Chapter Text
The Morning Splits in Two Directions
One path smells like smoke and risk and unknown signals in the forest. The other smells like heartbreak wrapped in strategy.
You stand at the fork with your padded head, stitched scalp tugging every time you blink too hard, back screaming under leather wrappings. Senku stands beside you carrying far too much and pretending gravity is optional. Taiju and Yuzuriha stand opposite, trying to look like this is temporary and normal and not a surgical tear down the centre of your little four-person universe.
No one is good at pretending.
Taiju rubs the back of his neck, eyes red but blazing anyway. "We'll track Tsukasa. Keep him busy. Keep him pointed away from you guys."
"You'll spy," you translate gently.
"I'LL STRATEGICALLY EXIST VERY LOUDLY," Taiju corrects.
Yuzuriha smiles, but it's the careful kind, stitched at the corners. "And we'll gather information. Movement patterns. Where he camps. What he's breaking."
What she does not say sits behind her eyes like a sealed letter.
I'll rebuild them. Quietly. Patiently. Statue by statue.
You squeeze her hand once. You don't know why it feels like a promise exchange.
"You don't have to sell it that hard," Senku speaks up while smirking with worlds secrets. "Tsukasa already thinks I'm dead. Keep it that way. Our highest tactical value on the board."
Stop measuring your murder like a strategic value.
Taiju's jaw tightens. He hates the sentence. "I don't like saying it." You can't help but agree.
"Good," Senku replies gently. "Means you'll sound convincing."
Taiju turns to you. "You could still come with us."
You shake your head immediately. The motion costs you. Worth it. "Nope. Not walking toward the guy who used me as a tree decoration."
Also not leaving Senku. Not now. Not when I watched his heart go silent and come back like a restarted engine.
Yuzuriha steps in and hugs you carefully around the safe parts. "Don't die again," she whispers.
"Rude," you murmur, arms rising on instinct, even when it pulls at the healing abasions."I only do that once per arc."
She quietly laughs into your shoulder, inhaling shakily before pulling back.
Then Taiju scoops Senku into a crushing hug that ignores all neck-brace science and basic personal space. You and Yuzuriha both flinch at the dull cracking from Senku’s poor neglected spine.
"OW!" Senku screams into Taiju's shoulder. "I just got resurrected! Don't uninstall me again!"
"YOU BETTER LIVE," Taiju booms softly.
"That's the plan."
He sets Senku down like he's breakable. Senku straightens his pelt with wounded dignity. Neither of them look away from each other.
They nod.
They part.
They're so dramatic.
You wave weakly over your shoulder as Senku starts walking away like he's not carrying both of your lives on his back.
You mouth, "Boys." Yuzuriha chuckles, before following Taiju.
They've already said their goodbyes once.
But the mountain doesn't let people leave cleanly. It demands echoes.
You and Senku have just crested the ridge, packs creaking, branches snapping softly under careful steps, when the forest suddenly gets punched by a voice from behind.
"SENKUUU — I PROMISE!"
You flinch so hard your head throbs. "Volume control is still illegal, apparently," you mutter, wincing, turning back.
Taiju stands on the opposite rise, huge against the pale morning sky, fist raised like a victory banner, tears fully visible from here because Taiju does nothing at half-scale. Yuzuriha comes to stand beside him, one hand on his arm, the other lifted in a smaller, steadier wave.
A vow thrown across distance.
Senku stops.
For a split second he just looks. Shoulders heavy with packs. Neck locked in Taiju's improvised brace. Eyes sharp and bright and painfully alive.
Then he chuckles under his breath, the sound warm and rough-edged. He answers quietly, voice pitched low, meant for one person even if air steals it. "Just hang in there until our paths cross again, ya big oaf."
There's no chance Taiju hears it. Every chance it lands anyway.
Senku shifts his shoulders, and tries to reach up and undo the leather tie of the brace. With two bags, two sleeping bags, and every sample of your lives from the past year hanging off him, the manoeuvre becomes a tragic puppet show.
“Hold still,” you say, stepping in.
“I am still.”
You chuckle, “You’re wrestling yourself.”
You set your spear against a rock and work the knot loose, fingers careful around the splinted shaft. The leather neckerchief comes free in your hands, worn soft already. Up close you can see the stitching Yuzuriha added overnight. The crooked rocket and scatter of uneven stars stare back at you like threaded hope on scrap hide.You swallow.
My world's changing once again.
