Backup: Sudden Roommate (7) -- The Woman on the Train

Backup of https://joelrees-novels.blogspot.com/2019/10/sudden-roommate-7-woman-on-train.html.

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Previous: Night Horrors

I wasn't sure whether I was relieved or disappointed that Fumie was not on the same train as me Saturday morning. There weren't any messages from her on Line before I got to work.

I spent the time on the train reading the scriptures I had suggested to Teru. 

At lunch, the boss joined me at the kitchen window when I picked up the taster's tray. They had her tray ready as well, and we sat in the cafeteria to eat. The menu for the day was one I liked, baked saba (Japanese mackerel), rice, miso, and a steamed salad of moyashi (bean sprouts), string beans, carrots, leek, and myōga. Desert was a fresh fruit salad, with an optional sweet sauce which I gave to my boss.

"If I didn't know better, I'd guess you and Teru had sex last night."

"Huh?"

"You're work is really loose today."

"Am I making mistakes?"

"No, no, actually, I like your work better this way. You're paying more attention to the residents. So how was your first time?"

"No."

"No?"

"Teru had a bad date with a guy from work yesterday."

"And you had to comfort her."

"You have a one-track mind."

"Okay, you didn't have sex, but fighting the temptation left you short of sleep."

"You have a one--"

"--track mind." She chuckled. "Are you sure you don't want me to ask around for you?"

"Maybe. I need to check my phone."

There was an e-mail from Teru and a message from Fumie.

> I read the first five chapters of John before
> work.

Great. I read them on the train.

> I want to talk about them when you get home.

Let's do it.

> I'm thinking it might be good to invite Fumie.

I'll see what she says.

I sent that, then read the message from Fumie.

Fumie: Sorry I couldn't meet you on the train.

Fumie: Can we meet sometime soon?
Maybe with Teru?

I prayed in my heart, then replied to Fumie.

Ryō: Teru wants to study from John tonight, and 
then we're planning on setting up my computer
properly. Interested in joining us?

I looked at the boss and she raised her eyebrows.

"The woman on the train."

"No comment."

I took a bite of the saba. "A little salty, isn't it?"

"Put that in your report."

I had finished about half the tray when my phone pinged.

Fumie: Okay. Where?

Ryō: My place.

I sent her my address and she replied immediately.

Fumie: I see it on my map.

Fumie: If you're at lunch and with other people,
there's no need to answer now, but do you know
what your feelings for Teru are?

Ryō: I know enough to be confused.
It doesn't seem fair, but I think what both she
and I need is non-romantic friendships, like the
single adult activities at church.

Fumie: Actually, that's the answer I was hoping
for from you.

Fumie: Do you know her feelings?

Ryō: I'm not sure she needs to know her feelings
yet, and I sure don't.

Ryō: One thing I know, I'm not going to be making
any commitments to anyone besides her until she
graduates from high school and can make up her
own mind about what she wants to do.

Fumie: Good. What time should I be there by?

Ryō: Are you interested in fixing dinner
together?

Fumie: Sure.

Ryō: How about if we meet at my station at 6:30?

Fumie: Sounds good. See you there.

Ryō: See you there.

I sent another message to Teru.

So, Fumie says she's good to come over. I invited
her to meet me at the station at 6:30 and join us
in making dinner, too. Is that okay?

By the time I could check my e-mail after work, Teru had replied that she would meet us there, too. I hurried to clean up, change out of my uniform, and get to the train.
 
Fumie texted me that she had already arrived when I got to the station at 6:25, and I caught a glimpse of her waiting outside the gates as the train pulled into the station. From the platform, as I headed for the gates, I watched Teru approach the gates.

They seemed to notice each other, and started talking. Introductions were complete by the time I had gotten through the gates, and they were already getting to know each other.

"Uhm, Tada-ima?"

"Ah, Ryō, o-kaeri."

"Hi." And they continued talking with each other.

"Uhm, should we shop for some ingredients on the way?"

They stopped talking long enough to nod.

"Sure."

"Good idea."

And they kept talking.

"How about my special home-made yakisoba?"

"Great."

"Sounds good."

So I started walking to the supermarket in the mall and they followed, deep in conversation that was too fast and thick for me to keep up.

I had enough onions, raw ginger root, apple vinegar, soy sauce, prunes, and potatoes at the apartment, so I picked up the yakisoba noodles, pork, tofu, more cabbage and carrots, moyashi, an apple, and couple of plums.

Fumie was impressed, but not necessarily positively. "This is going to be an interesting yakisoba."

"He always makes things that taste better than they sound."

"It's a recipe I worked out while I was doing my service."

We passed the electronics and small appliances store where Teru and I had bought the micro-SD cards.

"Say, Teru, are you on Line?"

