Respite [Part 2]

Finally obliging Lucia’s request, I moved towards the nearby bench and sat down, simultaneously removing the bag of unknown contents I had slung over my shoulder this morning. “This is the only thing you said we should bring, so I assume something for lunch is in here.”

She didn’t give me direct confirmation, and instead took the bag from my hands as she sat down to my left. For some reason, she opened it timidly, and shot me several short, sidelong glances as she did so.

It was definitely cute, but also a little irritating. I’d long since learned that whenever she got like this, it was easiest to just be forthright. “So, uh, are you going to tell me why you’re acting weird all of a sudden? Or were you just planning to awkwardly glance at me a bunch and call it a day?”

“I was not…” she trailed off, probably realizing that she’d been far too obvious to play it off at this point. She closed her eyes and took a couple of slow, deep breaths as if bracing herself for something, while I sat there feeling awkward and confused, watching her.

She slowly opened her eyes and smiled nervously. “O-oh dear. I must have forgotten to bring anything to eat. How foolish of me.” It was easily the most obvious lie I’d ever heard her utter.

I’d experienced firsthand that she could be quite the convincing actress when she wanted to be, so she either intended to be this blatantly transparent (for reasons beyond me), or…

“Heh. Come on, what’s in the bag? You’re super embarrassed about it, aren’t you? It’s a bit too late for that, don’t you think?” I reached out to pry it from her hands, an action which, to my surprise, she only resisted for a moment before letting go.

“I… tried my best, alright. S-sorry.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, nor what that apology could have been about, but I got a better idea as I emptied the bag into my lap. Out dropped two large lumps of similar sizes, wrapped neatly in a paper-like material. Carefully undoing the wrapping on one, I spied what lay inside.

It was a golden, slightly misshapen sphere, and although it had a more amateurish look to it than what I was used to seeing, I recognized the food immediately.

“Ah, it’s illdun.”

It was an exceedingly common fried snack here, made from a seasoned illon egg fried within a ball of dough. Since the main ingredients came from the most plentiful farm animal and most commonly cultivated staple crop of this region, illdun was everywhere. I’d eaten plenty of these fried balls myself since arriving here.

However, based on what she’d said…

“You… you didn’t make these yourself, did you?”

She met my question with silence, and at some point, she’d closed her eyes again. Her evident blush cleanly gave her away, regardless, although I didn’t think she had anything to be embarrassed about. If anything, I was impressed.

“I didn’t realize you could cook—err, that came out wrong. I’ve never seen you cook anything before, is what I meant. When did you even get a chance to make these, anyway?”

Finally, she opened her eyes and glanced in my direction. “This morning, while you were still asleep.”

In contrast to the single room we’d stayed in for the first few nights, the double room we’d moved to a little later offered more amenities, including a small side room with a very basic kitchen setup. Neither of us had touched it once in all this time as far as I knew, so until now, I hadn’t even considered that she could have made today’s lunch herself.

Huh. That means I completely slept through that. I guess she has complained before that I’m a heavy sleeper…

“You have a talent for blocking everything out when you want to. It’s the same reason why you can get lost in thought so easily.”

Whoa! She completely read my mind. That was kind of creepy, actually. Stop doing that!

She continued hammering the nail in deeper. “By the way, today was not the first time. I have been practicing in the morning for weeks. You’re just oblivious.”

“Oh, okay, I see how it is,” I mumbled. “The moment it comes to bashing me, you get talkative again.”

“Naturally.” Her lips curved into a small smile as she spoke, though her apparent embarrassment hadn’t waned. “You had better not get your hopes up, though. I’m still… quite awful at this.”

“You said that you’ve been practicing, right? I’m sure it’s perfectly fine,” I said, hoping to reassure her.

I grabbed the exposed sphere from beneath with one hand and placed the back of my other hand on top of it. The pose would certainly look awkward to an outside observer, but I had a good reason for it.

“Omen-es omeni-al.”

The illdun rapidly warmed between my hands, continually rising in temperature until I finally removed the hand I’d placed on top. Lucia’s eyes widened as I cast the spell, and I grinned with satisfaction. Haha! See what I learned to—

“Ah, ow—” I clearly hadn’t learned all that much, because I’d heated it far longer than I meant to, and it was now searing my hand.

Normally, someone would just drop whatever they were holding on instinct if it started burning them, but I couldn’t do that in this case. Lucia had made it for me, after all, so I couldn’t just go dropping it on the ground because of my own screwup.

I gently lowered the lightly steaming fireball back onto the thick paper sitting on my lap before carefully letting go. Luckily, the wrapper was insulated well enough that I couldn’t feel the heat bleed through to my legs.

My hand hurt like hell, though.

Lucia sighed, before moving both the unwrapped and wrapped illdun balls onto her lap. “The stream should be cold. Go put your hand in it for a few minutes.”

“Th-thanks.”

I did as she instructed, feeling some relief from the pain as the cool water washed over my now sensitive skin. If it was any solace, my hand would be fine again tomorrow morning.

“Where did you learn to do that, anyway?” a voice asked from a few steps behind me.

