For several seconds after Thalia disappeared into her room, Sora remained motionless in the hallway.
The key sat cold in his palm.
He turned it over once, then again, watching lanternlight slide over the metal. Such a small object should not have felt significant, yet it did. Keys implied ownership, access, privacy—concepts that seemed absurdly advanced compared to the last stretch of his existence, which had consisted largely of mud, roots, hunger, and following Thalia through bloodstained undergrowth.
Now he had been handed a room.
A room.
His own.
The thought felt stranger than becoming human.
He looked down the hallway, then back at the closed door in front of him. Human voices rose faintly from the common room below—laughter, chairs scraping, the muffled clang of dishes. Somewhere farther down the corridor, another guest coughed behind a wall.
Walls.
That too felt unnerving.
The forest had no walls. Caves had no locks. Even ruins had too much open air to trap sound the way this place did. Here everything was enclosed, compartmentalized, arranged into spaces humans claimed and named.
Sora inserted the key on his third attempt.
The lock clicked.
He pushed the door inward slowly.
The room beyond was simple: a narrow bed pressed against the wall, a small wooden table with an oil lamp, a washstand with a chipped ceramic basin, a single chair, a wardrobe, and a shuttered window overlooking the side street. Nothing ornate, nothing particularly memorable.
Yet stepping inside felt like crossing some invisible threshold he had not been prepared for.
He closed the door behind him.
The latch settled.
Silence.
Not true silence—he could still hear the inn breathing around him, floorboards creaking, voices below, the wind nudging the shutters—but it was private sound. Distant sound. Sound that belonged outside his immediate space.
Sora stood in the center of the room and slowly turned in a circle.
He did not know what one was supposed to do first.
Sit?
Sleep?
Take off the hoodie?
Was there an order to these things?
He approached the table and touched it. Solid. Smooth. Dustless compared to forest debris. His fingers dragged over the polished wood grain, following lines carved by age and use.
Then he touched the chair.
He eyed it with distrust after the previous incident.
This time he lowered himself carefully.
The chair held.
Sora exhaled.
A small victory.
He sat there for a while simply because he could.
Not because sitting was especially interesting, but because there was something quietly astonishing about doing something so ordinary. Slimes did not sit. Forest creatures rarely rested without tension. But this—this was stillness with permission.
His shoulders lowered by degrees.
Then his gaze shifted to the bed.
He stood immediately.
The bed was larger than the one downstairs visible in passing, its blanket neatly folded. He touched the mattress, pressed experimentally, then sat on the edge.
Soft.
Not impossibly soft, not cloudlike, but yielding enough to make him blink.
He sat down harder.
The mattress dipped.
Sora stared.
Then, very slowly, he lowered himself until he was lying flat on his back, glasses slightly crooked, dark hair spread over the pillow.
The ceiling beams stared back.
He remained there in complete stillness.
This was absurd.
Why had humans invented this.
Why had he ever lived without it.
He lifted one hand above his face, opening and closing his fingers. The motion no longer carried the frantic disbelief of earlier, but he still found himself doing it when his thoughts drifted. His body remained a puzzle only half solved. Joints bent where expected, muscles obeyed, lungs drew breath, heartbeat continued its steady knocking in his chest.
He had been in this form for only a few hours, yet the memory of being slime already felt distant and near all at once, like something he could return to but not quite imagine inhabiting with the same ease.
A knock sounded.
Sora jerked upright so fast he nearly slid off the bed.
Another knock.
"Open the door," Thalia's voice said from outside.
He stood, fixed his glasses, then crossed the room and unlocked it.
Thalia stepped inside carrying a tray.
Food.
Steam rose from a bowl of stew alongside thick slices of bread, a wedge of cheese, and a metal cup.
Sora stared.
"You have to eat," Thalia said, setting the tray on the table.
He looked from the food to her. "Regularly?"
"Yes."
"That seems demanding."
"It is called being alive."
He approached the table slowly, eyeing the spoon beside the bowl as if it might attack him.
Thalia noticed at once.
"You do know how to eat."
"I know the concept."
"That was not the reassurance I wanted."
