Through the open curtains in the window, golden rays of sunlight streamed into the room, lying the light on a bouquet of white roses in a vase, next to which were also two plates - one with sandwiches and the other with sliced cheesecake. There was undisturbed silence all around.
Emiko's eyes stared at the blue sky on which white clouds were flowing. They looked so lazy, flying slowly across the sky that she herself wanted to be in their vicinity and fly far, far away...
She sighed deeply, then shifted her gaze back to the blank page of the sketchbook she was now holding, along with the pencil.
When Johan left early in the morning, he left her a considerable amount of food, as if he wouldn't plan to come back for a long time. What surprised her the most in all of this, was that he didn't tie her hands to the bed this time, and left a sketchbook in the room, locking the door with a simple flick of a key as he walked away.
She knew that he certainly hadn't done it all by accident - he had never done anything reckless. She knew him well enough already.
Her thoughts went to Kenzo, and later, to her friends whom she had left for so long in Japan. Although she felt a slight sadness in herself, she smiled slightly at the white sheet of paper and began to draw.
Though she couldn't see them in person, she might at least meet them that way...
****
On that day, time passed quickly for her, as she was completely lost in her favorite activity. In the present situation, she had nothing better to do anyway, so she preferred to take her mind to something else, something that reminded her of important things to her... before her mind would wander back to the blonde-haired young man.
She couldn't understand why that was that he wanted to know her better. After all, it was Kenzo who saved his life over ten years ago, it's him who he owes much more. So why... she...?
When the girl's eyes looked at the window again, she noticed that the sun was hidden behind heavy clouds, and soon after, she heard the sound of a thunder in the distance. Though it was only late afternoon, the dark clouds still drifting by, made it almost as dark as the night. Emiko put her sketchbook aside, then got up from the bed and walked slowly to the window, taking a piece of cheesecake in her hand on the way.
She peeked out through the glass, where the street below and the trees struggling against the increasingly gusty wind were visible. The young woman began chewing the cake while staring at the people rushing to their homes. Despite her current situation and free hands, she couldn't get out of here, because the hotel apartment Johan had rented, was on the sixth floor of the tenement house, which made it impossible to even escape through the window.
'He planned it all very well... That bastard...'
After taking the last bite, Emiko opened the window wide and inhaled full breast of a cool air saturated with the smell of ozone, which slowly began to clear her mind.
'But you know, Johan, any plan can collapse...' She tilted her silhouette even more outwards, and her face lifted up. '...when you come across a suitable opponent!' After that, she smiled slightly, staring at the dark clouds that were suddenly pierced by lightning.
When speak of the devil...
Unexpectedly, she heard behind her the sound of the door lock turning, which made her turn towards its source; she leaned her back against the window sill, right next to the open glass. After only a second the door slowly swung open to reveal the silhouette of a young man.
Johan studied the empty plates carefully, then scanned her silhouette standing by the open window. As a gusts of wind were crepting into the room, Emiko's hair was blown just like of a japanese youkai from another dimension who decided to observing the life of ordinary mortals. Her eyes were calm, tinged with a slight hint of amusement at the same time, and she was staring intently at the man still standing in the doorway. Neither of them said a word however, and the room was silent.
After a few long seconds, it was finally interrupted by heavy raindrops falling on the outside windowsill. The girl smiled to herself.
"...Did you want something?" For the first time, the mockery was felt in her voice. Oh how true at this point has it become to say that "whoever you hang with, that is what you become." She knew that this was the only way the Monster couldn't hurt her in any way, so she decided to play her little, unexpected role as best as possible.
Johan leaned slightly sideways against the doorframe, gazing casually at the glass, which was now drowning in the pouring rain.
"Do you want being struck by the lightning? I thought you valued your life more, Emiko." The sky was torn by lightning again, followed by a deafening rumble.
"Do you want an honest answer?" The young woman crossed her arms without moving from her place. "I thought it's a lack of manners to answer by a question to the question, Johan."
This sparing exchange of sentences was followed by a brief silence, which was unexpectedly interrupted by outbursts of a loud laughter. Emiko was still looking at the door, only this time with a slight surprise... mixed with inner satisfaction.
'And here, I've got you...' she thought with satisfaction, realizing that she had just managed to fend off his first "attack" without damage of her well-being, making her lips widen in a slightly larger smile.
"...You see?" Johan, with a slight hint of amusement still written on his face, looked in her direction again. "We are not that different, Emiko." At these words, the girl felt some unpleasant feeling inside of her, but she decided to ignore it and shrugged her shoulders casually.
"We may be similar, but we will never be the same."
"So you are not denying it?" The young man came down from the threshold of the door and came close enough for her, to be able to look each other in the eye.
