All of the next day, she spent jogging and sprinting to the next town over. When she finally reached the river, she bathed for the first time in days. Dirt scraped in layers off her pale skin. She scrubbed her robes and pants, too, and hung them on a nearby greeting pine tree to dry.
After she had redressed, she sat beneath the pine to munch on dried fish, seaweed, and tangerines. The tangerines were delicious, sweet and ripe and sour. It was a pleasure to eat them while watching the river flow by.
As she retied her hair in a messy dark bun at the back of her head, there was a snap-ping noise.
Abrial swore.
She brought her leather hair tie to her eyes to see that it had snapped in two. It had a small golden piece on it. If you looked closely enough, you could see that the gold was carved in the shape of a lotus.
“Shit! Shit, crap! Fuck!” she cursed, turning the pieces over in her hands frantically. “What kind of shitty luck is this? First I get separated from Finley, and now I broke the only present from Finley I have left! What the heck?! I’m gonna have to get a new one for now…” Still swearing at her bad luck, Abrial carefully stowed the broken hair tie away in a fold of her scarlet and black robes to be fixed later.
She set off grumpily towards the town, her long, dark hair fluttering in the breeze.
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“Is there someone who sells hair ties in this market? Or even leather?”
“Hmm. Old Woman Gur-eum sells accessories! You can find her at the other end of the market, on the right side.”
“Cool!”
As Abrial elbowed her way out of the market after plucking a plain hair tie off the stand of blindingly glittering hair accessories, she got stuck in a bustling crowd. Huh? What was going on here? Abrial was forcefully pushing her way through when she heard someone holler loudly over the din:
“Villagers of Futou! Travelers and merchants! Young and old! The annual Jiu contest will commence soon! Join quickly if you wish to participate!”
Abrial’s eyes glittered with curiosity, and unconsciously, she started to push her way towards that voice. She didn’t know what this annual Jiu contest was, but a contest sounded super fun! She’d never had other people except Instructor Wei to compete with before! Finally, she’d get to try something that people in the outside world did! Except…
Her face hardened, and she reluctantly forced herself to push the other way through the crowd, away from the announcer. Who was she kidding? She didn’t have time for a contest! Who knew how long that would take? She would be wasting precious time from journeying back to Finley and the house!
But then, the shouter added emphatically:
“The winner will receive the fastest horse in Futou!”
Abrial’s ears perked up.
“A horse!” she muttered, obsidian eyes sparkling again with excitement. “I could get back to the house so much faster with a horse, right? I could be back — in a day or two! Maybe. I’m not really sure how horses work, heh.”
She forced her way through the crowd members until she stood at the front, right before the announcer, who was a short man standing on a stack of crates and hollering into a paper cone. The small crowd surrounding him chattered excitedly.
“I’m only traveling through,” explained one person loudly. “But I stopped in Futou this year just for the Jiu contest! It’s famous in the north, after all…”
“And the horse this year!” exclaimed another. “Have you heard? He’s a pure black horse, the fastest one bred in Futou yet!”
“Wow! A fast horse and a smart horse? What a prize! Plus, by Futou’s standards, fast horses can practically fly like birds!”
“Hey, excuse me, you!”
The crowd went silent. Everyone stared incredulously at Abrial, who was waving a hand around wildly and shouting up at the short announcer man.
“Hey, you! Short man! I have a question!”
“How disrespectful,” muttered one member of the crowd to another. “How can she just yell ‘short man’ and “Hey!” at him when he’s clearly her elder?”
“She didn’t even call him ‘Sir’!”
“She must be uneducated. Or — pah! — what if she’s the daughter of a nobleman, ha!”
“That’s a good one! With that plain robe, there’s no way she’s rich!”
“Hey, you! I wanna ask something!”
At last, the short announcer man took the paper cone away from his lips and looked down at Abrial, furious.
“What is it?! Why are you so loud?! Can’t you see I’m trying to advertise here?!”
“What do I need to do to win that black horse?”
The crowd burst into mutterings of disbelief.
“Does she think she can win it, just like that?”
“How arrogant!”
The announcer man frowned disgruntledly down at her.
