The clearing was quiet now, the fog slowly creeping back in to fill the space where the wolves corpses had been. Sakura had wheeled herself to a relatively flat patch of ground and was looking between the two of them with the expression of someone who had already moved on from the fight entirely.
"So." She folded her hands in her lap. "Now that we're a party, it would be good to know what everyone's working with."
"You decided the party part." Yuki grumbled in a low tone while looking to the side making Victor try hard to not laugh.
"We all decided it." Sakura said pleasantly ignoring Yuki's grumpy comments. "Anyways~ Talents, skills, anything useful to share."
"You don't have to share yours." She quickly glanced at Victor and continued in a serious tone that was devoid of all her usual mischeviousness. "Seriously. In a place like this a strong talent is basically a target on your back. So if you'd rather keep it to yourself that's fine."
"It's fine, I trust—" Victor started but he was interrupted by an excited Sakura.
"Mine is Arcane Amplification! " She said, already starting her explanation, as Victor paused mid-sentence and in the just internally sighed.
"S-Rank." She sat up slightly straighter in her chair, her rose coloured eyes bright and fixed on him in a way that was barely containing her excitement. "It enhances whatever magic skill I learn. Not just a little either, it grows with me as I level up so the higher my level the more it increases."
She gestured at the fog around the clearing.
"Appraisal for example is supposed to be a single target skill, you point it at something and you get its stats. Mine covers the entire surrounding area like a net. Right now about fifty metres, but that'll grow." She tilted her head slightly, still watching him. "That's how I knew where the wolves were coming from."
Victor's brows rose slightly as he connected the dots and Sakura caught the reaction immediately.
"Right?" She leaned forward a little, elbows on her knees. "And that's just a basic utility skill. Once I get my hands on proper offensive magic—" she let that sit for a second, "—it gets a lot more interesting."
Victor looked at her for a moment. "...That's genuinely terrifying."
The smile that broke across Sakura's face was filled with excitement and pride. Apparently that was exactly what she'd been hoping to hear...
....
Yuki was looking to the side.
She wasn't sure exactly when that had happened. One moment she had been watching the conversation and the next her gaze had just drifted, settling somewhere on the treeline where the fog was thick enough that there was nothing actually worth looking at.
Victor had called Sakura's talent terrifying and her sister had lit up like a christmas tree , which was fine. It was a completely normal reaction to a genuinely impressive talent and Yuki was not bothered by it in the slightest... Not even a bit.
Her arms had folded across her chest at some point, she also wasn't sure when that had happened.
'He's always been like this.' She thought flatly. 'Giving her exactly the reaction she wants, every single time, like clockwork. It was annoying back then and it's annoying now.'
Her bottom lip had pushed out slightly.
She continued gazing into the fog because it was really very interesting, very thick ,very grey and extremely worth studying.
'And he's just standing there like— and Sakura is doing that thing with her eyes that she always does when she wants him to keep looking at her and he's just— he's not even—'
"Yuki."
She blinked. Sakura was looking at her with an expression of pure, barely contained satisfaction.
Yuki became aware of several things in rapid succession. The folded arms, the direction her face was pointing and the fact that her lower lip was doing something she would not be acknowledging.
She unfolded her arms with great composure and returned her gaze to the front.
"What." Her voice came out a bit clipped but she did her best to stay composed.
Sakura stared at her for a few moments before responding in a tone that meant the actual opposite of what she was thinking "Nothing...Did you want to share your talent?"
"Battle Intuition." Yuki said. "A-Rank. It reads patterns in combat and helps me make the the most optimal decisions"
"That's it?" Sakura blinked. "That's all you're going to say about it?"
"That's what it does." Yuki narrowed her eyes as she gazed at Sakura feeling that the latter was getting a bit impudent. Sure enough this little traitor was so unreliable that she switched up the moment and outsider came.
Sakura looked at Victor and he had the self-preservation instinct to look at the treeline , he wasn't going to get involved in whatever the heck that was going on with these sisters.
Yuki stared straight ahead and thought about absolutely nothing, least of all the lock screen she hadn't changed in 3 years because she simply hadn't gotten around to it, that was all. It was a perfectly normal mistake any human being could make...
...
" Enhancement? " Sakura asked while tilting her head as Victor nodded.
"Yes." Victor said simply. "I can permanently enhance any object or entity, Weapons, armor, skills." He paused. "Not myself and the things I enhance are bound to me."
Sakura stared at him in confusion and awe.
"...That's it?" she said.
"That's it." He shrugged.
