Chaper Three

So it was decided, Paraiso and I would go to Reis, the main town to go to for those arriving here in Frontier land. I was to register there with Paraiso since it would be her place I would be officially registering as my place of residence.

“If you did not have a place to stay, you could register, but that is only so they can have a name to put on your gravestone when they eventually find you.”

“Wow that is some system that they have down here.”

“Isn’t that just though? It is a good thing that no deaths have occurred though. Even though you’re pretty much left to your own devices out there, I think everyone seems to really be making the best of their situation though. “

“How long have you been out here exactly?”

“For about two years now.”

“I can take it that you like it out here then don’t you?”

“The clean air and wide spaces do well for my health and I am getting plenty or exercise with the planting and the hauling. Plus the temperature is like this all year around, give or take a few degrees but it never snows here. It gets cold, but it never snows.”

“I guess this place is near the equator then. Even so, I think you should at least have a tan or something.”

“I do have a tan; I just hide my tan lines really well so of course you wouldn’t notice. Have a look-see.”

She lifted the thin brown leather vest she wore and showed me clearly a paler shade of skin underneath it, outlining where the strap was. She always wore the same kinds of clothes and did so in a very conservative fashion. She wasn’t the type of person who simply went out in a bikini or wore clothes which showed a lot of skin.

She was, however, unreserved about showing off her underwear, but only when she had finished washing them and was leaving them out to dry.

“Isn’t that why I got you here anyway, Soul, if any underwear thief comes by, just give ‘em their comeuppance.”

That Is what her reply was when I spoke to her about leaving her personal belongings out in the open like that, I swear she can be a little bit too lackadaisical sometimes.

She continued on, despite my discomfort on the subject.

“Besides, you’re not a pantie pervert are you?”

“Of course not...”

“Well you are a boy so I guess it can’t be helped, I guess. If you absolutely must do it then, make sure you put them back or whatever.”

“You…listen to me when I am speaking to you. I have no interest in that kind of stuff.”

“Of course, if you float that way then it’s fine too. I feel a bit safer at night.”

“Why you…!”

She was just making fun of me now. That conversation ended with my habit of cheek pinching keeping her from saying anything more.

The time we spent there eventually drifted by. At night, we’d go to sleep early, usually after having dinner. I had picked up a few basic skills in cooking while I was with her so she didn’t always have to cook for the both of us. In the morning and for the most of the day I’d be on the lookout for the aforementioned underwear thief but also for other losers who didn’t have anything better to do better to do than to harass the females out here living on their own.

I spotted them once, but I guess the sight of another guy who had a stern looking demeanor caused them to have second thoughts. I didn’t see anyone like that anymore.

Preserving the food was pretty simple although different than what I was used to. Paraiso had a cellar which contained several ice boxes and inside those iceboxes was, well, ice. Inside one was cold drinks primarily consisting of water and the other had frozen meat in it. With proper care, these things could last for a while. And they did, until the end of the month came and there was a need to stock up on more supplies.

Money was perhaps the biggest issue, but because the locals, if you could indeed call them that, were entirely, for the most part, self-dependent, the town of Reis had an exporting business going on. A good majority of the food spent would be sent out to the government and in return one would actually get back some food and water to help keep you alive. I didn’t really get the whole process, but what works is what works in these parts.

As it pertains to getting to Reis, there was a method which was not necessarily reliable on making a tremendous journey on foot. Once you signed up for this little exporting trade a designated driver would arrive and personally take you and your produce to Reis and drive you back as well. That’s the process that Paraiso explained to me.

Eventually, that day came after I had spent about three weeks here.  I’d become slightly tanned myself, in that time.

I, without complaining, hauled the food that Paraiso had designated she would be sending off today and moved and had to carry them all the way to the road which was quite a ways away. Paraiso was going to keep watch there while I completed the three long trips to and fro.

“Good work, partner! I was a little worried at first since you seemed as though you were too lazy to do anything but fish. However, you’ve earned your stripes with me as breadwinner. Oh, but don’t think this means you get to order me around, I still outrank you.”

“Aye, aye Captain-Commander Ma’am…”

I replied with sarcasm as I took a sit on the ground. It was another scorcher and there was not a tree in sight. It was just miles and miles of grassy lowlands. I got a little shade from my cap, but that’s about it really. What I really needed was something like that gigantic straw hat Paraiso was always wearing outside. That’s exactly what I needed.

“Oh, but you are welcome though, Paraiso. No, I should be the one thanking you for going out of your way to take me in.”

