I wouldn't trade that for the world

“If only you knew how to take your own advice.”

Ann slowly opens her eyes at my words, her consciousness slowly regained.
“Master Shiidou? Might you inform me why I’m led upon the grass?”
“You not remember what happened?”

She sits up slowly, rubbing her eyes, and looks around at her surroundings.
“We began our venture across the river… the serpent…”

“You dealt with it beautifully.”
“Then to what do I owe my lapse in consciousness?.”
“Hubris, my good friend. You spent too much mana trying to do the trick I showed you beforehand, so when you spent so much to stop the waves from sending us to an early grave you exhausted the last of your supply and knocked yourself out.”

As the prior events of today seem to resurface in her memory, Ann’s expression shows nothing short of abject horror.

“Does my stupidity know no bounds? Or is it my pride? My stubbornness? How could I have been so reckless when I know we have no time to waste? Too scold my own master for taking risks, only to make such a fatal mistake of my own? I am a failure as a maid, a traveller, and a servant of the people of this island. A thousand curses upon the god who made me so imbecilic.”

“Easy there, Hachiman, you don’t need to hate your own existence over one cock-up.”
“Master Shiidou, I have failed you both as your servant and your partner. I shan’t speak a word of protest if you choose to cast me aside for good.”

Alright, maybe teasing her isn’t a good idea here.

“Hey, Ann, listen to me. I’m not replacing you any time soon, got it? You’re my strongest ally and my closest friend, I’m not stupid enough to throw that away over a single innocent mistake, especially not one that you made while trying to improve your skill.”
“But… my actions, they may well have gotten us killed.”
“Your actions are the reason we survived in the first place. You’re the best mage I’ve ever met, and I wouldn’t have been able to pull off such a ridiculous idea if it was anyone else at my side but you. You’re the best partner I could ask for, and I wouldn’t trade that for the world, you hear me?”

A familiar blush and speechless stutter appears, but this time I’m not just trying to fluster her. I spoke no word of a lie, and I wouldn’t hesitate to say it all again. She is the person I care most about in this world, after all.

“I-if you so insist, master Shiidou, then I suppose I will drop the issue. E-Even so, I feel my mistake was reprehensible and stupid, and will accept any demand to pay it back.”
“You wanna make it up to me? Travel with me some more once this is all over and done with. Just you and me. For fun this time.”

Ann looks up from the ground and meets my eye. At first she seems confused, but when she realises I’m being genuine her expression melts in a warm smile. It makes my heart race more than I’m willing to admit.

“My, master Shiidou, how ever could I say no to a request like that?”
“You’d break my heart if you did. And drop the master already, kay?”

For a moment we simply sit there on the grass in silence, savouring the comfort of each other’s company. And it would be a lie to say I wasn’t once again completely captured by her beauty. Simply looking into her eyes made me feel more at peace with the world than any amount of meditation could.

“Apologies for interrupting the lover’s reunion, but am I mistaken in thinking the two of you have urgent business to attend to?”

The ferryman’s words bring me out of my trance so suddenly that I damn near jump out of my skin. Upon realising we’d been passionately staring into each other’s eyes for at least a full minute, we both immediately turn bright red and look away, hurrying to our feet.

“Ah- of course, right, we were just resting for a bit while Ann’s mana recovered!”
“Yes, that was all, a rest break to regain my strength, nothing more! A moment of tranquillity before our journey begins again!”
“A good adventurer has to know when to conserve their strength after all!”
“A wise notion indeed, my young master, I was simply following your excellent guidance!”
“I’m glad we’re on the same page, Ann! Breaks are important after all!”

One look at the shit-eating grinning on the old ferryman’s face tells me he doesn’t buy a single word of our excuses. I don’t feel sorry for risking your life at all now, bastard.

“Young love aside, might you answer a question for this old man?”
“I’ll ignore the snide comment. What’s the question?”
“Forgive me if I’m wrong, but the magic you used back then was time dilation, was it not? How did one so young as yourself learn the forbidden arts?”
Shiiiit, I’m not supposed to use time dilation in public.

“Uhh… guess the library just had some outdated books heheh…”
He raises an eyebrow, a smirk still plastered on his face
“A library that stocks illegal books, eh? I’d very much enjoy a visit to such a place myself.”
“W-well, they’ve probably removed them since I took them out anyway. It was a while ago after all.”
His expression doesn’t change. I get the message, you old fart, you see right through my bullshit.
“Well, that’s certainly a shame. Still, without that forbidden spell we’d be washing ashore with the remnants of my boat right about now. So perhaps it’d not be so bad for that library to keep them in stock.”
The old man gives me a wink and turns to walk back to his boat.

“Will you be alright crossing back on your own?”
“That oversized worm hurts its belly every time it slams itself into the water. It won’t be back for several hours yet.”
The ferryman happily climbs aboard his boat and pushes away from the shore.

“Take care, old man!”
“Remain in good health, ser ferryman!”
Ann and I wave our goodbyes to the kindly, if a tad too snarky ferryman as he begins his journey back to the hamlet.
“Blessings of luck upon your journey, young travellers!” He waves back, slowly receding from sight across the great river.

“Well then, we have nary another second to waste. Let us return to our travels.”
“Yeah, let’s get moving.”
We both openly avoid talking about the moment before we were interrupted, and set about riding our horses east once again.

***

Ann has a complicated expression on her face, as if confused about something. Seemingly deciding she can’t figure it out, she turns to me.

“Shiidou, how did you slow the serpent down from so far away? Time dilation requires immense amounts of control, to manage it with that much range barely seems possible.”
“Hmm? Oh, I didn’t slow it down at all, I sped us up.”
She tilts her head to the side. Apparently my answer increased her confusion instead of alleviating it.

“How can that be? I felt no faster than usual?”
“Well of course not, you were in the accelerated frame of reference.”

She furrows her eyebrows. Seems my explanations are not helping.
“Shiidou, I must confess, I haven’t the faintest clue what you mean.”
“Oh, right, you would skip physics back on Earth all the time. I guess you never learned about relativity, huh?”
She freezes up when I say Earth. I gotta stop doing that, I know she hates being reminded of our past lives.

“...care you to explain it to me?”

Ann, taking an interest in physics? Man, she really has changed since her reincarnation. Sometimes I wonder how they could possibly be the same person.
“Well, to make a very long story short, every reference frame experiences time at a different rate, depending on things like gravity and speed. You’ll always feel like one second passes every second, but to an outside observer you might look like you’re moving through time incredibly quickly. And in the same vein, you would observe them as moving through time very slowly. It’s all relative to the observer.”
“I see… so you disrupted the flow of time for us and us alone, but as we were the ones affected, we observed all of time around us slowing down?”
“Theeeere you go. You catch onto these things much quicker now than back th-”

Fuck. I did it again. As with any time I mention Earth, her expression falters, and there’s a dejected look in her eye.

I know Ann doesn’t want to remember Earth, but it’s kind of upsetting to have to forget our whole past together. Especially those final moments.

I wonder if either of us will ever find the courage to say those words again.