Eld stared at her for a bit. He was getting the strangest feeling of deja vu, as though something like this had happened before.

Ah, that's right. It did happen. Kind of. Only with a different girl, and positions swapped. But that still meant that particular possibilities were well within his ability to predict.

"I-It's okay, I'm fine on the floor," he stated, hoping that it would be enough for her; and really, he was, as he could sleep just about anywhere. So long as he was in the room, he'd sleep well, too...probably.

"Mhhrrr . . ." Kaze hummed in disappointment.

Disappointment not in the fact that Eld was opting to just sleep on the floor, but . . . actually, that was the entire source of disappointment right there in a nutshell! Kaze didn't feel offended or anything like that, it was just . . . well, this was his room. He shouldn't be forced to sleep on the most uncomfortable thing available in his room, and while a futon would've been tons more comfortable than the floor, Kaze would have rather him slept in this comfy bed of his!

"Don't, don't," Kaze beckoned, "I'll take the futon if you'd like. You don't have to share a bed with me or anything. You shouldn't have to. This is your room, right? You should be able to sleep in your own bed whenever you want to."

It was fairly obvious by the look on her face that she didn't want Eld sacrificing his comfort for her sake. Kaze wasn't cool with that at all.

He frowned; no, that wouldn't do at all. A man couldn't take the most comfortable spot while the girl slept on the floor! And she clearly didn't have the initial reservations Etsu had in sleeping in someone else's bed.

"Well, climbing in with you when you're just wearing a towel is a little...beyond friends, really," he pointed out. "Besides, it's not that important. If you've been on the road, you probably haven't slept in a good bed in awhile anyway. And I can sleep pretty much anywhere."

Not that she probably remembered how well she'd been sleeping recently, but...

"No! No, you should really be able to sleep on your own bed!" Kaze insisted.

She sat up quickly and almost lost her decency in the process. She lost her towel rather quickly. It seceded from her body quickly and fell into her lap, but just as it did, Kaze almost instantly had her right arm across her breasts, concealing anything that might leave her considerably indecent before tragedy could even come close to occurring! Her reflexes were actually so smooth that one might call them inhuman, as if she had seen the towel falling all along, before she even sat up.

Nonetheless, Eld would be able to see that she had a slender, yet curvy figure--and him seeing that didn't seem to bother her at all.

Kaze had completely different things on her mind, after all. With her arm still over her breasts and pushing on them to avoid tragedy, Kaze continued:

"Or at least on something more comfortable than that!" she declared quietly, before at last concluding: "S-so-- so-- so could you hand me some underwear?"

"It's--"

Fine never left as his mouth, as the towel fell and...well, her arm moved before he really saw anything, but she had slender arms so it didn't leave too much to his imagination.

After a few seconds he finally caught himself, flushed deeply and turned around. Why do things like this always happen to me? It's not that he didn't enjoy the sight, but especially now he was committed to someone, if not officially than at least in his heart.

"R-Right, uh, here..." He picked up the clothes she was wearing and tossed them to her. Of course, this required him to look at her, but he tried his best not to stare...

Eld's embarrassment went unnoticed, for the most part. Well, not entirely. She saw that he didn't look too comfortable, but intentionally thought little of it. He didn't like her like that. He loved someone already. He wasn't going to be attracted to her like that, so it wasn't anything she had to worry about.

Eld tossing her clothes resulting in Kaze removing her arm from her chest, but at peak tactical location: the clothes were right in front of her body when she let go, incidentally covering her, and resulting in her hugging her clothes to her chest.

"Hnn?" Kaze asked as she looked down to the clothes in her arms.

It was her dress and her panties, but the latter was the only thing she wanted. Sleeping in clothes wasn't all that enjoyable of an experience. It didn't feel natural. She usually slept in the nude, but for Eld, she'd suffice with just some underwear.

"Hey . . . I asked for just underwear . . ." Kaze remarked. Hopefully he'd toss her something she could use to just cover her chest, because she really didn't want to wear any clothes beyond that.

Somehow, Kaze remained decent through the whole thing somehow, and these was either a mercy or a cruelty, and he wasn't sure which. No, the former, definitely. The less temptation he had to endure, the better.

"W-Well, uh..." If that was her only dress, it was true that it was probably best if she didn't wear it to bed. He wondered what she was thinking, traveling without bringing a change of clothing. Then again, she'd probably only forget anything she brought with.

Giving her one of Etsu's bras wasn't an option--he wasn't sure it would fit, anyway. "A-Alright...here..." He went over to his dresser and pulled out a plain t-shirt before tossing that to her as well. It was perhaps a little more clothed than she wanted to be, but it was the bare minimum in his opinion.

When Eld tossed another article of clothing at her, she let her dress and panties fall to her lap and caught the shirt at just the right moment, again when she maintained decency all throughout. She did, however, cross her left arm over her chest so she could hold out the shirt with her right hand and investigate it.

A . . . t-shirt? No, no, that was far too much to wear to bed. Kaze stared at it for a moment, before tossing it back to him. Not only was she not keen on wearing a t-shirt to bed, but Eld's t-shirt looked like it would have been kind of big on her. Kaze wasn't cool with that at all!

"You . . . you don't have any cloth?" she asked, "Just plain cloth. Like bandage wraps! Or something like that! I can't really remember what it's called but I know just plain cloth wraps work just fine for that sort of purpose."

Eld just wasn't going to get the woman to wear anymore clothes to bed than absolutely necessary.

"C-Cloth...?" He really wanted to know why she couldn't just wear a t-shirt. She was such a strange person; he would have thought a girl would want to wear as much clothing as was comfortable when sleeping in the same room as a guy. He almost wondered if he should just go sleep in the living room, but he knew she wasn't going to accept that.

