Chapter 213 - Late Night Tavern
The tavern was quiet that night.
Just me and Nanahoshi, a rare thing, lately.
I'd wrapped up the afternoon lesson with Julie and Zanoba and sent them both home early. Julie had actually enrolled at the Magic University, for the record. Voiceless Casting will open doors, even if her total mana reserves aren't much to write about. For puppet-making, though? More than enough.
------
Nanahoshi was sipping her drink.
Slowly. Delicately.
I smiled. "What's going on with you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Why are you drinking like that?"
She tugged the corner of her mouth and downed the entire glass in one go, then slammed it onto the table.
"Better?"
"Much. So where are Cliff and Orsted tonight?"
Nanahoshi waved the owner over for refills before answering.
"Orsted has something to handle. Cliff's kid is just over a year old — he says it's a critical stage. Won't leave the child's side at night."
"Just over a year..."
I turned that over in my head.
Tina just turned two.
Hm. Was I an irresponsible father? Here I was, perfectly at ease drinking outside on a weeknight, not a shred of guilt in sight. Cliff had completely outdone me.
"Rudeus." Nanahoshi's voice cut through my spiraling thoughts. "What's with that face?"
"Nothing."
"Haha! I know that look. You're thinking you're not as responsible a father as Cliff, aren't you?"
"...How did you even guess that."
"When your expression goes weird, it's always one of two things — your wives or your daughters."
I smiled and didn't deny it.
Nanahoshi really did understand me. Better than most people. The strange half-formed thoughts rattling around my head, she'd catch them before I even finished thinking them.
I steered us onto safer ground.
"So how's the Mana Storage Device coming along?"
"Pretty smoothly, actually. A few more years and we should have it."
"That fast? Can we push it further?"
"You and Cliff have done a lot on that front, honestly."
"And that other thing you mentioned — the potion research. What exactly is that?"
Nanahoshi smiled. She channeled mana into the storage ring Orsted had given her and pulled out a small bottle. The liquid inside caught the light, gold and faintly luminous.
Something about it tugged at my memory.
"Is that..."
"The potion you gave me before. The one that turned me into a Dragonoid." She set it on the table. "This one is mine, I made it myself. It doesn't work."
"You're trying to replicate it?"
"I'm trying." She turned the bottle slowly in her fingers. "Not going well, though. I genuinely don't know when I'll crack it, or if I ever will."
"How stuck are we talking?"
"Put it this way, compared to the Mana Storage Device, this potion is a complete dead end."
"Did Orsted ask you to research it?"
Nanahoshi shook her head.
She looked at me then. Just looked. And I looked back, neither of us saying anything, until something shifted in her expression and she laughed.
"I'm researching it for you."
"Huh?"
"I don't want you dying on me so soon. Is that hard to understand?"
"...Where is this coming from? I'm twenty-nine."
"And I can live for hundreds of years. Maybe thousands. Whether I ever make it home is still an open question." She met my eyes. "So I want you to stay alive. Otherwise it's going to get very boring around here."
She took a long drink after that. Then propped her chin on her hand and watched me with that expression she gets, reading me like a text she'd already memorized.
Honestly?
I was touched.
A friend who would quietly spend years trying to extend your life and then tell you it was just because she'd be bored without you, there was something in that I didn't quite have words for.
"You know," I said, "if even you're calling it a dead end, I might die before you figure it out."
"Yeah... I don't have a direction yet. Orsted doesn't know much about it either. But I have to try something."
"Don't go getting sentimental on me. Even if I die, my kids will be around for you."
I finished the wine left in my glass and kept going.
"Actually, it should be me asking you the favor. After I'm gone, Sylphie and Roxy are both going to live for a long time. Keep them company, will you?"
"No."
"You've always said you liked them."
"Liking them is one thing. They're my friend's wives. There's a line." She added a little sing-song tilt at the end of it.
"What are you, some old man with a code of honor?"
"Hahahaha... Relax. Maybe this round of research goes nowhere, but there's time. Plenty of it. And there will be a next time, I'm sure of that."
"I have absolutely no idea what you just said."
"Good. Now drink."
------
I ended up carrying her home.
Nanahoshi's dormitory was too empty. I'd furnished it as best I could, but the place still felt hollow in a way furniture couldn't fix. She'd told me herself, more than once, that she liked the feeling of my house better.
Loneliness. That was the word underneath it.
I'd have her come by more often.
She had her arms around my neck, head resting against my shoulder. Not particularly drunk, she's a Dragonoid; I'd be amazed if alcohol even touched her at this point. She just wanted to be carried because she couldn't be bothered to walk.
"Rudeus."
"What? You smell like a distillery."
"Ha? You should be used to it by now."
"Fair. What do you want?"
"Nothing. I just want to talk. That a problem?"
"Pick a topic."
Her head lolled further onto my shoulder. Eyes closed. She thought about it for a few seconds.
"Have you ever been to Japan?"
"No."
"What do you think you'd make of it?"
"How would I know? I've never been."
"You've never watched videos, looked anything up?"
"Filters. All of it. I went to a famous scenic spot once, looked stunning online. In person..." I trailed off.
"Hahahaha. Yeah, Japan's the same."
She reached up and pinched my cheek.
"So if I make it back, is there anywhere you'd actually recommend?"
"Not really. I didn't get around much in my past life."
"Okay, then... where was your home? Specifically."
"Haven't I mentioned it?"
"More specifically."
My home.
Funny, if she hadn't brought it up, I might have let it slip away entirely. The memories of that place had been blurring at the edges for years now. But my mother's face from that life, I still had that.
I hoped she was all right.
"XXXXXX."
"That's a mouthful..."
"It's Chinese."
"I've got it memorized now."
After that, we talked the whole way back, bits and pieces from our past lives, things we'd seen, things we half-remembered.
The lights of home came up slowly through the dark, and we kept walking toward them.
➤ Next: Friends, Nighttime — Words Unspoken