Page 8 of Patience
Regardless of what Eli thought, Yamada-san was scary beyond all reason. Keiji had never been fooled by his trust-fund baby attitude. No one in his inner circle of security guards was.
Keiji had seen Yamada-san in action during a kidnapping attempt. His boss had only been sixteen years old at the time, but he’d put down two of his attackers before his security detail had a chance to reach him. Both had been rushed to the hospital, but it didn’t stop Yamada-san from having them interrogated in the intensive care unit. The coldness in his eyes told everyone in the room that the lives of his potential kidnappers meant less than nothing to him.
What Eli was doing with the man was beyond Keiji’s understanding, but he couldn’t deny that the boy was safer under Yamada-san’s care than anywhere else. In the time Keiji had known Eli, the boy had been the object of affection of countless unsavory individuals and a magnet for runaway shopping carts, bikes, and cars. The former were easily taken care of, but the latter was tricky since Keiji wasn’t allowed to touch his small charge. He’d had to get creative. Jumping behind the wheel of a moving vehicle and safely crashing it had been the highlight of Keiji’s entire career.
This was all on top of the minor bumps, stumbles, and slips Eli managed all on his own on a daily basis. So, taking him skiing was nothing short of torture for anyone watching over him.
Keiji wasn’t certain why he was being punished in place of Yamada-san, but if it made Eli happy…
* * *
“Okay. I’m doing this. I’m doing this and I’m going to be great at it because I am totally awesome. So, so, so awesome,” Eli chanted from his position at the top of the bunny slope, poised to go down.
Keiji had been watching his small charge beawesomefor roughly twenty minutes. Hopefully, Eli would be content with his current level of awesomeness and not feel the need to actually plummet down the slope like his skiing instructor wanted him to. Keiji was equally hopeful that Eli would get the awesomeness out of his system soon before they both froze to death. Keiji hated the cold.
It was a gentle slope. Keiji knew that, but after having experienced being Eli’s bodyguard for several months, it looked like a hundred-foot-tall cliff with a sheer drop. Every time Eli came to Japan, he chose Keiji to be his guard, and every time Keiji was Eli’s guard, the thing he ended up protecting him against the most was the boy himself.
“Here I go…” Eli said for the tenth time.
Please dear kami of this mountain, do not let him get the courage to go.
Kamakura was inundated with visions of Eli careening into trees, flying off cliffs, (There wasn’t one anywhere near here, but Eli would manage it. He had Keiji’s full confidence that he could.) getting carried off by a bear, or flying past the barrier at the end of the bunny slope, down the mountain and never to be seen from again.
If it was a bunny slope, it was a nightmare bunny with fangs, red eyes, and claws dripping with blood-
“Woo!”
“Hey look, shorty actually did it,” Eli’s instructor said with a touch of wonder. She was a young, blonde, German woman who had a surprisingly decent grasp of the Japanese language—if not enough grasp of Japanese manners to treat Eli with the proper respect.
Keiji couldn’t bring himself to look at Eli’s progress until he heard a tiny littlemeepand a softchuffof something hitting the snow.
“Aaaand he’s down,” The ski instructor said, laughing. “Should I go get him, or will you do the honors?”
Kamakura skied the distance to Eli’s side—all two meters of it—and kneeled down. “Talosa-san, are you okay?”
Eli’s face was buried in the snow, and he was as still as a corpse, but before Keiji had time to get worked up over whether or not he should risk touching the boy to make sure he was still alive, Eli said, “Please tell me no one saw that.”
“Even I didn’t see it,” Keiji said, loyally. Maybe other people did see, but Eli didn’t need to worry about that right now. Eli’s regular levels of anxiety were already more than Keiji’s small charge should have to deal with. “Are you hurt anywhere?”
“Only my ego. I think I’d like to stay here for a while…maybe become one with the snow. I’m never taking my face out of it, so it and I might as well get used to one another.”
“Talosa-san,” Keiji said, biting down on a smile. “If you insist on staying here, Yamada-san will insist on building a house around you” And killing Keiji for letting Eli fall.
“And the nice people who come here to ski will be sad because we put a house in the middle of their ski slope.” Eli gave a cute little snort and lifted his head. His cheeks were bright red from the cold and snow was stuck to one of his eyebrows. “Fine. I’ll get up, but I’m trying again.”
“…Of course you are, sir.”
Keiji fetched Eli’s skis while Eli worked on getting all the snow off his socks—when he’d lost his skis, they’d taken his boots with them. “I knew those boots looked too big for you.” He would have a talk with the woman at the rental counter about her shoddy customer service when he returned Eli’s gear.
“The boots are fine. They just weren’t expecting to have to deal with me being their temporary owner.” Eli had taken off a sock and was shaking snow out of it. He wiggled cute, pink little toes and eyeballed them skeptically before slipping the cartoon pony-clad sock back on his foot.
Kamakura wanted to tuck the foot inside his coat until it got warm again, but it was a big no-no. Rule number two: No touching Eli under pain of loss of all reproductive ability.
Yamada-san was constantly changing up the threat so none of his security detail would grow complacent. Rule number two was only slightly less important than Rule number one: Keep Eli safe at all times. Yamada-san didn’t bother giving threats for that one. When he gave out reminders about it, his eyes were dark enough to chill the soul.
Eli made two more nerve-wracking attempts to go down the nightmare bunny slope before Kamakura finally broke.
“Talosa-san, after we left the rental shop, I noticed a coffee kiosk. Would you like to warm up there before continuing?” As soon as he spoke, Keiji began working on another distraction to toss in front of Eli once he finished his coffee. Under no circumstances would Keiji allow Eli on the slope again.
