Chapter 41 – O-Oh… My… This Is Rather… Vigorous, Is It Not…

Two days had passed since the battle.

The cafeteria inside the Seldia vigilante corps' headquarters was normally a lively place--voices overlapping, chairs scraping, the comfortable noise of people who worked together. Today it carried a different weight. Something stretched thin in the air, a tension no one named.

Letaria Adeniam sat in her favored spot by the window and stared without much focus at the holographic news display projected across the far wall. Particles of light advertised a seasonal event in the residential district with cheerful fanfare, then segued into a commercial for a new Makina model from one of Syn-Fibra's competitors. She had once thought this technology was something out of a fairy tale--a magic mirror. Now she watched it the way she watched weather: present, unremarkable, ordinary.

(...I have come rather a long way, haven't I.)

She traced it back without meaning to. The cold stone beneath her feet on the day she was cast out. The unfamiliar ceiling she'd woken to after the abandoned factory. Arden, and all the fights that had followed--new places, new enemies, quiet walks through unfamiliar streets, and then Arden again. She had held her dignity as a duke's daughter in front of her like a shield, had let herself be carried by events, had sometimes chosen to be carried, and somewhere in the drift she had settled into this strange, cold, mechanical world--and found warmth in it, too.

Seldia, though, had been wrong these past few days. There was the analysis of the recovered wreckage and the hunt for Blang, who had gotten away again. The corps was visibly on edge. Milea above all--the word "busy" didn't begin to cover it. She was staring down data with an expression that made Letaria hesitate to even ask if she was sleeping.

"Haah..."

A heavy sigh escaped through the gap in her sleeve--the sleeve of a rather nicer set of casual clothes than strictly necessary.

The voice floated up in her memory again. The one from the debris field. Clear and androgynous, speaking directly to her and no one else. Milea still frowned and said "there's nothing in the logs." A voice only she could hear. Was it a fracture in her own mind? Or was it--

"--Hyah--?!"

Something crawled up her spine without warning, and Letaria's shoulders lurched upward in a full-body flinch. It felt like a pair of slender fingers trailing slowly up her vertebrae, one by one. She nearly fell off the bench entirely as she spun around.

"S-Sora! Such a sudden prank is entirely unbecoming--!"

Standing there was a small woman with a full, lush head of light-blue hair threaded through with vivid pink highlights. Sora.

"I'm so sorry! I didn't think you'd jump that much... ehehe, did I scare you too badly?"

Sora pressed her palms together apologetically--but there was a small, sheepish smile on her face. Beneath her eyes, however, the shadows were unmistakable. Dark circles she had no hope of hiding.

"Sora... You haven't been sleeping, have you."

"Hm? Oh, this? I'm totally fine! I had an energy drink this morning, I'm completely energized!"

She gave a cheerful thumbs up--but her voice had no spring in it. She was pushing through something.

"You are not fine in the slightest. A lady cannot allow herself to carry on in such an unhealthy state. ...Come along, Sora. You're accompanying me."

Before Sora could argue, Letaria had her by the wrist and was leading her with no room for discussion down the corridor to the rest lounge. There, arranged in a tidy row as part of the corps' staff welfare amenities, were several automatic massage chairs.

"Sit down, please. I have been meaning to try one of these marvels of civilization myself."

Sora sank into the nearest chair as though pulled down by gravity. Letaria settled into the one beside her, and both reclined.

"These are wonderful, aren't they... the kneading pressure is just right... I can't believe you'd never tried one, Letaria-san..."

The chair activated. Sora went limp almost immediately.

The mechanism worked steadily into Letaria's back, and she found herself making a rather undignified sound--"O-oh... my... this is rather... vigorous, is it not..."--before she could stop herself.

"...Hey, Letaria-san. The new sweet shop that opened on Third Street in the residential district--would you want to go together sometime? Milea-chan was raving about their dango."

Sora's voice had taken on the drowsy, unhurried quality of someone already halfway gone.

"Dango, you say? If Milea recommends it, there can be no doubt."

"Right? And there's this little miscellany shop nearby--it's so cute. One of my seniors at the research institute told me about it. ...You've seemed busy lately too, Letaria-san. I thought it might be nice to eat something good and just... take it easy for a while."

Sora spoke only of this. The recent battle went unmentioned. The voice that Letaria could not stop thinking about went unmentioned. Instead, only quiet ordinary things--how she'd been feeling lately, a shop with good food, the newest dress she'd been hoping Letaria might try.

(...She is being kind.)

Letaria looked at Sora, eyes already drifting closed in contentment, and understood.

Milea. Grain. And now Sora.

They all knew that something had unsettled her--that she was carrying something and pressing down on it. And they had each, in their own way, chosen not to press on it. They simply sat beside her as friends, and gently held her to the warmth of daily life. Anchoring her to the ordinary side of things, because the extraordinary was frightening, and the ordinary was something they could give her.

"...Sora. Dango alone will not be sufficient, I'm afraid. You will also arrange for the finest tea to accompany it, won't you?"

"Ehehe, of course! I'll book us the full course... the very best..."

Sora's voice faded out on the last word.

The massage rhythm had pulled her under entirely.

"...Sleep well, Sora."

Letaria let herself settle into the chair's steady movement and closed her own eyes.

The warmth of the people around her. Ordinary and profound at once.

Perhaps it was that--not the machine, not the battles, not the voice in the dark--that was the most precious thing she had found in this cold iron world.