Senku rolls his neck once, testing range, then exhales. “We already had to wait three thousand seven hundred years to see each other. A few more months, or even years, is no big deal.”
He shifts the loads again, settling pain like it’s just another backpack, moving to catch your eyes. “Time is relative, ya know.”
“You’re misusing physics to cope,” you tell him gently.
“I’m repurposing it.”
Instead of pocketing the leather, you retie it higher on the cut spear shaft and lift it upright between you like a tiny standard. A ridiculous, handmade flag. Rocket and stars facing backward for the others to see.
Senku’s eyes flick to it, then to you. Something soft passes through his expression, quick as a meteor. Then he grips the shaft with you.
Together, you hold it there. Not waving. Just claiming.
“But no matter how long it takes,” he speaks, voice steady now, iron under warmth as they meet yours, a ghost of a smile gracing both your faces. “we will build our Kingdom of Science.”
Across the ridge, Taiju still stands with his fist raised. Between the two hills, a promise stretches like a bridge no one can see and no one can burn.
You finally lower the flag, turn, and walk toward the unknown. The forest swallows two of you one way, two the other.
For a while, it's only footsteps and birds, soft crunches and the smell of a world know one asked to be part of.
...And Senku carrying absolutely everything like a stubborn pack mule with a PhD.
"Give me one," you say, reaching for a bedroll.
He pivots away without looking. "Nope."
"I can carry a sleeping bag."
"You can barely carry sarcasm right now."
"I carried you emotionally for a year."
"Non-quantifiable load."
This Nerd!
You grab for your own bag strap. He lifts it higher out of reach without breaking stride.
"Stop that."
"Nope."
"You're not Taiju, give it."
"Not happening, Princess."
"You are listing sideways."
"Optical illusion."
"You're dying."
"Efficiently."
He is, in fact, struggling. Two backpacks, two rolls, tools, clay vessels, even your spear has been wedged between spine and leather. Sweat beads at his temple, his neck brace is gone but the habit of holding himself rigid remains, he refuses surrender.
Stubborn Genius.
You narrow your eyes. "If you collapse, I'm looting you."
"Noted."
You fall into step beside him. The morning light filters thin and grey through the canopy, still carrying the memory of yesterday's rain. Your head throbs in rhythm with your heartbeat. Your back feels like someone tried to file a mountain range off your skin, but you're walking.
He's walking.
That's already more than yesterday promised.
Ahead, Senku has you following a faint column of memory, the mircacle in the air where smoke once lived.
The mystery fire.
You were unconscious when it answered their accidental explosion. You only know the outcome, not the invitation. Senku's expression shifts as he studies the terrain. Fatigue fades behind curiosity.
Curiosity always wins with this one.
"The combustion profile didn't match wildfire," he informs you, gesturing into the distance of his memory. "It was too vertical, too contained. That was built, and then maintained. Intentional."
"Or a forest spirit with a hobby," you pipe up.
"Or humans with fire literacy above zero." He immediately shoots back.
"Or cannibals."
"Statistically low."
You grin, "Never zero."
He snorts, amusement glimmering like stars in his face, then the lecture engine starts turning over. "If someone depetrified independently, the question is mechanism. Our revival required nitric acid plus environmental coincidence over millennia. Cave drip exposure, bat guano nitrates, stone shell permeability…"
He gestures with his chin because his hands are full of your stubborn independence. "Alternate pathways would need comparable chemical aggression. Strong acids, chelation reactions, or high-energy surface disruption."
"Lightning?" you offer.
"Possible but unlikely to produce selective revival without catastrophic damage."
You hum to yourself in agreement. "Aliens."
He raises a brow, "Less likely than lightning."
"Cannibal chemists."
"Now you're just worldbuilding."
You can't help the laugh that rips free, even though it hurts, Senku shakes his head a smirk creeping along his lips, but the laughter doesn't last long.
Unease prickles up your spine like the oldest warning signal. You scan the trees, hand resting on your make-shift walking stick. Every broken branch looks staged. Every shadow looks staffed.
Tsukasa’s brutality still has you on high alert, you doubt it will calm anytime soon, especially with more unknowns popping up like fungus.
"How many," you murmur.
"Unknown."
"If it's a group, they have hierarchy."
He grunts as he shifts the bags again, "Probably."
"If they have hierarchy, they have rules."
"Usually."
"If they have rules, they have punishments."
He glances at you sideways. "You're not wrong."
