The difference between a burger and a sandwich was in nuance, and so it shouldn’t really have been a surprise that this world had something like a burger—but not really.
It was a simple shop on the side of the road: a counter facing the street, five stools placed along it, given shade by a rectangle of canvas with patches and stitches in places. It wasn’t some mysteriously-popular store with a secret code for giving discounts, but there was always someone eating there, never too many, and not fewer than one.
An old man laughed and handed over some coins to the elderly couple manning the store before he left. Jyn and Kalender took the old man’s place.
“Oh! Dear, dear, it’s the Knight from the other day.” The old lady pulled on the sleeve of her husband.
“Oh? Looks like she’s brought someone, too,” the old man said. “What can we get you?”
Kalender looked to Jyn for a senior’s guidance and recommendations.
She slid over twenty Notes. “Two of the Monster Slayers, please.”
The old man gave a thumbs up and got to slicing and dicing an awfully large slab of meat, larger than Kalender had ever seen before. The old lady scooted over to Jyn like a mischievous gossip. “If you don’t mind me asking, but is the young man a Company fellow?”—she paused—“Are you sure about him? I must say, Company fellows can be quite difficult to handle, sometimes.”
A sword hung on display on the wall behind her. Jyn blushed.
“I-it’s nothing like that.”
The lady grinned and scooted away, claiming no responsibility for any damage caused.
“Jyn…” Kalender said. The mere mention of her name made her straighten her back.
“Yes?” she said.
“It’s, um…how do you actually feel about me?”
The old couple on the other side of the counter was impressed.
“Dear, why didn’t you make a direct attack like that before? We could have had two more anniversaries at this point!”
“That youngin’ is made of different stuff than I, okay!”
Of course, they made sure the younger two didn’t hear their bickering.
Jyn, meanwhile… “I’m not sure how to answer that,” said the girl who could give a straight answer right now, but was just too nervous to actually do it.
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“With full honesty,” Kalender replied. “Then I’ll show you my honesty, too.”
She looked, and he was smiling, but…it looked a bit sad. It made no sense. Why would you be sad?
“Alright,” Jyn said. “I feel…that I must devote my life to you.”
Kalender’s eyes widened. He looked to her for a moment, and then away. He should have been thinking about her words, but his mind had gone blank.
“Why?” he only managed to say. If there were better questions to ask, he couldn’t reach them.
Jyn took a while to answer. “Somehow…though I may be mistaken—or, may I be certainly wrong—to think that what silent moments we had gone through, is what family should have been.”
Family. It was just her and her sisters for the longest time. They had no mother, and they had no father. They did have, however, orphanage mothers, but they were merely a disattached mirage of what family should have been. They were kind, but their attention was divided between hundreds of them—all little children, unwatched and emotionally unguided.
Many grew up to be thieves. Many grew up to be sent away as settlers in distant lands. Few, like her, became anything of marginal note.
She, motivated by duty and obligation, joined the kingdom’s knights and did her best to ensure her younger sisters did not worry about putting bread on the table.
…Only because she had to. Duty and obligation, after all, did not need any love at all.
One of her sisters fell ill and died. Another became a thief, and was executed soon after. Five of them joined the settlers in faraway lands, never to be heard from again. To her relief, four of them, like her, became anything of note: the treasury’s accountant, a castle’s maid, a soldier of fortune, and a maker of tools.
She had never spent time with them. She didn’t ever know them.
When the last of her sisters left the nest, her only thought was, “It is done.”
She never thought about them again.
But now, after the warmth that Kalender showed so readily, she mulled over the by-gone thing that she had let slip so easily, that thing called family.
“You…want to have a family?” Kalender asked. “With…me?”
Jyn’s clarity of self-awareness stopped right here.
“Well. It would be alright,” she said.
“Is that a yes?…”
“I am unsure.”
Kalender narrowed his eyes at her, and she slowly blushed, and even slower, looked away. Kalender chuckled.
“W-what?” Jyn said.
“Thanks for telling me,” he said. “Honestly, if you went and said ‘yes,’ I think I’d be the one awkwardly stuck trying to decide whether my own feelings swing towards making a family.” He chuckled to himself. “I don’t think it’d be bad, but…”
“But?”
“But…do you think I’d be a good dad? Do you think you’d be a good mom? I know I care about you more than enough for it, but, will the kids turn out alright?”
Jyn narrowed her eyes. “Why do you doubt yourself on this one? You would make a fantastic father.”
“Thanks, I guess…”
“As for myself, I am unsure how I could ever be worse than my own mother.”
Kalender looked to her. The quiet prompted Jyn to finally say,
“I don’t turn away from my duty.”
Kalender nodded. “So…does that mean you want to have a family—”
“Excuse me, is our food ready?”
“Hey—”
“Two Monster Slayers, coming right up!” the old man said.
Kalender’s next words were stopped by two pizza-sized…burgers? He lifted up the top…bun?…only to discover that it was, in fact, a filling of minced meat sandwiched between two cheese pizzas. The amount of meat would have served two people.
At 10 Notes per serving, this was certainly cost-effective despite just how utterly strange the concept was. Very Jyn.
He looked to her, just to see her showing him such a gentle smile.
“I will never turn away from you,” she said.
…before turning away and digging in.
It was such an amazing sequence of events that Kalender couldn’t help but laugh…and realize that, possibly for the first time in this world, his heart skipped a beat.