“Still, it’s hard to believe you really forgot. Yuika was all you were on about last week.” Amongst the sound of people walking and trains moving flooding the area, I can barely make out Aubin’s voice. “Something on your mind?”
“No, it’s nothing. Just a little tired.”

“If you say so,” Aubin gives an unsatisfied look. “Actually if you forgot, what was that hunt you went on yesterday?”
“You know about that?”
“I heard some people talking about it. East Alyona, right? I thought for sure it was to show off to her.” Aubin gives me a confused stare with his one good eye.
“I was just blowing off some steam. And doing it under the Royal Guards’ name might just give the ex-Nugatories a better reputation. Florence… talked to me about something like that.”
“Florence, huh? She’s probably the one who’s best adjusted to the Royal Guards out of all of us, despite all her complaining. I heard she’s been working on some open investigations outside of the Capital. Though knowing her, she’s probably doing half of them out of boredom.”

The crowd begins to clear out, and the gray tiles on the platform floor actually start to become visible. When I turn to Aubin, he looks at me as though I have something stuck on my face.

“...What?”
“Nothing, I just thought that you’d be rushing to the front to greet Yuika as soon as possible.”
“I don’t know which door she’s gonna get off of.”
“Oh, you’re right.” His expression changes to one of satisfaction, but quickly reverts. “I don’t know, you just seem… not that excited?”

The train eventually arrives, and a swarm of people begin to come out. Amongst the large crowd leaving, I immediately spot the long, black haired, adorable yet beautiful girl once she exits the train. Despite wearing a generic school uniform, she clearly stands out, as if she’s shining. After she spends a few moments looking around her surroundings, she eventually spots me and Aubin. Her blank stare quickly shifts to one of excitement and glee, brightening her features even more. 

“Oh, Yuika!” Aubin notices quickly after. “Hey, don’t just stand there staring. Wave back, will you?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah.” I lightly raise my hand and wave it around, but it feels painfully awkward.

“You really okay?” Aubin persists in his questioning for my well-being. I can't tell, but I guess I look really depressed.
“Yeah… yeah. I told you, I’m just a little tired.”

When Yuika is just a meter or two away from us, she leaps forward, wrapping her arms around my neck and hugging me. 

“Caspar! It’s been so long!” I take hold of her shoulders and pull her down to the ground. 

“Hey, yeah. I missed you.” I try to make the brightest tone with my voice that I can, but apparently it doesn’t work.
“Hm? What’s wrong? You seem a little down.”
“This guy over here wiped out an entire flock of Clyrell Mocks yesterday to show off to you. Looks like he bit off more than he could chew, though.” Aubin intervenes before I can make an excuse, apparently ignoring what I said earlier about not having done it for Yuika.

“Oh, Aubin! You’re here! Great to see you again!”
“What?? You didn’t notice I was here?”
“Ahah!” Yuika laughs. “I’m just kidding. More importantly, you won’t believe the horrible situation I was in on the train! I got into the train early so I was people-watching as everyone came in, and then suddenly this guy with the most rugged, dirty clothing walks through the door. So there I am pitying whoever’s going to have to sit next to him, and then he stops walking when he’s right next to my seat!! His seat was next to mine!! So I try to look on the bright side, and not judge by appearances. I mean, a great personality doesn’t necessarily correlate with clothing right? Maybe he’s just poor, or maybe he was dared by his friends to go into a train looking like that. Maybe he’s actually super interesting and funny when you get to know him and maybe he even turns out to be my future husband!” I stare at her in shock at the last two words, and Aubin quietly snickers watching my reaction. “But then when he actually sat down, I noticed the smell. Oh, the smell. You wouldn’t believe how he smelled! It was this mix of fish and expired milk and grease and cheese and oh my god it was horrid. So I’m sitting there already unable to focus on any of the assignments I’d plan on working on while in the train, and then I feel something on my shoulder. When I turn my head, I see the bastard leaning on my shoulder and sleeping!! Are you kidding me?” She looks down as she sighs and takes a moment to breathe after her long monologue, before looking back up at me. “Can you believe it, Caspar?”
“It sounds like it was bad.” I can feel myself faintly smiling when hearing her terribly long rant, relieved at how Yuika hadn't changed.
“Bad doesn’t even start to describe it! Ahh, I’m so frustrated!” She grabs my right hand and begins to pull me. “Are the Royal Guard headquarters still open?”
“Yeah, the two of us got off early today. People normally start leaving at around 6 if it’s early, and there are still people doing night shifts there anyway. Why?”
“Great! Let’s go!”
“Now? Don’t you want to leave your stuff at my place at least? What are we even going for?”
“To blow off steam, of course!”

