Slayers

We needed a plan. Rushing in against a large gang of bandits without thinking things through first would for sure get us killed. We didn’t even know how many there were.

Phase one of our strategy was information gathering. Any future phases we’d have to figure out after we had a basic idea of what we were up against.

My map had been stolen along with all our other stuff, but I had the layout of the land memorized well enough by now to navigate without it. Heading directly toward the shrine was obviously a no-go. We’d run right into the bandits we were trying to avoid that way, and the info phase would be over prematurely. I mentally charted a course that would take us around the back, and hoped that I didn’t remember anything incorrectly.

We left the bodies behind for the time being. It took a lot of convincing, but eventually Nadine agreed to come back and give them a proper burial after our job of purging bandits from the shrine was done. If we did it now it would be rushed and incomplete, and neither of us wanted that.

Before we set off, we spent a brief moment scavenging for any supplies that had been left behind. It would be hours before we reached the shrine, and we were going to need food to sustain us. Fighting on an empty stomach would put us at even more of a disadvantage.

I found some unrecognizable burnt meat in the fire that was kind of okay after I cleaned it off and scraped away the scorched parts. Nadine located a bunch of mushrooms in the forest that she was mostly sure were edible. It would have to do.

The final thing we did before continuing onward toward the shrine was prepare a spirit recovery potion for Nadine. She called it a decoction, but it was totally a potion in my eyes. It was made by soaking the leaves of the recovery herbs in boiling water, which Nadine could create and heat in an instant, so it thankfully didn’t take too long. She drank it down, and I thought I could see a soft glow in her cheeks. It definitely brought color back to her complexion.

We took some of the remaining recovery herbs with us so we could use them for healing later if we needed it, though according to Nadine we would have to dissolve them in alcohol to get them to heal our physical bodies, so I wasn’t sure how helpful they would turn out to be.

We spotted the Water Dragon shrine around the eighth hour (two p.m.).

You would think that taking the long way around would cause us to arrive later, but Nadine and I were just two people, unencumbered by large supply wagons or carriages that weren’t designed to rough it through the woods. We were able to move a lot quicker than before. We had to stay on the lookout for bandits, which was the only thing slowing us down. We could have basically run most of the way if we were less cautious.

The shrine wasn’t so much a shrine as it was a pile of rubble. Stone walls of what had once been buildings stood in various states of crumbling disrepair. Plants broke through paths on the ground, pushing up cobblestones and creating patches of strange, uneven terrain. A pair of fountains that ran into long troughs and created a sort of miniature moat around the shrine had long since dried up.

A pair of full-grown trees had sprung up in the center of the largest building, which was the only one that still had any of its ceiling. In front of them was a proud statue of a Chinese-style dragon that was leaning precariously to one side. The statue’s gold plating was peeling away, exposing a green patina underneath.

Recent additions to the shrine grounds included our wagon and supplies and two of our three horses, as well as a large pile of stolen goods that was stacked up in the corner of the main building. A few bandits lazily patrolled the perimeter, but they clearly weren’t that worried about being discovered. Most of them were eating, drinking, gambling, and generally making a ruckus in the shrine interior.

I spotted several of the bandits we had seen at the caravan site earlier, meaning that they had returned some time before us. From what I could tell by listening to the louder ruffians who I could hear without getting too close, the whole bandit gang as presently constituted was gathered here for the time being.

That wouldn’t necessarily stay true forever, so if we wanted to make sure we got all of them, we would have to act soon. I wouldn’t have minded taking on fewer of them, personally, but Nadine shook her head vehemently when I suggested we wait until another group set out for some evening banditry.

“We must be sure that Lord Aquariod’s shrine is completely cleansed of vermin,” she said in a calm tone that did not match her words. “I won’t let a single one of them escape if there’s any chance they will return here.”

“O-okay.”

I didn’t know how to begin to argue with that. Religious people can be scary sometimes.

“Well, as far as good news goes, their defenses are pathetic. They aren’t expecting anyone to come out here in the first place, so they’re hardly trying to watch out for enemy attacks. We can pretty easily catch them with their pants down.”

“Why would their pants be down?” Nadine asked quizzically.

“I— Nevermind. The point is, we have the element of surprise on our side.”

“That will only help us for the beginning of the fight. We will have to kill as many of them as possible before the rest are alerted to our presence.”

“Um, yeah, pretty much.”