Looking down at me, Paraiso smiled at me. It was most likely just her face being placed into the direct sunlight, but her face seemed to shine.

“Oh come on, nobody’s that heartless.”

Though her words were confident and her smile bewitching, something within me only just came up short of completely believing her. I was reminded.

Before coming here, there was a girl who was as bad tempered and violent as she was pretty. Reflecting back on it, I kind of felt sorry for the way things had ultimately ended up going. I’ve been thinking about it, but I think she was also being kind in her own twisted way. She may have forced her way into my life, choked me half to death, tried to kill me and insulted me, but that only made the fact that she protected me even harder to ignore. Not to mention, she also gave me this name too.

“We’re partners in crime.”

Perhaps, just maybe, she didn’t want to be alone? There’s no going back to change it though, in the end, I used that power which had made me a target on her and left her out there alone again. Well, it didn’t change the fact that she was seriously trying to kill me though.

“I wonder…”

Those people though, those Suits who came after us, did not try to talk to us or even attempt to get us to surrender, instead they had tried to kill us without warning. Those bullets were definitely not blanks. I had indeed wanted to go with Heart, who had shown the capacity to protect.

As Paraiso so brilliantly put it, “Nobody is that heatless.” She was incredibly violent and short tempered, but she had one, a heart that is.

 As for those people who could kill without a second thought, those Conspiracy idiots, they were not people at all. They were just sell outs, people who had sold their minds to an idea. An idea that required that they abandon their humanity and morality…

“You seem to be thinking about something pretty interesting you know?”

“Huh?”

Breaking away from my train of thought, I looked up to see Paraiso standing there staring at me with a concerned look. I give a reassuring smile and wave at her to blow it off as nothing to worry about.

“It’s just random thoughts. It’s pretty hot out here so when do you think they’ll be coming here?”

“It should be anytime soon.”

I looked up and down the road but still didn’t see anything which indicated something was being driven towards us. I hope we didn’t miss it by chance or anything like that. Paraiso sat down next to me and removed my hat on the way back. I gave her another questioning look as she removed her hat as well.

She almost always wore that large sun hat outside so it struck me as odd that she would suddenly take it off her head in the blazing sunlight without having  much of a reason to. After taking my hat off, she placed it on her head and in return, placed her hat on mine.

“You’re taller than I am, so it’s only natural that you should provide the shade, you know?”

She said this and pushed herself against me. Under the disguise of trying to stay cool she was simply leaning against me. If she were tired and wanted to lie down she should have just said so from the get go. Of course, this was having the opposite effect since our body heat only added to the problem, but I opted to keep my mouth shut since I had learned my lesson regarding the unpredictable natures of the female gender. I was not about to get slapped once again.

To be honest it was pretty uncomfortable. I had to support both her weight and my weight on my arm alone and after carrying so much earlier, I was in a lot of pain. After about a minute like that, I could no longer bear and the strain caused my arm to give out and I fell backwards onto the ground. For a moment, we laid in an “L” formation with her head on my chest.

I picked up her large sun hat and placed it on the side of her head as she was looking at me. I tilted it back so I could see her face and so she could be in the shade of her hat.

“As I thought, it looks better on you than it feels on me.”

“I am keeping your hat though. You can’t have it back right now.”

Why are you suddenly being so playful and in such hot weather no less? I wanted to ask her that, but I didn’t have the courage or the desire to do so. I am a go with the flow kind of person so I should just be going with the flow like I always do. I was getting back into that style of thinking lately. I was beginning to adapt. It’s a great thing to be a human isn’t it?

Reaching out I gently pinched her cheek and pulled it. It was quite fun when I did that. It was not so much touching her though as it was simply pulling her cheek.

“I never knew…you enjoyed seeing me in pain so much…you’re not supposed to pull on a ladies’ face like that you know?”

“Alright, alright, I am sorry, Paraiso.” I gave a soft chuckle and gently rubbed where I had been pulling on her cheek.

I was quickly falling to the pace around here and was rapidly coming attached to this person named Paraiso Janeiro. Whether that was good or bad, I don’t know it’s hard to say. Am I being too depended on her but I think it is okay really. Everyone has their own times when they need someone to rely on don’t they?

There’s nothing wrong about relying on someone right? Married couples relied on each other, but wait, our relationship isn’t like that. Best friends also rely on each other, but I don’t think that quite explains our relationship either. Paraiso isn’t my wife and I don’t know about her being my best friend or anything like that.

