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Chapter 15: Unexplained Boundaries

Craft rested his arms on the chair’s backrest. He slumped forwards, hiding his mouth behind his arms, and his eyes drooped. Nightshade was his mirror image as she hid her mouth behind her knees, sitting like a shrimp on the bed, her only comfort the blanket wrapped around her.

It didn’t make sense to him how they could both be like this. They’d only known each other for less than a day — hell, less than an hour.

She looked at him again and smiled, even if subdued. “It’s okay. I understand,” she said. How could he believe that? Who understands being pushed away?

“No, I” — his words got caught up in his throat. ‘Don’t misunderstand,’ ‘I don’t hate you,’ ‘I’m looking forward to knowing you,’ and ‘I’m scared to explain’ — all these thoughts wanted to become words at the same time.

But if they all did, then nothing would, and in the end, nothing did. He thought Nightshade might say something, glancing towards her, but she didn’t. She just kept her head bowed down, keeping her ear pointed his way. No matter how long he didn’t speak, she just waited.

It amazed him more than it pained him. Perhaps she’d gained Nickname Rights for more than just a random encounter.

He took in a deep breath. Patience ought to be rewarded. On his exhale, he let the dozen phrases competing in his brain melt away, leaving one the only survivor. “I’m not ready,” was all he could say.

Nightshade’s face lit up and she nodded. That puzzled him.

“I said something bad, you know?” he said.

She looked at him with a small gasp, perhaps realizing she was making the wrong face. She put her palms to her cheeks, shook her head, looked away, and covered her mouth. “I-I didn’t mean that — er” — she shook her head again and took a deep breath before looking at him — “I don’t think you said a bad thing.” Her gaze flittered between him and her blanket.

Not a bad thing? He rested his gaze on some random spot on the bed. He shook his head. “Isn’t it actually?” He looked at her.

“No, no, it’s really not.” Nightshake shook her head. “When you say ‘not ready,’ that just means ‘you still need to prepare,’ right? That means there’s still a chance.”

That confused him for a moment. She hadn’t even taken what he’d said as a rejection, but as a source of insight instead. What he’d seen as an infinite line that circumnavigated the globe was just a wall segment in her eyes — something to be acknowledged and walked around.

Craft shifted his head. Nightshade was more amazing than she seemed. “I guess.”

“And if you’re preparing, that means you’re still figuring out what to do, which means you’re still a little lost…right?”

He didn’t reply.

“H-hey, say something. I can’t just keep talking assuming things about you!” She flailed her arms.

You can’t assume things about me, huh? Had it been because of what he’d told Amacus earlier that she was being considerate? Or was it really in her nature not to go forward in a conversation without the other person?

Craft recognized the way she was approaching him, too. Approaching someone with curiosity and understanding, trying her best to minimize all assumptions, had also been one of his strategies as an agent. Making someone feel that he’s genuinely interested in them as a person was the first step to building rapport, and with enough rapport, he could make them do things they normally wouldn’t.

For a brief moment, he feared that Nightshade’s friendliness towards him was just a prelude to the same kind of betrayal he’d normally committed. He found it too unusual that she was so intent on befriending him, too unusual for her to be so accommodating.

It should’ve been a red flag — but this isn’t my world.

He shifted his gaze to her. To trust her, even if only a little, was a choice counter to the way he had lived so far…and it was a choice he made every waking second.

Besides — no offense to Amacus — but Nightshade was more of an angel.

He chuckled, showing her a little smile. “You’re right,” he told her.

She settled down. “Gosh.” She laughed a little, expelling the awkward energy. She looked at him, perhaps to see if they were both laughing, but she saw something a lot more interesting. “That’s the realest smile I’ve seen from you.”

He jerked back slightly. “That’s depressing to hear.”

“Huh? No, really — I’m actually surprised!”

“You only know how to inflict damage.”

She opened her mouth, stopped, opened it again — but no. She churned through every possibility, plotting conversational battle tactics with her mind’s chess wizard, but there was just nothing she could say to win. She started to make an annoyed purring noise like a grumpy cat, and with every consideration, modification, and final rejection of her dwindling list of next moves, her annoyed purring just got louder and louder.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Somehow, her enemy had stopped being Craft — and had begun to be herself.

So lively. Craft chuckled, his earlier smile lingering. He hadn’t even known that anyone could make that noise; another one of those odd cultural differences, most likely. She’d only been kind to him, even when he’d screwed up. Might as well throw her a fish bone.

“It’s not that I don’t smile,” he explained. “It’s just rare to find someone who can make me do that.”

“Ah.” She put her hands on her cheeks. Her ability to use language degraded. This was unprecedented. “Ah. Am embarrassed.”

Craft’s eyes widened; the line between speaking the truth and being smooth was dangerously thin, and he didn’t want to find himself in the danger zone of proto-romantic misunderstanding.

He raised his hands in a stop gesture. “Don’t read into it.”

She hid behind her arms and shook her head. “Am still embarrassed.”

“Don’t.”

“Can’t not.”

He narrowed his eyes. Years of deep cover work had given him lots of practice with mirroring people on the fly, matching their strangeness, mannerisms, and turns-of-phrase so well that he could meet someone, talk to them for a minute, dump their body in a backalley dumpster five minutes later, and replace them in the office before lunch was over — and no one would notice for at least twenty-four hours. Who could’ve predicted that his expertise would eventually bite him in the ass in this very moment?

