Crash Land on Kurai – Chapter 25

I don’t believe I’m actually free of the Aoi Uma compound until Rin leads me outside, and no one’s there to stop us from getting away. The blinding sun hits me in the face, and my body is so wrecked that my head spins, and I trip. Crashing to my knees, I retch over the dry earth, but of course, nothing comes up because I haven’t eaten in days.

“Yumi!” Rin runs up and pushes me over on my side. I wonder if Narumi is watching us via outside security cameras. She’s probably laughing her ass off at Rin, spending so much on damaged goods.

“Don’t touch me,” I croak out, my voice weak and hollow. I push his hands off me. “I’ll just die right here, thanks.”

“Shit,” he mutters under his breath. “What did they do to you in there?”

“Don’t act like you care.” I close my eyes and nuzzle the ground, prepared to sink into oblivion and leave it all behind.

I told him not to touch me, but he can’t help himself. His fingers pinch my skin and search out my pulse in my neck.

“You’re dehydrated. Badly.”

I try to push his hands off of me, but I can’t open my eyes. My body is painful, and my heart is racing. I just want to be left alone.

With a deep breath from Rin, I’m lifted up into his arms. A shock of pain from my broken rib rips through my chest, and I scream, scaring Rin who drops my legs to the ground.

“Yumi! I’m sorry.” His eyes are wide and sympathetic, but I don’t care. “My sorabō is over here. Let me carry you,” he says, touching my elbow and directing me to the right.

I jerk my arm away from him, stumbling to the side. “Don’t you dare touch me, ever. I don’t care how much you paid for me, I’m not going to be some kind of sex slave to you.”

His lips tighten and he glares at me. “I didn’t buy you —”

“Yes. You did.”

His face hardens even further, which I didn’t believe was possible. “Is it too far beyond your people to even say thank you for anything that we do?” He asks, folding his arms across his chest.

My whole body heats with rage. “Are you fucking kidding me? My ship was fired upon, and we were forced to crash land on this planet.”

“It’s a moon,” he says, raising a finger in the air.

“Don’t interrupt me. You attacked me. Held my head underwater and brought a knife to my neck. Then you delivered me to that sadistic woman?” I point to the Aoi Uma compound. “And I’m supposed to thank you for that? What are you going to do now? Take me home and drug me? Keep me in a cage?”

“I just spent more than my life savings to get you out of a mess you shouldn’t have been in in the first place. You should’ve laid low. Helped them gather up your shipmates. And then we would’ve come in and paid for them all. Instead, I had to spend all of Tamura’s and my own money on you! One person!”

I sigh, throwing my hands up in the air. “Why the hell would you spend all of that on me?”

I try to read him from a few meters away, and I don’t know what I see there across his eyes, his cheeks, his lips. Regret?

“And how was I supposed to know you had a plan? How?” I turn and try to walk to his flying device, but I trip and fall to my knees, the world spinning around me. I clench my hands in the dust, determined to get back on my own two feet.

“If only you and Kazuo had stayed at the temple, none of this would’ve happened.” Rin’s voice is soft and sorrowful as he slips his hands under my arms and pulls me up. “You should have trusted us to do the right thing. Tamura gave you credits. He gave you a chance at a new life.”

“He did no such thing!” My chest aches from yelling. “He put me 5,000 credits in his debt.”

Rin’s eyebrows pull together, not understanding me. Fine. Whatever.

“He’s been determined to screw me since he laid eyes on me. And why do you think that is, huh?” I lower my voice and mumble, “Fucking family.”

He sighs and waves to the sorabō. “I’m afraid I have to touch you in order to fly you home.”

My eyes sting, but tears don’t form. Dehydration is saving me from looking like a weakling. “I don’t trust people who don’t earn my trust.” My voice cracks, and it hurts to swallow, but I’m too sad to care. “I don’t trust people who lock me up or sell me off or buy me up. Did you really expect us to blindly follow you?” I step up to the flying device, placing the center of it at my back. I double check to make sure my tablet and the data device are securely fastened inside the clothes I’ve been wearing for days.

“No. I guess I wouldn’t trust us either.” Rin sandwiches up against me, putting his feet on the rests of the sorabō and powering it on. He pulls up his hood and wraps his face. “You’ll have to hold on to me. I’m sorry we’ll be so close.”

I sigh as I reach around and hug myself to his chest. This is a man who came out of nowhere to help me, and I’ve now put a serious amount of distance between us by being reckless. But how can I trust him after all that he and his people have already put me through?

“I’m taking you back to Ryuanji Temple, to Tamura and Kazuo. We’ll discuss further arrangements after you get some rest, food, and medicine. I don’t want my significant investment to go to waste.” His voice is as cold as deep winter in the mountains.

Great. I’ve just pissed off my master. We lift off into the sky, and I keep my eyes closed. There’s no going back now.