 

 

 

Yuika grips her wooden carved practice sword and takes a couple of light swings before getting into a comfortable ready position. 

“Take this seriously, okay?” She gives me a slightly concerned look as she requests me.
“Yeah, don’t worry.”
“Jeez, that relaxed tone isn’t reassuring at all!” Yuika laughs.

The training grounds had several arenas for the Royal Guards to practice sparring in, but with the all time low crime rates in Alyona, they were hardly used. As a result, there wasn’t even any explaining that I had to do when bringing Yuika here. 

The two of us stand a couple meters away from each other. The two of us move around the practice swords we hold. Like her’s, mine is made of wood. The blade is awfully dull since it’s only intended use is for sparring. To make up for the difference in weight, the practice swords here had a variety of metal inside them to try to make them feel less awkward. Though… despite taking what’s supposed to be the heaviest of the bunch, it still feels awkward because of how light it is. 

“Are you ready?” I nod, but I can’t help but feel a lack of motivation. I want to sincerely meet Yuika’s feelings, but the strength to even grip my sword doesn’t come to me.

After a brief moment, Yuika begins to run towards me. She’s taking the initiative?

As she moves up, she lets go of her sword on her left hand, holding it only with her right. While maintaining a firm grip on her sword, she raises her empty left hand, positioning it as if she was holding something that wasn’t there. She’s about to materialize something.

On her open palm, I can see a thin, wooden strap. As a magic user, all Yuika needs is for her body to be in contact with whatever material she has an affinity to, in her case wood. The thin strap made of wood wrapped around her palm fulfills such conditions, and a compact wooden box begins to materialize on her hand. The empty space atop her hand is no longer there, and instead she holds a perfectly square box. With force, Yuika pushes her left hand forward and lets go, throwing the box towards me. 

I motion to deflect the box away with my blade, but on contact, the box collapses and an enormous amount of brown dust reveals itself.

What the hell? How did she manage to fit something inside the box that she made right in front of me? Her affinity is wood, she couldn't have materialized something other than that. Unless, is it... sawdust? 

The particles begin to spread out midair, and it follows the same trajectory that the box did– towards my profile. I feel a tinge of excitement at Yuika’s unchanging usage of magic, using it as a mere tool rather than basing everything around it. 

Still, what do I do about this? If I do nothing, the sawdust is going to go into my eyes and blind me. It’s not as though I can just look away and dodge it when Yuika is about to swing her sword, though. 

I resolve to take the dust into my eyes and keep them wide open. In a mere moment, the majority of my view is blinded, as the mass of particles closes the distance between them and my eyes. I try to keep my attention to her figure, but eventually I lose sight of her.

…! The tip of a sword suddenly comes into view, and I raise my sword to match it. 

However, for the second time, upon contact, it simply deflects away without resistance.

A fake?

Before I can assess what just happened, I feel a light tap on my back. I turn around to see what it is, though I can guess.

“Wha… I… I did it?” Right where my back had been placed before I turned around, the tip of Yuika’s practice sword is located. Yuika wears an expression of pure shock, one that would be more appropriate for me who had just lost. I laugh. 

“What’s there to be confused about? I mean, you stabbed me in the back yourself. That was really impressive.” I tell myself that even were I to have been focused from the beginning, I still would have struggled to respond to her movements. And regardless, her strategy had been extraordinary. 

“Well, I… just thought that you’d somehow turn around in time or just grab my sword without looking. I mean… it’s you, after all.” 

“You think too highly of me.” I pat her on the head, congratulating her. “So you made that sword on the spot?”
“Yeah. It’s pretty easy to tell the difference if you look at it normally, but I thought it’d be hard to tell if you were nearly blind.”
“It was. That would probably work in practice, though I’m not sure how much of a burden producing all that takes on you. Still, you can make sawdust now?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah!” She opens up her right hand with her palm facing upwards, and begins to produce a pile of brown looking ash from the strap on her hand. “I don’t know if calling it sawdust is accurate though, since… you know, it’s not sawed. I really wanted to show you as soon as we met, but I thought it’d be even better in action! Amazing, right?” 

