Chapter 20 Meeting Again Over the coming days, Sakura found it hard to fall asleep. The face of Yiu was always before her eyes. Her desperate and sorrowful sayings made her uncomfortable.
The day they met, she acted as a gossip reporter, asking a lot of hard questions, trying to make Yiu happy. However, she did not give her even a smile. Seeing the girl step on her destination as an outsider made her uneasy. She was thinking of giving her the Marici. The people of Suwa believed in Myou Jin; did the G.o.d really protect them?
Anyway, she had no way to change the G.o.ds. The only thing she could do was try to change history. At least, she should use her knowledge about this era to make a better life for herself.
“Sakura. . . Sakura. . . ”
Who was calling her? Had she come back to her own age? In any case, the only thing she needed right now was sleep.
The sound disappeared; however, something was covering her lips and moving slightly. What?! Sakura turned to sit up, taking out her stone and knocking at the head of the opposite shadow.
“Throwing this stone on me again? How stupid you are!”
The familiar voice came from Takeda Harun.o.bu; however, the face was only two-thirds as wide as it’d been previously. The slim one was quite handsome; though not as beautiful as Imagawa Yoshimoto, he looked much better than before. Was he really the Takeda she knew? Or was this an illusion?
“Want to hit me again? Great! Come on and hit me! You’ve just woken up, so I don’t believe you can really hurt me. Come, come, and tickle me.” He smiled like a Casanova in a TV drama. “I have planned to visit Lady Yiu tonight. But all the underlings were fed a hallucinogenic drug. Lady Yiu was missing. However, I found you here; this discovery comforts me a lot.”
Hearing this, Sakura could not stop laughing at him in her mind. In order to send Yiu to a safe place, she used the hallucinogenic drug on all the underlings, including herself. She never thought she would meet him in such a weird situation. Her poor first kiss was stolen by him in such a terrible manner. What a pity!
“Lord Harun.o.bu, the guards who were searching nearby have returned. They did not find Lady Yiu.” The man reporting outside was his trusty guard called Shin Saburo.
“Maybe the ninja from Suwa took her back. I should have guessed Suwa Yorishige would do this.” He kneaded the folding fan roughly with his fingers for a while, and then he ordered, “Send a letter to Suwa Yorishige for me; if he doesn’t give the lady back, he can’t complain about my ruthlessness later.”
“Hey, what are you doing? You want a war?” Sakura took his sleeve to stop him. “Is it worth it? I heard that you have many other hostages in hand; the lady was missing, and she herself might be suffering somewhere. Why don’t you act like your father? As the leader of Takeda, could you keep calm and be prudent?”
“You use him to push me? At the moment we met again after such a long time?” He squinted one eye and lifted his lips. Sakura felt the dangerous meaning behind this expression. She hoped she hadn’t mentioned the name of his father.
“You are calling yourself the maid of Yiu, aren’t you? Then you are from Suwa. What a coincidence that I lost one hostage from Suwa! Come with me to the Tsutsujigasaki tonight.” He suddenly carried her princess-style, in front of all the underlings.
“Hey, you!”
“Be obedient! Don’t let the poor relationship between Suwa and us be broken by you.”
Sakura was back with Takeda again, after so much had happened. When she saw Lady Ooi welcome her with tears, she suddenly understood what it meant that they were meeting again. But she didn’t know if she wanted to say thanks to Harun.o.bu.
He was sitting in the living room of the outside main building, eating sashimi and drinking sake. Though Sakura was from Guangdong, a seaside province, she could not enjoy sashimi. She was nibbling at an Ay Tsao cake, stealing a glance at Harun.o.bu.
“Can you become full with just this Ay Tsao cake?” he asked her tenderly. “Tell me your favorite foods, and I will ask someone to have them prepared. Look at you, you are thinner than before.”
Why did he treat her so well? Was there some scheme behind it? She wondered about this. Wouldn’t he want her to fill this empty time without Yiu? A hot feeling ran over her face, and she could not think more.
She cleared her heart and turned to Harun.o.bu calmly; however, she found him drunk enough that he had to rely on the wall. What? Only two or three cups of sake and he was already drunk? And she was still awake, by the way.
“Sakura, Sakura, don’t leave me. . . ” he murmured.