Sora picked up the spoon incorrectly, paused, adjusted his grip, then looked deeply offended by the existence of utensils.
"Why not simply drink the stew."
"Because civilized people do not put their faces in bowls."
He considered this.
"…Humans have made survival unnecessarily ceremonial."
Thalia folded her arms and leaned against the wall. "Eat."
He obeyed.
The first spoonful hit his tongue and Sora froze.
Heat.
Salt.
Richness.
Vegetables softened in broth, herbs, meat juices, pepper.
His eyes widened behind the round lenses.
Slowly, he swallowed.
Then he looked at the bowl as if it had personally betrayed him by being this good.
Thalia noticed the expression.
"What."
"This is…" He searched for a word and failed. "This is unfair."
"Unfair?"
"How was I expected to survive on moss and rabbit blood after this exists?"
For the briefest second, something almost like amusement flickered through her gaze.
"Keep eating."
He did.
Far more quickly than dignity recommended.
Bread vanished next. Then cheese.
By the time he set the spoon down, there was not a drop of stew left.
Sora leaned back in the chair, staring at the empty bowl in something close to reverence.
"I understand towns now."
"You understand food."
"Same thing."
Thalia pushed off the wall and crossed to the window, checking the street below before drawing the shutters half closed.
"We need to discuss tomorrow."
Sora looked over. "There is a tomorrow?"
She gave him a flat look.
He smiled.
A real one this time—small, involuntary, warm at the edges because he had eaten and was indoors and not actively in danger.
Thalia's eyes caught on it before she could stop them.
There it was again.
That smile.
It appeared without warning whenever he forgot to guard himself. Not broad or dramatic, just quietly bright, softening his sharp features into something startlingly young. It made him look less like a stolen shape and more like a person who had once belonged in one.
She looked away first.
"Do not make that expression."
Sora blinked. "What expression?"
"That one."
He frowned. "You are being unclear."
"Good."
He stared at her suspiciously but let it go.
Thalia remained by the window, posture rigid. In the dim lamplight, with her armor partly removed—gauntlets off, cloak loosened—she looked less like the untouchable Hero and more like a woman carrying exhaustion she refused to acknowledge.
Sora noticed the faint cut near her jawline from yesterday's fight.
"You are injured."
"It is minor."
"It is still blood."
"I am aware of what blood is."
Sora hesitated.
Then stood and crossed the room.
Thalia immediately straightened. "What are you doing."
He stopped in front of her, looking up through slightly skewed glasses.
"Looking."
"At?"
"You."
Her eyes narrowed. "Why."
He considered the answer before speaking.
"Because armor makes you seem impossible."
A pause.
"And without it," he continued, "you seem… less far away."
The words settled strangely between them.
Thalia's expression hardened not from anger but from instinctive defense, as if proximity itself were something she distrusted.
"You are speaking too freely."
"I am trying to understand humans."
"That is not a scientific method."
Sora tilted his head. "You are the nearest one."
Against all reason, that nearly made her laugh.
Nearly.
Instead she stepped around him and moved toward the door.
"Sleep. We leave after sunrise."
She opened the door.
Sora turned. "Thalia."
She paused.
He stood in the center of the lamplit room, black hoodie hanging loosely from narrow shoulders, hair falling over red eyes, glasses reflecting gold.
"…Thank you," he said quietly.
Not for the room alone.
Not for the food alone.
For the fact that he was here at all.
Thalia understood that much.
Her hand tightened once on the doorknob.
Then she left without answering.
The door clicked shut.
Sora stood still for a long time afterward.
Then he returned to the bed, removed the glasses carefully, and lay down beneath the blanket.
Sleep did not come immediately.
Too many sounds remained—voices below fading one by one, footsteps in the hall, shutters tapping softly in the wind. Yet none of them were threatening sounds. They belonged to ordinary life.
He stared into the dark.
He had forgotten what ordinary life sounded like.
Eventually, sometime deep into the night, his eyes closed.
Across the hall, Thalia remained awake much longer, sitting beside her own window with sword within reach and one thought repeating with quiet persistence:
She should have left him in the forest.
So why hadn't she?