Chapter 81: Cool Stuff

{Lily}

Kohaku let go of my waist after about a hundred steps, once she was sure I wasn’t going to turn around. I kept walking anyway. I don’t know why. The moment she said "rock community" to Professor Corvaine’s face, I should have sat down on the trail right there.

I still had the rice ball. I looked at it, then at her back, then I ate it.

I understood what was about to happen. It was obvious.

[She’s going to talk about it.]

That was the only reason Kohaku, of all people, would volunteer for magical maintenance work. She’d grabbed me in front of two hundred people, hauled me up the one path we’d been told to stay off of, and then she hadn’t said a word since the yard. Kohaku talks all the time! She can’t stop. She talks in her sleep. If she was quiet, I’d learned by now it was because she was working up to something, and there was only one something left between us.

[I said it! Oh my gods, I said it, and she’s gonna talk about it!!!]

I chewed slowly, just to keep my mouth busy.

[What do I even say if she asks? That I don’t know? That’s the truth! I mean, she’s great... She took a hit for me that should have killed her. She buys me dresses. Sometimes she does the laundry (though I do it most of the time, but still). She kissed Marisol, and I remember thinking...]

I held back the urge to scream.

[ANYWAY, and last night she came back from the baths smelling like Odette’s hair oil. I know that smell. I sit next to Odette in Theory.]

The path turned. She kept going and I kept following.

[So that’s four girls!!! If I’m counting, and I am. Marisol, Odette, Professor Corvaine if the rumors are right, the wolf girl, maybe. Serena isn’t on the list, at least. Maybe.]

I looked down at the floor.

[And then there’s me, apparently, since I’m the unofficial wife. Eleven of the letters assumed that.]

The rice ball was gone. I wiped my hand on my skirt.

[Does it bother me? Yes. Why? She’s my friend, she took the Warden’s best hit for me, and she’s been great to me since the first moment I met her. That’s what a friend is! Right? It doesn’t have to be more than that.]

I said the last part in my head a second time and sighed. Repeating yourself in your own thoughts is never a good sign.

[Okay. If she asks, I’ll say I was tired and I meant "like." Which I did. Which is true. A lot. A lot a lot. As a friend. I’m going to say that as many times as I have to.]

Kohaku stopped walking.

I stopped too, stood up straight, and got ready for it.

She turned around. There was something long across her back that I hadn’t noticed with all the jogging, wrapped in cloth. She pulled it over her head, took two steps toward me, and tossed it.

I caught it against my chest. It was heavy in a way I knew.

"Uh... What?" I said.

"Your sword! You left it on the rack in the yard. I grabbed it on the way out. Can’t have you up here fighting with rice balls... though that would be pretty funny to watch."

I unwrapped the hilt. It was mine. She’d carried it the whole way up without saying anything.

"Uhm... Kohaku."

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"Why are we here?"

She turned and blinked at me.

"The ward stone."

I pouted.

"Kohaku..."

"Okay, okay! Stop making that face at me." She looked away and continued with, "Fine. There’s something up here. Something old and... awesome. Nobody’s allowed to even see it, which is how you know it’s the best thing on the whole mountain. The shrine won’t tell the professors, the professors won’t tell us, and the moth was sitting on the road blocking it. That’s three different people hiding the same thing, Lily. I want to know what it is."

I pulled back.

"That’s it?"

"That’s it! Isn’t it great? Two weeks of poetry readings and boar chores, and you get a real adventure instead. I did that. For you. No, no, don’t thank me. You’re welcome."

I looked at the sword. I looked at her. She was grinning with all her teeth out, her tail going side to side, waiting for me to be excited.

[Okay. So she wasn’t going to bring it up at all.]

I strapped the sword on. I pulled the buckle tighter than it needed to be.

"You could have just asked me to come."

"I did ask! You said fine!"

"That was last time."

"So it’s the same answer!"

She turned back up the path. I followed her again, one hand on the hilt.