“Ah, well, about a week ago, Selina taught me how to do it, completely unprompted. It was really weird and random, but that’s kind of her thing, so I didn’t question it much at the time.” Honestly, I’d figured she just taught it to me because of how simple it was. I’d only started practicing spellcasting recently, but I still struggled with consistently executing proper pronunciation for longer names or completing complex movements. A slight mistake in either and the spell wouldn’t work.

Lucia simply clicked her tongue in clear annoyance when she heard my answer. “Of course she did.”

I had no idea what she meant by that, but her ire didn’t seem to be directed at me, so I was fine leaving it at that.

Deciding I had let my hand cool long enough, I returned to my seat beside Lucia. She had opened the other illdun, and as I approached, she cast the same spell I had earlier on it. Of course, she broke the pose sooner than I did so as to not overheat it.

As usual, she could do pretty much anything I could but better. I wasn’t envious of that fact, exactly; it just always made me feel kind of useless. She really didn’t need me around, it felt like.

I shook my head to clear my thoughts, and grabbed the first illdun, which had cooled down to about the correct temperature by now.

It looked like Lucia was trying to pretend she wasn’t watching me, but it was very clear that she was staring at me in anticipation, a worried expression plastered on her face.

Here goes. I lifted the illdun up to my mouth, took a bite, and it was…

A little bland, but definitely not bad.

I smiled. “I don’t know what you were so worried about. It’s fine.” Crap! Crap! I should’ve said it was good! I didn’t mean it like that, but ‘fine’ sounds like an insult!

She turned away from me before responding, so I couldn’t discern her expression. “You’re probably lying to make me feel better, but, still, thank you.”

She may not have wanted me to pry further, but after a couple minutes of the two of us eating in silence, I decided to ask the question that had been on my mind anyway. “So, what made you want to practice cooking the first place?”

She continued to slowly chew the food in her mouth, and for a moment, I thought she was just going to blow my question off, but after swallowing, she responded, “The simple answer is that I happened to glance at our kitchen one morning and went with it on a whim. The longer, more complicated answer is that I simply felt... too idle, I suppose. As usual, you are to blame for that.”

“Huh?” I didn’t really get it.

“For a long, long time, I have only cared about what I thought was important for achieving my goal—my vengeance. I exclusively honed the skills I needed to reach that end, and I viewed all else as a waste of time. One could say this has led me to develop a… skewed set of skills. I may excel in a small handful of things, but I lack any ability in most else. Until recently, I never had any qualms regarding that fact. To be honest, I could not have cared less.”

She’d been staring at the sky as she spoke, but, pausing for a moment, she then turned to look towards me before continuing, “And then you came along. Day after day, I watched as you would devote hours of time and effort towards learning new things and developing your skills. It was always clear from a glance that, despite your protests, you would put everything you had into it every day, without fail. Over time, watching you led me to feel guilty—or, perhaps, ‘inspired’ is a better word for it. I thought to myself, ‘When was the last time I went out of my way to learn something new?’ I hadn’t the faintest idea.”

“Ah, so then…”

She nodded. “It did not matter if it was something trivial; I simply wanted to expand my horizons and attempt something new, no matter what it was, just as you were. I felt I had been static, unchanging, for far too long.”

She’d given a far more serious answer than I’d expected. I really wasn’t good at responding to sincerity, so I didn’t know what to say. I thought I was just going to get a response like, “you’re really expensive, and I wanted to lower dining costs,” or something…

Inexplicably, she giggled at my silence. “You always get so awkward at moments like this. Loosen up, Layn.”

“I don’t want to hear that from someone who was just acting super awkward a minute ago… even if you are right,” I conceded. “I get your reasoning now, but why’d you keep it a secret for this long? I would’ve been happy to try your stuff out earlier.”

She closed her eyes and let out a defeated sigh. “Precisely, which was what I had to avoid at all costs.” She suddenly balled her hands into fists. “I have a lot of pride, I’ll have you know. I would never allow someone else to try it until I could produce something at least edible.”

“Edible?”

She lightly nodded. “You could hardly call it ‘food’ in the beginning. It was so, so awful.” She opened her eyes and looked to be on the verge of tears. Her expression contained a look of horror, as if she was reliving past trauma. “It was so, so awful…” She continued to mumble that on and off for a while.

I couldn’t help but laugh. She’s probably exaggerating, but I would’ve been happy to try it every time, even if it completely sucked.

Still smiling, I took another bite of my illdun, and—

… Hold on.

An outing alone, just the two of us.

A pseudo-picnic, in a cutely arranged forest clearing.

And a handmade meal to share.

It wasn’t like a date.

This was a date.

It was definitely a date (probably). There was no other way to interpret this situation (probably).

I was pretty sure Lucia hadn’t intended it to be, but it was (probably) definitely a date. Or maybe both parties needed to agree that it was a date to qualify as one, and I was getting ahead of myself.

Was I overthinking this? No. No way. I was simply being thorough.

After that, I was quite restless throughout the rest of our once calm meal, endlessly arguing with myself in my head over the semantics of what technically qualified as a ‘date’.