📍 The Garden Pavilion — Elfior Mansion | Afternoon
The dagger was already in the air before anyone understood what was happening.
Nanime struck aside her assistant's dagger, drew the blade in a single motion, and sent it toward Kiyoshi with the flat, unhurried precision of someone who had done this ten thousand times. It crossed the garden in less than a second.
Sakura moved.
[ Lightning Speed — Active ]
She was already reaching when the dagger stopped — three feet from Kiyoshi's face, caught in the air by something that had arrived faster than her hand. A circular blade, thin as wire and sharp as winter, intercepted it from a trajectory that shouldn't have been possible, redirected it into the grass below, and returned to its owner before the echo of impact finished settling.
Nanime caught it without looking.
Throughout all of this, Kiyoshi had been telling the royal maid that the tea was very good.
He turned around.
The dagger was in the grass. Sakura's hand was still outstretched, fingers inches from where the blade had been. Her expression was the particular kind of controlled that meant she was deciding whether to be angry.
Nanime walked over, pulled the dagger from the ground, and looked at Sakura.
"You would have lost a finger," she said. Not unkindly. Factually. "An SS-rank weapon moving at that velocity — you felt it before you saw it, which means your instincts are good. But reaching for it bare-handed is not instinct. That's a habit. Break it."
"...Yes, my lady. I apologise."
"Don't apologise. Remember." Nanime looked at her for a moment longer — the kind of look that takes full inventory. "Your team is known in Ramiya. Lightning Reaper and the Healing Sword. Few people receive B on their first assessment. Fewer still finish sixty consecutive quests without a single reported injury." A pause. "You also have a healer who fights. That combination is rarer than either of you understands yet."
Sakura bowed her head. "Thank you for your praise, my lady."
"It isn't praise. It's observation." Something shifted slightly in Nanime's expression — not warmth exactly, but the border of it. "Train with me tomorrow. Both of you."
"How could I refuse training with the Dark Moon of the Forest — the leader of the Yamogi Gang and the first princess of Elfior?"
The title seemed to settle on Nanime the way titles settle on people who have worn them long enough that they fit without discomfort. She looked at Kiyoshi.
"Tomorrow," she said.
"Thank you, my lady."
📍 The Treetop Chamber | Evening
The room the maid showed them was at the top of the tree.
Of course it was.
The walls curved with the tree's natural shape, the floor was living wood worn smooth by centuries, and three arched windows opened to the full spread of the city below — branches and bridges and magic-stone lanterns as far as the eye could follow, the whole of Elfior glowing amber and gold in the evening.
"We need only one room," Kiyoshi told the maid.
Behind him, Sakura went very still.
The maid's expression remained professionally neutral. "Of course. This room is yours. You can see the city beautifully at night from here. Your meeting with Lord Garion is early tomorrow morning, followed by training with the princess. I'll leave you to rest."
She bowed and left.
The door closed.
Sakura turned on him.
"Why do you have to say it like that?"
"What was I supposed to say?"
"Anything else. Two rooms. Two rooms, Kiyoshi."
"And then what — you lie awake all night in a room alone in the dark listening to every sound this tree makes?"
"That's only when I'm sleeping."
"Which is what you do at night."
Sakura opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked away with her arms crossed.
Kiyoshi leaned against the window frame, looking out at the lit city, trying to hide the fact that he was very slightly pleased with himself for winning that exchange.
"What about Nanime," he said, changing direction before she could reload. "She talked to you like she already knew you. And why call her Princess? She's the lord's daughter."
The irritation on Sakura's face shifted into something more settled — the look she got when switching from arguing to explaining. She sat on the edge of the bed.
"There's a spell called Appraisal. Anyone can use it — even non-awakened people. It shows an adventurer's title. She would have read ours the moment we arrived." She paused. "And she's not just the lord's daughter. Five hundred years ago there was a civil war in the Elf Kingdom — the neighbouring country. Twin brothers, the throne, the second brother lost and was banished. The King of Yavior let him stay, keep his family name, and keep the noble title. Nanime is descended from that line. She's a princess by blood, even if the kingdom that blood belongs to is no longer hers."
Kiyoshi looked at her. "Where did you learn that?"
"The barman."
"How much did that cost?"
"Nothing. Just some conversation." She looked faintly pleased with herself now.
"Hmmm," Kiyoshi said, which meant several things at once.
📍 The Treetop Chamber | Night
They had been in this world long enough that they stopped being careful with each other.
That was the thing nobody warned you about — living alongside someone through enough bad situations makes the careful parts fall away. The version of yourself you maintain for other people, the measured responses, the social distance — it takes energy to hold up, and eventually you run out of energy for it. Somewhere between the thunder night at the inn and the acid lizard and sixty quests and a bed they'd shared for practical reasons that had stopped feeling practical a long time ago, Kiyoshi and Sakura had stopped performing for each other entirely.
Which meant they argued constantly. Not because they disliked each other — the opposite, really. You only argue that freely with someone you trust completely not to leave over it.
