One eyebrow arched meaningfully over her dark eyes, a single corner of her mouth curling upward just the tiniest smidgen in genuine amusement as her gaze washed over his handsome face. Galina remembered that smile well, marked in her memory for so very long now. She was glad to see it once more, that flash of genuine good humor had changed not in the least from her first remembrances, and the thought warmed her far better than even the [i]sake[/i] could.

Galina had learned over the course of this past year, how very, [i]very[/i] different her upbringing had been from Souma's, and this vast gulf of disparity was far more than simply being born in separate nations, to differing cultures. In most every nation from the dawn of man, the rich and the wealthy lived lives of privilege, the children born into this vaunted families never knowing a moment of want or need. This had been Galina's life once, just as it was the life of every child born to a Japanese nobleman, or a fabulously successful American entrepreneur. The privations Galina experienced as a child, indulged [outlandishly, many would say] by a father who raised his daughter to become a Cossack warrior, had been entirely her own choice from the moment she could run after her brothers and stubbornly refused to be chased off.

This was, by [i]no[/i] means, the order of privation Souma had known as a child. Far from it. Whatever respectability the Takahiro clan had achieved was gained entirely through what could be stolen, smuggled, cheated or ripped away by wit, by skill or by sheer brute force. The title of "samurai" and that once palatial compound stood testament to the undeniable efficacy of their brutal and merciless ways, and all Souma's clan wrested from this vicious, unforgiving world.

Knowing this, Galina only loved him all the more.

She set down her near empty ramen bowl before reaching for the warm jug of [i]sake[/i], refilling Souma's cup, and then topping off her own. "Money is not important, you say? So much to 'find' for cheap - for [i]free[/i], is there? Just lying about?" Galina's musical laughter, as melodic and rich as her matchless voice, danced from her lips.

"Tell me Souma, you have piqued my curiosity fiercely, and I simply [i]cannot[/i] decide," she purred, leaning forward just a little over the table they shared, her voice dropping to a lovely, conspiratorial whisper. "Are you trying to seduce a haughty noblewoman down from her lofty perch, to come revel with you in all your [i]deliciously[/i] filthy back alley ways?" 

A devilish lift of her eyebrows accompanied an equally wicked grin. "Or are you are simply proposing to teach me a whole new skill set?"