"That's why I wrote the letter."
Outwardly, I was troubled. Inwardly, I was smirking.
'Nailed it. Let's see how you say no to that.'
Silence.
Ruth looked at me.
The red eyes did their thing, flat, direct, reading.
The silence stretched in that specific way her silences did, which weren't empty but full, the way deep water is full even when nothing is visibly moving in it.
Then:
"Wow. That's a lot of words."
"Mhm." She picked up the letter again. "The broken arm."
"Yes."
"From yesterday."
"Yes."
"When the sea crawlers attacked."
"Yes."
She set the letter down very carefully.
"Roy."
"...Yes."
"You wrote this letter three weeks ago."
My heart dropped instantly.
'H-How could she know?'
"I-I..."
'Damn. I'm going to die.'
"And weren't you the one who baited the crawlers to attack the ship?"
'Ah. I'm done for.'
Admiral Ruth stood and walked toward me. The pressure intensified.
My core flared, struggling to compensate.
"...The broken arm," I tried, "is representative of a longer pattern of..."
"Roy."
"...systemic gaps in my development as a..."
"Roy."
I stopped.
She looked at me. I looked at her.
The morning light came through the porthole and illuminated the resignation letter sitting between us on the desk, the two empty mugs, and ten years of everything that didn't need to be said.
She sighed.
It was a short sigh. The sigh of someone closing a tab they'd had open for a while.
"Why do you want to leave?" she asked.
Her tone was different than usual. Softer. Almost resigned.
"I-I..."
Perhaps because of that, I found some courage to speak up.
"Why do you want to keep me here?"
Another silence. Shorter this time.
Honestly, this question had been bugging me for a long time.
What did she want from me?
Usually, when you rescue children, you hand them to the authorities. That's what happened to the rest of the kids she'd saved from that slave ship.
So why was I here?
I'd had some inappropriate guesses over the years. They'd all proved wrong.
I couldn't figure her out.
She raised her hand and traced it down my cheek.
For a moment, something flashed in her eyes.
Frustration. Helplessness.
Or maybe it was something else. How could I know?
I was just scared shitless.
'She's not going to blow my head off. Right?'
"Well," she said quietly. "I guess it's inevitable."
She walked back to her seat.
"It's time for you to discover the world."
I blinked.
'What?'
Did it... work?
I mean, my plan was a complete flop. So why?
'Has she finally realized that child labor is against the law?'
I didn't know. But she'd said it was time for me to discover the world.
'Does that mean I'm free?'
At that thought, my stomach fluttered.
'Hell yeah! I knew I could—'
"But before you go," Ruth said, interrupting my internal victory lap, "let me tell you a story."
I blinked. "A... story?"
"Mhm." She leaned back in her chair, fingers steepled. "I wanted to be a writer when I was little."
'What is this all of a sudden?'
Well. She did have the personality for it.
But this was new. She rarely talked about her past, let alone her dreams.
"I grew up in a farming village," she continued. "Nothing special. Just dirt, crops, and people who thought the world ended at the next hill."
Her tone was flat. Matter-of-fact. The same tone she used to read nautical charts.
"I had a younger brother. He liked my stories, so I made them up for him. We didn't have anyone else. Our parents had been dead for years."
A small pause.
"I used to think the world was a novel."
Her fingers stilled on the desk.
I said nothing.
'What is going on?'
"You know what the difference is between reality and novels?" she asked.
"A... ahem." I cleared my throat, unsure whether she actually wanted an answer.
"They stop being funny when you're living them."
She continued without waiting.
"One day, the village was attacked. Politics. Power struggle. Doesn't really matter what you call it. By the time it was over, there wasn't much left."
Silence filled the room like water filling a hull.
"My brother didn't make it."
I felt like I shouldn't say anything. She wasn't asking for comfort. She was finishing something she'd started, and the only thing I could do was let her finish it.
"I left after that. Picked up a sword. Became the kind of person I used to write as a villain."
A quiet breath.
"Eventually, I came to regret it. Joined the Northern Navy. Tried to correct the wrongs." A pause.
"It wasn't that easy."
"I used to think, if only this world were a novel, I could erase a few pages. Rewrite them into something better."
"...That would be nice," I said, not entirely sure why I said it.
Ruth's eyes refocused on me, as if surfacing from somewhere far away. There was something in them I didn't have a name for.
Softer than usual.
"And then I met you."
I straightened slightly.
'Is she finally going to tell me?'
She kept looking at me with that quiet, almost affectionate expression. The faint smile stayed at the corner of her mouth.
Goosebumps ran up my arms.
I waited.
The silence stretched.
"And?" I finally asked.
"That's it," Ruth said.
"...That's it?"
"Yes." She picked up her pen and started writing on a blank page. "That's the story I'm working on right now. What do you think?"
"!!?"
I opened and closed my mouth several times.
'What the—'
"Hehehe..."
She let out a quiet, almost mechanical laugh.
It wasn't a loud laugh. Just two flat syllables, like she'd looked up the word laugh and was demonstrating it for reference. But her shoulders shook slightly, which was somehow worse.
I didn't know what expression I was making. Based on how my face felt, it was probably not a dignified one.
"You..." I said.
"Mhm?"
"That was... You were..." I stopped. Collected myself. Let out a long sigh.
"Was any of it true?"
"Maybe." Ruth replied. "Don't they say that stories are taken from reality?"
I loosened my tense shoulders.
I knew what was going on. This woman had finally lost her mind.
"Don't make that expression now," Ruth said, leaning back. "You lied, I lied. Let's call it even."
"So," I said after a while. "Am I actually free to go?"
"I said you were, didn't I?"
The corner of her mouth moved. Not quite a smile. Close, though.
"Your letter's approved," she said. "Not like you were part of any fleet to begin with."
"So what was I?" I asked, not surprised by her remark.
"My personal assistant." She paused, lips twitching. "And my excuse to keep pretending I cared about this job."
I blinked.
That... actually sounded honest.
For once.
"Alright." I stood up. "Thank you for everything so far."
"Take care. Let's hope you find what you're looking for." She waved a hand dismissively.
"Feel free to return anytime."
I snorted despite myself.
Reaching the door, I paused, then turned.
"If the world really were a novel..." I was suddenly curious. "And you could rewrite it. What would you change?"
Ruth blinked.
Her red eyes stared at me, as if they could see right through me.
Slowly, her lips parted.
"I would," she said, voice quiet, "write myself a better ending than the one I'm headed for."
The words hung in the air.
For a moment, I thought about asking what she meant. But something in her expression stopped me.
"That would be nice," I said.
She smiled. A real one this time, small and fleeting.
"Get out of here before I change my mind, Roy."
I grinned, opened the door, and stepped into the morning light.