"Yeah, my family's been here for generations," Yuuta said. "My dad runs the local brewery, so we're pretty much set in Sapporo. Lots of tourists come to Hokkaido just for the beer." He had never left the island of Hokkaido before. As they got closer to the park he asked, "Have you ever made anything out of clay before? They have open studios here where you can make stuff."

"I've always wanted to, but I've never had an opportunity to do so," she said. She also wasn't really artistic so she was kind of scared of doing it, worried that it would turn out looking like a giant steaming pile of garbage. "What about you, have you ever made anything from clay?" The more she learned about him, the more she became intrigued. It was a dangerous game with her heart she was playing.

"I've made a few vases and pencil holders, but nothing big like a sculpture," Yuuta said. "The people who run the studio teach you how to do it right though." They made it through the park and led Amina to a small building. Inside was a white walled studio with multiple wooden tables covered in blocks of clay. A grey haired man was supervising as a small group of people, both younger and older, tried their hand at making something out of their clay piles. His eyes lit up when he spotted them walk in, and he came over immediately.

"Yuuta, you haven't visited in a while!" he said in Japanese.

"Yeah, I've been kind of busy over the summer," Yuuta said back. He couldn't exactly tell the old man he was in the future for a few weeks. "This is my friend from Canada, she just moved here recently. She doesn't speak very much Japanese yet." The man turned to Amina and gave a short bow, smiling.

"A pleasure to meet you, Miss...?"

"Amina," she said. "It's nice to meet you." She beamed at the man in front of her. She had the feeling Yuuta knew him, and she was tempted to ask. She looked around the shop and saw some people creating stuff from clay. Some were younger than her, others older although there were a few people her age. They all seemed better than she figured she'd be better. Knowing her, she'd end up with a giant ball of nothing at the end. She smiled wryly at herself. She wanted to ask the man questions like how long had he been working here, normal things she'd asked, but she didn't have the words in Japanese for it yet. Darn language barriers!

"Call me Kiyoshi," the man said. "Well, Miss Amina, feel free to pick wherever you want to sit. Choose any of the clay blocks on the table. We're just about to start making pottery on the wheel." She and Yuuta sat down somewhere as Kiyoshi went to assist someone else.

"First you have to make your clay into a rounder shape, like a ball," Yuuta explained to Amina. He took his slab and started molding it to become more circular.

Amina watched Yuuta shaped the clay into a ball for a few moments before she attempted her own. She pulled up her sleeves to keep them from getting dirty and grabbed the clay with her hands and began to shape it into a ball. She rolled the mass around between her hands while applying gentle pressure to try and get it to form the shape she wanted. Ok, so far so good, this wasn't very difficult. Maybe she would actually do this. She looked over at Yuuta and smiled. He looked so focused and into his task. It was cute.

After he was satisfied with his own clay, Yuuta looked over at Amina's.

"See? You did pretty good," he said. "Now you just need to put it on the spinning wheel." He picked up hi clay and moved it over to an unoccupied wheel. "You kind of have to throw it onto the base to make the bottom flat. If you throw it too hard it'll splatter though..." He held the clay over the wooden stand and threw it down, making the ball more of a lump. Yuuta used a foot pump to start spinning the clay around. "Do you want to try, or do you want me to do it?" he asked. Another empty wheel was next to him.

Eyeing a rack full of smocks off to the side of the room, Amina gently put her ball of clay down for moment and jogged over to grab one. No sense in getting dirty. Coming back, she smiled, picking up her ball of clay. She eyed the wheel for a moment and decided she would go for it instead of having Yuuta do it for her.

"I'll give it a shot," she said. Giving the wheel one more glance she threw the clay down a little too hard, causing some of it to splatter. "Opps," she said sheepishly, pink tinging her face in slight embarrassment.

Yuuta looked unamused as he wiped the bits of clay off his face.

"Maybe I should have worn a smock..." he said, before smiling. "Let's just move onto the next step before I get any dirtier." As he spun the wheel, Yuuta made a small hole with his finger in the middle of his clay and slowly made it bigger, forming a cup with his hands. "Use the foot pump to work the spinning wheel and start shaping it with your hands. The wheel does most of the work for you."

"Sorry, she said sheepishly, ducking her head a bit. She watched him demonstrate before copying his movements, moving the pedal slowly but consistently, watching the clay take form. She frowned as hers began looking lopsided. She moved her hand to that area in an attempted to make it right, somehow managing to make it worse instead.

Yuuta stopped to watch as Amina struggled with her clay, unsure if he should go over and help. Maybe she wanted to try and fix it herself. But as it continued to look like her pot was about to tip over, he relented.

"Push the clay like this," he said, standing behind her to guide her hands.

She blushed as he stood behind her and guided her hands, helping her form the clay. He felt so warm against her back and she could feel her blush threatening to spread further. Under his guidance, Amina was able to form the clay into a vase. They worked silently for a few more moments until it was in her opinion perfect before Yuuta got her to slowly stop the wheel.

"So what do we do next?" she asked.

Yuuta didn't seem to realize how he was affecting Amina as he helped her, but he did enjoy being that close to her. It felt more natural than their interactions in school.