“Miss, don't you know that only men traditionally enter Futou’s annual Jiu contest? You’re a woman, you wouldn’t like some of the activities —”
“Hey! Don’t tell me what I can and can’t like! I don’t care what the activities are. You said to join. How do I join?” Abrial stared up at him, her eyes gleaming somewhere between annoyed and excited. This short announcer man was really getting on her nerves, but at the same time, the idea of winning a swift black horse was making her blood spark with excitement.
The annoying announcer man looked flabbergasted by her bluntness. “Well…Well, ahem, if you’re really…really set on it, the Jiu contest will begin very soon, at the twelfth hour. To join, you would need to go to the courtyard — ”
“Where’s the courtyard?”
“Ahem, you don’t know? It’s past the east entrance of the market — ”
His words were cut off when Abrial abruptly turned and waded back through the crowd and out of sight, headed towards the east entrance.
The announcer man and the crowd stared after her, bewildered and aghast.
“What an unmannered young woman!” someone exclaimed.
“No sense of social norms!”
“I’ve never in my life seen such a complete, utter lack of respect!”
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The announcer man, however, suddenly got a greedy twinkle in his eye. He was a businessman at heart, and here was an opportunity for advertisement, right? He lifted his cone to his lips again and started his advertisement anew, except slightly tweaked now:
“Villagers of Futou! Travelers and merchants! Young and old! The annual Jiu contest will commence soon! Come and watch if you want to see a GIRL compete! A GIRL, I said! A woman will be competing! You heard me right! Go and see, go and see! Don’t forget to pay for your tickets on the way in!”
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A big crowd gathered for the Jiu contest. Abrial had never seen so many people before all standing in the same place. They filled up nearly half the stone-floored courtyard: mothers and fathers with little children running around wildly, old men and women sitting on stone benches, hordes of excited teens.
Abrial didn't know what it was, but something about having all these people watching her gave her a thrill. She felt…
Powerful! It was a weird, new kind of power she hadn’t had access to before — the power of knowing that if she did something crazy, it would shock all of these people. And if she did something awesome, it’d amaze all of them. That…was AWESOME!!! All sorts of ideas started being born in her head — there was an infinite number of things she could do to shock a group of a hundred people, hehe!
“All those competing in the annual Jiu contest of Futou! We will hand out your cups now.”
Abrial and the other competitors — all of whom had indeed turned out to be male, for some reason — had been lined up facing the audience. Old men with scraggly white beards and bald heads, teenage boys who jabbed each other in the ribs, middle-aged men who looked silly as they competitively cracked their knuckles. Abrial was the one female among them, standing about a head shorter than most.
However, Abrial didn’t care. She was too focused on that beautiful prize horse to be concerned about anything else.
The prize horse had been tied with a red rope to a tree at the edge of the courtyard. Its coat shimmered a shadowy, shining black, and its mane tossed in the wind, feathery and wild.
Abrial’s pupils dilated more and more the longer she looked at it.
She’d never seen a real horse before. But she really, really, REALLY wanted to make friends with that one.
She was shaken out of her infatuation when a woman held out a carved wooden cup to her. Abrial blinked and took it.
What the heck was this for? Didn’t contests usually involve stuff like running, or fighting, or mind games, or something? Were they going to be throwing cups at each other, or what?
“Hey,” she called to the teenage boy on her right. “What exactly are we doing in this contest?”
The teenager side-eyed her. There was slight disdain in his gaze.
“Has no one told you? The town of Futou is famous for three things: breeding horses, crafting axes and brewing rice wine. To win that horse, we will be axe-throwing and drinking.”
Abrial’s jaw dropped. Her face went pale as a ghost’s.
“Drinking?”
“What? Have you never drunk before?” smirked the middle-aged man to her left. A few of the other men nearby chuckled as well. “It’s true that drinking is a hobby of men, and not women. This contest might not be for you, little lady.”
Abrial stuck her tongue sourly out at him, shutting him up with shock.
At the same time, Finley’s pale face materialized in her mind, frowning sternly.
Abrial — not only is drinking alcohol bad for your health, but you do not have the capacity to hold more than a little, and yet you always drink half the bottle when you find some! If you drink too much, it is possible you might do something more reckless than usual and end up…severely injured. Look — you can’t even walk straight after one mouthful this time. Give me the bottle, that is quite enough.