[... So why do I feel so weird all of a sudden?]

---

{Kohaku}

The ward stone was right where the shrine hand said it would be, a waist-high slab beside the path with a crack straight down the middle. It looked like somebody had taken an axe to it. Clean, no chips, no tool marks.

I poked it. Nothing happened.

"Okay!" I said, stepping back. "Lily. You’re up."

"Me? Why me?"

"Because I’m nowhere near as talented as you when it comes to magic."

She looked at the stone, then at me, then she sighed and pushed her sleeves up. She knelt, put both palms flat against the crack, and closed her eyes. Her mana started moving. I could feel it from where I was standing.

[And, of course, she’s naturally good at this, as she is when it comes to literally everything. That’s my heroine!]

"Go, Lily!" I clapped. "Push it in there! You’ve got it! That rock doesn’t stand a chance!"

"Kohaku..."

"Feel the stone! Be the stone! You’re doing amazing, sweetie!"

"L-Let me focus!"

I chuckled.

"Alright, I’m gonna go check for moths. Be right back."

I walked off down the path until the trees hid her, then I sat down on a root.

[No more sneaking around. No more tours. No more fake tea spills. I’m cheating.]

RECOLLECTION: 10 MP.

View a scene from this world’s past?

[Do it.]

The world went white.

The keeper of Hanamura wrapped the blade in three layers of cloth, because it had cut through the last two.

"It goes east," he said. "Two days. Tsuzumi will take it."

His apprentice pointed uphill.

"The peak is closer."

"The peak does not take things," the keeper said. "The peak keeps them. It’s too dangerous to remain here, but we want to make sure we can get it back if we need it."

He put the sword on the cart. He walked east, and the mountain watched him go.

The white went away. I was sitting on the root again with my mouth open.

[East! Two days east. Tsuzumi!!! GODDAMMIT!]

I slid off the root. My face landed in the leaves. I stayed there.

[The sword was never here. There’s a peak that "keeps things," whatever that means, and a moth, and I got Lily almost-dissolved for nothing.]

I heard footsteps on the path a while later. They stopped next to my head.

"Kohaku?"

"Mm."

"Did a moth get you?"

"No."

"Then why are you face down in the dirt?"

I rolled over. Lily was standing over me with her arms crossed and dirt up to her elbows. Behind her, the stone was in one piece.

"It’s not here," I said.

"What’s not?"

"The uh... awesome thing. The old thing. It’s somewhere else. It’s always been somewhere else."

She was quiet for a second.

"So we climbed a forbidden mountain for nothing? Twice?"

"Don’t say twice."

"You said three different people were hiding it!"

"They are! They’re just hiding it somewhere else!"

She looked at me for a long moment. Then, she crouched down, put a hand on my head, and patted it twice like I was a dog.

"You fixed the rock, at least," I said into her hand.

"Yeah... Come on. Get up! Up!"

---

Sabine was waiting in the yard when we came down. She had her arms folded and a smile on her face that I recognized from a lot of time behind locked doors.

"Four hours," she said. "For one stone."

"It was a big stone."

"I’m sure it was." Her eyes went to the dirt on my arms, then to the leaves in my hair. "Miss Everdawn did the repair, I take it?"

"Yes, Professor," Lily said.

"And Miss Sakana?"

"Supervised!"

"Supervised. Of course." She tilted her head. "I hope you both got some rest in, at least. It’s a long walk."

Lily went red to the ears. I decided not to help.

"Well, the timing works out. Pack for two nights. The excursion is moving."

"Moving where?"

"The shrine asked us to inspect an interment site while we’re here, and I’ve agreed. It’s an old one. Something on the register has stopped answering to its seal, and they’d like fresh eyes on it. We leave at the fifth bell."

[Interment site?]

"Professor," I said slowly, "where exactly is it?"

"East. Two days. A place called Tsuzumi."

I almost fainted.