Unlike Andrew, who was still wrestling internally with the thorny question of whether New Eridu might run into trouble while he was away — taking Miyabi with him added a whole new layer of variables to that calculation — Miyabi herself was in an entirely different headspace.
After hearing Andrew's description of the Monster Hunter world, the fire of her martial spirit had already been stoked to a raging blaze. It was burning so hot she could barely keep herself in place.
A new world.
A new world meant new sword styles born from that world's soil — and it meant an untold number of powerful opponents she had never laid eyes on.
For Miyabi, who had only just begun to feel the ceiling of her technical growth pressing down on her, this was nothing short of irresistible. It was like a Forest Thiren stumbling upon a field of catnip. Like a Felyne discovering a tree full of silvervine. Like a Jagras catching the scent of something fresh and—
...Ahem.
No need to finish that sentence. Anyone reading this already knows exactly where it was going.
The point was: for her personally, this was the kind of temptation that was simply impossible to refuse.
The moment the last word left Andrew's mouth, Miyabi turned to look at him, her eyes blazing with unmistakable impatience. She wasted no time at all.
"Since you already understand the situation, Andrew — shouldn't we be leaving now?"
And with that, she reached down, wrapped her fingers around the hilt of Wuwei at her hip — and immediately adopted a posture that made it absolutely clear she was ready to drag Andrew out the door this very second. Never mind that she had never in her life actually gone on a proper expedition into the wild.
The foot she'd already started moving forward, however, was immediately caught by Andrew reaching out and stopping her.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa — it's not time to leave yet."
Faced with the mildly baffled look Miyabi turned on him at being stopped, Andrew quickly explained himself.
"Right now, my personal Proxy is still out there in the Hollows, working hard to find a stable Rift that leads back home." He spread his hands. "So even if everything else were completely sorted, we'd still have to wait until we actually know which way to go before we can set off, right?"
He watched understanding begin to dawn on her face and pressed on, his tone gentling into something more reassuring.
"So — please try to be patient until they bring back a result, okay?"
"And that's not even the only thing. Before we leave, there's actually quite a bit of outdoor survival gear we need to properly prepare for the journey ahead."
Speaking of preparation — Andrew's gaze drifted down, sweeping over Miyabi's outfit from head to toe.
He paid particular attention to the fingerless glove on her right hand, and to the black high-heeled leather boots on her feet. Even the arm brace extending all the way up to her upper arm on her left got a long, careful look — after which Andrew couldn't help but quietly shake his head.
With what Miyabi was currently wearing, heading into the Monster Hunter world was going to be a problem. Not even talking about defensive performance — just sustaining normal movement over long periods in the wild couldn't be properly guaranteed.
Especially those heels.
It wasn't that heels were categorically forbidden. It was that heels which weren't built tough enough would, in the field, stop being footwear and start being a liability. A trap waiting to happen.
True wilderness survival — and that was exactly what a genuine outdoor expedition boiled down to: wilderness survival where you could prepare in advance and bring camping gear — demanded certain things above all else.
If you wanted to sustain movement over long stretches of time in the wild, then beyond the obvious essentials — fire sources, tents, food, and the rest of the standard field-life kit — the two most important items, bar none, were a pair of sturdy, reliable boots and a pair of gloves that could provide actual, effective protection.
The former ensured a person could move normally across all kinds of complex terrain. The latter dramatically reduced — and covered against — the risk of accidental injury during combat, fire-starting, and the dozens of other physical tasks that came with field life.
Miyabi's current boots and gloves were beautiful, and by the standards of city operations they were genuinely quite durable and well-made.
But for extended wear and use in environments like wilderness and jungle? Absolutely not.
Miyabi's usual operational zone was the various Hollows scattered around New Eridu — and while those Hollows were labyrinthine and complex in their own right, at their core they were still urban structures, still ruins, still built environments. City bones.
Human beings cannot conceive of what they have never witnessed.
The wildly unique environments of the Monster Hunter world — the sheer, alien hostility of raw nature — were simply beyond the imagination of someone who had lived their entire life in New Eridu's city and never once faced the true terror of the natural world.
Thinking it through, Andrew already knew what had to be done.
In addition to forging Ellen's weapon, he'd need to craft Miyabi a pair of gauntlets and boots that were tough and durable enough to actually hold up out there.
Fortunately, those two items wouldn't require designing from scratch. Hunter armor, by its very nature and design philosophy, had always addressed both of those requirements simultaneously. That was baked into the craft itself.
As for materials...
As it happened, the battle against Nineveh had left him with a fair amount of Gore Magala materials. A decent haul, all things considered.
But there was a catch. Because the Gore Magala they'd faced had not yet fully matured — had not yet truly been born into its complete form — the materials themselves were correspondingly weaker. Diminished.