So what was our relationship like then? She had rescued me and taken me in, and I stayed because I literally could not return to where I came and had no idea what to do. That was how it was but, is that how it’s like now?

I was helping her with everything and she did say that I was basically living here too. The person she knew me as was not the boy “Alex” from the sticks, but as “Soul” the guy who had beached on the Frontier and just so happened to collapse from hunger in front of her house.

Paraiso had closed her eyes while I was thinking about all of this was taking a cat nap using my body as her personal pillow. I guess she really was tired, I could see it in her eyes. The heat makes people sleepy. For now, there was nothing for it, but to let her nap until our ride comes. I was beginning to feel sleepy, but I had to watch out just in case something was to happen. Even though it was pretty hard to believe, we were not the only ones out here and I doubt everyone had honest thoughts and opinions.

“Nobody’s that heartless eh? Paraiso, you have you certainly have your way with words.”

                           ***

Eventually the driver did show up. I spotted him coming from down the road and had disturbed Paraiso’s beauty sleep when I spotted him.

“So, you’re her cousin huh? The name’s Ralph, but it’s just my job to drive you back and forth so don’t think we’re friends or anything.”

“Then Soul is just fine for me. I can’t say I was particularly hoping to be friendly with you or anything like that, so I don’t really care.”

“Then hop in the back, Soul. The cab’s only for two.”

The pickup he had driven here in was painted a blue color. The driver named Ralph was getting paid to drive all the way out here to pick us up, not because he was feeling generous or anything like that. After lifting the sacks of the vegetables into the bed of the pickup, I lifted myself up and sat down just before he began driving us to Reis.

I’m not sure how long it took, but we eventually got the bustling town known as Reis. It seemed to be perpetually made out of stone, it seemed. For me, the ride was uncomfortable, but the breeze that hit me reminded me of someplace that I did not wish to remember anymore.

Adapting to the situation and responding to it appropriately was something that I was good at. It’s kind of strange thinking about all of that when you’re in my position, but there’s really nothing for it in situations like this one. However, there is a time and place for everything and this was not the time. I allowed myself to only ponder about such things during the hours before I went to sleep each night. It’d be too much of a problem to deal with it on a daily basis.

“Welcome to Reis, Soul. We’re dropping this off here and Ralph is going to load the stuff I asked for into the back of the truck so by the time we come back from getting you registered, we’ll be on our way again.”

“Well we should probably get going then, right?”

“Just follow me.”

Jumping down from the bed of the pickup truck, I followed after Paraiso who had begun walking away from me.

“So what was it like before coming to live in this place?”

I asked out of curiosity not thinking about asking such a personal question or anything like that. I don’t think she minded though since she didn’t immediately say anything.

“Life before I came here? I don’t know what to say about that really. I guess I haven’t really ever thought about it something. “There was nothing important really. I just ran out of options there and decided to take a chance out here. I can go into the details if you like; I just like keeping it short and sweet. Kind of like how I am.”

“Right, well if it’s hard for you I don’t want you to do something that you don’t want to.”

“It’s nothing like some horror story or anything really depressing. Tell you what though, I’ll tell you everything later alright? Then, you tell me a little bit of your story in return. You don’t have to say anything about your circumstances, just a little about your past if that is okay with you?”

“Hmm,” I thought about it as I took a gander around the streets we were passing by. “I think I can do something like that. Who knows, it might just be good for me.”

“Alright then let’s keep going then.”

Suddenly more energetic, Paraiso grabbed onto my arm and began walking faster. When she was smiling like this, I think she was really happy. The concerns that she was hiding some painful experience disappeared from my mind at that point.

Smiling, I followed behind her and. after a rather distant stroll through the town, stopped at an impressively large building. It clearly had the aura that it was an important government building. Like everything else in this town, it was built from brick.

“This place is often called “Brick City,” Paraiso mockingly said earlier during her explanation of the town.

When we walked into the building, there was still no relief from the heat. It was impressively hot in here as well. The fans really didn’t seem to be doing their job right. I followed Paraiso the counter and after a short discussion, was handed a paper to fill out. So as not to impede the line, I moved somewhere else and began filling it out.

It was pretty simple stuff like my name and thanks to Paraiso I had a surname to put in. Honestly something about writing the name Soul Janeiro on the line. It was a mighty strange feeling. I shrugged it off as being just in my head. Age, sex, all of the expected stuff I guess and more like medical history and list of family. I signed that last one off with Paraiso’s name. The questions or residence also came up and I made my address as Paraiso’s and also colored in the *family* member option. It took about fifteen minutes to go through the whole thing and with that, I handed it in. I was then handed a number and was told to wait until it was called out.

