A Piece of Me

And so, we begin anew

The months following seemed to slowly become less and less productive for Angela as it went on. Sure she went on missions and made progress on her papers and research. She even managed to not blow something up in her lab since that incident, though that never stopped Genji from assisting her in his combat gear.

However, if she thought about it hard enough, the rate that she worked at definitely slowed down. Actually, perhaps she was working more productively. Despite feeling as if she has been just chatting with Genji half of the time she's in her lab, she was putting out results and achieving successful or at least conclusive experiments at a consistent rate that was similar to her usual pace.

It did not feel like they talked about her work. She was worried that she would bore him to death with her constant talk about it. What used to be a mental thinking process and explanation became a vocal routine as she explained her steps and analysis to the man standing nearby.

The new routine could definitely be a large part of why she thought faster and could figure things out so well. He was even able to give useful inputs from time to time, much to her surprise, as if he had worked with some of these things before.

Even so, it only happened during half of the time she spent in the lab. As for the other half, she felt as if she just spent it talking to him about completely irrelevant things. Sometimes she would stop during these chats with a new idea to try or jot down on her tablet to look into later. Most of them, however, were not like that.

It was everything from his past and experiences to hers. She did not know when he began to open himself and his life to her. She noticed that his stories never strayed near the time when they would have worked together. Even if it did, the focus was never on him nor her. It was always about the team.

While curious, it helped her understand him more. She shared things about her life as well, to which he simply smiled and sat gazing at her affectionately as he listened attentively without ever interrupting. Very rarely, he would ask a specific general question about her story which would remind her of something interesting she neglected to tell. It took her a while but eventually, she figured out that just perhaps, this was not the first time she had told him these stories.

When she asked about it, Genji admitted that it was true. When asked about why he never stopped her, it only took six words to stop her from being able to speak.

"Because I love listening to you."

She vaguely recalled him explain sheepishly that he meant he enjoyed hearing her talk so passionately about herself. Something about the way she sat on the table, her eyes gazing far away and fondly at her past. Maybe something about her various amusing expressions while she sipped her coffee. Her voice too. He used a thesaurus' worth of synonyms for "lovely" about it.

At the end of the day, those six words were what stayed in her mind. The more she thought about it, the more she felt the same way toward him. He was just a wonderful storyteller. He could pull her along so easily with his story, unable to stop herself from eagerly prodding him with questions and insistence for more details. He even teased her to get that reaction out of her sometimes, pausing and pretending to think. She just knew he was.

In addition to these chats, she had been getting more rest and food for herself than she had before. It was ironic for her own patient to take care of her but somehow, it just felt so fitting for him to do that to her.

One morning, she awoke with her heart racing and cheeks hot. In her dreams, Genji's story about him and a young woman back in his youth at a festival in Japan was not just about an unnamed woman. It was with her, dressed in a kimono that she knew she still owned.