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chapter twenty-nine
trip the light fantastic
DECEMBER TWENTY-SECOND
ONE MONTH LATER
The next month passed in the blink of an eye. My resident status came through, and I started working again in Rascals territory. Tetsu still worked at the bathhouse, but his father was lightening up on him a bit, and he was thinking of actually doing something with his interior design degree.
I talked to my mother at least once a week, usually on a Thursday night when Tetsu pulled the unfortunate night shift. Mom was doing alright back in New Mexico. She moved out of my grandparents' house, and bought an apartment in Santa Fe. She'd recently started working for one of the natural heritage sites, and she seemed to be enjoying it.
A lot of things also happened in and around S.W.O.R.D, and I was starting to realize that would would never change. They finally found Himari Iemura, but of course, once S.W.O.R.D found her, the Kamizono family did as well, and she was whisked back away to the big city where she was going to remain under house arrest until her wedding, but after eavesdropping on a few S.W.O.R.D meetings, I realized that Hyuga had a plan to break her out that involved crashing said wedding.
Smokey was rushed into emergency surgery for a tumor on his lungs. I think everybody within S.W.O.R.D was shocked. We knew Smokey was sick, but we didn't know it was that bad. Takeshi and Lala were able to get him into the hospital in time, and with Himari's family money, the surgery saved his life. Everybody could tell he was crazy about the heiress, and he was beating himself up about letting Yuu Kamizono take her back.
After the hot springs weekend, I kept in touch with Midori Yamada, and we'd get together for coffee at Itokan with Naomi frequently. It was nice to have friends around, especially ones who understood the chaos of S.W.O.R.D. That's also how I found out that Midori and Murayama had gotten engaged, and that Murayama was planning on leaving Oya Kokoh and handing the reins over to a new generation of fighters.
Naomi and Yamato had officially made their relationship public, resulting in a very public argument with Tsukomo and Kohaku, Naomi's overprotective brother-figures ( even though they're like twice her age ). Now that everything was out in the open, Chiharu and Dan could no longer speculate and make wild guesses. They'd since moved on to finding out who Cobra's mystery woman was, with no such luck.
I had started attending an alcoholics anonymous group in an unregulated bordertown between Sannoh and Oya. It was freeing to talk about my struggles since Yuki died with a group of people who would truly understand. When I reached my six month mark in my second sobriety journey, Tetsu and the other guys in Sannoh Rengokai had thrown me a party at Itokan. Back home, I barely even got a cake when I hit two years. I'd also been spending more time with Ukyo Sena and Shu Kato. I think my presence was helping them both move on through some of the guilt that they felt after Fuyumi died, and they were genuinely nice people. God, I like having Ukyo around, but he could talk your ear off about Fuyumi, may she rest in peace, and his younger son Takahide, even though the boy hasn't talked to him in almost three years. But please, don't get him started on his two ex wives. He's a hopeless romantic: the get married first, ask questions later type.
