Ryumiko sat with an enormous bowl of rice in her arms, eating away happily as she waited for Haku to give her the 'rules' before he showed her 'what it was like to fly'... basically letting her out of the house. The only sounds were the soft click of the girl's chopsticks and almost inaudible munching in the room. Her long black hair had been arranged into a very untidy bun as she ate her lunch, not wanting to mistakenly chew on locks of her own hair while she enjoyed the meal.
Haku meanwhile, had his eyebrows close together in a tight frown as he tried to make foolproof rules for the girl so that she couldn't find a single loophole. He had thought up many rules, but all of them had many gaps for Ryumiko to easily work her way around.
"So..." Ryumiko said between mouthfuls of rice. "The concentration you're putting into this is great and all, but I will say that the sound of silence is deafening. Have you got a single rule for me yet?"
Haku raised an eyebrow, "Ignoring the irony of that statement, I am finding neither your chatter nor this silence to be beneficial to my thoughts, so I will just have to say them as they come to me."
The girl looked at him skeptically with blue orbs. "The spontaneity of your actions is incredible," she remarked dully with an edge of sarcasm, before resuming her feast.
"First rule, you will not under any circumstances make any attempts to escape while outdoors, whatsoever," Haku ordered, raising a long white finger as if to emphasise the point.
"But what if you tell me to run away because we're being attacked? Hypothetically of course."
"First rule, you will not, unless ordered to otherwise, make any attempts to escape while outdoors, whatsoever," he huffed, closing the loophole she'd created.
"You said 'unless ordered to otherwise'... what if someone else saw me in the clutches of a terrifying dragon and told me to escape? In that case I'd be ordered to escape, and be allowed to," Ryumiko said.
Haku felt his left eye twitch ever so slightly. "First rule, unless ordered to otherwise solely by myself, you will not make any attempts to escape while we're outdoors. What. So. Ever," the dragon spirit huffed, his patience running dangerously thin.
Ryumiko struggled to not laugh. It was much too easy and much too amusing for her to irritate Haku. She loved pinpointing the flaws in his obvious need for order and control. Though she knew it was making more restrictions for her when she finally got outside, she took joy out of pulling the ends of his rope.
Haku was about to crack by the time they got to the end of his rules.
"Okay let's recap...
"First rule, unless ordered to otherwise solely by myself, you will not make any attempts to escape while we're outdoors.
"Second rule, you will not unless I tell you to do otherwise, stray away from a metre's distance from my person.
"Third rule, if by some random and coincidentally horrific stroke of fate, you 'fall off' me while I'm a dragon and get kidnapped, lost, harmed or any other unfortunate circumstance that may befall you, you are to keep yourself alive by any means possible until I, someone else sent by me or someone with unusually good intentions comes to your rescue. If you die from the fall then clearly this rule is void as you so kindly pointed out.
"Fourth rule, you are to keep as silent as humanly possible unless warning me of potential danger coming towards us.
"Fifth rule, you are to keep as close to me as possible to avoid being noticed by enemies, unless I tell you otherwise, or if the circumstances such as the ones mentioned in rule number three, prevent this from happening...
"Is that clear?" he huffed, exhaustion from having to deal with the infuriating girl seeping into the tone of his voice.
Ryumiko smiled and nodded, half her enormous bowl of rice consumed by the time he'd finished.
"Can I add a few rules?" she asked cheerfully.
Haku groaned, "What other rules could you possibly add?"
She cleared her voice dramatically before speaking, "What about 'The flight has to at least be thirty minutes long and at night'?"
Haku frowned, "I'll agree to the first part of that rule but what does flying at night have to do with anything?"
"Personally I prefer the moon, I think it's prettier than the sun. Plus, wouldn't I be less recognisable to enemies at night? Also Yubaba would be busy with her bath-house at night so that'd eliminate her as a threat wouldn't it?" she said with a smile.
Needless to say, the dragon spirit with her was bewildered by her logic, presuming her to be incapable of concluding something so strategic.
"Fine then. Is tonight too soon?" Haku asked wanting this whole ordeal to be over already. He expected her to be happy he was letting her out already, however he wasn't expected for the body that flew at him.
Ryumiko leapt at him with a bone-crushing hug, the bowl of rice rolling off somewhere, leaving a trail of rice in its path.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she repeated, hugging Haku harder with each 'thank you'.
Haku let a small smile creep onto his face at the girl's antics. Annoying as she could be at times, she seemed like a fairly ordinary girl at that moment. He managed to wrench a hand free and pat the top of her head, "Ryumiko, could you let go now?"
