A hand slightly pulled away the curtain, lifting the fabric with the hand's back. Umi turned his face that way as he heard someone clearing their throat. Kumiko was timidly peeking through the curtain avoiding Umi's eyes by looking at her feet, which now fitted some geta. His eyes slowly scanned her from up to down. She wore a plain light salmon pink kosode, matching her the redness of her cheeks, with a blue and white plaid obi.

"You really like that color, hmm? It suits you"

Kumiko then looked for his eyes with a little bit of confidence and nodded.

"It's pretty, right?", she said excitedly with a genuine smile.

"Yeah, but be careful, too much pink in your cheeks looks like you've got a sunburn", he replied with a smirk as he got up. 

Kumiko averted her eyes and pouted, boiling with annoyance and shame. "Why can he just be nice and simply give me a compliment without ruining after?" She crossed her arms and leaned onto the wall

"Baba¹, how much do I own you?", Umi asked the old woman as he seemed like approaching Kumiko.

The old woman screamed from behind the curtains.

"I triple the price! And come take all these boxes!!"

"What? Why are you charging me more?"

"Because you don't know how to tree a woman!"

He pulled away the curtain passing by Kumiko's side and ignoring her, who now was smirking after hearing what the old lady said.

"Okay... I won't call you baba anymore", he said with resignation on his voice.

"You know I don't mean that, stupid moron!!", she screamed back again. 

He covered one ear with his finger and closed one eye with a frown. He saw then a big amount of boxes piled up in the middle of the room.

"Hey, why did you prepare so much?!"

Kumiko looked back inside the room with her arms still crossed and screamed:

"Because you said I can take as much as I want!!"

"A beautiful woman, needs many beautiful clothes", the old lady started to explain, now in a moderate tone. "There are many colors and patterns of embroidery that fit her and bring out her beauty. It'd be a shame she didn't try every one of them".

He rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers. Suddenly, the boxes dissappeared from the room. Kumiko's eyes opened wide open as she let out an incredulous gasp, taking her hands to her mouth. She looked at Umi's back expecting him to turn back and say something, then diverted her eyes to the old lady who just watched the situation unbothered. What was that? How did that happen and why no one was looking confused at all?

"Wh... what...", Kumiko tried to say something, but words got tangled up in her mouth.

The old lady sighed and took a sit.

"You haven't explained your friend yet?", she asked and Umi then spinned around quickly to look for Kumiko.

Her bewildered expression on her face was definitely amusing to him and he couldn't help but smile to that image.

"Ahhh, true. I didn't told you, did I?"

Kumiko denied moving her head side to side, rapidly, with her body completely stiff, unable to move any other part of her body.

"I'm a yōkai²", he just casually said, as if it was something completely normal.

"A... a...", she still couldn't say any word.

"A yōkai", he raised one eyebrow and tilted his head slightly up watching her from above, "You know what that means, right? Do people from your time know about us?"

She looked at the old lady again which just stared at her unfazed. 

"So she really knew this", she thought.

"To be fair, you would've never followed me if I had told you from the beginning", he continued to explain, "But, still, I recommend you to think about it before you runaway. I really meant it when I said I will help you".

She was in complete disbelief. A yōkai. It was imposible. It was pure mythology. Something most people believed to some extent, but never expected to actually be a real thing or something you could see in your whole lifespan. But until then, she also, as most people, thought it was imposible to travel in time. And there she was, about five hundred of years ago from her time. In fact, thinking carefully about it, it was said that it was common to see yōkais thousands of years before, even to live between them, and that it started to be less and less common within the pass of time to the point where they just became some kind of legends from mythology.

"So you can just take me back to my time", she suddenly spoke when she realized what that meant.

The old lady looked with a serious face at Umi. He looked back at her.

"I knew she wasn't from this time".

"Nothing escapes from you, baba".

"You can't even go to the future, how are you going to take her back?"

They started to talk between the two as if Kumiko wasn't even in front of them.

"I can get her to go back, what I can't is I, myself, go to the future".

"So you can, for sure, send me back to the future", she interrumpted them.

Umi looked back at her with concern.

"I can't say for sure because I don't know how to do it, but I know for sure I will do it".

Kumiko took a step back. Her eyebrow lowered as the inner part of the brow raised, wrinkles forming in her forehead. And as she shook her head slowly, side to side, her eyes reflected a mixture of dissapointment and fear.

"Kumi", Umi tried to take a step up and made a gesture with his hand trying to reach her, but she cut him off.

"No. Stop right there and don't call me like that as if we were friends".

She knew she was mean, but she felt lost and hurt. Why did she feel like that? From the beginning she thought of Umi as a normal person, just like her. How would he be able to get her back to the future? She didn't have any expectation from him before. So why did she feel as if she was lied to? Maybe it was the fact that he was actually a yōkai and that, even though he was a supernatural being, he didn't knew how to send her to her current era. Being a mortal didn't raise many expectancy from her and somehow she was just ignoring the reality she was in. But now, she felt as if she got a reality shock and not even a immortal being with superpowers actually knew how to help her.

She turned around and ran from that place. Umi didn't follow her, he just stood there looking at the spot from where Kumiko left, clenching his fists. Baba let out a sigh.

