"I think we're snowed in." I hear Wakana say as she walks into my room and looks out of the window. I follow her gaze and saw the snowflakes slowly come down from the sky in large forms.

I wasn't really worried about what was going on outside but what was inside. If it's warm inside and there was enough food, then we would be fine. Winter is the time when we mostly eat meat and sometimes also miso soup. But because we don't have much vegetables, we can easily become deficient in something. The kitten will once in awhile find a mouse hiding somewhere and get a good meal out of it and Hosuke would find something here and there when outside. But I still fed him some seeds.

Wakana walks up to me as I sat on the futon and in front of me, I held my brush and had a piece of paper on the floor. I was writing a letter to send to Hanzo asking for him to call over Renn to see if I could go back into duty early in the spring. She sets down the tray with two cups with leaves in the and a pot of hot water. Picking up the pot, she fills one cup and hands it to me before I take it with my free hand and felt the hot surface warm me up. She fills another for herself and looks down at the paper in front of me.

"What are you writing?" She asks.

"A letter to Hanzo. I'm requesting my post back." I tell her as I sip my tea.

"Oh."

"Is something the matter?" I ask as I look up at Wakana and see her slightly frown.

"No, nothing's wrong." She replies as she looks the opposite way from me.

I sigh. "I'm still not very experienced with women, but I do know that look." I say as I remembered how Akane always frowned when I didn't sleep with her and also when Goemon took over my post. But still, interacting with women isn't in the Ninja Technique Book.

"Well, I came here for a purpose. And that purpose was to help you get better. You're way better now and that means," she stops and takes a breath. "You don't need me here anymore."

I look at her with a mix of bewilderment and dumbfound as I heard her say that. "Why would you even say that?" She looks back in confusion. "You're repeating Goemon's words of 'she needs a job and a place to stay'. But you didn't hear me say 'when I'm cured you need to leave'."

She looks at me, completely speechless.

"You can stay here as long as you want." I say as I go back to writing the letter.

"Thank you!" In an instant, Wakana jumps on me and wraps her arms around my neck causing me to mess up on the writing and spill some of the tea.

"Wakana?!" I call out her name as I felt myself begin to heat up and become flustered for a moment.

"Oh my! I'm so sorry Kotaro!" She looks down at the mess on me; ink smeared on both our clothes and tea all over the ground.

"Um, it's fine." I looked down to the side to try to hide my blushing, but Wakana didn't look in my direction as she begins to clean up the tea with a rag. "Thanks."

"No problem. Er, sorry about the letter." I look down at the piece of paper with half of my letter already written until there was some blotches of ink through some words and a smear across the entire piece of paper.

"It's fine. I'll write another one." I say as I fold the piece of paper and take out another one and begin to copy what I wanted to say.

We became quiet as Wakana took the tea out of the room and I wrote my letter for a little bit. It doesn't take long till I finish my letter and wrap it to be secured to Hosuke's foot during delivery. I open my window and let him go and watched the owl turn into a dot in the white sky.

"Sent him off?" I look back and see Wakana with a rag in her hands as she looks out of the window.

"Yeah. Master Hanzo will be getting the letter by tomorrow." I look back at the white sky.

"You still have ink on you." Wakana says as she walks up to me and makes me face her.

Without saying another word, she uses the rag to wipe off the almost completely dry ink on my shirtless body. After a few minutes of trying to get all the ink off, Wakana continues to stroke my chest and core; with her hand. She seemed to be in her own world as she glided her finger over my abs, causing me to smirk. Grabbing her hand, she seemed to snap out of it when she felt her small hand in mine. Brushing pink, she attempts to leave the room but I quickly pull her back and held her against my chest.

"You seem to like touching me." I whisper in her ear.

"You must be seeing thing. I-I was just trying to get the rest of the ink off of you." My smirk grew as I saw Wakana become flustered and try to make up and excuse.

I lowered myself and lock my lips with Wakana's as she continues to make lame excuses about her feeling my body. And to my surprise, Wakana doesn't tense when I do. Parting with her, I look down into her eyes, not far from almost making our nose touch.

"You didn't tense."

"I think I like kissing you now."

I smiled as I heard her confess and once again lock her lips with mine. Enjoying the kiss as a real couple.