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

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 re-reading the scriptures I had suggested to Teru. 

At lunch, Ms. Yamatani joined me at the kitchen window when I picked up the taster's tray. They had her tray ready as well, and we sat together 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 a side of 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?"

"Uhm. 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.

"My roommate."

> 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.

She's texting me. 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 my boss, who was observing my reactions, 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: I can understand that.

Fumie: Do you know her feelings?

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

Ryō: One thing I know, I'm not planning to make
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.

On the way to the train, I got a call on the cellphone from one of the officers who were taking Teru's case.

"We have been able to clear up the child custody issues for Teru Sumaguchi."

"Ahh, ...," I wasn't sure how to react.

"Enough evidence was gathered more than a year ago to allow the court order to be made permanent, and Amanoko Funamoto's custody and guardianship responsibilities for Teru Sumaguchi were permanently revoked. Unfortunately, there was no one the court could assign those responsibilities to until her brother Jun Sumaguchi achieved the age of majority, and the officers of the court were not able to contact him. Now that he is an adult, those responsibilities have been transferred to him."

"Well, that's good news, but what about contacting him to tell him?"

"We did, today, and he has signed the documents assuming responsibility for her and confirmed that she has permission to stay with you until his situation improves."

"Oh. Okay, would that allow me to find her a more suitable place?"

"If you do, please let both him and us know."

"I'll do that."

I sent Teru an e-mail with the news once I was on the train.  She did not reply.

Fumie texted me at 6:23 to tell me she had arrived. My train was still a couple of minutes away. As the train pulled into the station, I caught a glimpse of her waiting outside the gates with a bag over her shoulder.

From the platform, as I headed for the gates, I saw Teru approach the gates.

As I watched, both of them immediately took notice of the other, and they started talking. Introductions were complete by the time I had gotten through the gates, and they were already deeply engaged in conversation.

"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.

"How about I make 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.

"With haggis."

"Haggis?" Fumie stopped and looked at me.

"Where're you planning on getting that?" Teru was laughing.

I grinned. "Okay, you two are aware I'm here."

Teru rolled her eyes.

Fumie looked like her interest was piqued. "Haggis yakisoba. Might work." And we started walking again. But they slowed their conversation down enough I could sneak in a comment every now and then.

"By the way, Teru, your liaison officers called and told me that your custody responsibilities and rights have now been transferred to Jun."

"Yeah, great! I got the message." But that was her only reaction. I wondered whether the news had actually registered.

I had enough onions, raw ginger root, apple vinegar, soy sauce, prunes, and potatoes at the apartment, so I picked up just the yakisoba noodles, pork, tofu, more cabbage and carrots, moyashi, an apple, and couple of plums at the supermarket. No haggis.

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 serving God."

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 could 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. And quick to eat.

When we were done, 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, and we discussed 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. It has to do with the way God's power works."

Teru sighed. "Okay, save it for later. What's this 'just believe' 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, someday."

"If Teru had believed that, would it have helped her have the courage to leave?"

"Well, she can believe it as long as she's here and Angel is there."

Fumie shook her head. "Bad joke."

Teru gave me a dark look. "Not even funny." Then she sighed. "But true things happen even if you don't believe."

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

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

I nodded.

Fumie explained, "What Jesus is saying here is to believe in Him."

"What does that even mean? Isn't it like believing in Santa Claus? Or the Shichifukujin?" Teru shook her head.

I asked, "What good things can happen when people believe in Santa Claus?"

"Children behave themselves?"

"What else?"

"Uhm, waiting for presents seems like it could be either good or bad."

"How about giving presents?" Fumie suggested.

"You know, that seems like it could be either good or bad, too. Sometimes people give presents to bribe people to do bad things."

"Do you know about Nicholas, the bishop of Myra who is generally considered to be the historical origin of the Santa Claus tradition?" she asked.

"I think I've heard of him. He helped a lot of people. And he gave secret gifts, right?"

"Right."

Teru thought some more. "Okay, so the belief is supposed to help you do good things. I guess the Seven Gods of Fortune are similar, each represents a virtue that people are supposed to emulate."

I looked at Fumie and she nodded.

"That's good place to start from."

"So what about Jesus?"

This time, I yielded the response to Fumie.

"His name means 'God is help' in the original language."

"Oh-kay, so we should believe that God will help us, and that will motivate us."

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

Fumie nodded in agreement.

"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'. My dad, who has authority from God, met me in the water, said words of the covenant, and --"

"The Words?"

"Sort of. And he put me 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 especially good to be resurrected, right?"

Fumie responded, "Well, if we want to be resurrected with the Savior, to life, we have to follow His teachings, 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.

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

"Even Angel?"

"Even Angel's boyfriend." Fumie spoke in earnest. "But more important to you, 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 looked at Fumie, and Fumie just shrugged. "It is what it is. Sometimes, cheap allegories are not wrong."

Teru grumbled, but she and Fumie proceeded to walk with me through some setup procedures, and soon the PC had three work user accounts set up, one for each of us, in addition to the admin users. Then they set it up to spawn ephemeral user processes to run applications safely in, with template file systems that would keep the applications safe.

And then, while I watched, Fumie helped Teru adjust the template settings for the abominable mainstream OS so that any of the three work login users could start it in a jailed ephemeral user virtual machine. I did not follow half of what they did.

Then I logged in on my work account and started an instance of the abominable OS, 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. I started another instance, started a word processor document, and pasted the copied stuff in. It was a little clumsy, but it worked, and we could be fairly confident the vulnerabilities of the abominable OS would not allow malware to do damage, even to the login user's data.

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 manuals and documents for work and access them from VMs I started in my work user account, without making them accessible from other work user accounts. With that in place, I could finally use the PC for work for real, keeping the manuals confidential. I let them do this one, too, even though I understood what they were doing.

I had put off actually using the computer for working with my manuals, because I knew that the usual approach, using the abominable OS as the host OS and managing the files within it would leave it vulnerable to some malware I might pick up on the Internet, even if I set up the admin and work user accounts in that OS properly (which is still rarely done) and kept the anti-virus/anti-malware software up-to-date.

Anti-virus and anti-malware software always suffer from 0-day vulnerabilities. Teru had insisted I figure out why that is several years ago, and I had not forgotten.

We set up encrypted 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. Then we set it up to interface with Line, as well, and tested it by chatting with my family on the PC.

Dad was especially happy to meet Fumie; Mom, not so much. But they all connected with her via Line.

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

I thought I saw Mr. Inoshita there, but I wasn't sure, and then he was gone. If he saw us, he must have decided to stay out of sight.

On the way back from the station, Teru and I talked about Jun officially being her guardian, and about her having official permission to stay with me. She was quite happy about the permission to stay.

Teru and I had no problems with dreams or temptations that night, even though she asked for, and got, a goodnight kiss.

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Backed up at https://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2019/10/bk-sudden-roommate-7-woman-on-train.html.