Using them to craft a dragon-hunting weapon? Honestly pointless. The material's innate strength, even combined with the best metals Andrew had on hand right now, would still produce a weapon and armor set that fell short of what Odogaron materials would yield. If he tried to use these scraps for his own gear, the end result would be a perfect example of something too mediocre to use but too rare to just throw away. The definition of an awkward middle ground.
The one genuine advantage these materials had...
...was weight. Compared to standard materials of similar tier, Gore Magala materials were significantly lighter. Anything crafted from them came out considerably less heavy.
For Andrew personally, that advantage meant absolutely nothing.
Still — these were Gore Magala materials. Just letting them collect dust felt wasteful in its own right.
But now, used to craft armor for Miyabi? That balance of strength and reduced weight turned out to be, quite by accident, an almost perfect fit for the application. The material had found its purpose.
The Gore Magala died for a reason after all.
Once Andrew finished explaining the situation, Miyabi — now understanding — could do nothing but grit her teeth and wrestle her excitement back under control.
Fortunately, a lifetime of dedicated training had tempered her character into something unusually mature. It didn't take long for her to reset her composure and return to her usual equilibrium.
Andrew's proposal — to craft new boots and gauntlets for her before they set off — was accepted without a moment's resistance. Miyabi agreed immediately, her trust in him on this matter absolute from the first word to the last.
Not a single flicker of hesitation, from start to finish.
After all, she'd always operated on a simple principle: professional matters belong in the hands of professionals. If she hadn't understood that, she never would have gone to the trouble of headhunting Yanagi and Asaba Harumasa into Section 6 in the first place.
And so, once again, Andrew found himself crafting gear for someone else — and at this point, he was getting notably good at it.
To ensure the finished armor would actually fit properly — particularly getting the boot size right — Andrew directed Miyabi to take off her boots. She pulled them off to reveal the feet hidden inside: small, delicate, and wrapped in a layer of sheer black stockings.
The young woman's feet were now exposed to the open air.
Years of relentless training had left not a single trace of puffiness on them. Instead, the constant rigor of kendo practice had carved them into a series of perfect, graceful curves. The slender, tapered tips of her toes were tinged with the faintest blush of pink through the tautness of the stockings — the vague outline of each toe visible beneath the fabric, like a row of small, rounded pearls — and yet that same expectedness of the reveal made something in them tense instinctively, the toes curling together just slightly.
Honestly, just the sight of those perfectly formed feet alone was the kind of thing that would have sent any dedicated connoisseur of such things reaching for a third bowl of rice, no questions asked.
They had only just come out of her boots — but perhaps because she had bathed after her morning training, not a single trace of any unpleasant scent reached Andrew. None at all.
Instead, a faint, delicate fragrance — unlike anything he had ever encountered before — drifted upward from them, curling gently around the tip of his nose. Whether it was the lingering scent of her bath soap or something unique to Miyabi herself, he genuinely couldn't tell.
It was a pity, though.
Because while Miyabi's feet were undeniably flawless, Andrew himself was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a devoted worshipper at that particular altar. A perfect scene — and it was being witnessed by someone who simply didn't know what to do with it. One couldn't help but sigh at the waste of it all.
A tragedy. A genuine tragedy.
Faced with those flawless feet before him, wrapped in their sheer black stockings, Andrew allowed himself exactly two appreciative glances — the way you'd admire a well-crafted piece of art — and then got to work taking the measurements he needed.
Miyabi's foot hovered slightly in the air in front of him. To measure it properly, Andrew hesitated for just a brief moment — and then reached out and cradled it gently in his palm.
Encased in its wrapping of black silk, the small, delicate foot rested in Andrew's broad hand like an exquisite little ornament — the kind of thing you could imagine closing your fingers around and having it disappear entirely into your palm.
As the head of the Hoshimi family, Miyabi's clothes were of course crafted from only the finest materials. And the moment Andrew's hand closed around her foot, the silky, impossibly smooth texture of the stocking began to transmit itself steadily from the surface of her sole into his palm.
Perhaps it was simply that the extremities of a young woman's body always ran a few degrees cooler than the rest of her. Or perhaps it was that Andrew himself, as a Hunter with an exceptionally robust constitution and vigorous circulation, radiated noticeably more warmth than most. Either way — what rested in Andrew's palm was not the warmth he'd half-expected, but instead a faint, lingering coolness.
Like a perfectly fitted piece of smooth jade, cool and flawless against the skin.
That difference in temperature — cool to Andrew — registered as something else entirely on Miyabi's end.
The warmth from Andrew's palm began spreading inward from every point where his hand met her sole, and Miyabi — who had not seen anything particularly unusual about the situation up until this moment — felt her foot tense up entirely on pure reflex.
The toes that had already been curling slightly clenched together completely. The foot that had been loosely relaxed instinctively locked into a rigid, perfect arc — a clean, taut curve, pulled taut by pure involuntary reaction.
