Asuma's mouth quirked. "I'm going to assume that roughly translates to 'yes, Asuma, I'm completely fine. Thanks for asking'."

Natsumi's face flushed a little more, even as her eyebrows drew down; her hand twitched beneath his loose grip, halfway to pulling away. Too soon for teasing, he realized, and sobered his expression. Her pulse stuttered slightly when he rubbed his thumb across the inside of her wrist; he couldn't tell if that was desire, or a rising urge to whack him upside the head.

For a woman so transparent, she was damn difficult to read.

"If the abbot's the same man I remember--tall guy, probably older than this building, bit of a wicked sense of humour under all that piousness..." He grinned when Natsumi nodded. "Abbot Shiga. Don't worry, if he said he'd deliver the sword for you, then that's exactly what he did."

Some of the tension eased out of Natsumi's shoulders. Asuma lifted himself up on one elbow and looked her over properly. Everything about her said she'd been through a bad run--sharper cheekbones, chapped lips, bruised shadows beneath her eyes--but her neatly brushed hair was now finger-combed and beautifully disarrayed, and the rosy glow to her skin just made her look young and healthy. The yukata covered almost everything, but he could see the professionally bandaged look of her broken fingers (healed broken fingers, if the monks had done their job right), and the faded yellowish bruise over one slim collarbone which had been black the last time he'd seen it. Even her feet looked better: every cut was well-scabbed, every bruise was a healing yellow-green.

I... couldn't walk very well, at that point.

Because she'd carried him.

For a three-week rookie, it was probably too soon to have debts, but he was damn sure going to find a way to pay that one back.

Finding out if he could actually stand up was probably a good place to start--or even if he was still in one piece.

The last of Natsumi's tension vanished under shock when he released her wrist--only a little reluctantly--and loosened the cloth belt that was the only thing keeping his yukata closed. He sat up, and the robe slipped off his shoulders with naked ease, as if it had only been waiting for the right moment. When it slid off his wrists, he realized what was missing.

"Did you see where they put my bracelets?" he asked, running careful fingers down the neat bandages that stretched the length of his ribcage; pain flared in a muted way, but not nearly enough to care about. "And my sash. Well, headband. I know I had it when we got here."