I was thinking the same thing, but she didn’t have to put it so bluntly! At least try to make it sound like we’re the good guys!

“And for the bad news?”

I wasn’t excited about this next part, but there was no way to get around it.

“Putting the numbers we counted together, there are somewhere around thirty bandits total at the shrine, thirty-one if our tallies were exact. That’s… that’s a lot of enemies. Beating all of them is going to be seriously difficult. Not to mention some of them have ranged weapons—mostly the ones on patrol. We’ll have to take care of them first so that they don’t shoot us from a distance while we’re trading blows with the others.”

Nadine pursed her lips. “As long as none of them are mages, I believe I can handle it.” She sounded less confident than her words implied.

“I’ve never seen any bandits who knew more than the most rudimentary spells, so that shouldn’t be an issue,” I said, trying to be reassuring. Considering I couldn’t even reassure myself, it probably didn’t work.

…

“So, when do we commence operation: shrine purification?”

“You saw the ones who were drinking?” Nadine asked in response.

“Yeah, it was kind of hard to miss them.”

“We will give them ample time to become intoxicated. That’s when we’ll strike.”

Ruthless. But we would have to be underhanded to win this, so I made no objection.

***

There was one other thing Nadine was waiting for. Rain. It had been overcast since around midday, and the clouds continued to gather and darken throughout the afternoon. It was inevitable that a downpour was coming, and rain meant water. The more Nadine had in her environment to manipulate, the longer she could go without using up her own magical stores.

We started to see precipitation at what was equivalent to four o’clock Earth time. It had been long enough that the bandits who were drinking should be thoroughly wasted. There was no point in delaying our sneak attack any further.

At a signal from Nadine, we started to move in. I wouldn’t say stealth was my strong suit, but I had some practice staying out of sight from my time working at Tomkin’s Tavern and Inn, and my spirit sense alerted me to the positions of the guard patrol, so I could avoid them without too much trouble.

The glow of Nadine’s magic wasn’t subtle enough to fight without attracting attention, so the task of taking out the bow wielding patrolmen fell to me. The gray sky kept the blade of my sword from glinting in the sun as I drew it from its sheath. The rain obscured visibility, providing me with additional cover. It also left me wet and shivering, but I could deal with a bit of discomfort.

I crept up on the nearest member of the bandit patrol as quietly as I could. It didn’t turn out to be necessary—I could hear his snoring as I got closer. These guys really didn’t care about keeping watch for outsiders.

I stood behind the sleeping guard and, with one quick motion, slit his throat.

My body shuddered as he fell back against me, as lifeless as a ragdoll. Handling dead bodies wasn’t pleasant, doubly so when I was the one doing the killing.

I repeated the same set of actions with the next two bandit bowmen. They were more conscious than the first one, but they didn’t stay that way for long. It was almost too easy.

Which I had to think right before the fourth guy spotted me. I charged for him at top speed, but by then it was too late. He had already knocked back an arrow and shouted for help.

I dodged his shot by sensing the trajectory of the arrow’s spirit and rolling out of the way. I came to my feet right in front of him and stabbed my sword through his middle. He coughed once before his eyes rolled back and he fell to the dirt, which was starting to become mud as it mixed with the rain..

Cries of “intruder!” filled the shrine grounds, and bandits started to pour out of the wood— er, stonework. I wouldn’t last a minute once they all got to me.

Suddenly a long tendril of glowing water crashed into the group of bandits closest to me, catching them as if they had been grabbed by a giant hand. The tendril slammed them into a nearby wall with so much force that it collapsed. The brigands who weren’t buried in the rubble lay as unmoving as those who were.

My head jerked in the direction the water tendril had come from, as did most of the bandits’. I was sure that was part of the point. Nadine was intentionally redirecting their attention to her, taking some of the pressure off of me in the process. I would have told her off if I didn’t know she was a much more capable fighter than I was.

Her stern expression betrayed no emotion as she shouted an incantation that whipped the tendril around in front of her, shaping it into a wave and catching a barrage of arrows and throwing knives that were hurtling toward the place where she was standing. All the rain in a five meter radius arced toward her. Her wave slowly grew bigger and bigger. Then she thrust it forward into the mass of bandits, sweeping most of them off their feet.

At least a few were caught in the deluge and found themselves unable to swim out. Their eyes drifted closed as they let out their last breaths.