“Alright,” Craft said. “No not. Do, then.”

She giggled, peeking out from her hidey spot. “What?” Although her mouth was covered by her arms, her eyes still squinted and she shook her head all the while.

Craft shook his head with a smile. Even he didn’t know what had come out of his mouth.

Time froze for him as he realized: he was having lively banter with someone he had only met today. He realized he wasn’t balancing on a tightrope to cover up an ugly truth; that he was capable of interactions like these at all.

Even if it had just been for a minute, he had successfully lived a moment that was the complete opposite of the life he despised.

— If one such moment could exist, then two wasn’t out of reach.

“Craft?” Nightshade asked, concerned.

He snapped out of it. “Ah, my bad. I just remembered I’ve still got a pair of shoes to find.” He got up from the chair. “If you don’t feel up to it, you can stay here” —

“I’m coming with!” Nightshade flipped away the blanket, and in a blink, she was on her feet. “We’ve only been through half the pile, after all.”

“Hey.”

She paused to look at him. “Yes?”

Craft paused. He didn’t want to ask this; Counter-intelligence 102, you shouldn’t be letting the enemy know you’re thinking about them. Even so, he had to ask. “It’s a little late for this, but why are you being so nice to me?”

She nodded once with a smile. “Oh! Well, you just remind me of my bestie. You sort of have the same vibe, so I thought…” She poked her fingertips together — then she clapped with a big smile from a banger idea that couldn’t possibly go wrong. “Ah! You should meet her! She should be in town by now, so say hi to her if you see her!”

He was glad that she was glad to answer. It meant that he was wrong. He needed to be wrong more often.

That said, it sounded oddly like ‘someone just like him’ was nearby. Did that mean he’d be looking in a mirror, or was Nightshade just too flexible in her comparisons? He couldn’t know what to expect.

“She’s got RGB hair. Really hard to miss,” Nightshade continued.

He hoped that was just a metaphor for hair color, and not literal LED strips growing out of her scalp. There was a country where…yeah, better not think about it.

Anyway, if it’s a friend of Nightshade’s, she couldn’t possibly be weirder than her. It didn’t hurt to expand his connections, too. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.

He turned around to leave, but she called out again. “And Craft.” He faced her, finding her holding her hands together in trepidation. “You’re really just taking your time, right?”

Her expression was stiff, head slightly bowed, and she gulped right after saying it. He knew what she was really asking: You’re not pushing me away, right? Seeing her that way, he wavered between feeling morose — as if their fun just a while ago was all a lie — and hopeful — that she was leaving the door open for him. “I never planned on pushing you away,” he said, “just inch my way there, if you get me.”

She smiled a little. “That’s fine.”

Her acceptance of his shortcomings pained him, but that just meant he had to work hard for that future. As long as he kept at it, everything up until now, and all the things he was yet to do, would have been worth it.

***

They stepped out of the temple without Craft’s feet knowing what Amatorian dirt felt like. A draft of wind cooled his skin. It smelled of the musk of a forest undergoing cycles of growth and decay — just like Raffie’s home. He missed her, suddenly.

Nightshade walked backwards past him. “Sun’s got you squinting?”

She smiled. It didn’t feel real to him; the last half hour didn’t feel real to him. The imposter’s nonsense, Amacus’ insistence, and Nightshade’s understanding — one after the other — shouldn’t have been things piled up on a guy who’d just been breathing for half an hour.

Could he still turn around and ask for a time out? It had all been very unexpected. A moment to process it all would be great.

Nightshade turned and skipped down the cobble path from the temple. “Come on! And don’t trip on the pavers!”

Pavers? His gaze homed in on the cobbles on the ground. Goddamn pavers? He clicked his tongue. As a city boy, flat surfaces were the superior surfaces. Well, he didn’t mind walking on dirt trails or trekking up mountains, but he had something against half-assed pavers. They would shift with the soil underneath them and end up jutting out by an inch, turning a walk into a game of hopscotch. Gravel roads were only slightly better.

Nightshade turned and waved towards him. “Come on!”

One moment could become two. A road was a road, and if it was the only one in front of him, he had no choice but to take it.

After an uncomfortable one-minute commute on-foot, Craft landed on a fenced clearing. He was happy to find plain dirt.

He caught up to Nightshade’s back. He was about to file a few complaints about the cobblestone, but he noticed she’d stopped and stood still right behind a chalk line on the ground.

“Is there something about this?” Craft pointed at it.

“Oh, that’s just the temple’s property line.” Nightshade chuckled and waved her hand. Had she been talking to anyone else, that would have been the end of that, but it was Craft, and he couldn’t ignore her paralanguage.

Not elaborating on something and looking far into the distance with a smile that didn’t follow her eyes? That couldn’t be anything other than avoiding the topic.

“Let’s wait here for a bit,” she continued. “Someone I know comes around right around this time. I’ll explain the situation to him, and he’ll take you to town.”

Craft nodded. He’d ignore the problem for now; it didn’t seem like a problem for now. Besides, wasn’t it was fair that she’d hide some things from him just as he did from her?

He shouldn’t have to think too hard about the lines on the ground and the road ahead. Nightshade had shown to him that walls could be insights, not just obstacles. As long as he took the time to understand them, then one moment could become two, and the second didn’t have to be now.

“Waiting’s no problem,” he said.

Nightshade nodded. “Thanks.”