"If they're not human anymore, rules might be ugly."
"Define human," he says lightly.
You don't answer, your jaw tightening with an impossible answer.
Im so tired.
A few more steps, You sway. He notices without looking and subtly adjusts pace half a notch slower.
"I'm optimistic," he tells you quietly.
"I'm not."
"I know."
"That fire could be bait."
"Everything is bait to someone."
"They could be violent."
"So can we."
"They could outnumber us."
"So we don't get counted." He tells you evenly, a million and one plans already swirling in that big head of his.
You finally succeed in grabbing something. A small tool pouch from the side of his load. He lets you keep it. Victory the size of a matchbox.
"Balance of probabilities," he continues, voice thoughtful now, softer. "If they built fire, they preserved knowledge. If they preserved knowledge, they preserved cooperation. Civilization likes to regrow the same shape."
"Civilization also invents torture," you mumble.
I’ve seen what people do when rules rot.
"True."
"Comforting talk, Nerd."
He smiles faintly anyway, "Get excited."
For a while it's quieter, the sun moves high above your heads. The birds resume their interrupted conversations. Wet bark and nature cling to the air. Somewhere behind you, Taiju is probably already accidentally yelling at a squirrel, and Yuzuriha is probably already gently correcting his volume.
You try not to think about how quiet it is without them.
Senku says nothing for a long stretch. Just breathes. Just walks. Just exists beside you in a way that feels deliberately, stubbornly alive. You focus on that instead of the grief nibbling at your edges.
His shoulder brushes yours. Accident or intent, impossible to parse. You don't move away.
"Hey," you eventually break the quiet.
"Hm."
"When we find whoever made that fire…" He glances a you, waiting patiently for you to finish.
You pick your words carefully, arranging them like kindling. "If they're hostile. If it goes bad. I need you to promise me something."
His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. "You already made me promise to run."
"That was different. That was Tsukasa. This is—"
"This is the same calculation." His voice comes across clinical and flat. “If the threat level exceeds expected win rate, you reset the board. You made your position very clear."
You stop walking turning to face him. He stops too, because he has no choice, you're standing directly in his path, forcing the issue.
"This isn't about probability," you tell him pointedly, your brows knitting, "This is about you deciding you're expendable."
He doesn't deny it.
"I watched you die, Senku. Your chest didn’t move.” Your voice comes out rougher than you meant. "I held your cold pulse-less wrist and screamed at the universe and you didn't come back until I poured science on your neck like a prayer. And I cannot—"
You cut yourself off. Breathe. Your ribs ache, finishing softer, "I can't do that again."
He looks at you for a long, silent moment. Something cracks behind his eyes, just a little, just enough to see through. Then he shifts the packs, resettles his grip, and looks you directly in the eyes, "Then don't let me."
The forest goes quiet.
It's not a promise. It's not even close, but it's the closest thing to I'll try that he knows how to give.
You nod once. “Just, no more sacrificial heroics. You’re a scientist, remember?” you grumble, accepting the non-promise and start walking again.
After a few steps, his shoulder finds yours again.
You let it stay there.
You walk in relative quiet, forest noise filling the spaces where Taiju’s volume used to live. Your walking stick taps stone and root in steady rhythm. Halfway through a step you glance down at the leather tied beneath your grip, Yuzuriha’s stitched rocket and crooked stars, plant thread bright against hide.
You smile despite yourself.
“We could use it as a flag,” you say. “On top of our next house.”
Senku looks over, eyebrow lifting. Not sure which variable to process first:
The fact you’re already planning the next build.
The fact you’re talking about planting banners like a scouting base.
Or the fact you said our house like the answer was pre-decided.
That line lands somewhere behind his ribs and does something statistically inconvenient, so he chooses the safest distraction vector. “A flag?”
“Yeah.” You beam. “Like you’d have on a castle.”
“Why would we have a castle?” he deadpans.
“Because it’s the Kingdom of Science. A kingdom needs a castle. Therefore a flag.” You nod, proud of this airtight nonsense.
“I think your concussion is getting worse.”
“Fuck you.”
“No thanks.”
You choke. “SENKU!!”
He laughs under his breath. “Guess the flag can go on top then. We’ve got a kingdom, a castle, a flag, and you’re a princess, so—”
“I will stab you.”
“Not very princess-like.”
“I’ll show you how un-princess-like I can be in a minute.”