“This is a surprisingly bureaucratic process…did you also have to jump through these hoops?”

“Of course I did. It’s natural for everyone. Just try to be patient alright?”

“Yeah,” I sighed and leaned back in my chair. There weren’t a bunch of people here, but then it wasn’t entirely empty either. Still, I think this might take a while. Gradually, my eyes drifted to the girl sitting next to me. Her blond ponytail was, as usual, hanging laid over one of her shoulders. However, perhaps because of space, she had taken off her large hat and had set it on her lap.

“You know, Soul, you can still run away if you like.” She said this out of nowhere so I didn’t have an immediate casual response. “The last thing I want to do is tie you down or somethin’ like that. If you feel the desire to spread your wings, you can still do that you know?”

“I’ve thought about that too. I thought that I may just be latching myself onto you for some reason like being unable to depend on myself. That’s what I thought at first.”

“It’s not true,” she rebuked. “You’re doing a swell job helping me out and things are sort of more relaxed with you around. It’s not just because you’re a helping hand either. Humans need other humans don’t they?”

“That’s right. Even so, if left to their own devices, humans will tend to believe what they want until someone else says so. I’ve always wanted to fly, but…seeing the sky and feeling the breeze was a great substitute.” I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say so I couldn’t help but feel a bit nervous saying all of that.

“Anyways, it’s better to share that feeling with someone else right…someone that you like? Well, I’m a pretty big cloud dreamer. Takin’ things slowly and easily….it’s how I roll.”

I don’t think that was enough to answer her question so giving a light smile I looked up at the ceiling to string together the right words then returned my glance back down to her. “I don’t really mind staying with you anymore. I actually enjoy working with you and living this simple yet tortuously torrid life with you…”

Yeah, what I wanted to basically convey was something like that. I don’t know if she got all that but I don’t think I’d be repeating this again, hopefully. It wasn’t especially difficult to say, it was just a lot harder speaking what you want to say in terms that another person could easily understand.

                Sometime later, my name was called and Paraiso and I went to the back together. Aside from asking a few questions, she remained a bit quiet. I was asked for a few questions, though the toughest one was the one regarding where I had come from. They didn’t necessarily check out the validity of my statements so I had free reign to say anything, but I cannot tell a lie so easily without feeling that it will eventually come back to bite me. So, I gave the name of my old town. Obviously, there was no way to trace the person once known as “Alex” to the one known as “Soul” so I felt half of my anxiety was without merit.

Once that part was effectively done, I was taken to another room and had a picture taken and an Identification Card was officially registered. The person known as Soul Janeiro, living with his *family* member named Paraiso Janeiro was officially registered into the governments contractual data base. It was a pretty simple process that took well over an hour and a half to complete.

“So how do you feel about it now? From here on out we’re officially roommates. Let’s hope that we can get by and by on good terms.”

“Life moves on, right? Let’s keep our lives moving on as well.”

Paraiso had suddenly become more talkative as we left that place. I was kind of nervous at first, but now I couldn’t help but be in a very good mood. However, my luck was not always going to be so well. I learned this when we returned to the pickup that was supposed to be waiting for us.

“What happened here?”

“Actually, sorry, but the engine suddenly blew out as I was starting her up. I’ll need to get an entirely new engine.”

Ralph described the situation briefly to the questioning Paraiso, who seemed a bit down trodden. It’s understandable though, this might just mean that we won’t be returning home on schedule. The pickup was currently being towed away by another car.

“Now don’t worry about the provisions you’ll be given back, they are safely tucked away until I can drive them out.”

“When will that be exactly?”

“There’s a repair shop in town and that’s where they’re taking it right now. The government pays for all of this, so it should be fixed by tomorrow as a top priority fix.”

“Tomorrow…” I mumbled this out loud as I considered that for a moment. We could walk, but there is no way I’d ever make it carrying that sack of food and I doubt Paraiso would want to do that as well. No, that was just clearly not an option. We’d probably die from the heat if we attempted something reckless like that.

“Is there any place we could stay for the night then?” I asked them. I was indeed a complete tourist right now, so things like hotels or pretty much anything was a mystery to me as the lights in the night sky were.

“Ah, well there’s an Inn here, but…” Paraiso sort of trailed off and a few moments of silence she decided to continue, “I don’t have enough for separate rooms…”

“Well, so there you have it,” said Ralph as he shrugged his shoulders. “That’s all I can do for right now. Everything should be here by the afternoon tomorrow so stop by around noon and wait around. Do what you can, right?”

