The computer program

10. Floorwork

I was trembling, looking over at him.

He was looking straight ahead, not saying anything.

Suddenly, he moved, grabbed my hand, entwined our fingers.

I looked down on them; his large, warm hand encompassing mine.

I put my other hand over his to clasp it into safety.

"Are you nervous?" I asked softly.

He thought for a while.

"No", he said, his voice a bit darker than usual as the elevator took us up to the eighth floor where my apartment was.

"Good", I said. "You're safe. I don't have any expectations. I just want to show you my room."

He turned to me then, put his hand on the side of my face and kissed me.

I smiled into that kiss.

I opened the door to my tiny room with the kitchen in the corner, happy I had had time to clean this morning.

"It's not much", I said apologetically. "But it's my home."

He walked around a little, put his hand to the wall.

"I love it", he said, and he sounded as if he really meant it. He turned to me, his brows furrowed. "I mean, I don't really know how people usually live."

"Don't you know everything?" I asked.

Tobirama shook his head.

"No. No, I can find everything out. But I decided against searching how people live. At first, when I was only a program, because I wanted to find out myself when I got a body. But now, because I think it would have... Hurt me. Since, you know, Hashirama just puts me in a chair and shuts me off."

"I know", I said, suddenly angry at Hashirama. "What about him, by the way?" I asked. "Did he notice you coded over his codes for recording of vision and hearing?"

"Yes", Tobirama said. "I'm not an expert in reading facial expressions, but as I came to the lab, he looked at me in a certain way that made me have no doubt he was very disappointed with me, and scared."

"Well, well, well, if it isn't the consequences of his own actions", I said, taking a vase down from a shelf, filling it with water and putting the rose Tobirama had given me in it. "Did he say anything?"

Tobirama shook his head, and he sat down on the floor, just like that. It looked odd, this well-dressed, handsome man that still had something strange about his demeanour casually sitting down in my little student apartment among the white and blue walls and the whit furniture and the terracotta pots with plants.

"No", he said. "But I believe he's up to something. And I don't like it."

I walked to him, sat down, took his hand, started kissing the back of it. Tobirama sighed.

"So you do feel touch", I said softly. "I wondered that before but now I'm certain."

"Yes. I need to activate the sensory neurons. It takes a lot of power, but if I don't, I can't walk."

"I read there is a lot of proprioception involved in walking", I said, thinking back to my neurology books. "From your feet and your joints."

Tobirama nodded.

"Do you..." I began, not daring to meet his eye. "Do you have any sexual desires?"

Tobirama looked away into the far distance, smiling.

"Yes." Tobirama looked at me. "But I'm inexperienced. I mean, I'm literally a few weeks old."

"Don't say it like that!" I burst out, and Tobirama laughed as I put my hands over my ears. "It's creeping me out!"