He ignores the threat and pretends to calculate. “Does that make me a prince? Or a king?”
You answer instantly. “Court magician. Or jester, at best. You have the social graces of a rock.”
His brows drop. “Thanks.”
“Anytime, nerd.”
A few more steps pass. The humour thins back into mission. You adjust your grip on the staff. “What if Tsukasa finds whoever made that fire before we do and wipes them out?”
“We’ll just have to hope he doesn’t,” Senku groans as you both finally stop near a cliff edge where the forest thins and the wind actually remembers how to move.
He drops the packs like defeated boulders and collapses flat on his back on the hard ground, chest heaving. For someone who recently died, got resurrected, and declared war on a caveman demigod, he is extremely dramatic about cardio.
You kneel and hand him a drink. He drains it like a machine refuelling mid-mission.
“Let me at least take—” you start.
“We’ve been through this, no.” He gasps between chugs. “Stop being stubborn for once. I’ll take the weight, you take the technical work.”
You sigh. “Fine. I’ll do the cooking and crafting while you live your muscle-bound dreams.”
He snorts, already loading a rebuttal—
CRASH.
The sound punches violently through the forest, sending birds screaming into the skies.
You’re on your feet instantly, at the cliff edge, heart sprinting. A huge plume of dirt and leaf-litter mushrooms upward through the trees below.
“What the—?!”
Your eyes scan the canopy. No storm winds. No rot pattern. No slide line.
“Tree fall?” you murmur. “But there hasn’t been anywhere near enough rainfall—”
You turn and Senku is already looking at you.
Same conclusion. Same name.
“Tsukasa.”
You grab your spear and abandon everything else. Senku is already moving, sliding down the dense slope like gravity personally invited him.
Your head throbs hard enough to blur the edges of the world. You ignore it on instinct.
“If it’s Tsukasa, you need to stay hidden!” you call after him.
“Heh. If he’s fighting someone out here, the probability—”
“Don’t care,” you snap. “He knows I’m alive. Not you. Stay down, assess, and I’ll engage.”
“You’re injured!” he immediately snaps back.
“I’ll be fine enough. He won’t kill me without provocation. Already proven, Nerd. Protecting this person or people gives us an edge to gaining their trust.”
His grin flashes sharp and feral. “We save them, they’re in our debt, then they’ll have no choice but to join the Kingdom of Science!”
“That is NOT what I said at all!”
“Semantics!”
You skid to a stop at the break in the slope. The scene below writes itself in shock. A massive tree lies freshly cut, trunk splintered and clean at the base.
Pinned beneath the angled weight, trapped in a crack in the earth is a girl around your age, wild hair, powerful build, crystal blue eyes blazing up at you both with pure, undiluted defiance.
Not fear.
Defiance.
“It’s you,” she says, recognition sparking. “The sorcerer gentleman who was protecting that girl and—”
Her gaze jumps to you. Back to him.
“You’re alive.”
You drop down beside her instantly. “Are you hurt? Trouble breathing? Any numbness? Bleeding you can’t stop?” Your hands are already checking leverage points, compression angles, where the trunk is actually bearing weight.
You snap your head back. “Senku.”
He lands beside you a beat later, eyes already mapping vectors. “We could risk blasting the trunk with the gunpowder I’ve got left—”
“That could draw Tsukasa back,” you cut in.
He pivots to the trapped girl, urgency sharpening every word. “Can you wait until nightfall? We can go another way. Takes longer, but we can ten billion percent get you out. But, if you feel like you’re dying, we blast it. You’re the only one who can make that call. I need your status right now.”
She doesn’t hesitate. “Bones and organs are fine. I'm pinned, not crushed. I can hold.”
You exhale once. Controlled. “What’re you thinking, Senku?”
He reaches back and draws out his axe. “A compound pulley.”
You nod immediately. No argument. No delay. “Alright. I’ll get started on rope.”
“Rub it down with soap after. We need lubrication. Ten meters should cover it.”
You don’t even blink at the length. If he says ten, it’s ten. Your brain is already inventorying fibres, bark strips, vine strength, twist patterns.
You pivot and move, pain trailing behind you like a complaint you decline to read.
Behind you, the blue-eyed girl frowns up at him. “What’s a compound pulley?”
Senku’s grin returns.
He drives the axe into the upper trunk with sharp, efficient blows, choosing his points like he’s editing reality.
“—The compound pulley,” CHOP, “was first invented by—” CHOP, “old man Archimedes,” CHOP, “a few hundred years BCE.”