More bandits were coming, and as powerful as Nadine was, she couldn’t hold them off forever. I made to run toward her to help out, but my path was cut off by another small group of enemies. Two of them ran around behind me, cutting off my escape. I was surrounded.

One of my assailants stepped forward, grinning wickedly as he brandished his double bladed axe. I recognized him. He was the cat beastkin who was complaining back at the caravan site. His tail whipped back and forth excitedly.

“It’s been a while since I’ve had a good fight,” he said. “Try not to die too quickly!”

Leaping forward, he swung his axe down in a massive arc. I jumped back, and the ultra-sharp blade whistled through the air in front of me. If I were half a second slower my skull would have been split clean in half.

Not good. A part of me really wanted to run away, but I didn’t have that option. I did my best to swallow down the fear.

All of a sudden I felt a stinging in the side of my leg. One of the bandits who had circled behind me had managed to graze me with his sword. It wasn’t a deep wound, but I cursed myself for not seeing it coming. A more precise attack could have seriously injured me, and it would only take a few hits like that before I was a goner.

The axe guy was already readying his next swing. I shifted my sword into position to meet his attack. Metal clashed against metal. I felt the force of the impact through my entire arm. This guy was strong.

But he also wasn’t very adaptable. He pulled his axe back and held it in a mirrored position from his last strike. I could tell he was going to swing at me the same way, from the opposite direction. He was broadcasting his attacks like a boss from an action game.

I dodged a spear that jabbed at me from the side, then closed the distance between me and the axe-wielder. He was already preparing a wide swing, so he had no response for a foe as fast as I was getting behind his guard. He just stared at me dumbfounded as I slashed open his chest.

“No way, I was—”

He slipped on a puddle of water and toppled over backward in the middle of his sentence. His axe clattered to the ground next to him. Foam formed in the corners of his mouth, and he struggled for a moment, ears twitching, before his body stopped responding.

I felt my stomach turn.

To be clear, this wasn’t my first time killing another person in this world. I had ended the lives of several bandits who had attacked caravans that I was guarding, though much fewer than I had left wounded.

That kind of killing—acting in defense of yourself or the innocent, such as killing dangerous bandits—was considered “justified” and wouldn’t result in you becoming a black mage if you did it. I couldn’t tell you why. It seemed different theologies had different opinions on the matter. Not that it made a difference for me, other than a basic moral one.

I didn’t want to kill anyone, but if I had to, it was good to know that the universe itself considered my actions a-okay.

Those who had engaged in justified killing and still had untainted spirits were referred to by the term “slayers” rather than “killers.” It differentiated them from murderous black mages.

Like me.

It wasn’t my first time killing in this world, and yet, every time I did, I remembered Shino’s face. How could I recklessly take even more lives, knowing that I could never be forgiven for what I had done to her? How arrogant did I have to be?

I retched. The other bandits who were closing in on me reflexively backed away. It would have been a great opportunity to stab me while my guard was down, but their reactions made sense regardless. Even I found myself revolting.

The first one to get over the shock advanced on me alone. That was a mistake. I might have looked vulnerable, but although I was facing away from him I could sense his spirit moving in my direction. Without even looking I swung my sword behind me. There was a thump as his lifeless body hit the ground.

Holy— did I actually do that? If I didn’t feel sick with terror and self-loathing I would have given myself a solid pat on the back for that one.

The remaining bandits surrounding me turned tail and ran. They probably could have killed me if they all attacked at once, but I didn’t blame them for being scared. I didn’t want to die either.

Glancing around me, I didn’t notice anyone else who looked like they were gunning to bring me down. All my eyes could see was rain. My spirit sense didn’t pick up anyone near me either.

I noticed the two and a half walls that were previously still standing around the remnant of a building that the bandits had been using as a drinking hall had fallen in and crushed the inebriated bandits under a mound of dripping stones. All that water might have sobered them up just before they died. That would kind of suck.

I turned back to check on Nadine. She was engaged in combat with the spear girl from the caravan sweeping team. Her opponent’s movements were fast and graceful, but Nadine didn’t seem to be in any danger of losing. She had yet to sustain a single injury, and I didn’t see signs of magic fatigue from her yet.

