"Mokuinu, could you be a dear and check with the kitchen if they have mugicha—or at least something cool and refreshing?"
The words left my lips like a pebble tossed into still water, breaking the silence with ripples that felt too loud in my own ears.
I peeked out from behind the bulk of the book in my lap, head emerging as timidly as a rabbit testing the air outside its burrow. For hours—since sunrise—I had been cocooned in its pages. A fortress of ink and paper, thick as a shield, dense with history, myth, and wanderer's lore. I had eaten nothing since morning, though Mokuinu had brought a tray earlier without being asked. She always noticed before I did.
It surprised me, honestly, that a ship like this carried books at all, let alone volumes like these. Some part encyclopedia, some part travelogue, some part myth-making—though whether "myths" were falsehoods or simply truths too raw to wear their names, I could not yet decide.
The chair beneath Mokuinu groaned faintly as she rose. Her jinbei slipped into place around her, soft folds falling with the weightless inevitability of snow settling on eaves. She placed her own book down on the bed, carefully, as though even silence deserved tidiness.
Then she looked at me.
A squint. Narrowed eyes, not in judgment but in something quieter—like the way one shields their gaze against the sun's brightness. Yet it never failed to rattle me. That look left me with the sensation of being caught, like a child scolded for crying too loudly in the market. My throat tightened. I shrank behind my book again, cheeks prickling.
"Oh!" I blurted, the sound sharp as flint. Too loud. Too obvious.
But I anchored the outburst to the page.
The Riven Sea is a place of perpetual storms, where lightning strikes each second and the waters churn in a ceaseless tempest of magical power.
"Yes… Father spoke of this," I whispered, tracing the words with a fingertip as though that act might prove I had meant my gasp for the book, not for her.
Yet it is also said to be the source of every river and waterway in the world, a wellspring of life that feeds all the other zones.
Thud.
The door closed, and my heart jolted. She had gone already, soundless but for that small punctuation.
When she returned, her footsteps were the steady, unhurried rhythm I had come to recognize—like waves nudging a shoreline, never rushing, never yielding. In her hands, a glass sweated with chill.
"Lemonade," she said simply, placing it on the table. "They didn't have what you wanted. This will have to do. Or… would you rather I fetch something else?"
The glass touched wood with a clap sharper than it should have been. A full stop. No space for another sentence.
My throat constricted. That hadn't sounded like a real offer. Was she annoyed with me? Did I burden her?
I took a sip. Cool, sweet, sour. It slid down my throat like sunlight slipping through leaves, but the flavor seemed almost mocking.
Her eyes were already back on her book. Her tail lay still.
"Is there an issue, Miss?"
Her tone was flat—not cruel, not dismissive, just a steady line I could not read.
"What? No, not at all." My voice cracked, betraying me. Heat surged up my neck. I bent over my book again, pretending the ink was more important than her tone.
The Verdant Veil is a jungle so alive with chaotic mana that trees grow and die in a single day. The very earth beneath one's feet may open to swallow intruders whole.
But the words dissolved, letters tumbling into shapes without meaning. I read the same line thrice, and it remained as hollow as my pulse.
At last I shut the book, too sharply, and rose. "Let's go for a walk," I said, trying for casual, failing.
Her ear twitched. Just barely. But her tail offered no reply—not a wag, not a flick.
The silence pressed between us.
I bit my lip, hovering by the bed as though waiting for her permission. Like a child asking to go play.
After a long moment, she stood. "Alright. Let's go."
The door opened. Like a duckling, I followed.
---
The corridor greeted us with air strangely sweet—cedar and mint and something else unnamed, something I could not pin to memory. It filled my lungs in slow swells, each breath deepening until I almost believed the ship itself exhaled calm into me.
Sunlight spilled through tall windows, pouring golden warmth into the passage. It caught in the grain of the wood, making it gleam as though the planks themselves were alive.
"So, where would you like to go, Miss?" Mokuinu asked, her voice even as she walked half a step ahead.
Her pace was steady, unbothered. My smaller strides scrambled to keep up, pattering quick as raindrops.
It struck me—this had been my idea, my invitation. Yet I felt less like a leader and more like… a pet. A dog trotting after its master, tugged by an invisible leash.
"Too… fast," I gasped after some distance, hand clutching at my side.
She turned, eyes calm as water. For the smallest heartbeat, I thought I glimpsed something flicker there—concern? Annoyance? Affection? The moment passed too quickly to name.
"Are you alright? Should I carry you?"
The words were simple. Practical. Yet my face burned hot, traitorous.
"No," I said too quickly, too defensively. "Just… give me a moment to catch my breath."
I dragged air into my lungs, greedy as sails straining for wind.
But the aftertaste of lemonade lingered, cloying and sour now. Bitterness bloomed on my tongue, rising in me like dough swelling in an oven's heat.
Frustration. Murky, indistinct. Was she upset with me? Or was it my own shadow, my own restless heart, inventing edges in her silences?
I clenched my jaw. I would not quarrel. Not when I could not even name the quarrel.
Her pace slowed. Enough for me to match her, to fall into step beside her.
So we walked on together, not hand in hand, not even shoulder to shoulder, yet tethered by some unspoken thread. The deck awaited us, where sunlight and sky stretched wide and open—but already, I knew, the aftertaste of lemonade would linger long after the glass was empty.