Chapter 12: The Maid Dress Fluttered and Everything Went Wrong

I ran.

This was, objectively, a terrible decision. Running directly at a third-year swordsman is the kind of strategy that gets written about in textbooks under the heading What Not To Do. But Sakuya had said middle, and I was already moving before my brain could file a formal complaint, and the forest floor was uneven and mossy. My boots were sliding on wet leaves, and Garreth von Stahl was standing between two oaks in a maid outfit with a sword raised and a petticoat that caught the forest breeze in a way that was, against every law of taste and decency, almost elegant.

The petticoat fluttered.

The sword came down.

I ducked.

I did not duck because I am fast. I ducked because I am lazy, and lazy people develop an instinct for avoiding things that require effort, and getting hit by a sword requires the effort of falling, getting back up, and explaining to an instructor why you have a bruise shaped like a blade across your shoulder. My body did the math. My body chose to duck. My knees bent, my back dropped, and the flat of the blade passed over my head close enough to trim a hair I was not willing to sacrifice.

“Good reflexes, first-year.”

“THOSE WERE NOT REFLEXES. THAT WAS COWARDICE.”

“Cowardice and reflexes look the same at speed.”

He pivoted. The sword came back in a lateral sweep, low, aimed at my ribs. I was still crouched. I had no time to stand. I had no time to dodge. I had time to do exactly one thing, which was fall flat on my face into the moss.

I fell flat on my face into the moss.

The blade passed over me.

“Interesting technique.”

“I AM ON THE GROUND.”

“And yet untouched.”

Rin hit him from the right.

She did not hit him the way one person hits another. She hit him the way the weather hits a coastline. Fast, low, from an angle that should not have been possible, her body a blur of green cloak and cinnamon hair and one small fist aimed directly at the hand holding the sword. She was not trying to hurt him. She was trying to disarm him. The difference was academic, because her fist connected with his wrist with a crack that echoed off the oaks, and Garreth’s grip loosened for exactly half a second.

Half a second was not enough.

His fingers tightened. His wrist absorbed the hit with the stubborn resilience of a man who had been hit harder by worse things. He shifted his weight, turned into Rin’s momentum, and brought the flat of his free hand down toward her shoulder in a clean, precise tap.

She twisted. Midair. Like a cat falling off a shelf. Her body rotated, his hand missed, and she landed three paces back on the balls of her feet with her ears flat and her teeth showing.

“The cat is fast.”

“She is not a cat.”

“The cat-shaped person is fast.”

“STOP CALLING HER THAT.”

Fire.

The word is not enough. The light came first. A wash of orange across the green, sudden and warm, and the shadows of the forest jumped and danced, and Garreth turned just in time to see it.

Sakuya was standing at the left oak.

His short blade was in his left hand. His right hand was open, palm up, and in his palm sat a ball of fire the size of a fist. It was not a wildfire. It was not a bonfire, a burst, or a flare. It was controlled. Perfect. A sphere of clean orange flame that sat in his palm like a lantern, steady and bright, casting hard shadows across his calm face.

He was not smiling.

His dark eyes reflected the flame.

“Move, please.”

Garreth looked at the fire. He looked at Sakuya. He looked at the fire again.

“Fire magic.”

“Yes.”

“Controlled projection.”

“Yes.”

“That is a second-year technique at minimum.”

“I practiced alone.”

“Mm.”

Garreth’s sword came up into a high guard. The maid’s outfit rustled. The headband caught the firelight.

“You understand that fire in a forest is irresponsible.”

“I understand.”

“You will not burn my trees.”

“I will not burn your trees.”

“You will aim only at me.”

“I will aim only at you.”

“Then come.”

Sakuya threw the fireball.

It crossed the distance between them in less than a breath. It was fast and it was precise and it was aimed not at Garreth’s body but at his sword, at the blade itself, and when it hit, the steel rang like a bell and the flame burst across the flat of the blade and scattered into a dozen small sparks that died in the wet moss.

Garreth’s hand shook.

Not from damage. From heat. The steel had absorbed the fire’s warmth in an instant, and even through a warrior’s grip, hot metal is hot metal. His fingers flexed. His jaw tightened.

Sakuya threw a second fireball.

This one was smaller. Faster. It came in low, under Garreth’s guard, aimed at his leading knee. Garreth stepped back. The fire passed beneath his skirt, and the petticoat fluttered violently in the heat wash, and for one deeply surreal moment, the most dangerous man in this forest was a six-foot-two swordsman batting down his own skirt with his free hand to keep it from catching fire.

“First-year.”

“Yes.”

“I am going to take you seriously now.”

“I would appreciate that.”

Garreth moved.

He was fast. Genuinely fast. Third-year fast, which is a category of speed that first-years are not supposed to encounter on their second day, which is exactly why the Academy puts third-years in the obstacle course. He closed the distance to Sakuya in two strides, sword forward, and his first cut came in at an angle that would have tapped Sakuya’s shoulder clean and easy if Sakuya had been there.

Sakuya was not there.

He had sidestepped. Small. Economical. His feet barely moved. His body shifted like smoke, just enough, and the sword passed through the space where his shoulder had been, and his right hand came up again, and there was fire in it again, and this time he did not throw it.

He pressed his palm flat against the blade.