“Yeah, it really is.” I pat her on the head again, and she quietly giggles, before turning around to pick up her sword from the ground.
“Okay, let’s go again!”

“You two siblings really are one of a kind, huh?” Aubin hands me and Yuika each a paper cup of coffee.
“What do you mean?” Yuika asks.
“You’re both battle-loving idiots.” Aubin takes the seat away from mine and Yuika’s. “You kept smiling the entire time in the past two hours even though you lost every time after the first match, and Caspar’s suddenly gone from being depressed to cheery after that.”
“I’m just happy because the feeling that Yuika’s here has started to settle in, that's all.”
“And that happened mid battle!” Aubin laughs. 

“He does have a point about the smiling, though.” I ignore him and change the conversation to something that was on my mind.

“Mm?” With a piece of pancake in her mouth, Yuika tilts her head and stares at me in confusion.
“I know it was just practice today, but you take fighting too lightly.”
“Pff…” Aubin scoffs.

“What?”

“No, it’s just funny hearing that from the guy who kept leaving our platoon and made a reputation for wiping out entire enemy camps by himself.” Before he says it, I can already predict Aubin’s next words. “The White Demon!!” Aubin laughs hysterically, while I sigh in shame. I look at Yuika, whose eyes are practically sparkling at Aubin’s mention of me in the War. 

"You make it sound like I was some freak going off by myself on a whim to enemy bases.”
“...Yeah.”
“What do you mean, 'yeah?’ Each time had a reason!”
“Okay, why’d you leave the first time?”
“To save Florence when she was captured!”
“Then the second?"

"To save Florence!"

"Oh, right, she’d been transported to another base that time. Then the third?”
“We were on a desperate shortage of resources, and a nearby camp had them. You know this! And in the first place I'm not referring to her attitude towards battle, I meant her attitude mid-battle.”
“Because I was smiling?” Yuika enters the conversation again once the topic returns to her. “I mean, smiling itself doesn’t change anything, right?”
“The smiling’s an indicator, not the effect. You’re getting too carried away. If you go out with that attitude, one day or another you’re gonna get yourself killed.”
“Hm… well, you do have a point. Even with the insane things he does, Caspar's particularly good at that. He suddenly goes silent and becomes like a different person, almost like a switch gets flipped.” Although Aubin and my responses were intended to deject her a little, Yuika looks all but excited at the prospect of getting to hear about me in the War. Upon seeing such expression, Aubin grins. "Oh Yuika, I just remembered this story from before the Nugatories was formed. You wouldn't believe what—"

 

 

 

“Caspar, can we go one more time?” After Aubin splits away from us once we leave the cafe, Yuika pulls me back into an empty alleyway.

“Again?”

"I won for the first time today! I can't just accept losing every match after that!”

“It’s going to take a while to get back to the training grounds, though.”
“We can just use these!” Yuika takes out her wooden strap from her pocket, and produces two wooden swords of different sizes. Even after all the practice we did before, she can still produce these so easily? Her magic capacity really is impressive.

“Just once though, okay? We have to start unpacking all your stuff.”

“Yeah, no worries!” Yuika happily skips backwards a few steps, making enough distance. 

This alleyway is pretty narrow. I guess it makes for a pretty interesting environment. 

“You ready?”

“Yeah.”

As I watch Yuika dash in my direction, an eerily familiar sensation arises in my chest. My body starts to feel hot, and my vision begins to blur. My eyelids start feeling heavier by the second, and a wave of exhaustion begins to overwhelm me. I close my eyes intending for it to only be momentary to try and regain my focus. My chest feels overly heavy, and my mind clouds further. I begin to be consumed by a helpless sensation of sinking, feeling like I’m slipping through the ground into the Earth’s crust. 

Ah…

Ahh…

“Ahhh, hhhhhaah”

I abruptly open my eyes to see my left hand wrapped around Yuika’s neck, pinning her to the wall. What the fuck? I immediately let go, and Yuika falls to the ground before grabbing her own neck and coughing relentlessly.

“Yuika, I’m… I…”