Afterwards, Paraiso and I had begun walking towards the Inn. There’s nothing for it really. Enough or not, it was all we could do for the time being and if things didn’t work out as Ralph would say, like suddenly not having the parts needed to fix his pickup we would be completely out of luck.

“This is all the money that I have saved up until now. Can you believe it costs this much? Three hundred is highway robbery.”

Sitting on the single bed in this small room, Paraiso complained. When you have to look out for people who might want to steal your clothes or food or maybe even attempt to ransack your place, I guess she has a lot to be worried about.

“Well it’s the way the cookie crumbles isn’t it?” I said while sitting down on the floor and leaning my back against the wall. I took out the new I.D card and began examining it thoroughly.

“Sometimes, Soul, you are too carefree you know that?”

“I wouldn’t say that. There’s just nothing we can do about it short of sending one of us out there to go back and watch over the place while one of us stays behind to transport the stuff we’re getting back right? If we did something like that, I doubt we’d both make it back in perfect health. There’s nothing we can do.”

I had thought about this and, of course, I was worried, but what’s the point when you can’t do anything about it? Like Paraiso said, just simply taking a step forward can be good enough if you don’t know where you want to go. Just pick a direction and forge a path. Well, here we are, forging a path for ourselves. Somehow, facing unwanted happenings was the story of my life. It was largely good up until about a month ago, but suddenly I was thrown into a scorching lifestyle spent living and working on the edge called the Frontier. Exciting, it was, but also very troublesome as well.

“So are you going to tell me a little bit about yourself now since we have the time to do it now?”

“Wasn’t the agreement for you to finish it first?”

“Alright I’ll just get comfortable then. That is, of course, if you don’t mind?”

Quirking my eyebrow I turned away and faced away. I could hear her standing up from her bed and shuffling around for a bit. After a brief moment, she said it was okay for me to turn back around and I did so, anxious to hear her story.

Typically, she dressed conservatively, yet comfortable enough to stay out in such extreme weather. That much didn’t change today. However, presently, she was not wearing anything as such. Showing much more skin than I was used to seeing quite frankly, she was wearing a white wife beater shirt which stopped above her abs and a pair of tight fitting shorts also a light color. Her tan lines were more easily distinguished now. Her hair was also let down instead of being worn in that usual ponytail and in a strange way, she seemed to be a totally different person.

“Ha~ well it’s much better this way. It’s much more comfortable.” Paraiso seemed to be enjoying herself as she sat down on the floor in front of me, smiling. How should I say? She was kind of hard to stare at, and yet at the same time, I couldn’t stop looking away from her earlier.

“Anyways, let’s see it is kind of hard trying to explain your life. I don’t know what to say exactly though, but I’ll give it my best. I pretty much grew up in a large farming town. Life there was pretty slow and everything. Went to school there, grew up there, planted, and harvested all of that traditional stuff. Well one day I just sort of thought that everything was going a bit different than I thought. A farmer’s daughter I guess you could say I was. It was an easy life given to me with a lot of work.”

“That’s how I grew up,” she added leaning her weight back onto her palms and tilting her upper body back so she could see out the rather small open window. Of course, this caused her chest proportions to be, well, heightened to my perception. I never thought she had much going on there, but, yes indeed, Paraiso is a girl after all.

“One day,” she continued on leaning forward again, “I was just listening to the radio with my eyes closed on the front porch and actually thought about how things were going in my life and realized one very important thing: I never had a single thought of my own.”

She was looking at me, but I could tell that she wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes seemed to be looking into the space between us rather than at the person she was talking to.

“I guess you could call it an epiphany or a vision or just a simple understanding, but it doesn’t matter. I had it and then I decided to not follow everything I was told to do. I wondered what I could do, but I guess the only thing I could think of was planting growing vegetables and stuff. That’s just that I guess. However, succeed or fail I wanted to do it on my own instead of living up to a “family” name or whatever. So when the opportunity came, I jumped on it and never looked back. Rather, I only had enough at the time to go one way and left everything up to chance. That’s everything I guess.”

So that’s it huh? Paraiso was another ordinary person under an entirely different set of circumstances than I am. She, unlike me, is fighting against the flow while I do my best to passively roll with it. Is she a stronger person than me? She probably is.

“It seems like you’re doing well for yourself though. In only two years, you seem to be doing pretty well for yourself.”