She looked at the rusted sword on his belt. Then at the cotton robe. Then back at his face with an expression that showed that she was still trying to take in the information he provided.
"The sword." she said slowly. "The robe."
"Yeah."
"Both trash grade."
"Originally."
Sakura's mouth opened and then closed then she turned to look at Yuki.
Yuki was already looking at him with her eyes slightly narrowed, not in suspicion but in the way she got when she was running through something methodically and was still wrapping her head around the numbers she was calculating.
"There's no limit?" Yuki asked.
"Not one I've found yet."
Another silence.
"Victor." Sakura said.
"Hm."
"You can enhance anything."
"That's what I said."
She stared at him for another long moment and then turned her face away and brought her hand up to her mouth and said nothing for a few seconds.
"Sakura?" Victor said.
"I'm fine." she said. "I'm just thinking about how you got an SSS rank and you used your first free enhancement on a rusted sword."
"It was the only weapon I had."
"A rock." she said. "You could have enhanced a rock."
"The sword was better than a rock."
"Was it." Yuki said, in a tone that suggested she had appraised the sword at some point and had thoughts about this.
Victor opened his mouth and then closed it.
Sakura had dissolved into quiet laughter beside them, shoulders shaking, and even Yuki had turned her face slightly to the side but the corner of her mouth had done something she would not be acknowledging...
....
Victor reached into his inventory and held the scroll out toward Sakura.
"Fireball scroll. You don't have anything offensive yet so—"
"Oh." Sakura's eyes went wide and she snatched it out of his hand before he finished the sentence. She turned it over rapidly, then hugged it to her chest. "Victor~"
"It's a single use—"
"Victor."
"...What."
"You got me a gift~ " Sakura said with grin.
"It's a drop." Victor's lips twitched but he said in a deadpan tone. "From the wolf I just killed in front of you."
"A gift." she repeated in a serene tone.
Victor looked at the sky briefly. "It's a combat consumable."
"That you gave to me." She beamed at him. "On our first day as a party."
"Sakura—"
"I'll treasure it forever~ " Sakura said while acting like she was swooning.
"Please just use it in an actual fight—"
"Hm." She was already inspecting it again, turning it over in her hands with genuine curiosity now, the teasing settling back into something more genuine. Her fingers traced the edge of the scroll carefully. "300 fire damage." she murmured to herself, more quietly. "I wonder what my talent does to that...".
Victor watched her for a second then he turned to Yuki and reached into his inventory and held the fang out toward her.
Yuki looked at it in confusion. "...What."
"Firewolf Fang, it's an Ordinary grade crafting material, you could probably—"
"I know what it is." The words came out a little sharper than she intended and she pressed her lips together for a second and asked softly. "I meant why are you handing it to me."
"My talent lets me enhance my gear directly." Victor said, with the straightforward tone of someone explaining something practical. "I don't need crafting materials to upgrade my gear. So it makes more sense for you to—"
"Give it to Sakura." Yuki said in a clipped tone making Victor confused as to why she sounded like she was mad.
"Sakura can't—" Victor tried to explain but Yuki just cut him off.
"Then keep it." Her arms crossed. "You don't know what you will need later , this is still the early stages..." Yuki said bluntly gazing at him with her blue eyes.
Victor was quiet for a second. Then he reached out and took her hand and Yuki blinked down at his fingers around her wrist with the expression of someone whose brain had just skipped a step. He turned her hand over gently and placed the fang onto her palm as he closed her fingers around it, and Yuki let him, which she would definitely think about later.
But Victor wasn't done as his mouth still kept going "Some things don't change."... The moment those words came out the air between them stilled as a very awkward silence filled the clearing.
Yuki's eyes moved slowly from their joined hands up to his face.
"I—" Victor cleared his throat. "I just wanted you to have it." He said seriously like he didn't blurt out those words a few seconds ago.
But it was too late and they both knew it as Yuki could feel it in the way her heart did something completely unreasonable inside her chest.
"H-Huh—" The blush detonated across Yuki's face. It started at her neck and didn't stop, swallowing her cheeks, to the tips of her ears as she stood there with her hand still loosely closed around the fang and her ice blue eyes so wide and glassy that she barely looked like herself. Yuki opened and closed her mouth failing to find any words to say.
Victor let go of her hand and looked at a tree like it was the most interesting tree he had ever seen.
Yuki on the other hand touched her cheek and she could feel that her skin was burning.
Sakura watched all of this in complete silence, both hands pressed over her mouth, eyes bright, because some things were simply too precious to interrupt...
...
Thanks for the Votes 🦭