After regaining her full chakra control Mana had to once again deal with the enhanced attributes of ninja. Her metabolism shifted drastically to the point where she could no longer properly rely on her sense of hunger to tell her when to eat or her thirst to inform her of an appropriate time to drink. Ninja could remain without food or water exponentially longer than normal humans but it didn’t mean they should. For that reason the magician found herself having to remind herself when to eat or drink, or so to say, when it would be appropriate to do so.
Similarly her physical strength, speed, perception and pretty much every other aspect of her body increased greatly as well. Naturally ninja’s physical stats did not augment much beyond the might of the absolute human limits unless they were stressed or the body deemed such empowerment needed to survive. Due to Mana’s erratic power up the unconscious decision to augment her body was in fritz. It took the girl almost a whole week to stop breaking things and begin to actually feel pain, her body used to augment itself just to withstand getting cut with a kitchen knife
Once again the magician found herself at the mercy of her abilities of meditation, hoping they could help her control what was going on with her mind and body and put everything into place. Mana sat for entire hours contemplating on the complicating processes transpiring in her own body, while she did see representations of her body appearing as space bodies she could no longer feel or hear the mystic entity she once spoke with right before her near death experience.
It didn’t take long for Mana to identify a blazing gigantic star at her core “ the representation of her heart. It looked brighter and hotter than ever and no matter where Mana tried focusing her attention she could never avoid the star’s flames and energy bursts. It wasn’t particularly surprising, after all, Mana’s been dealing with a lot these days and it only made sense that her heart burned brighter and stronger as it was affected by dozens of different feelings.
“Did you hear about Mijo’s ship? Last night it got dragged to the bottom by the Eight Tails, I hear…” Mana heard voices while in total trance. It made no sense, she was supposed to be completely absorbed into herself and only been aware of her own body and mind. There should’ve been no one speaking in her mind!
While the magician expected a partial increase in her meditational effectiveness after her chakra control returned it was never supposed to be like this. She should’ve been more absorbed into herself and more capable of identifying physical or mental problems. This felt like something new entirely.
“Yeah… I guess it’s an occupational hazard sailing around Tako’s Reach. I’m glad we left that piss-hole behind” another voice replied. It was a strong masculine voice, drawn out as if slowed down in time. Due to the slowness of each word being delivered Mana almost got bored listening to this one sentence even if this was a new event she was dealing with.
Totally curious by her newly discovered ability to better perceive the environment around her Mana tried reaching out to the voices. Let her mind float free and extend beyond the edges she previously thought of as her limits. Much to the girl’s great surprise she could hear and perceive dimmed and blurry images beyond her own body almost as if she was there. These were no premonitions, they felt more like an expansion of her own body.
It was an impressive ability which could’ve been shaped into a whole different state of meditation. If Mana subconsciously or consciously perceived of a smell or a noise her mind expanded upon it, identifying the source from her previous memories and experiences and painting a very imperfect image of what may have been transpiring. It felt very mystical but it was merely an extension of her own senses. Mana was not sure when exactly this ability was born or where from it was acquired but it must’ve been something she knew for some time but couldn’t use due to her impairment. It currently felt too well defined and perfected to be a new discovery.
Loud and rhythmic footsteps alerted Mana’s attention. Her mind raced and borrowed from her chakra resources to process the noises and smells at breakneck speeds. The intensity of the sound of the person’s feet hitting the floorboard suggested their possible weight and mood, the pitch of the sound suggested a possible angle of their steps which helped the magician’s racing mind perceive a possible height of that person and also their gender. It was known from the Academy when they were taught to read footprints that males had a wider stepping angle compared to females and these steps were undoubtedly those of a relatively short male.
“Kouta…” Mana realized as her mind turned off all of the meditational stages and returned her to reality. If her highly educated guess was correct she needed to do something. The magician felt a great urge to not confront the young man as for some reason, unknown even to the girl herself, she did not wish to see him. Still, asking him out would be terribly rude and the last thing she wanted to be to her friends, people who stuck out for so long with her and her problems, was rude.
After just a couple of moments a pair of weak knocks could’ve been heard on Mana’s door and after another brief moment the door slowly opened with the boy’s cute face peeking in through the gap. The Jugo youth looked around and allowed half of his body to enter Mana’s room without stepping a single step inside. The medical ninja looked around and then sighed with sadness and disappointment.
“She must be out somewhere…” he uttered to himself gently closing the door and walking away.
With a loud poof followed by a cloud of smoke Mana’s shape became visible as she stood with her back against the cabin wall. Her hands were at the hand seal position having just used the “Cloak of Invisibility Jutsu” that every Academy Student learns at some point and yet very few use successfully or see coming. The magician didn’t notice how the bed cover she used to cover herself up and disguise in front of the wall slipped out from her fingers.
It was possible that Mana would’ve tried simply hiding under her bed and forgotten about this simple technique herself had she not used it as a part of her magic show a year before. As someone just recently out of the Academy the magician had very few tools to trick the audience with during those days having to resourcefully use and manage what she had.
