Chapter 994: [994] : Return

"Besides," Shin added, "it's not like I'm anyone to you anyway. Why would you need my permission?"

He said it offhand, like a throwaway observation.

Alice's expression changed immediately.

"Is that so," she said. Her voice had gone very flat and very precise, which was somehow worse than if she'd raised it. "Nobody to me. That's what you said."

"You know, I had just started thinking you were actually worth something, and then you say that."

"I see now. I finally understand you clearly." Shin turned to look at her. "I was being—"

"Figure it out on your own," she said.

He paused.

"Alice," he said. "We're leaving now. I'll take care of your mother. You have my word on that."

Something in her posture shifted. Not a lot, but enough.

"Fine," she said.

She didn't say anything else, but she stopped leaving the space between them quite so intentionally.

Progress.

——————————

The three of them stepped out of the guild and into the open air. The city moved around them at its usual midday pace—merchants, foot traffic, the distant sound of someone arguing over a price two streets over.

Lucy, walking just slightly ahead of the other two, seemed to be doing an excellent job of not visibly enjoying herself.

"Alright," Shin said. "Everyone stay close. I can get us there."

Lucy tilted her head. "What method are you using?"

"Space-time transfer. Direct jump."

"Can you even do that? You don't know where we're going."

He paused. "Right. Good point. Which direction is the capital?"

Lucy pointed north.

"That way. Far, though. I want to be upfront about that."

"Far is fine."

"You still don't know exactly where to aim," Alice said, studying him with her arms crossed. "Spatial transfer without a precise destination is dangerous. What if you miscalculate?"

"I won't."

"How do you know?"

"Experience."

She did not look fully convinced, but she did stop arguing.

Shin looked at the two of them.

"Here's the thing—the technique works better with physical contact. Close is better than loose." He kept his voice neutral. "So you're both going to need to hold on."

The sisters looked at him.

Then at each other.

Then back at him.

"That's convenient," Lucy said.

"I knew it," Alice said.

"It's a mechanical requirement," Shin said. "I'm not..."

"You've been planning this," Alice said.

"I absolutely have not—"

"You're so obvious," Lucy said.

"I'm going to start leaving both of you behind when I travel," Shin said.

Despite everything they'd said, both of them stepped in close.

Shin kept his expression even and his thoughts entirely to himself.

Lucy glanced up at Alice, who was looking steadfastly at a point somewhere above Shin's left shoulder.

"Sister," Lucy said softly, "are you nervous?"

"No."

"You look nervous."

"I'm thinking about Mother."

And that was true too, underneath everything else. Lucy felt it as soon as Alice said it—the nervousness wasn't just about Shin, wasn't just about the strangeness of all of this. It was older than that.

"She's going to be there," Lucy said quietly. "Actually there."

Her voice had gone small.

She had been three years old. A toddler. She had memories the way toddlers have memories—impressions more than images, warmth without detail. A presence. The specific way someone smells when they hold you.

And then it was gone.

She'd grown up in a palace where everyone respected her and no one particularly knew her, and somewhere in the back of every room she'd ever walked into was the quiet knowledge that there was a version of her life she'd never gotten to have.

Now it was possible she'd get to have it.

That terrified her in a way she hadn't prepared for.

Alice felt her sister go still and pulled her closer.

"Hey," she said. "I know."

"What if she—"

"She won't."

"You don't know that."

"I know her," Alice said. "She carried us both in the same hands. She's not going to come back and leave you behind again. That's not who she is."

Lucy pressed her face into Alice's shoulder.

"I've wanted this my whole life," she said. "I didn't know I was scared of it."

"You're allowed to be both," Alice said.

For a long moment neither of them said anything.

Then Lucy laughed once, small and a little wet.

"Mother always told me the best things feel terrifying right before they happen."

Alice looked down at her.

"She used to say that to me too."

Shin watched the two of them and said nothing. He'd learned enough by now to recognize when silence was the right call.

After a moment, both sisters turned back to him—Lucy with red-rimmed eyes and a stubborn expression, Alice with her composure reassembled and something quieter living underneath it.

"Well?" Alice said. "Let's go."

Shin nodded.

"Hold on." He raised one hand and let the technique gather—that particular stillness before space folded, that sense of the world pulling its breath in.

"Yomotsu Hirasaka."

The air around them collapsed inward.

A dark vortex tore open without warning, and all three of them were pulled through it in the space of a blink.

——————————

They came out standing in sunlight.

A wide plaza stretched in every direction, stone-paved and crowded, banners hanging from every visible surface in colors Shin didn't recognize. Music was playing somewhere at a distance, low and ceremonial, the kind that only comes out for occasions that happen once a year.

The capital of the Restoration Empire.

And today, of all days, was the day the Empire celebrated its patron deity—the Spirit King, the ancient being who had pulled this nation back from the edge of extinction, revered by spirit and human alike in equal measure.

The plaza hummed with it. Offerings at roadside shrines. Children dressed in formal clothes they'd clearly been warned not to get dirty. An old woman pressing her palms together in front of a carved stone figure twice her height.

Shin looked at all of it.

'Of all the days to arrive.'

He glanced at the two sisters.

Alice had gone very still. She was looking at the banners—at the symbol on them, the one that meant something to her specifically—and her expression was unreadable in the careful way that meant she was feeling something she hadn't budgeted for.

Lucy was looking at everything with wide eyes.

Shin quietly decided to let them have the moment.

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