[SWAMP 3 – PART B]

Masaru swings around to see her, just a few meters away near one of the connecting paths.

“I…” He clears his throat to come up with an explanation, but instead decides to do something a bit un-salaryman-like.

Masaru steps up to her and attempts to take her hands, but they flow right through.

“Uh,” he mutters out, needing a third try for this. “I wanted to tell you that I’m going to get everyone out, not just us.”

Valerie’s usually cold gaze is lightened a bit in thought.

Okay, now she thinks I’m a freak for sure, he muses with a grin.

She shakes her head simply. “Yuna and Kenji, maybe, but Sato’s done for. He can’t be pulled out of his beliefs like that.”

In his moment of emotion, Masaru leans down slightly to see the short foreigner eye-to-eye – this visibly bothers her. “Don’t you see?! This isn’t a test of belief. It’s an exercise! A puzzle! It’s all a big joke meant to teach us something!”

Valerie’s groomed blond brow piques. “So it’s about finding out what is going on in each place, and conquering it in its specific way.”

“Yes!” Masaru turns to the cabin at the lake. “Behold!... depression!”

Masaru is not a very funny man, but his delivery, paired with the utterly nonsensical nature of his comparison, actually did the trick.

Valerie fails to keep her exterior as her cheeks puff out goofily with a punch of air – the chuckle follows shortly.

“You… idiot,” she says, wiping her face, but the smile is still there. “Why would we have weapons if we weren’t supposed to fight?”

Masaru leans in and grabs her shoulders, same spot as last time, and for some reason this bothers her in a different kind of way. Her cheeks flush as she freezes up.

“That’s not from them, from The Enemy. That’s for us!” Masaru explains. “Your rifle, where did it come from?”

She purses her lips before answering. “Ah, well it was my Uncle’s hunting rifle. He taught me how to use it when I was thirteen.”

His eyes widen with insight.

“I saw that!”

She squints. “What?”

“When I held the rifle. You were a super cute kid!”

She squints a little more. “What.”

He clears his throat. “What I’m saying is that it was a piece of your past that gives you a sense of security!”

Valerie pauses a moment, her expression melting away from suspicion, into confusion, and then to an epiphany.

“We… your briefcase makes you feel like you’re safe… because you have a job.”

“Yeah! And I…” Masaru’s eyes widen as if he saw a ghost, which, in a place like this, isn’t too much of a stretch.

His energy’s funneled into a confusing thought for a moment.

Is the reason I have my briefcase here because keeping a job keeps me safe… from criticism?

Well, yes, probably. The more Masaru thinks on it, the more he remembers all the times he dreaded the next daily phone call from his father asking him if he had sent his resume out to “no less than twenty corporations!” per day.

…I looked up to him so much back in those days, he recalls.

“Yeah. That’s it,” he says, his tone deflated.

Valerie’s brow piques with interest.

“This is… what make me feel safe from him.”

“From… who?”

He turns away from her for a moment. It’s been so long since he’s really looked at it that it almost feels like seeing an old friend after a decade or more. “My dad. He’s… he was the Vice Chair for the company I work at.”

She hums. “Daddy’s boy getting an easy job at the company, eh?” she asks with a playful smirk.

The look that Masaru gives her causes her to freeze up.

“What the hell, man? I’m sorry!” she apologizes.

“Maybe it’s like that where you come from, but here things are different. You’re not a man if you don’t strike out on your own…” he turns away again with a scowl. “But I…”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Valerie says, “I’m sorry I burned through your excitement like that… I think we’re starting to figure this out.”

He nods as the sun waits patiently in its spot, waiting for their decision. “I’m sorry – I shouldn’t have glared at you like that. You couldn’t have known.”

She gives him a gentle pat on the arm. “Hey. Parents are rough. My dad’s pretty… rough around the edges, too.”

Masaru raises his brow for only a second, suppressing something Valerie can only place as arrogant certainty. “You don’t know my dad. He’s truly one of a kind.”

He’s not looking at her, but Valerie’s face twitches. Just as soon as it shows up, the microexpression fades.

“Yeah. Sorry,” she says, “I guess you really do have it that bad.”

He wipes his face from the humidity of the swamp as he looks up to the sun, barely punching through the clouds. “Hey, so I have an idea,” he starts.

“Yeah?” she returns with.

“I can carry other people’s take-alongs in my bag, right?”

Her brow raises a little more. “Yes?”

“Can we see what happens if I put yours… well, a part of yours in here?”

Valerie pulls up her weapon and looks it over.

“The strap’s tied to a metal rivet by a grommet in the leather.”

Masaru blinks and nods as he pretends to know what those things are— he can take a fair guess, but it would still be guessing.

Taking this as a cue of his understanding, she continues. “So… I suppose the only thing we could remove would be a round from the magazine.”

He nods. “That will do.”

Her full lips stretch to the corners of her mouth.

I said something stupid, didn’t I? Masaru ponders.

“I mean… okay, but if we need to shoot something five times the-”

“-then I’ll give it to you, okay?”

She blinks, pauses, and then gives a short, respectful nod. “Okay, I think that will work out just fine,” she keeps down her smile for just a moment, but they both burst out laughing.

“You’re goofy,” Masaru snips with a grin.

“Only because you led me into it, weirdo,” she says as she pulls back her lever action to reveal a round of resplendent brass.

Masaru accepts it with a nod, and unlatches his briefcase to put it in.

“What’s on your mind?” she asks. “What could it possibly do for us?”

He hums as he shuts it back. “I have a hunch that we can go into each other’s worlds.”

She pauses first with surprise on her face, but a slow, accepting smile forms in its place. “You really want to see my fourth place that bad, do you?” she says with mild blush on her face, but an awkward, almost brokenly confident grin. Masaru hasn’t the slightest clue what it could mean.

Masaru twitches. “Uh yes? It’s important for us to be able to see each other’s problems so we can come up with better solutions.”

She begins pulling up her sleeve. “I think we share pretty much all of them except my last one,” she reminds, showing him the extra mark on her arm missing from his.

He shrugs.

“You really want to get to know me that badly,” she states.

He scoffs, chuckles, and then just scratches his head.

Okay, now she thinks I’m a creep.

She shrugs. “I’d be happy to. The more I think about it, the more I realize I wouldn’t want to share it with anyone else,” she says with a plain tone, but her direct eye contact seizing him in a place of his soul he thought he’d lost forever. “Be ready, though. It’s not something I really share with people.”

Masaru clears his throat as turns away completely. “Whoa there, haha! Sure is strange how the sun hasn’t moved yet!” he notes with a goofy smile.

She looks up with him for a moment. “You’re cute when you get flustered, you know. The angry guy stuff didn’t fool me.”

Masaru says nothing. He’s running a dozen potential responses through his head when she continues.

“I like the genuine you. The real Masaru is a likeable guy.”

Masaru’s suddenly short for breath as he keeps his gaze away from her own.

The two look up to the misted sun for a moment, and they both finally look at each other.

“Thank you,” Masaru says, wiping his face again, but this time not of sweat.

She nods and taps him with the buttstock of her rifle. “I think we should get this started. Do you have a plan?” she asks, not with a smile, but not a frown either: a kind of light-hearted, yet professional curiosity on her face.

He clears his throat, looks back to the cabin, then into the depths of the swamp. Finally he looks back to her. “Yes, actually. Thanks for reminding me.”

Her eyebrows raise again.