With a depressing sigh Mana picked up the cover off of the ground and dusted it off, placing it back on her bed and fixing it so that it looked tidier. She had no idea why she’d rather resort to using ninjutsu to hide than see the boy she had to admit to herself she still liked. Or maybe it was that she knew the answer but didn’t want to confront it, finding it much easier to just hide from confronting him or her answer.
*****
That night Mana did have to move out from her cabin, as usual, to dine. Unlike with the pirate ship the crew and the voyagers or high ranking officers did not dine together and had different quarters. The higher ranking officers dined with the voyagers in the upper captain decks where the servicemen and the rest of the lower ranking crew dined just above the engine rooms.
Desperate not to meet Kouta Mana decided to slip out and eat with the crew instead of dining with the captain of the small ship and the others. Needless to elaborate it was a smelly and pretty loud venture. The crewmen quarters stank of manly smells such as sweat and even contents of someone’s stomach as the sailors had a nasty habit of throwing up into their own trash cans or even right onto the machinery in the engine room when they got seasick or drunk.
The food was not something to write home about however since Mana was not much of an eater anyways she decided to suck it up and eat a couple of smoked sardines and the really moldy looking and smelling bread with quince jam. The sailors were a decently loud lot as they often complimented their poor diet with alcohol which Mana found made them much more talkative and jolly.
In just an hour or so the crew were singing songs and even dancing which, having their very questionable balance and stuffy quarter space in mind, was rather impressive. Despite not feeling comfortable in the presence of these jolly loud sailors Mana decided to sit it through and wait until the dinner was actually over so that she didn’t risk running into her friends or getting seen by them as generally one could see the entire main deck from the captain’s quarters where the high status officers and guests ate.
Despite the very friendly and generally icky but affectionate drunk uncle-like behaviour from most of the sailors who quickly began looking at Mana like the little sister of the room the magician didn’t feel like returning all the friendliness she received from the sailors. She was simply not in the right mood, truth be told, she doubted she’d ever be the same again after what happened. Then again, that was what she thought after Tanshu-sensei’s passing as well…
“Oy, you stinking sea-rats! Stop harassing Mana-chan, she just lost a friend out there, captain said! Something with that huge man appearing in the skies…” one of the less drunk like a slipper sailors barked out angrily instantly shifting the mood to more nostalgic and lyrical. In just mere seconds the entire room began recounting those they’ve lost along the way. Mana was surprised to hear that pretty much everyone from the lowest ranking deck scrubber to the more refined maintenance specialists saw many more friends of their gone.
“And then the Eight Tails just squished poor Rachi like a paste tube… It wasn’t a sight for the little ladies, I’ll tell ya that!” a round sailor with a dad-stache recounted. It even forced Mana to squint her eye imagining seeing something like this.
“Rachi always liked to press his belly for a good fart, always made the table laugh that guy…” someone sadly recounted the deceased.
“Well it wasn’t a fart that came out from his ass when the fucking squid crushed him, those fucking tentacloids of his have crushed entire armoured battleships, poor bastard just blew up” someone yelled out from under the table.
“Hey, would you mind passing out in silence? We’ve got kids by the table!” the round sailor kicked the man down there and stomped on his gut but only received slurring giggling in return.
At some point Mana realized that the men were not going to stop honouring their dead with bottom-ups so she simply excused herself to thin alcohol smelling air and left the quarters. Right after she walked out into the salty and damp sea air the fresh air rushing into her intoxicated with putrid smells lungs made her cough and struggle to keep the contents of her stomach inside.
“You OK? I don’t think you should’ve drank for Shimo, I don’t think he’d have liked it very much” Meiko’s gentle joking voice alerted Mana.
“No, I didn’t drink, it’s just that… Those quarters really stink, the food is awful and everyone has more friends at the bottom of the ocean than living. Makes you understand why piracy is so rampant…” the magician replied looking at the black cloud ridden night’s sky.
“You know… We really missed you at the table. Kouta’s beginning to really make this disappearing act of yours a big deal and I’m not even sure how my training is going without your supervision” Meiko tried bringing the topic up. Mana had never expected Meiko, of all people, being capable of social subtlety.
“Yeah… I just… Everything that has ever happened with my life, both good and bad. I’m used to dealing with it alone, I had very few friends, no siblings or boys chasing after me and giving a shit. I just feel like I can only make everything fall into place by my lonesome, just like I always had” the magician replied staring longingly into the distance.
