Chapter 444: Practical Gifts

Kori’s head snapped toward him from the kitchen.

"What did you do!? You just entered the room without - oh."

Her voice changed shape in the middle of the sentence as the situation arranged itself in her head. Raizen, in the hallway, going to her room. The clattering of steel from inside her room. The fact that Hikari had been sent to her top left closet before any of this had started.

The "oh" was followed by a slow smile.

It spread across Kori’s face with the unhurried satisfaction of a woman who had not done this on purpose and was not going to be able to convince anyone of that.

"I promise," she said. "That was not intentional."

Raizen didn’t turn around.

He stayed in the hallway with his hand still on the doorknob and his face still blank. From inside the room, the sounds had not stopped. Hikari was moving through the frustrated process of removing armour she had not been trained to remove, and each new clatter was followed by a small annoyed breath trying not to sound deeply embarrassed.

"And by the way," Kori shouted from the kitchen, in a voice that had recovered most of its usual register and was now operating somewhere just above flat amusement, "I didn’t know Hikari was planning an all-out war with the weeds. I wonder what set she found..."

Raizen made a small wounded sound through his teeth.

Once the sounds became silence, he slowly knocked on the door.

The knock was gentle, just two fingers against the wood. "...Hikari? You okay? I’m - I’m so sorry."

Inside the room, for a couple more seconds, the sounds continued: a piece of steel was being lifted and set down, a buckle was being undone with slow concentration, fabric was being pulled.

"...Yeah," came her voice, low and partially muffled by what was clearly a shirt being pulled over her head. "Give me a second."

He stood there.

The minute that followed felt considerably longer than a minute. The sounds inside the room stretched on - buckles, the slide of armour against the floor as Hikari moved each piece to a corner, the soft thud of a heavy plate set carefully down rather than dropped, the rustle of cloth. Raizen did not move from his position next to the door. He couldn’t bring himself to walk back to the kitchen where Kori was visibly enjoying herself. He couldn’t open the door. He couldn’t do anything but stand there.

He was rehearsing apologies in his head.

When probably on his third one, the door finally opened.

Hikari stood in the doorway in a plain checked shirt that was maybe two sizes too large for her - also Kori’s, judging by the cut - and a pair of worn dark trousers that had clearly seen many years of work. The formal jacket and trousers from breakfast were folded on the bed behind her. Her hair had come loose at the back of the tie. Her face was the colour of a warm sunrise.

She did not look at him.

She kept her eyes on the floor between them.

"...I’m sorry. I - I found it, and I couldn’t - I just wanted to see if it fit."

"It’s fine."

"It’s not fine. I -"

"I’m the one who should be apologizing."

"...No, it’s fine."

She kept her eyes down and brushed past him toward the kitchen, the loose checked shirt billowing around her with every step, her boots clicking quietly on the wood.

Kori, from the table, watched her arrive – she was not going to comment on anything, but she was clearly enjoying the moment. Hikari did not meet her eye - she crossed the kitchen, opened the back door, and went out into the garden quickly, trying to avoid any other discussion.

Raizen stood in the hallway for another long second, completely stunned.

Then he walked back to the kitchen, forgetting about Kori’s slate, still on her bed.

Kori was watching him with both eyebrows raised.

"Don’t," he mumbled.

"I haven’t said anything."

"Just... Don’t."

She tried to push herself up from the table.

The motion didn’t go well. Her left hand wasn’t going to take any weight, and her hip - the one she had favoured in the kitchen earlier – protested sharply the moment she put pressure on her right leg. She landed back down with a small grunt. Tried again. Made it halfway up before she had to brace on the table. Raizen stepped forward to help.

"Don’t," Kori said. "Just... Get me something I can use as a crutch."

"...A crutch."

"Something to lean on. A stick. A broom. Anything tall and structurally fine."

He looked around the kitchen.

Then he glanced back toward the hallway, where his unpacked travel bag from Ukai was still leaning against the wall next to Kori’s door, where it had been since he had set it down and not opened it, and next to it, one specific object was visible: a long wooden handle, carved with a simple pattern, ending in a wide flat bowl the size of a small platter.

The giantsouvenir spoon.

He had bought it in the Ukai festival market, carried it all the way back to Neoshima on the aircraft and had not yet figured out how to give it to her.

He walked over and quickly held it out to Kori.

She looked at it.

Her face did something: The corner of her mouth pulled upward, her eyebrows climbed by half a centimeter - she tried very hard to maintain composure, and the composure lasted approximately one and a half seconds before the laugh broke through.

"...Raizen."

"It’s a souvenir."

"It’s almost as big as you!"

"It’s a Ukai festival spoon, and... I thought you’d like it."

"I do," she said, and the laugh came out fully now, a low warm sound that was the first real laugh he had heard from her since he had come back. "I really do. I love it! I’m totally going to use it."

She took it with her good hand. The weight surprised her; she braced it against the table to keep it upright, the spoon’s wide bowl resting on the wood like the head of a strange wooden hammer.

"You know what I like, Raizen?"

"...What."

"Practical gifts."

"That is not practical. At all."

"It is going to be deeply practical, and I’ll tell you why. This " she lifted the spoon a few inches off the table, testing the balance, "- is good for at least three things."

She cleared her throat with unnecessary ceremony.

"As a crutch-"

She set the bowl-end against the floor and rose, slowly, leaning her weight onto the handle. The spoon held like a proper, solid crutch. Her good hand braced on it. The bandaged hand stayed at her side. Her hip protested but managed, with the support, to bear the standing position.

"...For my wonderful cooking."

She raised it a little, eyeing the bowl with the small fond appraisal of a woman seeing real culinary possibility in its size.

"And -"

Her eyes flicked toward the back door, where Arashi’s voice was now audible somewhere in the backyard, loudly complaining about something to Keahi.

"- for whooping Arashi’s -"