One more round turned into three.
Neither of them mentioned it. Yuki simply reset her stance after the second round ended and Shin'ya simply picked his sword back up. By the time they actually stopped, the light outside had shifted another few degrees and Shin'ya's arms had entered a new category of tired that he didn't have a name for yet.
He closed his eyes for a couple of mintues.
When he opend them again,he almost felt ready.
---
Preparation didn't take long.
Yuki moved through it efficiently — supplies packed, route decided, a brief conversation with one of the castle staff that Shin'ya wasn't privy to but that seemed to resolve whatever it resolved. She emerged from it with a travel pack over one shoulder and the expression of someone who had been planning this for longer than a few days.
Shin'ya had his clothes. His modern clothes, still completely out of place, still drawing looks from everyone they passed. He'd stopped being embarrassed about it somewhere around day two (for him technically its still the same day). Now it was just a fact.
They left through the castle's side gate as the sun — the very slow, very patient sun — was somewhere in its third act of what was technically still morning.
---
The city looked different from the outside moving through it with a destination in mind.
Before, Shin'ya had been taking everything in — the stalls, the noise, the people stopping to stare at his clothes. Now he noticed different things. The way the streets widened toward the outer districts. The way the stone walls gave way to wood and then to open land. The way the city, viewed from its edges, sat against the landscape like something that had grown there rather than been built.
It was, objectively, a beautiful place.
Shin'ya looked at Yuki beside him.
She walked like someone who knew exactly where she was going and expected the world to adjust accordingly. Auburn hair pulled back in its usual ponytail, a few loose strands catching the light as they moved. Amber eyes fixed ahead, already calculating something. Her travel pack sat on her shoulder like it weighed nothing, which Shin'ya suspected was less about the pack and more about her.
She was, he had decided somewhere over the past few days, probably the most competent person he had ever met. It was mildly irritating.
"You're staring," she said, without looking at him.
"I was observing."
"At my face."
"At the general direction of forward. You were in it."
Yuki's expression suggested she found this answer insufficient but not worth pursuing.
They kept walking.
---
Outside the city walls, the landscape opened up.
Shin'ya hadn't fully appreciated, from the elevated ground where he'd first woken up, how much of this world was just — space. Rolling terrain, patches of forest, distant hills that suggested more terrain beyond. The sky was enormous. Everything felt scaled differently from home, wider and taller and less contained.
He took it in for a few steps without saying anything.
Then — "How far is it?"
"Half a day's travel," Yuki said. "In this world's terms."
"So thirty-six hours."
"Approximately."
Shin'ya did the math. "We're walking for a day and a half."
"Parts of it. There's a village about a third of the way. We stop there."
"And then?"
"And then the forest. Ketsugai is in the forest."
"Of course it is," Shin'ya said. "Legendary swords are always in forests."
"Where else would they be."
"I don't know. A cave. A mountain. Somewhere with dramatic lighting."
"The forest has dramatic lighting."
"Fair point."
---
They'd been walking for what Shin'ya estimated was three hours when he first noticed he was actually keeping up.
Not just physically — though that was also true, his legs had stopped complaining somewhere in the first hour and settled into something that felt almost natural. But conversationally too. He and Yuki had fallen into a rhythm that didn't feel forced, the kind of back-and-forth that developed when two people had spent enough time in close quarters that the awkwardness had worn off.
She pointed out things on the road when they were relevant. He asked questions when he had them. When neither of them had anything to say, the silence was comfortable rather than pointed.
At some point Shin'ya had started talking about home without entirely meaning to — small things, nothing important, just fragments. The lamp on his desk. The view from his window. The particular kind of quiet that existed in his room late at night when everyone else was asleep.
Yuki listened without interrupting.
"You miss it," she said, when he'd trailed off.
"Yeah," Shin'ya said. "I think so. It's hard to miss something when you're still processing that you left it."
She was quiet for a moment. "You think you'll go back."
It wasn't quite a question.
Shin'ya looked at the road ahead — at the distant line of trees that marked the beginning of the forest, still hours away.
"I have to, right?" he said. "Eventually."
Yuki didn't answer that.
He noticed, but didn't press it.
---
By the time the village came into view — small, quiet, built around a crossroads like something out of a storybook — the sun had moved enough that calling it afternoon felt accurate.
They stopped at a small inn at the edge of it. Nothing fancy. Clean enough.
Shin'ya sat down at a table near the window and stretched his arms above his head with the specific satisfaction of someone who had earned the right to sit.
Yuki sat across from him and ordered something without looking at the menu, which suggested she'd been here before.
He watched her for a moment — the way she sat straight even when she didn't have to, the way she glanced around the room once, automatically, taking stock of who was there and where the exits were. Habits of someone who'd grown up knowing that the world was not always safe.
"Hey Yuki," he said.
"What."
"When we find Ketsugai." He leaned forward slightly. "And you get your ability."
"Yes."
"You're still not going to tell me what it is."
"No."
"Even after."
"Especially after."
Shin'ya leaned back. "Mysterious."
"Private," she corrected.
He smiled at that. She didn't smile back, but the corner of her mouth did something that he'd learned to count.
Outside, the sun continued its slow and unhurried journey across a very long sky.
Ketsugai was waiting.
---
To Be Continued