“I don’t think she asked for a history lesson, nerd,” you call, crouched nearby, shredding plant fibre between your knife and a flat stone with fast, practiced strokes. “Wasn’t he the guy who made ‘Eureka’ popular?”
Senku stops mid-motion and looks at you like you just labelled oxygen as “air-flavoured.”
“He was one of the greatest mathematical physicists in human history,” he says, wounded on behalf of science itself, “and you remember him as the guy who said ‘Eureka.’”
“What?” you shoot back, offended but grinning. “Brand recognition matters.”
He exhales through his nose and returns to work, switching tasks smoothly, packing measured amounts of gunpowder into the chopped cavities in the log sections he’s preparing as anchor posts.
Behind you, the trapped girl watches the two of you like you’re a traveling circus with tools.
“What’s ‘Eureka’?” she asks at last.
You glance over, still twisting fibres into cord. “It literally means ‘I have found it.’ People say it when they get a great idea. Like—Eureka! I’ve got it!”
“Oh.” She absorbs that, then adds more quietly, “Like how Chrome says ‘bad’ when he finds something cool.”
You blink. That sentence has layers you don’t have time to unpack. You open your mouth to ask,
“Princess, rope,” Senku calls.
You’re moving before the echo finishes. You bring the soaped length over, slick and strong, while he starts assembling the rig: cut logs as posts, axle branch, loop points, friction control. His hands move fast, precise, delighted. You smile to yourself.
He's happiest when his hands move, his brain lighting the way. He's a scientist, but he loves reinventing things in his own ways.
The girl watches him climb with open suspicion. “So what’s that thing even do?”
“Basically—” you begin, anchoring the lower tie.
“This ‘thing,’” Senku cuts in from halfway up the tree, voice bright with showman energy, “turns a skinny high schooler like me—”
He leaps down, grabbing the line and hanging his full weight into it,
“—into Hercules!”
The system bites, a satisfing creak as everything turns into motion. The rope tightens. Loops align. Force multiplies. The pulley rolls and answers, trading distance for power. The massive trunk groans, then shifts, then lifts, bark tearing free of their grip on the earth as the ton-weight rises inch by grudging inch. Dirt rains down as the pressure vanishes from the girl’s torso.
She just lies there a second, stunned, blinking at open sky like it personally surprised her.
You and Senku move in sync, securing the line, tying off the load so it holds without constant tension. Your hands move fast despite the sting from your back. His knots are crisp, exact, and infuriatingly neat.
Senku plants a foot on the secured line and grins like a victorious villain lecturer.
“This,” Senku declares with feral pride, foot braced on the secured line, hair wild, eyes brighter than the day, “is science!”
The forest takes a respectful second to process that. Then birds resume arguing.
The girl under the lifted trunk breathes out like she’s been given permission by the ground itself. You hurry over, crouching beside her, checking pupils, breathing rhythm, limb response. She’s solid as she is strong. Shocked, but intact.
“Amazing,” she says quietly.
You glance up. “The compound pulley usually is.”
“And I’m not talking about Archi—whatever,” she continues. “I mean how you kept going through every single step until you solved the problem. Your perseverance is amazing.”
She takes your offered arm and rises in one controlled motion, stronger than she looks. Warrior balance. A Fighter’s posture. You log it internally, your bruised mind taking notes.
“Guess it’s time to introduce myself,” she announces, retightening her ponytail with swift fingers. “I’m Kohaku. And honestly? I believe I’ve taken quite a liking to you.”
What?
You blink twice, your brain having stuttered.
“Damn, nerd,” you say, jerking a thumb at Senku. “You pulled. Figuratively and literally.”
Senku inhales wrong and nearly deletes a lung. He looks scandalized. Offended. Spiritually inconvenienced. “Ugh. I can’t give one millimetre of support for what I just heard,” he sneers, glaring at Kohaku like she just proposed chaos as a lifestyle. “We just met and you’re already professing your love? That is not how to handle an emergency.”
“I didn’t say anything about falling in love!” Kohaku fires back, pointing at him. He recoils like romance is contagious.
You fail to hide your laugh, badly. Even when your head and chest ache in tandem.
“I’m saying I like you both as people,” she clarifies, “and I think we can work together.”
“Oh.” Senku resets instantly. “Well, thanks. I appreciate it.”
