Chapter 246 | A Moment of Peace, A Flurry of Texts, And A Familiar [PS BONUS] Squeal
Chapter 246: 246 | A Moment of Peace, A Flurry of Texts, And A Familiar [PS BONUS] Squeal
Ayaka’s hands traveled down his right arm, working the bicep and forearm with a gentleness that contrasted sharply with the punishment she’d inflicted on his back. Her fingers found the tendons of his wrist and pressed into the spaces between, releasing pressure he didn’t know he’d been carrying. Jordan’s hand opened involuntarily, his fingers spreading as the tension drained out through his fingertips.
"Ohhh... wow."
"The hands accumulate remarkable stress." Ayaka worked each finger individually, applying traction and rotation to the joints with movements so small they were barely perceptible. "Especially in someone who clenches his fists frequently. Whether from boxing or from emotional tension."
She returned to his back and began a series of long, sweeping strokes that covered the entire surface from his shoulders to his lower back in a single motion. The oil had warmed to match his body temperature, and her hands glided across his skin without resistance, each pass pressing deeper than the last. Jordan’s thoughts became fuzzy at the edges, the constant background noise of his life, the System, the quests, the relationships, the business, fading into something manageable and distant.
"You are carrying a great deal, Master Jordan." Ayaka’s palms spread across his shoulder blades and pressed down with slow, even force. "More than someone your age should."
"You have no idea."
"Perhaps not." Her thumbs traced the outline of his scapulae. "But your body tells me you are trying very hard to hold everything together. For yourself. For others."
The observation landed somewhere in Jordan’s chest and stuck there.
Ayaka’s hands continued their careful work, the room quiet except for the occasional crackle from one of the candles and Jordan’s increasingly relaxed breathing. She found every locked joint in his shoulders, every bunched muscle in his arms, and coaxed them open with movements that felt less like manipulation and more like negotiation.
Her fingers traced patterns along his spine, applying pressure that started gentle and built to something that made Jordan’s breath catch before releasing into relief.
The persistent ache from Maya’s punches, the tension he’d been carrying since waking up in this body, the constant low-grade anxiety of managing the System, all of it dissolved under her methodical attention.
Twenty minutes passed. Maybe thirty. Time had stopped meaning much of anything.
When Ayaka’s hands finally came to rest on his lower back, Jordan realized his entire body had surrendered to the table. His muscles had forgotten how to be tight.
His breathing had slowed to something that belonged to someone sleeping. He made a sound that might have been a word if words required effort.
"The session is complete." Ayaka’s voice carried the satisfaction of a craftsman reviewing finished work. "How do you feel?"
Jordan lifted his head from the face cushion. The room tilted sideways for a second before the candles and steam resolved into their proper positions.
"I feel like I don’t have bones anymore."
"An ideal outcome." That smile again, knowing and warm and layered with something Jordan’s post-massage brain couldn’t categorize. "I have left a robe and slippers by the door. Take as long as you need to collect yourself. Your guests should be arriving within the next fifteen minutes."
Jordan heard the whisper of her kimono as she moved toward the door, the soft padding of her feet against the wood floor.
"Ayaka."
She paused. "Yes, Master?"
"That was..." Jordan searched for a word that communicated what had just happened without sounding like a teenager with a crush. "Really good. You’re really good at this."
"I have been told." Her voice carried amusement. "Though the compliment is more appreciated coming from my Master than from a Yelp review."
The door slid open and closed, and Jordan was alone with the candles and the steam and the pleasant absence of pain.
His phone buzzed on the bench where he’d left it with his gym clothes.
Three messages from Kumiko.
"WE ARE FIVE MINUTES AWAY AND I CAN SEE THE BUILDING FROM THE CAR AND JORDAN-KUN IT HAS A JAPANESE GATE A REAL JAPANESE GATE I AM GOING TO CRY"
"CHLOE TOLD ME TO STOP SCREAMING IN THE CAR BUT THIS IS NOT SCREAMING THIS IS EXPRESSING JUSTIFIED EMOTIONAL RESPONSE"
"there is a koi pond. i can see it through the fence. i am deceased. tell my mother i loved her and also that her castella recipe needs more honey"
One message from Chloe.
"Your girlfriend is having a religious experience in my passenger seat. This place better be as good as it looks from the parking lot or I’m billing you for the emotional damage of listening to Kumiko narrate every architectural detail we’ve passed in the last three minutes."
Jordan smiled, rolled off the massage table with the boneless grace of someone whose muscles had been professionally liquefied, and reached for the robe hanging by the door. The fabric was thick cotton, warm from a cabinet, and smelled like the same cedar that permeated every surface of the onsen.
He caught his reflection in a small mirror mounted near the entrance. His face looked different than it had an hour ago at the gym. The tension lines around his jaw had smoothed. His eyes were clearer. The constant low-level stress that lived behind his expression like background static had been, at least temporarily, replaced by something that looked suspiciously like peace.
Jordan tied the robe and stepped into the hallway, where the sound of Tomoe’s cheerful voice echoed from the direction of the front entrance.
"Welcome to Hada no Yu! Oh wow, your hair is so cool! Is that blue natural? I once tried to dye mine green but it turned out more like swamp water and Ayaka-san made me shave it off because she said it violated the dress code which I still think was—"
"Tomoe." Ayaka’s voice, smooth and commanding. "Please allow our guests to enter the building before you interview them."
"Right! Sorry! Come in, come in!"
A familiar squeal pierced the lobby.
Jordan smiled and walked toward his girls.