After a few moments he finally figured out what exactly she was asking for. "Y-You mean a sarashi?" he asked. Well, she did look vaguely Cizokian and have a Cizokian name, but he'd gotten the impression she was a little more used to this kind of culture. It wasn't as though Mayako wore sarashis, after all.

Well, it wasn't like she wore bras either, but that was beside the point.

Fortunately, he did have those, since Etsu still periodically wore them. "I-I think so...let me see if I can find some..."

"Yeah, a sarashi!" Kaze replied cheerily.

Indeed, she looked Cizokian, but she completely lacked the accent that most Cizokians had when speaking Common. In fact, she lacked a Cizokian accent entirely.

Kaze waited for Eld to route through the pile of clothes on the floor, all the while glancing a bit to try and look at the clothes themselves. She couldn't see them very well from here, as it was fairly dark in the room. That was somewhat disappointing! The longer Eld dug through the clothes, the more she wanted to see what, exactly, he was digging through, and where they had come from. From here, she could tell that they looked a lot like girls' clothes, after all.

It would be quite sudden to Eld, really. There was a woman behind him, with no sound or indication that she had gotten off of his bed to walk behind him. A woman that was completely naked. She stood behind him, pressed up against him with a considerable degree of closeness, enough that if he were to turn around quickly, she'd be able to turn with him, and avoid the whole mess of indecency!

She bent a little bit, as Eld was bent down to route through the clothes, to pluck one particular shirt from the floor.

"Oh, hey. This is cute," Kaze remarked as she lifted the shirt up to look at it better.

And indeed, it was . . . attractive. Cute wasn't a good word for it. It was pink and had long sleeves, but was short enough to just barely cover a girl's breasts. It was one particular thing that had been delivered to Etsu many, many moons ago, that she never actually got rid of . . .

While it wasn't as though Eld was impossible to sneak up on, his senses were sharp. As quiet as it currently was, he should have easily heard her if she even shifted her weight, let alone actually got out of the bed.

Which was why when she was suddenly behind him, speaking and pressing against him, he jumped more than a little bit before freezing perfectly still as he realized something: she was very much no longer wearing the towel.

"K-K-Kaze...?" He hardly even noticed that she'd picked up a shirt, and the fact that she'd picked up that particular shirt may seemed a bit eerie to him. "Y-Y-Your a-aren't...y-you're..."

He couldn't even finish what he was saying, so instead he quickly found what he was looking for and held it back over his shoulder. "H-H-Here," he said weakly.

Eld's nervousness was less noticed, as the scant article was further examined. She practically held it in front of Eld, as she pressed herself up against his back and dangled the shirt in front of him, to better see it.

Once he stammered and pushed the set of cloth sewn together behind him, over his shoulder, Kaze dropped the shirt and gently retrieved the sarashi from Eld.

"Oh. Thanks!"

Kaze turned away from Eld and pressed her back up against his for a moment, a moment which passed rather quickly. The process was simple. Sarashis were a lot like bras, except as comfortable as they could be, they were a ton harder to tie. Kaze took a few steps forward after a moment, but that was when her silence ended.

"Hey, could you tie this for me?" Kaze asked rather suddenly.

Were Eld to turn around to see, he'd find that she made no attempt to cover up her lower back or even her buttocks at all. That, more than likely, wasn't something she considered indecent. Either that or she had completely forgotten, but either way, standing with her back to Eld was Kaze, with the back of the sarashi folded over itself and held with both of her hands, to make sure she didn't lose it before Eld got the chance to tie it for her.

"A little loose though, please?"

Even after she pulled away from him, he remained still. He didn't dare turn around until there was some indication she was done. He liked to think he had a pretty strong will after everything that happened, but this was stretching even his limits. As he waited, he simply tried to get his breathing back down to normal levels.

"U-Uh, s-sure." By the time she asked he was fairly calm again--he figured a bare back would be alright. What he wasn't counting on was that her entire backside would be bare.

"......" It was, if there was such a thing, an audible silence. Part of him just wondered why he was even surprised at this point, but most of him was staring at Kaze's shapely--

FOCUS, ELD, he commanded himself. He forced his gaze back upward, and started to tie her sarashi. Or try to. It wasn't easy--his hands kept fumbling nervously every time, but eventually he got it. "T-T-There," he whispered and promptly turned around before he could look down again. "Y-You should finish getting dressed."

"Thanks~" Kaze chimed happily.

Her mood had gone back up to utterly cheerful again, without a doubt. There, she was in a state where she wasn't all that worried about anything else, and was just happy to be alive and with someone that seemed to like her enough--a friend. Yes, a friend! Kaze was perfectly happy just being with her friend.

She returned to the side of the bed in order to pluck her panties from the pile of clothes and slipped them on.

"Okay!" Kaze declared cheerfully, "Is this better than a towel?"

She posed slightly. The woman wasn't trying to be outright sexy or anything of the like, but accidentally? The way she posed with one hand upon her hip and the other lifted to place her index finger upon her cheek, the way the sarashi was tight enough upon her chest to practically outline her breasts, and the way her underwear looked more like a string bikini . . . well, she definitely managed to pull the look off by complete accident.

He really shouldn't have looked. He knew that. But she asked for his opinion on something, and he was obliged to turn back around. Again, he had to wonder if she was doing this on purpose, but he didn't sense any kind of deception from her.

"U-Umm...in a way...." That way being that he was sure they wouldn't fall off in the night like a towel most certainly would, but the towel was infinitely more modest. Well, at least the sarashi wasn't as bed as if she'd worn a bra...

Both would have been best, but he didn't think that'd go over well.