Her eyes snapped open as she realised what she was doing. She was hugging Haku... Haku... her cousin Chihiro's first love... of which Chihiro herself did not even hug, albeit, did not hug while Haku was conscious, according to her fairytales. With a light blush of embarrassment coating her cheeks, she let go of the dragon spirit and stepped away.
"Sorry! I did that unconsciously... I guess..." she laughed nervously, averting her gaze. Her sight suddenly settled on her mess of a lunch. "Oh bugger!" she cried disappointedly as she fled the room, following the trail of rice to her runaway meal.
Yukaoi found Retsu perched lazily on a tree, a short distance away from the prophecised one's residence. His long red hair, out of its usual braid, gently moved around him in the breeze as his sharp golden eyes focused on the house ahead of him. Yukaoi sighed. No-one would know simply by looks that they were siblings, the two being completely different in almost every way except by blood relation. One clear trait they did share however, was their personality. Although they had different interests, the calm and collected manner in which they acted was almost identical.
"How goes the guarding of the prophecised one? " she asked him.
Retsu sent her a short glance, letting her know he acknowledged her presence, "It is without trouble."
"Have you learnt much from your observations?"
With this question, a crooked smile formed on the red dragon's lips. "Her name is Ryumiko. Her ability to stay composed without anything to do is not great, and is usually compensated for by harrassing others for what appears to be entertainment. She enjoys eating unusually large quantities of food in one sitting and as I recently discovered, prefers the moon to the sun."
Yukaoi raised an eyebrow at her unlikely sibling, "You seem to have learnt much."
"It is not like I had much else to do, and her interactions amuse me. How did your meeting with the Clan Leaders fare?" Retsu asked.
With a sigh she answered, "I am to investigate further on this girl Kohaku thinks is the prophecised one, connected to-"
"Ryumiko," Retsu finished for her.
"Thank you, the girl connected to Ryumiko."
Retsu nodded, "Although it seems you will have to do that tomorrow. The human girl has finally coerced Kohaku into letting her be flown around by him tonight."
Yukaoi huffed. "The recent events are most definitely unhelpful," she said defeatedly.
When night had fallen, Ryumiko was excitedly tying her hair back for the flight, anxious to finally get out of the house. Ryumiko had many times dreamed of flying on a dragon, thanks to her cousin's stories, imagining the feeling of flight. All she had to go on was Chihiro's vague descriptions of the feeling of 'weightless-ness'. Now after much deliberation, she was finally going to fufill her childhood dream. It was like the feeling of finally buying that hing you'd saved up all your money for... only with much more excitement.
In the kitchen Rin was trying not to laugh at the fact that the usually calm and stoic 'dragon-boy', had lost his almost marble-like resolve to a human girl only just reaching the age of sixteen.
"It is not funny!" Haku said sharply, wanting to reclaim some of the dignity he had left from Rin's taunting. When it was finally silent, he resumed, "I'm not going to be here to make sure you're safe so you need to be careful."
Rin nodded, seriousness beginning to creep into the mood.
Ryumiko waltzed into the kitchen with a big grin on her face, "I'm ready!"
Haku turned to her, "Do you remember the rules?"
Nodding enthusiastically, she grabbed his hand and tried pulling him towards the door, "Yes yes I've got it! Now let's go already!"
"Then I guess it's time to leave," Haku said half to himself and half to Rin and Ryumiko.
EXAMS ARE OVER! YEAH! I can not wait to write the next chapter! Why? Because the next chapter is what started this whole story! EXCITED!
And we see more of Retsu *grins*... Just to clarify why I grin weirdly to myself here: In my head, Retsu is a total babe. Oh. My. Goodness.
I love his character and I'm so pumped to write more of him!
Many thank-yous to:
Mysticbreeze327 (Yup... it'll be interesting alright XD)
Animala (I'm glad you like my story! I can't wait for them to finally see each other again too! *squeals*)
Laugh. While. Crying (I don't mind the questions :) It helps me improve my writing. I re-submitted the last chapter and added a short explanation towards the end of Haku's conversation with Ryumiko. But if it still doesn't make sense,don't worry because I'll be explaining a little further in detail next chapter anyway :D)
cynthiarox66 (Thank you for the compliment :3 Hehe I can't wait for ChihiroHaku fluff too!)
Ground-Cinnamon (Thank you for the review and here's the update!)
I loved getting reviews from you! Why? Because reviews are WHAT KEEPS ME HAPPY AND WRITING WITHOUT WRITER'S BLOCK!
REVIEW PLEASE?
It's my cure for writer's block
and
the key to my motivation!
Want updates?
REVIEW DANG-NABBIT!