And then, because he is Senku, he steps directly on the rake. “Nothing’s as illogical or trouble-prone as a romantic entanglement.”
You bite your knuckle to keep from laughing out loud.
“I’m Y/N,” you introduce, rescuing the social situation. “And this social rock is Senku. We’re on our own out here, so help would be great. You actually okay?”
She nods. “Bruised. Not broken. I’ll recover fast.” Her eyes sweep your bandages. “You look like you lost a fight with a landslide.”
“I’m alright,” you assure.
“She’s not,” Senku inserts automatically.
Ignored.
“You did better against Tsukasa than I did, by the looks of it,” you tell her.
“You fought that man too?” Kohaku asks.
“More like survived him,” you correct.
She nods with deep, respectful understanding.
“I’d better go grab our things,” Senku says, already turning uphill toward where you ditched the packs.
“I can go—”
He gives you a look that could staple paper.
You raise both hands. “Okay, okay. Resting. But take it easy, you’re gonna pass out.”
“I won’t.” His eyes soften for half a second, his usual private reassurance disguised as annoyance.
“Stubborn,” you grumble.
“Coming from you.”
Kohaku watches the exchange like it’s a strange new sport.
“How long have you and the Sorcerer Gentleman been together?” she asks, gesturing between you.
That derails both of you instantly.
Senku stares blankly, “Sorcerer?”
“Gentleman?” you mimic perfectly.
“I’m a scientist,” he corrects.
“And he is definitely not a gentleman,” you add. He scoffs. “We’ve been annoying the hell out of each other since we were kids.”
Kohaku blinks, processes, then points at Senku. “No, I meant how long have you two been married?”
Aeh?
The silence lands like a dropped anvil, then You and Senku answer at the exact same time.
“We are NOT together!”
An echo startles something in the trees.
Kohaku blinks, unimpressed by the volume if not the conviction. She points at Senku like she’s presenting Exhibit A to a jury of confused trees. “But he called you Princess.”
You open your mouth.
Nothing comes out.
Because unfortunately, she is not wrong. You turn slowly toward Senku.
Look what you’ve done now.
Senku answers flatly and sounding dangerously defensive. “It’s a variable identifier.”
You raise a brow at him. “A what?”
“A designation label,” he continues, already digging the hole deeper with confidence. “High-frequency usage nickname. Efficient for rapid address in field conditions.”
You're soo full of shit.
“You could, just say my name.”
“Longer.”
“It’s two syllables!”
“Wasteful.”
“Where I'm from,” Kohaku starts slowly, “men do not give honour titles to women they are not married to.”
“Not an honour title,” Senku shoots back. “It’s a sarcasm title.”
“That’s worse,” you mutter, rubbing your brow.
He ignores you. “Also inaccurate. She’s not royalty. She’s a logistics hazard with a knife.”
You grin sweetly. “Keep talking and I’ll demonstrate.”
Kohaku folds her arms, satisfied. “So you are together.”
“We are neighbours with a shared survival problem,” Senku corrects again, his finger finding its home in his ear.
“Childhood rivals,” you add.
“Scientific colleagues,” he stacks.
“Argument hobbyists,” you counter.
“Zero romantic flags,” he concludes.
She studies you both for a long three seconds.
“…You’re together,” she repeats.
“Drop it,” you and Senku snap together. That does not help your case.
Senku turns away first, pointing uphill. “I’m retrieving the packs before weather or wildlife steals our inventory.”
He heads upslope, movement efficient but not as effortless as he wants anyone to think.
Kohaku watches him go, then looks back at you with open curiosity. “You worry about him loudly.”
You shrug. “He’s rebuilding civilization. I’m protecting the investment.”
She smiles at that, a smile that's actually approving.
“So,” she says, retightening her ponytail one last time, “you fought the lion-man too.”
“More like got introduced to a tree at high speed,” you reply.
She nods with deep respect. “Accurate description.”
You study her now that the crisis is done. Fighter’s posture. Hunter’s eyes. Pain tolerance filed down to a tool.
Dangerous, but not volatile.
“Your turn,” you say. “You knew him. The ‘sorcerer gentleman.’ You knew about us. How?”
She points vaguely through the trees. “I’ve been watching you since before you guys angered the mountain. You are not subtle.”
Taiju.
“Rude,” you mutter half heartedly.
She shrugs, “Just honest.”
Upslope, something clatters, followed by a very scientific curse. You smile without meaning to.
Kohaku notices that too.