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Chapter 19: Even then, it’ll be a little awkward at first, but you’ll get the hang of it eventually

Nightshade marched up the summoning platform. Beside Craft, Lei-rei had a downcast but tense gaze like a child who didn’t think she’d done anything wrong — which was bad news for him. If she was giving that look, then in all likelihood, her view of him hadn’t changed at all, and he might have to brace himself for a less than stellar stay here at World’s Origin.

“Lei-rei!” Nightshade came to a marching stop in front of her. She leaned in, and Lei-rei looked away. She leaned left, and Lei-rei looked right; she leaned right, and Lei-rei looked left. She huffed. “Are you doing that ‘death wish’ stuff again? No, don’t tell me…you did it with this guy?! He’s freakin’ new! Hey, what’s gotten into you?”

Ah, she’s like a mom telling her daughter off for bringing a guy home. That besides, Craft had been thinking of coming back here, but he’d never imagined it would happen this way. He could wait out Nightshade’s incoming sermon and give her the explanation that was meant for tomorrow, or he could try and make peace with Lei-rei so he wouldn’t need to sleep with one eye open — not as if they could attack each other anyway, but he imagined she would hover over him as he tried to sleep. That’s just harassment.

Nightshade continued to lean left and right, and Lei-rei insisted on looking away, but the longer they did so, the more Nightshade’s eyes narrowed. “I see,” she said. She righted herself. “So that’s what happened.”

Lei-rei stiffened up. Craft got the feeling there was some high-level communication going on here, but not knowing what it was Nightshade had inferred, the best he could do was whatever he could do.

“Er — Nightshade?” he called out. Lei-rei was a risk factor, and what he really needed right now was a sure ally. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about, though this is a bad time.”

She faced Craft. Her eyes were still narrowed, appraising him with the same look she’d given Lei-rei — and for a second, that made him nervous.

“So that’s what happened,” she said again.

“W-what?” He blinked, and for a moment, the afterimage of an interrogator, imperial iron cross and gray coat and all, imposed itself over Nightshade.

Tapping her finger against her elbow, she faced Lei-rei. “So, what will you say?”

Lei-rei turned about face, squarely facing Craft. She bowed with her entire body. “We’ll call it a draw.”

Thinking she was about to attack him again, he raised his hands — then parsed her words. Huh? “Really?” He put his hands down. He’d thought she was still mad, but she wasn’t?

Nightshade nodded once with a satisfied expression. “Called it.”

He didn’t expect this development at all, and he couldn’t even get a read on neither Nightshade nor Lei-rei. Was this what it felt like to be left out of a telepathic conversation? Looks like I’m stuck with primitive words.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” he told Lei-rei, and she righted herself. She still wouldn’t meet eyes with anyone, though.

Nightshade looked at her and hummed for a moment — “Alright! Formation H!” — and hugged her in a full-frontal assault with neither grace nor tact. Lei-rei squirmed in her hold, still refusing to make eye contact, but she didn’t resist more than that. “There, there,” Nightshade said. “Just apologize properly, okay?” She paused. “Properly, okay? With words.”

Lei-rei looked at her, then away, her gaze going up and down all across the room. “M-miss Nightshade, I would appreciate dropping the topic here.”

Oh no. Craft knew this type. They were fearless under fire, but put in an intimate situation, they folded like cards. Many of his targets and accomplices were like this — well, not exactly like this, but he got the gist.

Having someone like Lei-rei around actually simplified his social strategies, boiling it all down to one: spamming social survival donuts for her to latch onto.

“Actually,” he started, “I also need to say sorry to her. I sort of broke her pans.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Nightshade looked at him like he’d committed genocide. “You did what to her babies?!” She hugged Lei-rei tighter and turned her body, shielding the child from the scary man. “You can’t just massacre her Hobby like that!”

Imagine violating the world’s constitution on your first day of existence.

“Wh — hey, wait!” —

Desperation built up in his voice. His hand gestures became that of a B-rate villain’s realizing he’d screwed up. Violating a Rule? It scared him, but he was more scared of Nightshade hating him. Hurting her best friend was the last thing on his mind.

— “That’s why I want to make it up to her! Look, I’ll buy replacements, right? That should be fine, right? Right?”

Nightshade snickered. That confused him for a moment. Was she messing with him?

She dug her face into Lei-rei’s shoulder and waved a hand.

What, she was really messing with me! He sighed. His face went flush. “Don’t scare me like that…”

She looked up at him with wide eyes. “Huh? Wait, you took it seriously?”