The woman with the spear was deftly dodging out of the way each time Nadine sent a water blade flying in her direction, but didn’t have time to return the attack. She should have been running from a fight she couldn’t win, yet she remained close enough to stay the focus of Nadine’s assault. It was almost like she was trying to distract the water priestess from something…

Oh no. I desperately pushed the boundaries of my spirit sense, searching for someone or something that the spear woman wanted to keep Nadine from noticing. I found it. The potentially-naked bear beastkin was standing behind her, arms outstretched. He had no weapon, but his bulging arms could easily crush her spine if he grabbed her.

Time slowed down as my mind raced. I was too far to reach her in time. Even calling out her name wouldn’t alert her to the danger fast enough. All I could do was watch her be killed right before my eyes.

Unless…

I had sworn off all magic entirely. Black magic most of all. And yet, Nadine was in danger. Hadn’t I promised Inna that I would protect her no matter what? I could break my rule one time, for the sake of that promise.

I wasn’t sure if this would work, but it was the only idea I had.

“Vis sola yd foria.”

I reached inside of myself and ignited my own spirit. Energy coursed through my body as a purple glow appeared around my skin. I felt stronger. Which was my goal. I was using my magic to generate strength.

I ran, and my body carried me twice the distance I could normally cover. Just before the bear man could get his arms around Nadine, I grabbed her first, carrying her out of the way of his crushing grip. I dug my heels into the mud and skidded to a stop.

Slowing down so fast almost caused me to drop Nadine. I used my enhanced strength to right my balance, then dropped my focus and let the spell dissipate.

“S-Seiji?! What are you—”

Nadine looked over her shoulder and spotted the bear man. Her expression shifted from surprise to understanding.

“Thanks. But… could you put me down now?”

“Oh, right!”

I set her on her feet next to me, and we turned back to face our opponents.

The spear girl was already in two halves, split evenly at the waist. Nadine’s water blade had done its work just before I picked her up.

The bear man roared and charged at us. As he got close, I slid between his legs and slashed upward. He let out a roar of pain and anguish much worse than the first. Sorry pal. That’s what you get for not wearing underwear (possibly).

While he began to stumble forward, I swung around him and braced the pommel of my sword against my chest. He ran straight into it, impaling himself so thoroughly I had to exert myself to get my weapon out of his gut.

I braced myself for the next wave of bandits. It didn’t come. In fact, all the noise of shouting and fighting had completely died down. There wasn’t a single person standing within the boundaries of the shrine except Nadine and me. We… we did it.

I scanned the aftermath of our battle for good measure. Everything was soaked, either from rain or from Nadine’s spells. I couldn’t sense any living spirits, other than plant life. I spotted the body of the mouse beastkin who we had overheard arguing with the spear woman. There was no spirit contained within it. We had actually succeeded at purging the bandit infestation in the Water Dragon shrine.

Which meant I had time to worry about other things now. Like my magic. I had used it to save Nadine, true, but if she recognized what kind of magic it was…

“H-hey, Nadine, about how I grabbed you back there—”

“It’s fine, really,” she cut me off. I could have been imagining it, but it looked like she was blushing a little. “You just surprised me, is all. I wasn’t expecting you to… and I had no idea you were that strong… But you did it to protect me, just like you promised, right? I am nothing but grateful for your assistance.”

I sighed in relief. It sounded like she didn’t notice I was using magic.

“Anything for you!” I said cheerfully.

Nadine’s imaginary blush deepened.

“That aside, I am regretful that my spells did so much damage to the shrine. I wasn’t intending to knock down all those walls… mostly. If I were an earth mage I could repair them, but… the best I can do is ask for Lord Aquariod’s forgiveness. I’ll have to be more careful next time.”

“N-next time?!”

There was no way I could handle having to do this more than once.

“Hm? Oh, it’s not like I’m planning on it, but if something like this happens again—”

“Nadine, I’ve never asked you for anything, have I?”

“…You asked me to pay you.”

“Other than money!”

Nadine took a moment to think about it. “I suppose not.”

“Good. I’m going to make one selfish request, so hear me out, okay?”

“I’m listening.”

“Please, don’t let there be a next time.”

Nadine looked conflicted, but she nodded. “Alright. If you insist, I will do everything in my power to avoid ending up in a situation like this again.”

“I’m gla—”

A bolt of fire shot out from the shrine and caught me in the chest. I flew back. My leather breastplate didn’t burn easily, but it did singe. I could smell it in the air, along with the scent of my arm hairs burning away.