"Now we have to bake it," he said, reluctantly stepping away. He picked up his clay piece and hastily scratched the characters for his name on the side in small hiragana with a blunt pencil, and then moved it over to what looked like a large, paper lined cookie sheet. "The clay goes in the kiln and it gets fired until it turns hard. Then we glaze it and fire it again. That's why pottery looks like glass when it's done."

Amina watched as her clay was put into the kilin and spent the next hour or so watching Yuuta and the other people in the studio work with their clay. Her eyes kept getting drawn back to Yuuta, watching him while he worked. He looked so engrossed in her task.

When an hour had passed, she watched as the staff member took her item to cool. "Yours almost ready?" she asked Yuuta, stepping close to him.

"I think so..." Yuuta said, taking a few steps back to see his vase more clearly. It was about two feet tall and slowly extended outward form the circular base before tapering in again. The edges flared out and he had attached a curved handle to one side. Yuuta rubbed his chin in deep thought and nodded in satisfaction. He was already planning out what to paint on it as he picked it up and inserted into the kiln with the next batch.

"Do you know what you want to paint yours?" he asked. Different color pots of glaze were now being set up at the tables, each color a little faded.

"Umm, not really," Amina admitted. "Probably just a solid colour. I can't draw very well nor am I very artistic so it's probably the only thing I can really do." She was debating if she should go with purple, her favourite colour, or maybe try a different colour for once. Every time she tried to go for another colour it always felt wrong, so she always went back to purple. "Any suggestions?"

"Maybe you should paint a simple symbol or face on it," Yuuta said. "That shouldn't be too hard... unless you want my help again?" He gave her a small grin and nudged her with his elbow.

"I was thinking about maybe some Kanji on it, but honestly, my Kanji writing skills are like at the level of a kindergarten child's," she admitted jokingly. She could read Japanese a bit and speak it, but she still struggled with writing and making it look like what it was suppose to.

"Anything you'd suggest?"

"Hey, if you can teach me English, then I can teach you Japanese, right?" Yuuta asked. "You can spell your name on it in Hiragana. That's easier than Kanji." Her name would only be three symbols, and they were far simpler shapes to draw with a paintbrush.

She thought for several moments, possibilities of Japanese words milling around her head. "What about painting it a royal purple colour and have the characters in white with a black outline saying "Soul", or would that be too complicated?" she asked, looking at him. She really sucked at writing characters so she wasn't sure if it was possible to do an outline on the word.

She looked at the world. So much in her life revolved around her name. Her mother had intended to name her Anima, the Italian word for soul, but had misspelled it on her birth certificate, so she became known as Amina instead. Truth be told, she preferred Amina to Anima. Her powers also revolved around the same thing, as did her Senshi name. It seemed like everything in her life revolved around this. Sometimes it annoyed her, feeling as if she was trapped by some sort of destiny, yet she didn't seem to mind in this instance.

"I think you may need to write it in hirigana for me. I don't think I can do the second character," she admitted, indicating to the one she meant.

"Anima is the Italian word for soul and what my name is suppose to be but my mom got the spelling wrong on the birth certificate so it's Amina legally anyway. I prefer it to be honest," she explained.

"I like that," she looked over his should as she attached him write the hirigana for the word soul. "I think I may be able to write that and make it mostly legible.

"If you write it big, you'll be fine!" Yuuta said. "I'm not sure what I'm going to paint on mine, maybe a dragon..." Amina's explanation on name meaning did make him think though. In some languages, words usually had set meanings, but in Japanese, a name's meaning could change just by how it was written. His own name would have a completely different translation just by changing a kanji in it. 

"I won't write my name like you. Kanji's kind of hard to paint on a curved surface," he said after a moment.

"Are dragons your favourite?" she asked curiously as she began to select her purple paint. So many choices! They didn't have the purple but she may be able to mix a darker purple with a white one to get what she wanted. Deciding to try that first, she grabbed some dark purple and a white, something to mix them on and a paint brush before returning to the work bench that her and Yuuta had claimed.

"My favorite what, animal? Does a dragon even count as one?" Yuuta asked. "Yeah, one of my favorites, I guess. The kanji for dragon is in my family name." His vase came out of the kiln, and he set the vase down in front of him to cool down. "Who doesn't like dragons though?" he said. They were powerful, but wise and respected beasts in myths.

"There are two different types of dragons thought. There are the creatures that were created in the West, mostly in the English Isles, and the ones created in the East. Do you have a preference between those ones? I love Water Dragons for some reason. I've always been drawn to them," she asked. "It's kind of fascinating how cultures that are words apart have created so many mythical beings that are very similar when you look at them. Vampires, Shape Shifters, Dragons, Were Animals, etc."

"Yeah," Yuuta agreed. "We all have the same ideas, but everyone has a different image of it in their head. Hm...western dragons are pretty tough looking." Yuuta grinned and flexed his arm playfully. "You know, just like me."

"A tough guy are you? Is that why everyone so scared of you?" she teased gently. "I prefer eastern dragons myself, especially the water ones." She picked up the darker purple paint and began to slowly add some to the paper plate that she was using to mix her paint on below before adding a few small squirts of white and mixing it together to see what kind of purple she got.