“Give it back!”
“But I like it!” she replies.
He refuses to chase her around the room since it would be undignified and thus bad for his archetype. Unfortunately, Natsuko has no such issue and is happy to play keep away with the poetry journal he’s been keeping.
“I’m not done reading it yet,” Natsuko says, the journal flipped open in one hand. Her other hand is prepped to put tables and chairs in his way.
“Natsuko, I don’t want you to read it. Those are for me only. Give it back,” he replies.
There must be something in his voice because the playful grin on her face droops and she looks up from the poem to meet his gaze. Sensing the genuine anger, she closes the journal and hands it back to him and he snatches it out of her hand.
“I’m sorry, Pech. I thought you might like some feedback, y’know? I wasn’t screwing with you, I do like them,” Natsuko says.
If Pechorin had had a better understanding of his internal world then, he might have been able to take apart and identify the intermingling guilt, embarrassment, suspicion, and maybe, possibly, pleasure, swirling about his head. Instead, he stomps angrily to his room in the Lanbaoshi Roadhouse and slams the door. In the days after, Natsuko tones down her energy. Not just around him, but in general, as though having found a limit to what her boundless energy was good for. In battle she's as tenacious as ever, but out of it, her head is elsewhere. And by some frustrating act of emotional judo, it now feels like Pechorin was the one who did something wrong. After Natsuko burns dinner one night, he decides to talk with her.
“What’s the matter?” he asks her as she leans against the railing of their balcony, staring at the ground.
She startles at the noise. “H-Huh? Oh, nothing. I’m just thinking.”
“About what?”
“About… who I am, I guess. Hey, Pech, the other night… I’m sorry about taking your—”
He waves his hand dismissively. “We’re past that. I overreacted.”
“No, no, I shouldn’t have…”
He hands her the journal. After thinking on it for a week, Pechorin had decided he wanted someone to read his poetry after all. Tangled up in the embarrassment and self-consciousness was a spark of joy when she read from the book, and that spark of joy amounted to more than every second he had ever devoted to the Use-Ranking competition combined. Natsuko had been right, there was more to life than numbers.
She looks at the journal for a second then accepts it, holding it against her chest.
“You don’t have to if you’re uncomfortable with it,” Natsuko says, tucking her chin in.
He shakes his head. “I’m not. I want you to read it. Er… on your own time, I mean. I don’t want to force you or anything. I…”
She giggles at that. He really likes her laugh. Her normal speaking voice is rough, almost boyish, but her laugh is high and soft, like tinkling glass. That laugh has made its way onto the pages of the journal, disguised in one metaphor or another, and his heart thuds as he remembers that fact. He can only hope she doesn’t piece it together.
“Thanks,” Natsuko says.
“For the book?” he asks, not sure if his mediocre poetry is quite that good.
“For trusting me with it. I’ve been worrying I come across as not… not serious. Like I’m all smiles and sunshine all the time and I mean… I get excited about stuff, that’s true, but I guess… I guess I’m worried you all think I’m shallow.”
“You’re not shallow.”
“But I feel that way! I’m always worried that if I don’t act excited or happy enough that the Celestials won't like me. Who ever heard of a mopey, whiny, self-defeating adventurer, right? And I mean, I don’t want to become that, but I just… if that’s all I am it feels like I’m, I don’t know, a cardboard cutout. Nothing but a couple of generic personality traits. And I thought that’s how you saw me too when I was reading your poetry book, like it was just some prank I was doing for my archetype. I want to be taken seriously, but then, if I let my archetype slip, the Celestials will abandon me, and I just— I don’t—”
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He hugs her while she sobs. On the battlefield she feels so much bigger than she is, like a burning tornado carving a path through enemies, always with a joke or a quip. But holding her, he realizes how small she actually is.
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Through time and space, something tore abruptly at the wallpaper of memory, clawing its way inside Pechorin’s unconscious mind. This “thing” was an event he was entwined in through subtle and formless shifts in the energy of Po-Lin. One thing he had set out to master in his meditation practices was the way in which Heroes could manipulate special event fields as he had done in Shikijima, and again when fighting Hemiola. In the course of that practice, he had gone beyond assuming control of an existing field and had gained an intuitive sense for their creation and destruction by playing with the flows of energy in his meditative states.
