Time moved slowly onward, and the night settled over the harbor like still water.
Liyue Harbor was gradually growing quiet.
The night mist hung low and soft.
Lilting, melancholic music drifted across the docks.
Aboard The Crux Fleet's ship moored at the wharf, Kaedehara Kazuha sat perched atop the mast, playing a transverse flute.
It was a Liyue instrument. Its notes rang clear and bright, carrying far into the night.
Beside him, a copy of 5 Centimeters Per Second lay open, its pages turning softly in the breeze, one by one.
The tune he played was a folk melody from his homeland.
Below the mast, the sailors who had stayed aboard were uncharacteristically subdued — none of the usual rowdy noise that followed a night of drinking.
A few of them were draped over the railing, bottles in hand, taking slow, steady sips. Their eyes were red-rimmed. Even the toughest among them had tears running down their faces.
"Ahh... time really is cruel." One of the young sailors started talking, voice low and distant. "I remember back home I had a childhood sweetheart. She used to follow me around everywhere, like my own shadow. One day I asked her why she always tagged along, and she told me she liked me — said when she grew up she wanted to marry me. I took her out to the fields once and shaped a little city out of mud, promised her I'd make her my bride someday..."
"Didn't you say you never got married?" the middle-aged sailor beside him cut in.
"That's right, I never did." The young man nodded. "Because not long after that, my dad got a posting as a sailor here in Liyue Harbor, and my mom and I had to move too. I said goodbye to her and we went our separate ways. I always wanted to go back and see her, but I never had the money, and my family wouldn't let me. So I let it go. It wasn't until later, after I joined Sister Beidou's Crux Fleet and got my first paycheck, that I finally went back to that village." He paused. "But the girl who used to shout every day that she was going to marry me — she was already someone's mother. She'd married a man who wasn't as good-looking as me, wasn't as strong as me. At first I thought maybe she'd been forced into it. But then I saw her face from a distance — that smile — and I knew. She was happy. Really happy. So I turned around and left without saying a word. But I've never been able to let her go." He exhaled slowly. "Miss Fang Qiu's 5 Centimeters Per Second... she really wrote it straight into my heart."
As he spoke, the tears spilled over, falling one by one into the sea below.
"Here. Drink."
The middle-aged sailor watched the young man with a quiet sigh and held out a bottle to him.
The two of them had worked side by side on this ship for several years now.
Once, when The Crux Fleet was caught in a hurricane at sea, a civilian vessel nearby had been caught in the same disaster. Captain Beidou, seeing the small boat tossing in the towering waves, hadn't hesitated — she'd ordered her crew to pull it into safety, keel-cracking risk be damned.
That day, this young man had gashed his arm wide open saving the ship. Blood everywhere. The ship's supply of numbing medicine had run dry, so they'd had to stitch him up with nothing to dull the pain.
But the kid hadn't shed a single tear. He passed out cold the moment the last stitch was tied.
A tough man by any measure — worthy of standing alongside the best of them.
And yet, the moment he started talking about the past, the tears wouldn't stop.
The young man raised the bottle and drank several long, gulping swallows. Then he let out a slow, heavy breath and tilted his head back to look at the stars filling the sky above.
"Kazuha really plays beautifully," he murmured.
"Hey, Li-ge," he said quietly, "do you think I'm like what Miss Fang Qiu wrote — that I shouldn't be living in the past anymore? That it's time to let go and look forward?"
"Who knows."
The middle-aged man shrugged. "Everyone's got things they can't let go of, big and small. Just go with the flow. Here — drink."
"Yeah. Drink. Drown it all in one good drunk."
The other sailors nearby raised their bottles in agreement.
"Ha—" The young man breathed out again and took another hard, deep pull from the bottle.
Up on the mast.
Kazuha listened to their conversation in silence, his fingers never pausing, the flute's voice never faltering.
He said nothing at all.
Meanwhile, in the captain's quarters.
"This girl Fang Qiu — she really can write."
Beidou closed the cherry-pink cover of the book, lifted her jug, and took a swig.
"No kidding. I finished it and now I don't even feel like practicing Rock 'n' Roll anymore."
Xinyan beside her let out a sigh.
"Oh? What's that about? Did you have a childhood sweetheart you missed too?"
Beidou raised an eyebrow, wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand, and gave Xinyan a curious look.
"No, nothing like that. But after reading what Miss Fang Qiu wrote, I could feel that kind of regret. I really could."
Xinyan shook her head.
"Ah. That's exactly what makes this girl impressive," Beidou said.
"What about you, Sister Beidou? Did you ever have a childhood sweetheart?"
Xinyan asked.
"A childhood sweetheart? Absolutely not." Beidou laughed and waved a dismissive hand. "When I was little, all I had in my head was killing that big fish — the one whose head I've already taken. That was all I ever thought about."
"That is so you, Sister Beidou," Xinyan said.
"Speaking of which, I wonder how that woman's preparations are coming along. I'm actually looking forward to seeing what she pulls off."
Beidou's eyes narrowed slightly, a glint of anticipation in them.
"That woman? Which woman?"
Xinyan blinked — and then it clicked. Tianquan. Lady Ningguang.
"Right — Sister Beidou, I heard Tianquan is recruiting people with musical talent. I've been thinking about whether I should go sign up. Might be a chance to get some exposure for Rock 'n' Roll."
"Sure, give it a shot," Beidou said.
At that same hour, at Yujing Terrace.
The night had grown late. Closing time had long since passed.
The Yuehai Pavilion was all but empty save for the guards, the secretariat staff, and the lights still burning on the top floor.
The top floor of Yuehai Pavilion blazed with light.
Ningguang stood on the terrace, gazing out over the whole of Liyue Harbor below.
A gentle wind swept through, lifting her platinum hair and the hem of her robes in a soft ripple.
After a moment on the terrace, she turned and returned to her desk.
On the desk sat a book and a stack of documents.
The cherry-pink book had been set to one side.
It was Fang Qiu's new novel — 5 Centimeters Per Second.
Placed squarely in the center of the desk were the preparatory documents for the production of a Sword and Fairy film.
There were purchase lists for the tools and equipment needed for filming, application résumés, and a detailed report on covert promotional strategies for the Sword and Fairy film.
It was, on the surface, just a small film production. But her instincts as a merchant told her otherwise. She could feel it — Sword and Fairy was going to open up a blue ocean that no one had sailed before.
And her fleet, the first to enter those uncharted waters, would claim a territory far beyond anything that came after.
Of course, that was only true if her ship didn't capsize first.
After all, the marketplace was a battlefield. If Sword and Fairy sank — if the film turned out to be a disaster, drowning in bad reviews — then the moment the other merchants saw it come out, they would catch on and flood in one after another.
"Still," Ningguang mused, her gaze drifting out toward the terrace, a faint smile curling at the corner of her lips, "that girl Fang Qiu has quite a head for business herself. Otherwise she wouldn't have arrived at the same plan I did — and even come up with a few angles I hadn't thought of. Given time, once she's built up enough Mora, I imagine she'll make her move into the business world. When that day comes..." Her eyes narrowed slightly. "There'll be one more interesting player on the board."
"How delightful," she said softly. "I really am looking forward to it."
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