"I swear I won't do it again. This will be the last time, okay? Please stop crying. Look—I'll make it up to you. I promise to make you a legendary-grade sword. One that will definitely appeal to your soul, something that actually speaks to you the way the others didn't. Right, Sys? We're going to forge something proper. Just please stop crying."
He kept stroking her long black hair, murmuring whatever soft assurances he could find while her shoulders continued to shake and the occasional (cute) hiccup escaped against his chest.
Around them the store remained in mild chaos; a few customers had begun to whisper behind their hands, others were still too unsettled to move from the places they had frozen.
Baba appeared at Benjamin's elbow as if she had simply stepped out of a fold in the air.
In her small, wrinkled hands she carried a long, carefully itemized bill written in a precise, old-fashioned script, which was something in a world where paper was a luxury.
