Chapter 71: Awkward

A boar came out of the brush at a full charge, tusks down and screaming.

Lily cut it in half.

She didn’t even set her feet. She just swung, and the two halves of the boar slid past her on either side and hit the dirt. She looked down at them, then at her sword, then back at us with her mouth open.

"W-Whoa.... That one just... died!" Lily said.

[It sure did, Lily, you monstrous heroine. It sure did. I couldn’t be prouder.]

The second boar came out ten seconds later from the opposite side. Serena didn’t draw anything. She raised one hand, the air in front of it went white with frost, and the boar ran straight into it and came out the other side as a boar-shaped block of ice. It tipped over and shattered on a rock.

I sat down on a log, pulled a courtship pear out of my bag, and took a bite.

[Yeah, this is going to be fine.]

For the next hour I watched two of the strongest people alive clean out a forest like they were doing chores. Lily cut things and Serena froze them. Occasionally something would come at me, one of them would kill it before it got within twenty feet, and I’d nod my thanks and keep eating. I didn’t touch my sword once. I’m not even sure I remembered where I’d put it.

Around the fourth boar, though, I started noticing something else.

They weren’t talking.

That was obviously normal for Serena, since Serena didn’t talk to anyone on principle. But Lily talked to everyone. Lily talked to trees, occasionally. And yet here she was, walking three steps behind Serena, opening her mouth, closing it, and then looking at the ground like she’d dropped something.

"Um," Lily said at one point. "That was a good freeze. On the last one. Very... cold."

Serena narrowed her eyes briefly.

"... Thank you."

"You’re welcome!"

Then nobody said anything for another twenty feet of trail, and another boar died screaming.

[What the hell is this?]

I chewed my courtship pear and thought it over.

In the book, these two had no relationship at all. Their first real interaction was Serena feeling insulted by Lily’s existence at Marisol’s tea party in Chapter nine, and after that it was straight villainy until the final battle. Serena hated Lily on sight! Lily was too nice to hate her back, and that was the entire dynamic for four hundred Chapters. There was no awkward phase.

This, though, was just pure, thick tension.

[Okay, I get Serena’s side. She’s hiding a dick, I told her Lily’s going to see it, and now she can’t stand within arm’s reach of her without imagining the headline. Fine, that tracks. But Lily? What’s Lily got to be weird about? Serena gave her a divine core and walked away. That’s a gift. You say thank you and you move on with your life. Instead she’s acting like she owes her money.]

Lily glanced back at me. I gave her a thumbs up. She turned pink and faced forward again, which didn’t help at all, and then she started walking a little closer to Serena. Serena, without looking, drifted a little further away.

They did this three times. It was like watching two magnets that couldn’t decide which end was which.

[Did something happen? Did I miss something? When would they even have been alone together? We’ve been in the same room for-]

Something warm and furry pushed its way out of my collar.

The weasel climbed onto my shoulder, sat up on its back legs, and stared off into the trees. It wasn’t looking at the girls or the boars. It was looking over the ridge, toward the one direction we weren’t going, which was northeast.

Its whole body was pointed at that mountain like a compass needle, and it was grumbling in its throat, something I hadn’t heard from it before.

I scratched under its chin with one finger. It didn’t stop staring.

"Soon, little buddy," I said quietly, so the two of them wouldn’t hear. "Soon."

Up ahead, Lily said "nice freeze" again, Serena hissed like a kettle, and the fifth boar of the morning died before it could add anything to the conversation.

---

{Lily}

The seventh boar was the smallest one yet, and I felt a little bad about it.

It came out of the ferns already limping, saw the three of us, and squealed like it wanted to go home. I cut its head off anyway, since that was the job, and then I wiped my sword on the grass and told myself it had probably eaten a lot of rice.

When I straightened up, Serena was looking at me. Her eyes were on my lower back, right around where my shirt had ridden up from the swing, and they stayed there for a full second after I turned around.

We both froze.

She looked away first. She looked at a tree, then at the sky, then at Kohaku, who was sitting on a rock behind us with pear juice on her chin, humming.

I looked at my own boots.

[Don’t say anything. Just don’t.]

"Hey!"

Kohaku’s voice snapped both our heads around. Her little spirit had wriggled out of her collar, dropped to the ground, and taken off running back down the trail the way we’d come. Kohaku was already up and stumbling after it with her bag half open.

"Wait here, I’ll be right back!" she called over her shoulder. "It’s cleared, I’ll be fine, just don’t wander! YOU COWARDLY SON OF A- WEASEL, GET BACK HERE!"

Then she was gone around the bend, still shouting.

The forest got very quiet.

Serena stood on one side of the trail with her arms crossed. I stood on the other side with my sword still out, since I’d forgotten to put it away.

To be honest, I wanted to say something but I wasn’t too sure what. The Duel Festival had passed. Maybe I could ask about the Divine Core? I still didn’t really know why she’d given it to me. Kohaku had dodged that question rather impressively when I asked.

I didn’t get the chance, though.

"So," Serena said.

"Yeah?"

"Has she put her hands on you yet?"

I turned to look at her so fast I nearly dropped the sword.

"Excuse me?"

"Sakana." Serena didn’t uncross her arms. She said it to the trees, casually, like she was asking about the weather. "You share a room. We now share a futon, apparently. I’m asking whether she’s taken advantage of that arrangement. It’s a simple question."

"It is NOT a simple question! That’s, that is a horrible thing to ask someone!"

"Is it? You know how those beastkin are. No sense of boundaries at all. They see something they want and they take it, and they don’t care who’s watching."

My face went hot. I could feel it crawling up from my collar.

"Kohaku isn’t like that."

"Everdawn, she stares at your chest when you tie your shoes."

"S-She stares at everyone’s chest! That’s just her face!"

"And you’re fine with it?"

"It’s not my business what she looks at!"

Serena finally turned her head. Her mouth went flat, which was what it always did right before she said something she’d been holding onto for a while.

"You always were easy about that sort of thing."

I stopped breathing for a second.

[She did not just...]

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You know exactly what it means."

"No, I don’t, so say it. Say it out loud, Serena, I would love to hear you say it."

"It means you never had a problem with anyone’s hands, as I recall, and I find it interesting that you’re pretending otherwise now."

"THAT’S," I said, and my voice cracked and I hated it, "that’s rich, coming from YOU."

Her arms tightened.

"Careful."

"You’re the one who wouldn’t let me touch you! I sat on that bed for two hours! I asked you six times! You wouldn’t even take your shirt off, you just sat there in the dark like a statue and told me it was late!"

"It WAS late."

"It was eight o’clock!"

"There were circumstances you didn’t understand."

"Then explain them! I’ve been waiting a year for you to explain them and instead you show up at my door at dawn and hug my roommate!"

"That was not a hug."

"I SAW IT!"

Serena opened her mouth. I leaned forward without meaning to, and then the ferns exploded.

Kohaku came out of them backwards, holding the weasel by the scruff of its neck and covered in leaves.

"Got it! Little bastard made it halfway to the road, I swear it was trying to-"

She stopped.

I had turned away, and so had Serena. We were both standing with our arms crossed, facing opposite directions, and I could feel my bottom lip sticking out, and I couldn’t make it stop.

Kohaku looked at me, then at Serena, then down at the weasel.

"Uh," she said. "Did I miss something?"