Abrial swallowed. Her fist tightened around the wooden cup, making her knuckles go white.
Why did it have to be drinking, of all things? Anything else, she could’ve done well in. But every time she’d snuck even a few sips of alcohol at the house, she’d always, without fail, gotten extremely drunk…
Her mouth tasted sour.
Maybe…maybe she still had a chance? She’d always had great aim, and she was strong. She could still beat the rest of them in ax-throwing and snag that horse, then ride to the house quickly, right?
That’s right — of course she could still win! She just needed to try really hard to stay sober in the alcohol part of the contest, since she would definitely win ax-throwing easily! And she needed that horse. She would win this to get back to Finley ASAP. She could do it.
She had to.
At that moment, the short announcer man spoke again. He was very happy with the enormous turnout that Abrial’s female presence had gotten them, so his voice was jolly:
“All those competing! We will now fill your cups with Futou’s most potent rice wine of this summer harvest! Do not spill any out.”
A woman swept around with a gleaming ceramic jar and poured a clear liquid into Abrial’s cup, filling it almost to the brim.
Abrial gulped.
“It looks just like water,” she muttered under her breath. “It’ll go down just like water. Water doesn’t make you drunk! You’ll be fine!”
“I entered just to taste this wine!” an old man not far away crowed to another. “Mm, smells delicious!”
Abrial sniffed her cup. She gagged.
“It reeks,” she grumbled. Her stomach churned.
“All right! All those competing, we will explain the simple rules again before we begin, for clarification purposes! Each of you, after we light this candle, will drain your cup. We will come around to check that you have done so. Do not pour any out! Then, after this timer has reached half an hour, you will be given, one by one, three axes to throw at various targets. The one whose aim is most true even after consuming Futou’s most potent rice wine will rightfully win this beautiful black horse, whose name is Dal — the strongest and smartest of horses in Futou, bred this past year. As for all spectators, you may purchase some of the same famous Futou rice wine after the contest at the seller stands outside of the courtyard.”
The audience broke into excited murmurs.
“I’m jealous of the competitors — they get free Futou rice wine, mm! Except — one of them is a woman, did you hear?”
“Yes, it’s crazy! She’s right over there — she sticks out next to all of the men, heh!”
“How can a woman hope to compete with a man’s drinking tolerance? Hasn’t she already lost? Really…”
The announcer struck a flint over the timer candle. Once, twice —
The competitors all gripped their cups, eyes focused.
At the third strike, the candle caught fire.
“Drink!” the announcer shrieked through his paper cone.
“Drink! Drink! Drink!” the crowd roared enthusiastically. Even the smallest children joined in, laughing and pumping their fists, even though they didn’t know what the heck was being drunk.
Abrial licked her lips, feeling slightly sick.
“Finley, this is for you,” she croaked.
She raised the cup and drained it in one gulp. Then she threw it to the dirt, where it rolled, emptied of liquor. She had been the first one to finish.
Many people in the crowd gaped at her. She simply wiped her mouth on her sleeve, unfazed. Unaware of the crowd’s attention, she scrunched up her nose a bit.
“This wine really burns my throat,” she muttered, sticking out her tongue and sucking in cool air.
All down the line, men began throwing their cups down and sighing in pain and pleasure.
“So potent!” hissed the man to Abrial’s left, holding his throat. “It burns like fire!”
“Ughug,” gargled the teenager to Abrial’s right, coughing harshly.
Abrial grinned crookedly.
“Hah! Who says this is a contest for men? Why do you all react so badly to pain?” she chortled. Her throat was still burning viciously, but she was very used to ignoring pain from all of the injuries she had sustained daily at the house from horsing around. This was just like scraping her palms on rope. No big deal. No tears shed. She hardly even noticed the pain.
That pretentious middle-aged man to her left shot her a scalding look as he massaged his throat. He was obviously in a lot of pain. Heh, heh. Abrial crossed her arms and grinned, satisfied. Seems like she’d beat him on that front.
All at once, the grin evaporated from her face.
She stumbled slightly.
Was she...already drunk?!