Lei-rei managed to free an arm and flicked her on the side of the head.

“Ow! Why!” Nightshade looked at her while rubbing her own head.

Lei-rei squinted at her. “Serious people take things seriously. One would think you would have learned this after being acquainted with the likes of me.”

Nightshade frowned, looked down, let go of Lei-rei, and pulled away. She held her own hands together in front of her, wanting to face Craft, but only doing so halfway. “Sorry,” she said. Her voice was low, almost quiet.

Craft scratched his head. With this, he couldn’t talk to her about what he’d wanted to. He still felt a little cheated, and he didn’t want to mix his sincere feelings with these bad ones, but, “You didn’t mean it,” he still said — was all he could say. Nightshade nodded.

He happened to glance at Lei-rei at the same time as she glanced at him. Her normally sharp eyes drooped a little now. Perhaps she wanted a truce.

She harrumphed. “Craft, you owe me a debt of two pans. I’ll supervise. Somehow fail and I will duel you again.” (I want everyone to disperse so we can properly make peace.)

Nightshade looked up at her with a small gasp, then a soft smile, like a parent watching her kid grow. It helped Craft forget that he had no money to speak of.

***

Nightshade saw them out of the temple. Lei-rei went out first. Craft trailed, but Nightshade called out to him and pulled him back. He was surprised, but when he looked at her, she wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Do you hate me?” she asked.

Straightforward. He smiled. “Not at all.”

He joined up with Lei-rei, and the two waved to Nightshade who waved back with a bright smile.

As soon as they disappeared from her view, however, they distanced themselves from each other, leaving just enough space to react to an attack, yet close enough to hear each other.

Craft still couldn’t figure her out. By all indications, her view of him must have improved, but how?

“Come closer or I can’t hit you with my words,” Lei-rei said.

He looked at her. The fact that she could be a normal, feeling person only applied when Nightshade was around, and he didn’t want to stand next to an angry human lawnmower if he could help it — but her shoulders were relaxed, and she kept her hands together behind her back. Maybe she really did just want to talk. Maybe wasn’t good enough.

He looked away without an answer. From the corner of his eye, he noticed her side-eyeing him. Was she mad?

“It’s not as if I will cut you down at the toss of a coin.”

Not mad, then. She was making less and less sense to him. Instead of being a loose cannon, wasn’t she actually quite the cool-headed person?

He glanced at her. “So what will you cut me down for?”

“Theft of public property.” She took a deep breath. “But now that I’ve confirmed your alibi, I only have to be cautious now, not wary.”

“Cautious, huh.”

“You know how it goes. I’m sure you do.”

That gave him pause. He’d been cautious of her this whole time, and she reciprocated it. “Sounds like you do, too.”

There were lots of types of people on their side of the fence: people who loved the dirty work, people who hated it and wanted to run away, and people who despised it and rebelled against it — then there were those who would kill their emotions the best they could, turning themselves into living machines just to get through the day.

Going by how Lei-rei’s been speaking until now, they were in the same category.

“But that’s where we stop being the same,” Lei-rei said. Her gaze was distant, perhaps avoiding his judgment or remembering something. “First, she was my target, then my client, then my ally, and now…” She never finished that sentence. “Even ending on a good note, it was painfully naive not to take the straight path, and now everything takes thrice as long as it should take.” She looked at him. “If you are doing things differently, then you cannot possibly hurt her the same way.”

She looked away, and they both glued their eyes on their respective paths. Silence came between them; the sound of their trodding over dried leaves grew louder.

Why was she telling him this? Was it to prod him like the impostor had?

He looked at her, looking for clues in her mannerisms and nonverbal tells. There was no “global” body language — only deviations from a person’s norm — hence he only had their earlier interactions to compare. Just earlier, when she’d challenged him, she had shown no anger; during the fight itself, neither were there any signs of fear nor envy.

Looking at her now, she showed no deviations from her norm. She was as relaxed as when she’d stopped resisting Nightshade’s embrace. It should have been a good sign, but the distance between them meant it was a different story.

What did it mean for her to be relaxed, but not willing to close the distance? Likely, she held no anger. Likely, she held no fear. The way she held one hand with the other behind her back, however, could only be motivated by the need to comfort herself.

Discomforted by the presence of her own self — was it regret that she felt, after all? Had she said all of that because they were both…

“We’re the same,” Craft said. “I got the bad ending, though.”

She turned her head his way, then faced forwards without a further hint of emotion. Neither of them minded the narrowing of the trail.