"Things escalated faster than expected, but we still have a little breathing room. This is the spot. Let's begin here."
"This is... Crescent Moon Reef?"
The moon still hung high, its light at its most brilliant for the evening. Their meeting with Jinhsi hadn't taken long.
Using Flight, the two Rovers had left Jinzhou and traveled southwest to the coast, where the shoreline curved into a wide circular gap. At its center sat an island shaped like a crescent moon.
Locals liked to say it was a piece of the moon that had fallen from the sky.
Before the Tacet Discords claimed it, it had been the most romantic spot in the region for confessions of love.
Not that a handful of Tacet Discords posed any threat to two Rovers. He and she had wiped the place clean two days ago in passing.
"So what are we doing here?"
She flicked a sword from her hand as she spoke, skewering the few Common Class Tacet Discords that had respawned overnight in a single thrust clean through.
"Hmm? A confession, obviously."
"A confession?" A smile flickered across her face, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. "That does sound fun. Though I'm in a complicated mood right now." She sat on a reef rock, chin propped on one hand.
"Oh? Is it because the person I'm confessing to..."
"That's not it."
She cut him off before he could finish, her voice sharper than usual. What weighed on her wasn't who he planned to confess to. It was the realization that they'd been side by side for days, and she'd let him carry the burden of all that planning alone.
During the conversation with Jinhsi, the scope of what he'd been turning over in his mind had finally become clear. All those quiet hours together, and he'd been strategizing, calculating, building a plan from scratch.
While she'd contributed nothing outside of combat.
"Hey, that's different. I only came up with those ideas because I remember things, because I have information you don't. There's no reason to blame yourself for that. We've always been..."
"So! From! Here! On! You follow my lead."
"Wait, what?"
The shift was instant. He blinked, caught completely off guard.
The guilt vanished from her face like a mask being torn away. Before he could react, she seized both his shoulders and shoved him flat onto the sand, then swung a leg over and sat squarely on his stomach.
"The frontline against the Threnodian is mine. You go deal with the Sentinel problem. That's final."
"Hold on, how did you even..."
"Because it's painfully obvious." She laughed softly, eyes bright with knowing.
The Threnodian war was about to break. Their hand wasn't complete yet. Jinhsi was already making arrangements, but there wouldn't be enough time. Which meant splitting up was inevitable.
The two of them would need to do the same. One to hold the line against the Threnodian and the Tacet Discords. The other to resolve Jué's situation and bring the Sentinel back.
He hadn't said a word about how to free the Sentinel. But working from what they already knew, Jué had once been their companion, practically a subordinate.
She'd weighed the risks. The Sentinel mission was the safer one.
Which was exactly why she was claiming the battlefield.
His eye twitched. Having a partner this sharp isn't always a blessing. He'd planned to send her after the Sentinel, but... he knew he'd already lost the right to refuse.
She watched him wrestle with it, the silence stretching out until he finally gave a reluctant nod. Her face lit up, and she leaned down and kissed him.
As for his talk of coming here to confess, she hadn't overthought it. If her partner was making this kind of declaration, the recipient was almost certainly someone from their shared past.
Someone important. Someone close.
And also, she suspected, the reinforcements he'd mentioned.
Curiosity and anticipation were all she felt.
"You know," he said, "you really are too clever for your own good. You're right on all counts. She loves us."
Her eyes went wide. "...?!"
The presence had been subtle, but she had been with them the entire time, never far from their side. That was why he'd gone through all this trouble, so that when the moment of reunion came, it would be as beautiful as he could make it.
Under the quiet night sky, on the shore where waves folded endlessly over themselves, two Rovers stood on a crescent-shaped island. One of them opened a crimson portal, and a piano dropped onto the sand.
A blue butterfly watched them with curious, uncertain eyes.
A brief moment of preparation, nothing more.
Then they sat at the piano together. He raised his left hand. She raised her right. Fingers hovered over black and white keys, eyes on the score before them. No count-in. No signal.
Two hands leapt, and the melody poured out.
"Despite being my first visit to the Louvre, it didn't surprise me," he sang, "because a long time ago, I found my very own Mona Lisa."
"Since the day I met you, the heart began to turn its gears," she sang, "I can't help but have a hunch, that I will lose you."
Together, their voices braided into one: "Oh, although you have given me a lot, please give me one more. Can you give me one last kiss?"
"It's something that I don't want to forget," he sang.
"It's someone that I don't want to forget," she sang.
No rehearsal. No need for one. This was their first attempt at a four-finger duet, their first time singing in tandem, but the synchronization between two Rovers ran deeper than practice could teach.
His left hand. Her right.
Two hands belonging to two people, moving with more harmony than one ever could.
She'd grasped the song through Resonance the instant he sang the first line, understanding instinctively where her voice belonged in music she'd never seen before.
The blue butterfly didn't yet understand what any of it meant.
She alighted on the piano lid, wings fanning gently.
She only knew the song was beautiful. That she loved it.
And the two people playing it.
Then the melody surged, cresting toward its peak, and he turned his gaze to the only audience member present. Gold eyes, burning with tenderness and quiet longing.
"I want to meet you as you truly are.
Under this moonlight, above these tides.
Our Mona Lisa, ours alone.
You, who have always watched over us as we wandered."
Words too direct to be called hints. Two pairs of eyes, blazing with warmth. The blue butterfly on the piano went still.
Shorekeeper realized, all at once, that she was the sole audience for this concert. They were calling to her.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
She had no heart that could beat. Yet something pounded in her chest all the same. In this moment, no directive held her. No protocol constrained her. She knew, with absolute certainty, that she had been summoned.
And so...
The blue butterfly took flight, rising into the night sky.
And became a girl in a white gown, trailing a veil of blue and white.
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