Both irises were like a mirror, reflecting the whole world in the colors of blue... and at the same time they were so different from each other. Though Johan's eyes could see the depths of the ocean, calm and undisturbed, hiding dark uncharted secrets, in Emiko's eyes was reflected the ever-burning fire, showing all her inner emotions and deepest beliefs that couldn't be broken.
Water and fire; elements that are able to exclude each other, or connect, depending on the situation in the natural environment - fire can be extinguished by the water, and the flood disappears at high temperature. But isn't it, when being together - cold and hot - can create the storm and the lightning?
The fifth element that connects the others...
"I don't confirm it, as well." She replied impassive, still standing with her arms crossed. As if nothing had happened, the man walked over to the window next to her and then closed it tightly. As another lightning bolt tore the sky, the roar that followed seemed somewhat muffled.
"You should go to the bathroom and change your clothes. You're soaking wet."
'So what, maybe >a good afternoon< fire that will dry me?' She thought ironically.
"I'll be alright." She replied still not moving from her place, at the same time deciding to prove to him that she didn't intend to do as he wished. 'Not everything will go according to your plan, Johan.'
"Oh?" The man leaned slightly over her standing figure, resting one of his hand on the windowsill. "Would you prefer me to do it for you?" These quiet, calmly whispered words that reached her ears quickly washed away all her confidence from just a moment ago. Her heart started pounding in her chest, and a large blush appeared across her cheeks.
The girl immediately realized that she had entered a too dangerous area, so she quickly moved away from him, then gave him a murderous look and headed towards the door.
"I can do it myself."
After these words, she left the room, leaving the man still leaning against the windowsill, with a careless smile written on his face.
****
Before Emiko changed into dry clothes, she first decided to take a quick cold shower, which was able to sober her up. No matter how she tried to prepare and how to approach him, HE always find a way to get out of it...
She honestly admitted to herself that, more than the imprisonment in this apartment, she had enough of his little mind games, the assortment of which seemed to never end.
The girl tilted her head back, letting the next, cold drops fall on her face, gradually washing away the feeling of embarrassment she felt just a moment ago, standing by the window. She knew that she wouldn't let go him and anything that had happened so far.
****
When the young woman returned to the room, she noticed a glass of warm water on the table and that the empty plates had been cleared away. Without much thought, she tilted the vessel and began to swallow gulp after gulp; however, she quickly regretted her decision when she tasted the dissolved honey in the water.
A voice sweet as honey and soft as silk...
She immediately choked on the memory and with an instant movement of her hand, she put the glass with the drink back on the table, then sat down on the bed and put her face in her hands.
'Will it never end...?!' Despite the icy water that had washed her face in the bathroom just minutes ago, she felt too much warmth on it again.
"Do you not like it?" She heard a soft voice, the sound of which made her feel a shiver spread from the center of her body to the tips of her fingers. With all the remaining determination in herself, she lifted her head and looked in the direction of the door, without saying a single word.
To her surprise, Johan was holding a glass cup of a green tea in his hand.
"I thought you might want a drink before the tea cools down a bit." He announced in a calm tone, then headed towards the table on which he had placed the vessel he was holding, and then he reached the other side of the bed and sat down a short distance from her silhouette.
Emiko tried to calm down at all costs. She couldn't believe that despite all the encounters between them for two full days, Johan was still able to surprise her with something completely new and totally unexpected in the least expected moments. He was definitely a tough opponent. But what do you say in such situations? Oh yeah.
Better evil known than unknown.
She turned her head looking straight at his face. She knew she wouldn't regret the words she was about to say.
"If you care so much to get to know me, I also want to know something about you." His usually calm eyes showed a slight surprise, but after a brief second he closed them calmly, and his mouth curved in an ironic smile.
"Two days ago you said something completely different. You change your mind very quickly, my dear." After that, he gave her a gentle look, and the girl silently bit her lips, trying to swallow the few words she would say to him now... and which didn't belong to her vocabulary. Apparently he was enjoying this little game. "No reaction this time, Emiko? I was already starting to enjoy our conversation."
'And I don't.'
In her eyes flame appeared again and she spontaneously grabbed the fabric of his jacket with one hand and tightened her grip on it tightly.
"If you don't want to tell me, I'll find out by myself! Your eyes will show me the whole truth!" Johan tilted his head slightly to the side.
"Are you following the thought that 'the eyes are the mirror of the soul'?
She didn't answer his question, just began to stare stubbornly into his blues. The young man, on the other hand, was staring into her own, which looked as if it wanted to rip all secrets hidden from him.
'No matter what you hide, what mask you put on... What emotions have you destroyed. I will find them all...'
Though their heads were so close that they almost touched each other, young Tenma felt no embarrasment at all. This time, she was focusing on finding the truth within the Monster, instead of focusing on that if they had gotten closer to each other a little more...