Kumiko got out to the avenue where both, her and Umi, came from and ran between the people. She ran as fast as she could, without thinking. She watched as people around turned to look at her with confusion and concern. They were unfamiliar faces, every one of them were completely strangers. There was something on their faces that made her uneasy. They were different from her, from her friends, her boss. The people she saw everyday on the streets, on the train, on the supermarket... even from those strangers, they were completely different. She didn't belong there. She didn't belong around them. And she felt the way they looked at her, the same way she saw them.

She began to slown down as the houses became fewer, until she left the last ones behind reaching a meadow. She walked aimlessly through the field until she heard the sound of water on the other side of some trees. She walked a bit more until she reached a hill with a stream at its feet. Near her town, she remembered walking with her mom through the trees until they reached a hill with a small river. They went there often when she was still a little kid. She liked to just take a walk with her mom and enjoy the nature. Usually, they laid down on the hillside and looked for flowers, four leaves trebols or even some insects. They also played by the riverside where they dipped their feet on the water or even entered the river, getting Kumiko wet up to her knees while her mom barely got her calves wet. 

She went down the hill and stopped half down sitting on the slope. There was a gentle breeze that brought with it a mix of grass, wet soil and the river smell. It blew in her face like a caress in her skin, like the gentle hand of her mom caressing her cheeks and taking her sadness and worries away. 

She took out her phone and tried to turn it on, once again, without a result. She curled up and hugged her knees as she buried her face between her arms closing her eyes. 

Suddenly she heard some footsteps, just when they were already behind her, then felt as someone sat next to her. She knew who it was, but she didn't intend on raising her head. 

"Are you feeling down?", she heard Umi's soft voive.

She opened her eyes with her face still hid. After no response, Umi tried again:

"I can't understand how you feel, but...", he made a pause and looked at her. Her hair was down, covering her shoulders and slowly dancing with the breeze. He took a strand between his thumb and his index finger.

"But what?", she finally responded lifting her head and looking at him with a serious face.

She then smiled as if her mood had completely changed and shoved something at his face.

"Look! This is a device from the future! A mobile phone!", she exclaimed with a cute voice tone, "¿Isn't it impressive? You're looking at something from hundreds of years ahead"

Umi took her hand aside from his face. With a smirk on his face, he replied:

"What is impressive about a rectangular hard piece of... of what? What kind of rock is this?".

"You can't imagine how many things you can do with this 'rock'!", on the last word she made quotation marks with her fingers, "You can talk to people wherever you are, no matter where they are. You can be miles away from each other and still talk. You can listen to music and play games here".

He rolled his eyes and put an unimpressed voice.

"Oh wow, show me".

She rolled her eyes back and wrapped her arms around her knees again, resting her face on the back of her arm and looking to the other way. Why did he have to be such mood ruiner? She was just trying to be nice and to not make him worry about her or, worse, put him on an uncomfortable situation.

"Anyways, I'm already looking at someone from the future. Isn't that more impressive?", he spoke again, gently caressing her hair.

She looked at him again, directly in the eyes. He couldn't help but see the resemble to a dear as he looked at her dark round eyes sparkling. Her cheeks were red, but she already expected it. After all, her cheeks had burned red multiple times in just two days since she met him. Her expression turned gloomy all of a sudden, making Umi confused.

She diverted her eyes from his once again, this time, to the front, watching the stream flow with tranquility.

"Two days ago my mom died... I mean, a year ago", she took a pause for some seconds, closing her eyes and letting the breeze caress her face. Then kept talking, "When I'm at home, I still always expect her to suddenly come through the door... or, when I get home, I still wish she'll be there when I open the door and, somehow, always end up dissapointed. But now, there's no place to wait for her to come back. I want to see her again, but now I can't even look at a picture of her".

She opened her eyes when she felt a warm touch on her arm shoulder. Umi embraced her with one arm and rested his head on hers.

"I can't really understand how you feel", he told her without letting go of the embrace. "I'm not able to feel the way humans do. Those kind of emotions, I can't comprehend them... But I can sympathize with humans".

Kumiko hid her face on Umi's neck, below his chin and kept listening to him. 

"That's why I helped you. I saw you in danger and lost and I just wanted to do it. There was no reason and no emotion that drove me to do it...".

"Do you have human friends?", she asked.

He stopped for second to think and then said:

"You can say that... I guess. I guess Baba is one of my friends".

"Isn't she a yōkai too?"

He laugh at such a question and denied with his head. Kumiko felt the movement in the crown of her head. She lifted her head looking at him.

"I thought she was one too, she looked so unfazed when you mentioned it"

"Let's say we know each other from a long time. She's been knowing for a long time now"

Kumiko looked at her with sparkling eyes.

"What?", he asked.

"Can we be friends?"

He raised a brow with confusion.

"Why? I'm planning to deliver you back home. So we won't see each other ever again".

"I still want to be your friend... for as long as we're together in this journey".

Again, he saw a deer when he looked at her face. He rolled his eyes as usual and then searched for one of her hands, stretching it.

"Now we are friends then".

She smiled widely for ear to ear provoking a smile on him too.