“You know…” Meiko began a sentence she realized she wasn’t sure she wanted to finish halfway, “As someone who joined in to the whole Academy generation halfway through the studies as a newbie, I never really got why you didn’t have a circle of people around you. You just always ran off into the village centre to do something right after the end of the school day. I could always understand why I wasn’t too hot, I was a newbie trying to fit into an already built circle of friends. It was almost like everyone was afraid of you or something…”
Mana sighed, “Yeah, I always had a reputation of being a bit weird before joining the Academy. It could’ve been the mental disorder thing, I’m not sure… Once I asked of this girl whom we used to be close friends with before what happened to us. She said that the other kids were just awestruck by my performance in the village streets, everyone looked at me like some sort of kid celebrity and were afraid to talk to me. Maybe they thought I was a diva or something, my focus solely on my own magic shows didn’t help that image either”.
Meiko grinned before tapping on Mana’s shoulder.
“That’s so weird! You’re weird!” she said out with a laughter. She could’ve just been sarcastically referring to the magician’s reputation as a kid in the Academy but Mana doubted that Meiko would use sarcasm as a tool. She was most likely referring to how Mana’s troubles always were not the usual things people had trouble with, it was rather something usually only Mana understood making her hard to relate to.
Mana smiled for a first time in a while looking down at the capricious waves smacking against the ship’s side making it bob and weave around. “For the longest time I told myself that it was because of my slightly darker skin or because my mom was from another village. Foreigners always have a stigma with both the kids and adults. I think I thought that way because it was easier to accept that it was someone else’s fault of being stigmatizing than my own of pushing people away unintentionally” she said.
“I dunno, you’re still doing it. You keep talking about protecting and helping everyone, may at the very least enjoy the people you help. I’m more of a blades and armor kind of person but I always take time to test the babies I make out and have a blast while doing it. What you’re doing is like cleaning the floor but not eating the cookie mother promised” Meiko shrugged.
Still awestruck that Meiko actually used a metaphor in a conversation, Mana heard someone calling out her name from behind. She turned around seeing Kouta standing right behind her. He didn’t look angry, more concerned than anything.
“Look, I just wanted to examine your network, your chakra control was dormant for much longer than usual and its re-emergence may have caused some issues. I just want to see if you’re fine” Kouta mumbled with slightly pouty lips. He must’ve began to think that Mana was thinking highly of herself and avoiding him on purpose, just like the kids in the Academy used to.
“I’m fine” Mana cut down before looking away and blushing, she needed a reason to slip away. The magician grabbed Meiko’s elbow and began dragging her away. “I’m sorry, I need to check up on Meiko’s training. I was told she hit a slump”
Meiko cried out in pain as Mana’s abilities must’ve augmented themselves unwillingly pulling on the blacksmith’s arm way too hard. Judging from the blacksmith’s reaction and jump in pain her arm would’ve popped out of the socket if the redhead’s body didn’t augment itself.
“I didn’t tell you anything like that!” Meiko began complaining out of pain as well as confusion, the fact that Mana was making it up must’ve slipped over her head.
Kouta closed his eyes and lowered his head like preparing himself for a big blow. “Mana-chan… Are you avoiding me? You spoke to Meiko, you spoke to my father once and even to the servicemen and the sailors but somehow you always evade me”
Meiko pouting due to Mana’s rude push slipped her elbow out of the magician’s hands and walked away. She clearly gave a message that this didn’t concern her and while the blacksmith was literally incapable of holding grudges she showed quite clearly that this was something Mana had to deal with herself instead of avoiding.
“Well… As much as I’d want to dismiss that… I actually was avoiding you” Mana admitted looking aside and rubbing her elbow in embarrassment like a child confronted by her parents about a broken vase.
“B-But why?” Kouta looked at her confused.
“It’s just that… I promised you that we’d be together once I put all of this together, once my chakra control is back and…” Mana felt her eyes getting wet again but she desperately tried pushing all of her sadness deep down, all of her feelings of unhealthy grief. “I do like you, I really do but… I don’t want you to be with me when I’m like this. I want that there’d be no obstacles for us but now… It’s just too difficult for me”
Kouta’s head unwillingly turned aside like that of a confused puppy. “I never really wanted to confront you about that. I would never pressure you into anything, I don’t care if it’s a promise or whatever. I just wanted to help you with what you’ve just lived through, I wanted to see if you’re healthy, I wanted to be there for you. I don’t care if it’s as a friend or whatever you want me to be. Frankly I even forgot about any “promise” of yours” he joked laughing uncomfortable as he rubbed the back of his head messing even more with his already messy hair.
Kouta’s curious attempt to lighten the situation up a little didn’t appear to help so the boy’s face expression softened as he gently touched Mana’s hand. “I know it’s tough for you and I just want to be there, to keep you from being alone in something like this. Also, one piece of advice “ love isn’t a business, you don’t remove all obstacles from its way before giving into it. Love is the force that removes obstacles and you may just be suffering so much because you try to fight both it and what you think keeps you away from confronting yourself”
Mana’s forehead pressed against Kouta’s chest before it raised up and looked him in the eyes. The depressing gloomy mist in her eyes was somewhat clearer as she whispered in his ears. “Did they teach you that in the medical textbook?” she tried to joke before reaching out her lips for a kiss.
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