"No phone."

"She had to leave it behind."

"Jun helped me cancel the contract, to avoid leaving clues about where I'm at."

Fumie looked concerned. "Ryō said it was a bad situation ..."

"It was."

"But you need a phone," I insisted. "I'll be your contract guarantor."

Fumie pointed to the store. "They should be able to order you a libre phone over there."

"Not tonight, anyway. Maybe later."

Between the three of us, dinner was quick to put together. Fumie got her notebook workstation PC out of her bag and hooked it to an open connection on my router, so she could monitor the traffic on my cheap PC, and we were able to satisfy ourselves nothing was phoning home with any regularity.

Then Teru rebooted the PC and stopped the boot process in the host operating system. After some planning, she and Fumie restructured the formatting of the internal SD persistent store and started a download-and-install script to get userland tools for the host OS from the Reiisi Kenkyū mirrors.

Then we got out our scriptures and started reading. Teru was full of questions, so we answered a few.

"What's this 'Word' thing?"

Fumie and I looked at each other.

"You want to take this?"

Fumie shook her head. "I think you should."

"The quickest answer is that it's a metaphorical name for the Savior."

"It means something?"

"Yeah, but it's hard to explain."

Teru sighed. "Okay, save it for later. What's this, 'just belieave' business?"

"If your big brother hadn't believed Ryō would help you, would he have brought you to him?"

Teru thought for a bit. "But if I just believe Angel will quit being bad, I don't think that will change her."

Fumie nodded. "Yes, you have to believe true things."

I added, "But it sure couldn't hurt to believe she might change."

"But true things happen even if you don't believe."

I took Teru's hand. "If Jun hadn't believed, he would not have brought you here. On the other hand, if he said he believed and didn't bring you here, ..."

"Then I guess it would mean he didn't really believe that it was worth doing."

I nodded.

Fumie added, "What the Savior says here is to believe in Him."

"What does that even mean?"

I answered, "His name means something like 'God is help' in the original languages."

"Oh. So we should believe that God will help us, and that will motivate us."

I gave her a sideways nod. "Something like that, maybe it's good enough for now."

"Being 'born again' is fundamentally changing your attitude, I guess," Teru turned her palms up. "But what is this being born of the water and spirit?"

Fumie explained. "When I committed myself to believing in the Savior, I got baptized. 'Baptize' means 'submerge'. Someone who had authority from God met me in the water, said words of the covenant, and --"

"The Words?"

"Sort of. And he put my body under the water and brought me back up. It represents the old person dying and being brought back to life as a new person."

I found the scripture in Romans 6 and read it.

Therefore are we buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. 

"Resurrection means to live again, doesn't it? But you have to live right to be resurrected, right?"

Fumie responded, "Well, if we want to be resurrected with the Savior, to life, we have to do what He says."

I added, "But in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, he said,

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

"Everyone lives again, but we don't all live again with God."

"Even Angel?"

"Even Angel's boyfriend." Fumie was earnest. "More important, even you and your big brother. And if you believe and do what Jesus teaches, you can live with God again."

"I'm sure I'm not ready for that."

I looked at my PC, which had just finished downloading and installing the userland toolset. "I don't know how ready I am for this split-stack operating system, whatever that means, but I believe you and Fumie when you tell me I can get ready."

"That's cheat logic."

"Cheap allegory, but it's true."

Teru and Fumie proceeded to work through some setup procedures, and soon the PC had an admin user and three work users, one for each of us, and was set up to spawn ehpemeral users to run applications in. Then Fumie helped Teru move Microsoft's abomination virtual machine to a jailed ephemeral user template while I watched. I did not follow half of what they did.

Then I logged in on my work account and started an instance of the abomination, spun off a web browser and looked around on the web, took a copy of something random, and shut the instance down saving the copy buffer. Then I started another instance, started a word processor document, and pasted the copied stuff in. It was a little clumsy, but it worked, and the VM was not burdened down by anti-malware/anti-virus software.

I logged back out, and the two of them conferred for a few minutes, then set up a place in the file system where I could store the manuals for work and access them from VMs my work user started, but not from other work user accounts.

We set up internet relay chat for the PC and for my phone, and checked that Teru could use it to chat from the PC to Fumie and me on our phones.

"What about Line?" I asked.

Teru logged in to her work account, started a VM instance, installed the Line client for the abomination, and imported it into a linked template. I have no idea what that means, but she was able to run a full Line app from the PC, and we chatted with my family some more, and introduced Fumie to them. Dad was especially interested in meeting her.

I think it was close to eleven when the three of us walked back to the station.

I thought I saw Mr. Inoshita at the station, but I wasn't sure.

Teru and I had no problems with dreams or temptations that night.

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