Chapter 91 - Ninety-One: Tadaima

Chapter 91: Chapter Ninety-One: Tadaima

I must get out of here.

"Everyone has a proposition. The city is built on them. The only question that has ever mattered," she said, the shadow dagger freezing in her grip, point aimed casually in my direction, "is whether yours is boring... or interesting."

She was... Vesper?

Why was she--

FUCK. My head hurts.

"...!!!?"

I opened my mouth to say something.

Nothing came out.

Because... I was sure that I had heard this before.

Not something ’like it’ This. Her exact words. The exact pause between "boring" and "interesting." The dagger stopping at that exact angle, tilted three degrees toward my sternum. I knew she was about to uncross her legs and recross them the other way, and then she did, and my stomach dropped out of my body.

The receiving hall flickered. For half a second the crates weren’t there and the floor was a different color and something enormous and cold was sitting on my chest.

Then it was gone.

And the headache arrived.

"---!!!!???"

It came in like someone driving a nail through the back of my skull, slow, with a hammer, taking their time about it.

I didn’t make a sound. I’m not sure how.

I must get out of here.

I know what my thoughts feel like. They have my voice and my rhythm and they arrive with reasons attached.

This one was, undoubtedly mine.

I must get out of here.

Vesper was still talking. Her mouth was moving. Something about appetites. Something about welcome. The sound reached me through a wall of water.

I MUST get the fuck out of here.

My legs wanted to move. Actually wanted to, the way your hand wants to come off a hot pan. My body had already decided and was waiting for me to catch up.

I looked at her one more time.

Black hair. One violet eye, one brown. The dagger spinning lazily.

And floating beside her face, patient as a price tag:

[SMASH / PASS]

[Target: Vesper Solham]

[Tier: Rare]

[Race: Demonic / Half-Demonkin]

[Rank: 2nd Rank (Late)]

[SP Cost: 90]

Ninety.

I had it.

No need to fucking wait.

Whatever was in my skull screaming at me to run... fine. Fine.

But I was not walking out of this building empty-handed. Not while she was standing there, priced, in reach, unclaimed.

I clicked SMASH.

She vanished mid-sentence. The shadow dagger fell where her hand had been and dissolved before it hit the floor.

[Acquisition complete.]

Somewhere upstairs, a maid raised her eyebrow.

"B-big sis? What did you--"

I was already moving.

I went out the brass-bound door, down the steps, through the courtyard, and onto the street without once looking back at the house, and I didn’t slow down until the upper merchant quarter was four blocks behind me.

◇◇◇

I walked home.

I don’t know why I was walking so fast. My legs were doing it on their own, like they had somewhere to be and didn’t trust my brain to get them there.

The upper merchant quarter thinned out behind me. The polished stone gave way to rougher cobbles and the air went from expensive spice to fried street food and wet laundry.

Normal smells. The usual city smells.

They hit me like a wall.

I stopped in the middle of the street and breathed in. Deep. Like I hadn’t smelled anything like this in a long time. Which was stupid. I’d been at Vesper’s warehouse for maybe twenty minutes. Half an hour at most.

So why did the air taste like I’d been holding my breath for weeks?

A catkin vendor was frying something on a cart to my left. The oil popped and spat. Behind her, two women were arguing about the price of lamp oil. A kid ran past me chasing a cat that had stolen something from a basket. The cat was winning.

All of it was loud and bright and *there* in a way that felt too sharp. Like someone had turned the contrast up on everything. The colors were too saturated. The sounds were too clear. The sun was hitting the rooftops at an angle that made the wet tiles shine like they were made of gold, and for some reason that made my chest hurt.

I kept walking.

My hands were shaking. I put them in my pockets. They kept shaking in there too.

I... I was scared.

From what?

Why?

Why would I ever be scared?

It doesn’t make any sense--

Three blocks from the apartment I passed Rose’s bakery. The shutters were up. The bread smell was coming out of the door in a warm cloud. I could hear her humming inside. The same song she always hummed. The one she said her mother taught her.