"You ate my portion again," Sakura said, not looking up from where she was braiding the edge of her sash.
"I didn't know it was yours."
"It was on my side."
"The table doesn't have sides."
"This table has sides."
"Since when?"
"Since I decided." She looked up. "Also you snored last night."
"I don't snore."
"Kiyoshi."
"Occasionally."
She went back to the sash. He went back to the window. This was a normal evening.
Outside, the Elfior night was doing something no city in Tokyo had ever done — it was glowing. Yellow magic stones along every branch, every bridge, every pathway, pulsing with slow warm light. From this height, at the very top of the tree, the whole city spread below them like a living thing breathing in the dark.
Sakura came to stand beside him without being invited.
She did that now. Stood near him when something was worth looking at, as if sharing the view was automatic. He'd noticed months ago. He'd stopped remarking on it even internally.
Fireflies rose from the canopy far below — dozens of them, drifting up through the amber light in slow spirals. One found the open window and came inside. Just one, unhurried, tracing a lazy golden circle around the room.
It floated toward Sakura.
The light caught her — the white dress she'd borrowed from the mansion wardrobe, gold beads along the hem, the green clip she always wore pulling her hair back from her face. The firefly moved across her cheek slowly.
She looks like an elf goddess.
Kiyoshi thought it the way you think things that aren't meant to go anywhere. Filed it. Looked back out the window.
The firefly drifted back toward him.
"Why do you look so good tonight?"
Sakura said it under her breath, almost to herself, clearly not intending it to come out. A beat of silence. She blinked, as if surprised by her own mouth.
Kiyoshi turned.
She was already looking at him — not with the sharp attention she used in combat or the cold assessment she used on strangers, but something else. Something that didn't have a name in her usual expression catalogue. Just — looking. The way you look at something when you notice it for the first time even though it's been there all along.
Her hand came up slowly. Touched his face.
Her fingers were warm. Light. The touch of someone who wasn't entirely sure why they were doing this but hadn't stopped yet.
Kiyoshi had touched her face. In healing — palms to her forehead when her temperature spiked after a hard fight, fingers checking her jaw after a blow. Clinical. He'd kissed her hands dozens of times for the healing transfer. Her knuckles, her wrist, the back of her palm. That was function.
This was — her thumb near his cheekbone, not moving. Her eyes wide and a little confused, like she was waiting for her own brain to tell her what came next.
His heart was doing something loud.
The firefly drifted between them.
They were very close. He could see himself in her eyes — small, startled — and she could see herself in his. Their breath was in the same space.
And then — at exactly the same moment, at exactly the same speed — they both turned away.
Not dramatically. No sound. Just two people simultaneously deciding that looking at opposite walls was urgent and necessary.
The firefly continued its circuit.
"I'm going to sleep," Sakura said. Her voice was completely normal except for how fast she said it.
"Yes," Kiyoshi said. "Good idea."
"Good."
"Good."
Three seconds passed, during which neither of them moved.
Sakura walked to her side of the bed. Kiyoshi turned back to the window and found the city extremely interesting. The golden moon hung above the forest canopy.
He wasn't thinking about what just happened. He was thinking about the city layout.
He was absolutely thinking about what just happened.
It wasn't — he didn't think it was — he wasn't sure what it was. It wasn't like anything that had a clear label. It was her face in the firefly light and his heartbeat going wrong and something in his body reacting before he'd made any decision about reacting. Curiosity that had moved faster than thought.
He had never been close enough to anyone for this. She hadn't either — he knew that much about her by now.
That was all it was. Probably.
He lay down on his side of the bed. The careful distance. The unspoken line neither of them had named or crossed.
Partners, he thought.
Above them, the firefly traced one last loop through the dark and went still near the window.
He slept.
✦ CODEX — Chapter Thirteen ✦
World Archive: Entries Relevant to Chapter Thirteen
ENTRY 054 — ON KIYOSHI AND SAKURA: HOW THEY FIGHT
Neither Kiyoshi nor Sakura became fighters in this world. They arrived with the foundations already in place.
Kiyoshi's father trained him in swordsmanship and martial arts from childhood — a style more advanced than anything commonly practised in Yavior. He is not a natural athlete but a natural student. He mastered the forms through repetition and analysis, the same way he mastered examinations. In the original world, he didn't fight because he preferred studying. He had the ability and no outlet for it. The outlet found him.
Sakura's capability came through a different route — discipline, observation, and an innate ability to read patterns. She was never trained formally but she learned by watching and then by doing until what she watched became instinct. The system identified what was already latent in her and gave it shape. Her rank and skills provided tools. She provided the will to use them.
Both of them trained extensively in the months after arrival — AMO training grounds, equipment, monster description archives. Sixty completed quests built the rest.
Kiyoshi's ongoing problem: each rank advancement causes physical distress — heavier, slower, more pain, reduced stamina. The source is unknown. It is not normal. The system has not explained it.
End of Chapter Thirteen Codex.