A small man stepped out from behind one of the trees in the main building. It was the bandit leader, the one who gave the order to search our caravan a second time. He had been masking his own spiritual power by pressing it so close to the tree’s that they were indistinguishable. I had to admit, it was clever.

His right arm was still hanging uselessly, but in his left hand he held a long, thin branch that twisted at the end and enclosed a tiny orb of flames that somehow didn’t burn the wood. It was a wand.

He was a fire mage, I realized. He was the one who incinerated our carriage. The one who killed Inna.

“I hoped that would have done more,” he said, narrowing his eyes at me. “Well, now that I’ve blown my hiding place, why don’t we have a civilized conversation about this and—”

“Nadine, I kind of want to kill this guy.”

“Don’t act rashly out of desire for revenge, Seiji. I don’t want to kill this guy, but I will, for the sake of all those whose lives he has taken.”

“Ah, hell,” the boss said. Then he started chanting. “Aurant madla yd disparia oer impero!”

A torrent of fire highlighted in dark violet shot toward Nadine and me. We both dodged out of the way in opposite directions. The fire split into two parts and chased after us. Nadine summoned some water to extinguish hers. Immediately the boss barked out another incantation and sent a fireball hurtling in her direction. Steam rose into the air as his spells made contact with the rain.

Three more smaller orbs of fire shot out of his wand toward me, cutting off the route I was using to avoid the first blast. I jumped over a short, partially collapsed wall and ducked behind the other side. I felt the heat from the flames as they crashed into the wall and disappeared. As quickly as they were gone, two more orbs came for me.

Holding concentration on so many spells at once was an insane talent. We would never be able to get close to this guy if he kept it up. When Nadine expressed concern earlier about fighting another mage, she had good reason for it.

But the thing was, he couldn’t keep it up forever. He didn’t have a source for these flames, which meant he had to be generating them. Eventually he would run out of magic. Nadine and I just had to not die until then.

I made eye contact with Nadine, and I could see that she was thinking the same thing. More than likely she had figured it out before I did. She cut away from the fire that was pursuing her and ran toward me.

Once Nadine reached me, she quickly spouted an incantation. “Caerus exia oer bulla!”

The rain and the water Nadine had been using to stave off the flames formed a swirling bubble around the two of us. The boss scowled and pushed harder with his fire. Our dome of water started to boil, but Nadine used her own spiritual power to cool it down, and continued to add to it using the rain that hit the bubble. This battle had become a war of attrition between two mages.

My money would have been on Nadine to hold out longer, but I didn’t take bets like that, and the bear man and spear lady’s tactics had taught me something.

I waited until there was enough steam to cover me, then burst out of the bubble. The water was hot enough to hurt as I went through. I ignored the pain and dashed forward as fast as I could, straight toward the boss’s diminishing pool of spiritual energy, since the rain and steam made it impossible to see.

I had no idea if he had even noticed that I was no longer in the bubble. His intense focus was on his spells. Whether he saw me coming or not, he didn’t have time to react before I slashed out with my sword. The blade met with resistance, and I cut through. The remainder of the boss’s spirit left his body. He was defeated.

Assuming no one else was hiding themselves behind one of the two trees in the shrine, we had finally, actually won.

Nadine cleared away the steam with her magic. She looked tired, but she probably wasn’t in danger of serious magic fatigue just yet. I was glad that we decided to bring those extra recovery herbs with us.

“So… what now?” I asked.

Nadine tossed her hair. It was matted down and stuck to her back from all the rain, but as she shook her head thousands of tiny glowing droplets floated away from her, leaving her blue-green locks totally dry. It looked amazing, like she was surrounded by a thousand fireflies, and yet she was still the most radiant among them.

“Now, we clean up our mess.”

I looked out across the shrine grounds at all the bandit corpses lying around everywhere.

This wasn’t going to be fun.

***

It was dark by the time we were finished removing all the bodies from the shrine and cleaning the bloodstains off the cobblestones. Nadine used her water magic to do most of it. I just pitched in where I could, and tried not to vomit.

We piled up the bandit corpses just outside of the shrine. Nadine told me that she intended to send them off properly, because despite being our enemies, they were still people. That said, burying that many bodies would be way too difficult for the two of us, so we decided to wait until the next day and burn them when the rain cleared up.

We had to stay somewhere for the night, and it was still raining, so we moved the bandits’ loot pile to the side and made a fire underneath the portion of roof that had been shielding it from the weather. Although Nadine had removed the water from our clothes, we were still cold, so we sat close together next to the fire, taking in its warmth.