I almost went in.

I almost walked through that door and sat at the counter and asked for a loaf and just existed in the smell of bread and the sound of humming for a while. Chatting with her about random things.

I didn’t. I kept walking. But my feet slowed down for those three steps in front of her door, and I don’t know why.

The apartment building came into view.

It had the usual peeling paint. Crooked railing. Water stains running down the side like the building was crying about its own sad condition.

I’d never been so glad to see an ugly building in my life.

The stairs to my apartment were exactly where I’d left them. Thirteen steps. I counted them going up.

I opened the door.

◇◇◇

Fenra was on the bed.

She looked up when I came in. Her ears turned toward me first, then her head. Her tail gave one small wag, the automatic kind, the one she does before she’s finished deciding anything.

Then she stopped.

Her nose moved. Once. Twice. Her eyebrow went up.

"Noel?"

That was rare. She doesn’t talk much. Most days she doesn’t talk at all. Her ears say everything her mouth doesn’t bother with.

"...Are you okay?"

Pixia shot off the windowsill and hovered in front of my face, glowing bright and talking fast.

"Noel! Where did you GO? You left earlier without saying anything, you didn’t even take the bread, and I told Fenra you were probably at the guild but then you weren’t at the guild, and I checked TWICE, which was very generous of me by the way—"

I didn’t hear the rest.

I crossed the room and hugged Fenra.

Hard and in both arms. I pulled her off the bed and into my chest and held on.

"N-Noel?! What are you—"

She went completely stiff. Her whole body locked up. I could feel the heat coming off her face even through my shirt.

"Wh-what are you doing?"

I didn’t answer... I couldn’t.

My throat had closed and my eyes were burning and something in my chest that had been clamped shut for however long it had been... weeks, minutes, a thousand years... finally let go.

I started crying.

"...I’m home," I said.

◇◇◇

The silence was heavy in the room.

Then Pixia, from somewhere above my head, in a whisper that was not a whisper at all.

"Eh? Why is Noel crying?"

Fenra’s voice, muffled against my shoulder. "I don’t know."

"Did you *do* something?"

"I didn’t do anything!"

"Are you SURE? Because he came in and hugged you and now he’s crying, and that’s usually a sequence—"

"I was on the bed! I have been on the bed all day!"

"Okay, well, something happened."

"I KNOW something happened!"

They kept arguing. Right over my head. One tiny glowing fairy and one flustered wolfkin, having a full investigation into the crime of me while I stood there soaking Fenra’s shoulder.

I felt that it was the best sound I’d ever heard in a long, long time.

Slowly, Fenra’s arms came up.

It took her a while. I felt her hands hover somewhere around my back, unsure, twice starting and twice stopping. She’s never been the one doing the holding. That’s not the shape of us.

Then she decided.

Her arms closed around me. One hand settled between my shoulder blades. The other went up to the back of my head, careful, like she thought I might break.

"It’s alright, Noel," she said quietly.

Her tail started wagging. I felt it hit the bedframe.

"It’s alright. You’re home."

I cried harder.

She didn’t ask what happened. She didn’t ask where I’d been. She just stood there in the middle of the apartment and held me and let me ruin her shoulder, and every thirty seconds or so she said it again.

"You’re home."

◇◇◇

Later, I sat on the edge of the bed.

Fenra sat next to me. Close. Her shoulder against mine, her tail across my leg, her ears pointed at me and refusing to point anywhere else.

Pixia landed on my knee, sat down, and crossed her arms.

"So are you going to tell us what happened or not?"

"I don’t know what happened."

"That’s not an answer."

"It’s the only one I’ve got."

She studied me for a second. Then she sighed, uncrossed her arms, and let it go. Which, for Pixia, was practically a religious act.

I closed my eyes.

Then I let out a breath I felt like I’d been holding for years.