“It only seems that way now though. For an entire year, I had to switch between getting that house and cultivating the land too. There was a drought going on at the time I just decided to show up here. At times, I had to do things for days on end without break just to make the soil fertile and when things seemed to be impossible, I’d just get angry and shout my frustrations while thinking, “It can’t really be this impossible, right?” I don’t think I’ve ever been in such a rough do-or-die situation like that before. But, one day, a large storm hit and broke the drought. Things haven’t been great, but they are stable and I think that’s good enough for me. I was able to get this contractual agreement with the government because of it and everything is moving smoothly. That’s about the end of my story though.”

After saying all of that, Paraiso hung her tongue out of her mouth as though she had said too much. In truth, she preferred to keep it short and sweet instead of being complicated and having to say too much. For me, though, I preferred just hearing her confident and assuring attitude. She didn’t really seem to get down or upset so I was a bit surprised that she actually was in such a tough position anymore. More than anything, I felt a sizable distance had been crossed.

“What about you Soul? What was your life like before you beached up here on the Frontier islands?”

She came really close to me and sat down next to me. I felt a little bit out of place being with her though in such a close proximity. What was with her anyway? Is it me or has she been hanging up under me all day today? I can only wonder.

“Eh, well my life before coming here huh? Well it was pretty slow I guess. I grew up in the countryside in a boring and pretty normal seaside port town where nothing ever happened. I guess that it was not a major trading post that the town itself never grew out. Everybody pretty much knew everybody else and there was never anything like a bank robbery or serial killer. In fact, I can’t recall anyone dyeing from being purposefully killed. Well fishing was the big thing to do around there, and being so close to the water, if you stood by the docks then you got a very good breeze coming from there. It was my designated place to go when I had nothing else to do, especially during the summer months.

“It sounds nice, keep talkin’,” she laid her head against my shoulder and after a moment of desperately resisting temptation, I gave in and placed my arm around her shoulder. I don’t know, something just didn’t seem very right, it was incredibly uncomfortable, but not in a bad way strangely enough.

“Well there’s not much going on in there though. My life kind of passed by quickly I think. I wasn’t extremely popular, or an exceptionally good fisherman, but I decided that was what I wanted to be when I was old enough to do it. Let’s see…I lived with my grandparents, I don’t know what happened to my parents and I never really asked since nobody said anything. Or maybe it was because I had never asked, well I didn’t really mind anyway.”

The feel of her skin against my hands almost broke my concentration on several occasions, but somehow I managed to keep my focus to finish saying what I had to say. Was there anything else I had to say? No, discounting that incident, everything had been laid bare for her.

“I guess it’s still too early to tell me why you left a place that suited someone like you so well then?”

“Hey…you…are you comfortable?”

I asked her in a sarcastic tone because she had, for some strange reason, moved her body on top of mine. She was just laying on me, while I rested my back against the wall. I wasn’t comfortable, that’s why I asked if she was. To give her a hint, you know?

“Don’t be so serious all the time, just let yourself unwind alright? Smile some more. I like it when you do that.”

Saying this, she sat up and began to forcefully take my clothes off, starting with my precious hat. I was a bit nervous, no; I was down right about to panic until she stopped after she had taken off my shirt.

“Is that better? Heh, you’re kind of muscly aren’t you?”

She said this as she began feeling on my arms and chest. Reaching my hands out, I grabbed a hold of her cheeks and began pulling on them.

“Hey~ what did I say about doing that to girls~~?”

“Don’t go forcibly stripping people because they seem hot to you.”

I let go of her cheeks and sighed while looking at her. She should be reflecting on her actions as she rubbed her cheeks.

“Whoever said anything about stripping people? It’s only because you’re you that I can do something like that you know?”

What’s she talking about really?

“I think I prefer the Soul without the hat.”

As I was going to respond, she leaned forward and kissed me. She caught me with my mouth open and she didn’t really seem to care about that either. Breaking the kiss, she pulled away and smiled at me.

I’ve never had a girlfriend before, and I’ve never been in situations like this, so I don’t know how to respond to this exactly. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I wrapped my arms around her waist and sat up. In response, she slung her arms around my shoulders as well. We kissed again, deeper this time, and without the tense atmosphere of the first.

I guess this is fine too isn’t it? To be able to simply let go from one world and enter another, that is. Relying on people isn’t a bad thing; we’re all in this in world aren’t we? Even if it’s just one person, there should always be someone we can rely on isn’t there? So then, it’s fine really. Paraiso Janeiro and Soul Janeiro, they are the people who we are now. Together, I’m sure, out here in the scorching heat of the Frontier, we’ll find our way.