But — fortunately.
Unusual as it was, at no point did Miyabi feel any urge to pull her foot away from Andrew's hand. Her body, it seemed, did not object to his touch. Not even a little.
"Uh..."
Andrew looked down at the curled foot nestled in his palm and had no choice but to speak up.
"Miyabi, if you stay tense like that, I can't get accurate measurements."
"Mm... alright."
It was only when Andrew said something that Miyabi realized she'd been clenching her foot. She forced herself to relax it — to consciously uncurl and spread her toes back out — but in the very same instant, she felt an unruly surge of warmth rising from somewhere below her collar, climbing steadily toward her cheeks.
A flush of red that she couldn't suppress bloomed quietly across her face.
It was a sensation she had never experienced before, and it puzzled her — made her brow furrow, just slightly, in unconscious confusion.
This was a perfectly ordinary measurement. The tailors who had made her custom garments for the Hoshimi family had taken her measurements in exactly the same way. There was nothing unusual about the process itself.
So why was she having this kind of reaction now? This specific, unprecedented reaction?
Miyabi, who had not yet developed even the faintest awareness of feelings between men and women, found herself at a complete loss for an answer.
She looked at Andrew — who appeared equally unbothered and oblivious — and, having no clue where to even begin making sense of it, had no choice but to press down that faint, strange feeling and simply allow Andrew to continue cradling and adjusting her foot in his palm as the measurement required.
For some reason she couldn't name, however, those mere ten-odd seconds of measurement stretched into something that felt wholly, unfamiliar, endless.
The warmth from the point of contact grew increasingly distinct with each passing second — more present, more impossible to ignore — and the flush on Miyabi's cheeks deepened in perfect time with it.
Until, finally, the measurement ended.
The moment the warmth left her foot entirely, Miyabi let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
She had expected that, with it over, she'd return to normal immediately.
But then Andrew released her foot — and Miyabi, who had been suppressing that strange flicker in her chest this entire time, felt something unexpected bloom in its place.
A faint, inexplicable sense of... loss.
That single, quiet feeling confused her even more than the rest of it had.
What on earth is wrong with me?
While Miyabi was left adrift in a sea of her own baffling inner turbulence —
— on the other side of the exchange, Andrew was quietly exhaling in relief of his own.
The silky, impossibly delicate sensation that had been transmitting itself steadily into his palm had been doing entirely too good a job of stirring up thoughts he had no business thinking right now. Something strange had been quietly rising in his chest that he'd had to keep consciously tamping back down.
But Miyabi's skirt meant he had absolutely not dared to look up even once throughout the whole process — which meant that, for all of it, Andrew had remained completely unaware of the faint, carefully concealed flush of bewilderment simmering just beneath Miyabi's composed expression.
Now that it was finally over, Andrew drew a couple of slow, deliberate breaths and pressed that rising strangeness back down where it belonged.
Next up was the measurement for Miyabi's hands.
Unlike the foot measurement — which had been a unique experience in its own right — the hand measurement went considerably more smoothly.
Having reset her composure with commendable speed, Miyabi obediently removed the arm brace she'd been wearing, baring the arm beneath.
Whether it was simply that Miyabi was blessed with naturally flawless skin, or whether the constant protection of the armored brace had shielded her hand from the elements — Andrew wasn't sure. But despite Miyabi spending most of her time in New Eridu out on active field duty, constantly exposed to sun and wind —
The moment the brace came off and her hand was revealed, it was, without exception, strikingly pale. Immaculately so.
What surprised Andrew most was this: Miyabi was, without question, a swordmaster of extraordinary skill and power — and yet the hand placed before him bore not a single callus. Not one.
Slender. Fair. Smooth. Soft.
Resting in Andrew's hand, Miyabi's palm offered him a perfect, living definition of what was meant by the hands of someone born into old nobility — elegance made flesh, refinement without effort.
Those long, graceful fingers made it utterly impossible to imagine, looking at this hand alone, that this was the hand of a Void Hunter-class swordmaster. Even harder to imagine the kind of power quietly coiled within them.
Andrew found himself quietly marveling.
Compared to himself — someone who had only managed to keep his own hands free of calluses and scars by relying on Max Potions — Miyabi, who bore no calluses yet had reached this level of mastery, truly lived up to her reputation as a natural genius. The name wasn't just flattery.
With the experience of the foot measurement behind him, this time the process went smoothly. Whatever strange feeling tried to stir in Miyabi's chest, she held it down firmly throughout — and with her full cooperation, Andrew completed all the remaining measurements in short order.
Now that he had the data he needed, Andrew could begin crafting Miyabi's armor.
And the first piece he chose to make was, naturally, the boots — the single most critical piece of equipment for the long haul across every kind of terrain that lay ahead of them.
____
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