"Goemon, how did you meet Wakana again?" I asked him as we were in the middle of eating dinner.
"Well, I just saw her at the bar and thought I could get a night out of her. After talking to her for a little, she began to interest me more and more till I thought of you. It seemed like you two would get along." Wakana and I look at each other for a moment before the two of us look away with warm cheeks. "And my intentions were right again." Goemon finishes with a smirk.
"You kinda scared me when we were coming here." She tells him quietly.
"I'm not that scary." Goemon replies with a smirk, but Wakana doesn't say anything back as she looks down at her half eaten ramen she made for all of us.
I sighed to myself before I take some of the noodles and slurp them up.
"At least she got you to eat again." I look up at him with a blank expression as I swallowed the food.
"Yeah, I guess I got my appetite back."
"And how long do you sleep now?" I pondered on the times I have actually slept and just shrugged my shoulders.
"I don't exactly know. But I think I now sleep for a good two to three hours."
"Better than nothing." Goemon says.
"Except that one time," I look down at Wakana and narrow my eyes at her. "What did you put in the sake to make me sleep?"
She looks away from me and quietly mutters, "Wintergreen. Their berries cause drowsiness. I wanted to let you have some sleep for once because you seemed exhausted."
"But, my hair was also wet and I was wearing different clothes…" I felt myself begin to redden as I felt somehow violated.
"No way…. The girl who wouldn't get near any man undressed and washed Kotaro while he was knocked out!" Goemon looks from Wakana and I with a stupid grin on his face.
"He did have some blood stains in a few places. And his wound was infected." Wakana says innocently, as though it was normal to do that.
"But it's KOTARO. He NEVER let anyone touch him besides his girl…" Goemon stops mid-sentence when he realized what he was about to say. "Nevermind."
"Huh?" Wakana looks back at me in confusion.
"Just forget about it." I tell her bluntly before I finished the rest of the ramen and made my way to my room.
Walking into my room, I notice that Hosuke and the little kitten haven't moved from my futon since they fell asleep earlier in the night. I didn't make a single noise as I walk over to the futon and sat down next to the little animals. Hosuke laid on his back with his wings around the kitten as it laid on Hosukes belly. I couldn't help but smile at the two as they slept together. The kitten purred lightly as it slept while Hosuke let out a hoo here and there.
"Kotaro?" My thoughts were interrupted as I heard Wakana's voice through the paper doors. Opening the door quietly, she walks in without making a sound and sits down next to me. She also smiles as she sees the two creatures sleeping with each other. "That's so cute."
"Yeah. Guess they became friends quickly."
"Goemon told me to tell you that he would inform Master Hanzo on your current condition. He left after you came in here." I nod my head in response.
"But I doubt that I'm ready to go back into combat."
"What did you do?" She asks.
"Oh yeah. I'm guessing that Goemon never told you that we are ninjas." She shook her head. "I'm the only son of the headman of the Fuuma Clan. We are raised to be ninjas from childhood. I was always picked on by other kids because I looked funny and barely ever spoke."
"You don't look funny." Wakana says with a little giggle. Making the corner of my lip curl up slightly.
"Yeah, well I just learned to take it." I look down at the kitten and the owl as they slept peacefully. "I should have known that I would sooner or later be diagnosed with it."
"Diagnosed with what?"
"PTSD; Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."
"PTSD? Isn't that when you witness a traumatic event and you become mentally, emotionally, and physically unstable?"
"Basically." I answer quietly.
"What happened to you?"
"I had a job. I was chosen by the Ninja Princess to be her escort to Iga and protect her throughout the war. But, the both of us got close to each other that the death of her made it more likely that I would respond severely to her absence. And before that; 5 years ago, I broke the ninja rule and dated a civilian. But her village's water supply was tampered with and everyone died after drinking the water."
Wakana gasps slightly and covers her mouth with her hand in surprise.
"I cut myself off from the world and held a hard shell around me for some time. Blaming her death on me. It weighed on me for such a long time. I dried myself to the bones from all the pain I went through just to try to forget her but that never happened. Akane then came in."
"The Princess?"
"Yes. She was the first person I told about her death. And later, I confessed to her that I loved her. She broke my shell and made me able to love again. But…" I stopped and looked out of the bedroom window.
"Love is what made you what you are now." Wakana quietly muttered, making me nod my head. "I don't believe in love." Looking back at her, she sat up tensely and looked up through the window also and watched the snow fall in tiny white specks. "All the men I have dated, they only wanted me for my body. It took me long to realize that when I just kept getting dumped after just a few weeks, when they told me that I became boring to them."
"How did you become a sex slave?" I ask.
"My last boyfriend. We lived together for a while until we started to lose money. He never told me about his work, until I found out that the only way he ever kept the house was by gambling. And then he kept losing the money because he kept sleeping with prostitutes. The taxpayers came by our home and was about to kick us out till my boyfriend offered me to the headman. The headman came by the next day and offered big money for me."
"Tch." I click my tongue in annoyance at the sound of these guys.
Who would easily sell their girlfriend just to stay in a house?
"He abused me every single day. Raped me every other day. Maybe when I was good I would be able to walk out of my room for a few hours. Never once did I enjoy an experience with that man."
"Have you been pregnant anytime?" I ask randomly.
"Had an abortion twice. Almost killed myself the first time because they killed something that was part of me." Wakana let out a sigh and I can see in her eyes that she felt so much pain when she had to kill her own child.
I then wondered how all this could happen at a young age. "Wakana, how old are you?"
"Recently just turned twenty-three." I look at her in surprise as I heard that she was just a year younger than me. "Why do you seem surprised?"
"I would have thought that you were way younger." I confess.
"Oh, well I'm not." She says with a shrug.
"But it's sad to hear what you've been through."
"You've been through worse." She simply says before she stood up from next to me and walks out of my room.
I would just call it even.