He opened his eyes. Cold rain fell gently on his head. A small storm had come through in the middle of the night while he slept beneath the palm trees now shaking and rustling in the gusts. Upon waking, the subtle tug on Pechorin’s unconscious faded, but without trying to coax it back, he sat quietly and this odd sensation returned in an intelligible form. If it had been given a name, the “event” he had willed into being might have been called something corny like, “Preparing for the End Times” or the “Battle to Attack and Dethrone the Yishang,” but what it really was was a web of relations binding him to Sofiane, Shuixing, Daisy, and Natsuko. This event had a script in much the same way that the Yishang’s events had a script, but this one was solely written by the five of them, and it was constantly being written.
Over the past month, slight tremors and small vibrations had begun occurring in this special event field, but that night, something big happened. The event had begun its transition into a new stage.
Natsuko’s status quo was breaking down. He knew because his sleep, ordinarily a peaceful oblivion, had for the past two weeks been injected with the same memories she was recalling. Elsewhere, he felt the shock of Shuixing and Sofiane being thrust into contact with one other again. And of Natsuko and Daisy’s mutual repulsion.
The web was tightening. It was now time to bring them all together again.
Having nothing whatsoever to pack, the only thing Pechorin had to do before he left was compose a poem for the palm trees that had taken care of him the past two years—the only gift he could offer them. In giant letters in the sand, he wrote:
At world’s end,
You kept me company
Coconut trees.
With his last duties taken care of, Pechorin walked to the northern end of the small island where a Boat Summon signpost had for two years waited patiently for him. He summoned a boat and set out in it amidst the rain and wind for Kazan-to. The first few hours of sailing were rough, but the storm passed in the early morning and was replaced at dawn by a crimson sky. He took this as his cue to get a bit more rest, as well as to satiate his curiosity about what new memories Natsuko’s mind had dreamed up. Stretching out along the length of the boat, he allowed its gentle bobbing to lull him to sleep.
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Pechorin could go over the poem and revise it for a seventh time, but this would lead to an eight revision, and a ninth, and a tenth, and the poem would never see the light of day. He knows it’s just a distraction; a way for him to subconsciously put off the terrifying thing he has to do. No more revisions. He just has to hand it to her.
By now, Natsuko has figured out what must be happening. The way Pechorin’s gaze lingers on her, the agonizing over a single poem when he usually dashes them off. She knows what’s coming. But the matter is a sticky one because she has been dating Frederick for a month in secret, worried about what her teammates will make of fraternizing with competitors.
As they enter the meeting with the Grand Chairman to discuss the defense of Tianzhou, Natsuko can see in Pechorin’s eyes that he intends to give her the poem afterwards. Perhaps immediately afterwards. There’s no way to help it. The moment the meeting is over, she announces she has something to tell them all.
“Guys, I um, I shouldn’t have kept this from you, but... I’ve been seeing Frederick. For about a month now,” she says.
Hemiola pinches the bridge of his nose. “Ugh. Don’t give out any team secrets, please.”
“O-Oh,” Shuixing says. “I didn’t expect that, but I’m happy for you two!”
Pechorin’s expression freezes, unsure of what to do next. But before the conversation can grind to a halt and expose his apprehension, a smile flashes onto his face.
“Congrats, Natsu. He seems like a good guy.”
And just like that, she avoids disaster yet again. A feeling of relief washes over Natsuko. She still feels a little guilt, but as with everything, she faces it head on and accepts the consequences. This is her approach to life and it hasn’t failed her yet. And besides, Pechorin would get over it in time. There was probably some other nice female—or male, who knows?—Hero who would be perfect for him. As it was, this thing she has with Frederick is pretty shallow. Easy to break off if necessary. But she knew that isn’t what Pechorin wants. Nothing could ever be shallow and fun and meaningless with him. This is better for the both of them.
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Pechorin woke up in the boat. The sun was almost overhead now and Mt. Tomiji, the great volcano of the Shikijiman main island, was coming into sight. He splashed his face with sea water to wake up then shifted the sails to carry him towards harbor.