As I stared absently into the flames, I imagined faces appearing in them. They were the faces of everyone I had killed—all the faces I remembered, anyway. The bandit boss, the bear man, the axe-wielding cat beastkin, another bandit from my bodyguard work months before. Then finally, Shino. Her fiery eyes stared back at me, burning me from the inside out.

Why had I taken this second chance at life in the first place? I didn’t deserve it. I was just too much of a coward to pay for my crimes.

“Are you alright, Seiji?” Nadine asked me. She scooted a bit closer. “You look like you’re in pain. I don’t know a lot of white magic, but I can help a little if you’ve been wounded.”

I thought about the cut on my leg, but it wasn’t bad enough to be worth wasting her magic on.

“It’s not that,” I said. “I just… Don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure? I’ve never seen anyone make that expression who was truly okay.”

I moved away, increasing the distance between us again.

“Seriously, I’m great. Not hurt at all.”

I couldn’t burden her with this. It wasn’t her sin to bear.

Nadine closed the gap between her and me for a second time. “You may not be injured, but I can tell there’s something weighing on your mind. Would… would you like to talk about it? I promise I’m not a bad listener.”

…I did. I really wanted to tell someone, to get it all off my chest. But how much could I tell her without giving away what I really was? Would it even help if I couldn’t tell her the real thing that was haunting me?

Maybe not, but I had suffered in silence for so long. It couldn’t hurt to share at least a little.

“I… I’m not from this world, originally. I was brought here after I died for the first time, in a very different place from this one. That doesn’t make me sound crazy to you, does it?”

Nadine’s mouth parted in surprise, but she didn’t look nearly as shocked as I would have been if someone had told me they were from another world back in Japan. People like me were known to exist here, so it wasn’t too surprising that an intelligent person like Nadine wouldn’t be blown away by the revelation.

“I have heard of otherworlders before. You are the first I have met, though. You seem more… normal than I would have expected.”

“Well, I’ve been in this world now for over a year now, so I’ve had time to adjust.”

Nadine nodded, encouraging me to go on.

“My full name is Itten Seiji. Itten is my surname—we put them first in order where I come from.”

It was weird how much catharsis there was in introducing myself properly for the first time since I was reincarnated. My whole name didn’t feel entirely real to me anymore. It was like I was reclaiming it.

Now I had to decide what else I wanted to tell her. I couldn’t mention Shino—not directly anyway. Nadine was the only person I could talk to about these things. If I scared her away I would be entirely alone again.

I took a deep breath, steeling myself for what I was about to say.

“Back in my previous world… I did something bad. Something I’ve always regretted doing, but I could never take back. But then I was killed, and I ended up in a strange in between place—which I now know was the spirit realm. A person who called herself an angel said that I could come here and have a second chance. I’ve been trying to live a better life since then… but my crimes always come back to haunt me. I feel horrible every time it happens, but I can’t make it go away. In a certain, twisted way, I don’t want it to. Because I know I don’t deserve to forget.”

All was quiet for a moment. The only noise I could hear was the crackling of the fire. Nadine looked down. Her eyes were sad, like she was feeling the same pain that I was. Then she looked back up at me.

“Seiji? Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For choosing to help me when you could have taken the money and left. For saving me. For being honest about why you’re struggling. I haven’t known you for that long, but… You are a good person, Itten Seiji. I firmly believe that.”

My heart warmed the same way it had when the angel Tenshi first offered to give me a chance to start over. Nadine’s words were exactly what I wanted to hear. I wished I could believe them the way she did.

If she knew what I did back then, she wouldn’t have said it. Good people aren’t murderers.

“By the way, you said you wanted to come to this shrine so you could worship the Water Dragon and stuff here, right? Do you want to do that now, or…?”

“Tomorrow,” Nadine answered. “Right now I need to rest.”

She leaned over, and I felt her shoulder press against mine. My mind went into panic mode trying to find out what was happening as she laid her head down on my shoulder. I turned my neck to look at her. Her eyes were closed, and her face looked so peaceful that I couldn’t bring myself to disturb her.

This was kind of nice, actually.

I rested my own head against hers and let my eyelids drift closed. I let myself enjoy the sensation of Nadine’s body softly shifting with each breath until I finally fell asleep.