Chapter 65: Field Trip

And so, the coaches kept rolling.

The ones on the left started singing a song, going full school bus mode. Some of the teachers tried to stop them, telling them how this was a "serious excursion" and totally not a field trip. The students did not care at all.

[Can’t say I blame them. The energy is right. There’s excitement in the air. I like it.]

I, being an author who was normally cooped up in my studio apartment, wasn’t about to pretend that I was the festive type, but even I liked this from time to time.

"It’s far too loud," Odette said, falling down onto the seat beside mine. So now, I was sandwiched between her and Lily. "Why must they yell and sing so much? It’s hardly that exciting."

"Really?"

"It’s so annoying."

Somehow, my presence was less annoying.

[I guess we really are friends now, hehe.]

As the coach rumbled forward, I looked out the window. Ah, the landscape was so beautiful, green and... Serena was staring right at me.

I caught her. She was to my left, looking my way. Wait, no, was she looking at Lily? Maybe. But, as soon as our eyes met, she clicked her tongue and looked away.

[... Definitely didn’t make her like me more with that little show she got earlier. But, as long as I can work with her to keep Lily from seeing her ten inches, we should be fine.]

"Will we get any training done?" Lily asked and my eyes snapped back to her.

"We can if you want. Don’t you want a bit of time to relax, though? Lay down, enjoy the sights~?"

Lily gave me a sheepish smile and then looked outside.

She kept looking outside for a while. Then she spoke without turning around.

"I know it’s supposed to be a break," Lily said. "But I don’t think I can afford one."

"What do you mean?"

"You know." She folded her hands in her lap. "Everyone else here has had tutors since they could walk. Serena Frostfall has been holding a sword since she was six. Prince Aldric has a family technique. I got my letter in a village where the biggest fight anyone had ever seen was over a fence."

Odette stopped writing.

"When I got here I couldn’t even hold a proper stance," Lily went on. "I didn’t know what mana circulation was. I thought a spirit contract was a piece of paper. Everyone was polite about it, which was worse."

[Oh my god, she’s doing a whole speech.]

"So I decided I’d just work more than them. If I start behind, then I train in the mornings before class and I train after dinner and I read whatever Odette leaves on the table." Odette said "What?" But Lily just kept going. "I don’t get to be talented. I get to be the one who didn’t stop." She finally turned back to me, and her eyes were doing that thing where they went glassy and determined at once. "I want to be a great warrior, Kohaku. Not a good one. A great one. So that when someone in my village needs help, help actually comes. That’s all."

Silence in our row.

I put my hands together and started clapping.

[God, she’s so wrong. She’s so, incredibly wrong. There is literally no one in existence more talented than you, Lily. I know, I made this world.]

"Kohaku-"

"No, no." I kept clapping. Slowly. With weight. "Let me have this."

I brought one hand up and wiped at the corner of my eye with my knuckle.

"Are you crying?"

"A little." I sniffed. "You don’t understand. I’ve waited a long time to hear that."

"We met like eight weeks ago!"

"It felt longer!"

Two rows ahead, somebody turned around to look at us. Odette had gone back to writing, and I was fairly sure she was writing about this.

[Years ago I typed a version of that speech in a notebook on the school bus and I thought it was the best thing I’d ever written. And now she’s saying it out loud, unprompted, in a moving vehicle, at me. God, teenage me would be sobbing.]

Lily had gone red to the ears.

"You’re making fun of me."

"I’m not!" I dropped my hands. "Okay, look. Genuinely. Here’s what we do. Sabine’s still tutoring me twice a week, right? I’ll ask her if she’s got anything new. New forms, new theory, whatever she’ll hand over. And then everything she gives me, I give to you."

Lily blinked.

"You’d do that?"

"I’ve been doing that. Why is this surprising to you?" I threw an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in against my side. "Relax, sweetheart." I winked. "I’ll never abandon you."

She smiled.

---

The faculty had booked out the entire inn, which meant two hundred students were occupying rooms built for forty. I found Sabine in the common room with a book and a mug in front of her.

"Professor? Are you busy?"

"Ah, Miss Sakana." She looked up and closed the book. "What can I do for you?"

"I wanted to ask about lessons. I know we’re supposed to be on a trip and everything, but we’re going to be out here for two weeks, and that’s two weeks of tutoring I’d be missing. So I was wondering if there was any way we could keep going while we’re here."

"Ooh, you want to work through the excursion?"

"If it’s not too much trouble."

Sabine sat back and looked at me for a second.

"You understand what this trip is, don’t you? It’s recreational. Cultural exposure, provincial air, two weeks of not thinking about mana theory. The faculty spent a considerable amount of money to make sure none of you had anything to do. You’d rather have homework?" She smiled.

"Well... I’d like some homework."

She reached into her coat and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.

"Fortunately for you, I’ve already put together eleven items."

I stared at it.

"Eleven? You wrote them down already?"

"I wrote them down last week." She unfolded the sheet and turned it around so I could see. "Just in case any particularly passionate students asked for special lessons. I just didn’t think it would be you."

[... Okay, that’s fair.]

"So, what’s on it?"

"We’ll continue with independent casting, because you’re still leaning on that spirit of yours and it’s making you lazy. Circulation under strain, which we’ll do in the mornings before anyone else is awake. Mana efficiency in the cold, since the nights out here drop to freezing and your control falls apart below a certain temperature." She tapped a spot further down the page. "And then there are a few I’d rather run somewhere without walls around us. Discharge, redirection, and one I’ve been wanting to try on a beastkin subject for about eleven years now, since nobody has ever volunteered for it."

"Should I be worried about that last one?"

"It’s uncomfortable," she said. "You’ll want to eat something beforehand. Go ahead and rest tonight, I’ll let you know when we’re actually gonna get to work, alright?"

"Thanks."

"Good night, professor."

"Good night, Miss Sakana."

I went outside after that, because the common room was full and the rooms upstairs were fuller. The air was cold, and I had been sitting in a box for eight hours.

The moon was full over the stable roof. I stood there in the yard for a while with my hands tucked into my sleeves.

[Ugh, can you imagine how aesthetic I’d look right now if I had a cigarette? "Foxgirl, standing in the nighttime wind, gazing up at the moon." The writer side of me almost wants to write a scene about it.]

Suddenly, a voice spoke behind me.

"I’ve never known being as shameless as you could be possible." I didn’t turn around right away. "Though, I suppose that’s par for the course with your kind."

Serena was standing at the corner of the building with her arms crossed. She had changed out of her travel coat into something plainer, and her white hair was down, which I had only seen twice before.

[God, she looks cute in that.] I looked away. [There are two hundred students in that building, and she waited until the yard was empty to have this one-on-one. I wonder what’s on her mind.]

"My kind?" I asked.

"You put your hands on Everdawn in front of a full coach. You let that Vantecca girl get on her knees in a public drive, in daylight, six feet from the faculty. You don’t seem to have a line anywhere. I’ve been trying to find it."

[... All I did with Lily was put an arm around her. And yet, she opened with that. Interesting.]

I turned around and looked at her properly.

Then, I gave her a tiny smirk.

"It’s your kind too, princess."

She glared hard at me.

[Might be a long night.]