The darkness that greeted her in this blue was so heavy and overwhelming that Emiko had the impression as if her feet fell into the dark abyss, taking her to a void filled with icy cold. There was absolutely no life there... It was like...
"In my opinion, the universe is mostly empty... Ice cold. It is as if it was dead..."
The words he said on the roof that evening turned out to be so astonishingly sincere that the girl felt an almost icy stab in her heart, as if it had been torn to pieces by sharp icicles growing from the inside. How much would she have to experience in her own life to become such an emotionless being?
"Help me! The monster inside of me is about to explode!"
But... really devoided of emotions?
"We are not that different..."
The emptiness she's feeling since she came to this country.
"Nice to know that in my presence, you have dreams where you smile..."
His uncontrollable burst of laughter during their conversation when she didn't reveal her favorite music band to him.
All these sensations led her to one more discovery - that somewhere at the bottom of his soul, there is something tiny, very very tiny, almost invisible... but at the same time, pure.
Johan at one point opened his eyelids a little wider, not understanding the sight that was just unfolding before his eyes - on the face of the girl sitting in front of him... tears were flowing, one after another.
"Why..." She sobbed, wiping her face with her hands. "...this is... so sad...?"
Why?
Why what?
Wasn't Schuwald terrified at the same gesture on his part?
Wasn't called him a Demon, and the scene unfolding before their eyes, a Hell?
The monster was sitting motionless, staring at the silhouette of the girl, completely don't understanding why she was trembling with sobs, and wiping the tears running down her cheeks. After all, it was just a meaningless gesture that anyone could make. A look into the other's eyes.
And even if... Even if she could see a tiny bit of truth in them, there was still a good deal of it to discover...
Or maybe she just noticed those feelings that are close to her? Feelings reflected in her own eyes? Abandonment? Loneliness? Is that why she's crying? Because they are a painful memories for her?
The monster didn't move an inch analyzing the situation, however, he didn't manage to solve this new puzzle to the end.
For him, something was wrong with it...
****
Finally, after a few minutes, Emiko managed to calm down and wiped the rest of the salt drops from her face with the sleeve of her blouse.
"I know everything but one." She said, looking at him again with reddened eyes. "Why did you imprison me here? Because I'm a small, weak woman who is easy to deal with?" The young man's eyes met her own, and a gentle smile touched his lips.
"In that dark alley, when you helped a girl you didn't know, you dealt with a few opponents, didn't you? Aah, Emiko." Johan, with a gentle movement of his hand, combed a strand of hair behind her ear, which is why she bit her lip. "Why do you consider yourself weak?"
The girl took a deep breath, and after a moment she looked into his eyes again, with a fresh dose of determination in her own blue. Suddenly, she put both her hands towards his stomach, and then she started making probably the most famous gesture known to mankind...
A gesture that she herself hadn't expected to perform at such a serious moment.
It all happened so unexpectedly that the silhouette of the young man, before it could confront with her fingers in any way, ended up throwing itself onto the mattress, shaking with sensations it had never known before.
"You see?" Between successive bursts of unrestrained laughter from the man's side, her voice was heard. "Every human has their weaknesses, Johan! So you are a human too!" The laughter that escaped through his mouth was so highly uncontrolled that it began to frighten its owner too much. The young man managed, with no little effort, to push her hands away, then he sprang from the bed with a sudden movement.
The moment when Emiko managed to see his face, that mere fraction of a second, turned out to be priceless. It expressed the greatest confusion that she had never seen in any human being in her whole life, and in HIM, she had never expected to see. Moreover, a noticeable blush appeared on his cheeks! She felt a strange form of surprise at the sight, mixed with a satisfaction so great that her heart beated faster because of it.
Johan hurriedly took a glass with the rest of the water in one of his hands, then quickly left the room, locking the door behind him, and young Tenma began to stare at the closed wooden surface in disbelief.
'What have I done...?! What got into me?!!' She remembered his flushed cheeks, at the memory of which she began to ruffle the hair on her head in all directions. 'WHAT IT ACTUALLY WAS!?'
She felt incredibly embarrassed by the gesture she made completely spontaneously... Oh, does she always have to do something stupid? Tracking a cop like a criminal wasn't enough?!
But on the other hand, with her heart still beating, she remembered that face once again... The face that had become so human at that one moment.
'I will wake up in you all the emotions that life has killed in you. You will see...'
She felt extremely exhausted from all the situations she had experienced today, especially since by some strange reason, her head was buzzing and she felt weakness more than she could have imagined. She quickly realized that it was the result of the recent crying and the last days spent in Johan's company, which had given her a dose of too much emotions.
First, she drank a warm cup of tea, and then decided to lie down and sleep well to recharge her energy for the next day.
She was less than two days away from the freedom...