The fire wrapped around the steel like a glove. Garreth hissed. The sword glowed dull orange from guard to tip. He did not drop it. A lesser swordsman would have dropped it. A lesser swordsman would have thrown it and run. Garreth von Stahl gritted his teeth and held the burning sword and brought it around in a backhand sweep that would have taken Sakuya’s head off if it had been an edge strike.

Flat of the blade. Always flat. Even now. Even with his hand burning.

I respected him so much that I almost forgot I was lying face down in moss.

Rin hit him again.

From behind this time. She came in silent as a shadow and fast as regret and drove her shoulder into the back of his right knee. His leg buckled. Not much. An inch. But an inch was enough to break his rhythm, and Sakuya was already moving, already sliding past the burning sword, already through the gap between the oaks and onto the path beyond.

“Alfred-kun. NOW.”

I was on the ground. I was comfortable on the ground. The moss was soft. The ground was safe. The ground had never tried to hit me with a sword. I had a deep, meaningful relationship with the ground, and I was not ready to end it.

“ALFRED-KUN.”

I got up.

I ran.

Garreth turned. He saw me. He brought the sword around in one long sweeping arc that covered the entire gap between the oaks, and the blade trailed orange sparks from Sakuya’s fire. The petticoat fluttered, and I was running directly into the path of a glowing sword held by a man in a maid dress, and my body did the math again.

My body chose to slide.

I dropped. My hip hit the moss. My momentum carried me forward across the wet ground in a graceless, ugly, deeply undignified slide that took me directly under the arc of the sword and between Garreth’s legs and out the other side. I felt the heat of the blade pass over my back. I felt the hem of the petticoat brush my ear. I saw, from below, the white stockings and the black shoes with the low heels, and I thought, in the strange, slow clarity of a near-death experience, Grandfather, you absolute madman.

I came out the other side on my hands and knees. Rin was there. She grabbed my collar and hauled me to my feet with one hand and shoved me forward. Behind us, Garreth planted his burning sword in the dirt and stood between the oaks and did not chase.

“Well done, first-years.”

His voice carried through the trees, calm and warm and a little amused.

“You have passed the obstacle. Continue on the direct path. And Takafumi.”

I looked back.

He was adjusting his headband. The sword was still smoking in the dirt beside him. The apron was slightly singed. The frilled headband was, miraculously, still in place.

“Your grandfather was right about the outfit. It breathes very well in combat.”

“I HATE THIS FAMILY.”

“Keep moving, first-year. You have a long way to go.”

We kept moving.

Sakuya’s fire died. The orange glow faded from the forest, and the green came back, cool and quiet. He sheathed his short blade. He flexed his right hand once, twice, and I saw, in the brief motion, that his palm was red. Not burned. Flushed. The fire had come from inside him, and it had left its warmth behind, the way a torch leaves warmth in the hand that held it.

“Alfred-kun. Are you hurt?”

“I slid through a man’s legs.”

“But are you hurt?”

“My pride is a smoking crater.”

“Your pride will recover, Alfred-kun.”

“Will it?”

“I will make rice cakes when we return.”

“Rice cakes do not fix pride.”

“They fix everything else.”

Rin was breathing hard. Not from exhaustion. From excitement. Her eyes were wide and bright, and her ears were up, and her tail was doing a rapid back-and-forth that I had never seen before. She looked alive in a way she had not looked since she came out of the scroll. The forest had woken something in her. The fight had sharpened it.

“Alfred.”

“Yeah.”

“That was fun.”

“That was not fun.”

“I want to do it again.”

“We are not doing it again.”

“He was strong.”

“He was in a maid outfit.”

“He was strong in a maid outfit.”

“Please stop complimenting the maid’s outfit.”

“His legs were good.”

“RIN.”

We walked.

The forest deepened. The canopy thickened. The thin gold shafts of light disappeared one by one until we were moving through a permanent green twilight that smelled like wet bark and old stone. The second stream appeared, wider and faster than the first, running over dark rocks in a steady rush. We crossed it on a fallen tree that bridged the banks. Sakuya went first. I went second. Rin went third, but only after spending six seconds staring at the water with the intense, vibrating focus of something that was deciding whether to catch a fish.

“Rin. Not now.”

“…later.”

“Later.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

The ridge began. The ground tilted upward, and the trees thinned slightly, and between the trunks I could see the slope climbing toward the northwest corner of the Thornwood where our checkpoint waited. The moss gave way to rock and root. The air got cooler.

Sakuya stopped.

He stopped the same way he had stopped before. Full halt. No transition. His hand went to his blade.

“Alfred-kun.”

“I see it.”

“Do you?”

“…no. Again. I do not see it.”

“The ground ahead.”

I looked.

The ground ahead looked like ground. Dirt. Leaves. Roots. A few stones. I saw nothing unusual. I saw nothing at all.

“Sakuya, what am I —”

The ground opened.

Not crumbled. Not collapsed. Opened, like a mouth, a clean dark split in the forest floor that appeared between one heartbeat and the next. The edges were smooth. The inside was dark. A wave of cold air rushed up from the opening, carrying the smell of deep stone and still water and something else, something old, something that had been under the ground for a very long time.

Something reached up.

A hand.

Not a human hand. Larger. Gray-skinned. Thick fingers tipped with blunt claws. It came out of the dark and closed around my ankle with a grip like a shackle, and the world tilted, and the last thing I saw before the ground swallowed me was Rin’s face, her eyes huge, her mouth open, her hand reaching for mine.

She caught it.

Her fingers locked around my wrist. The pull from below was enormous, dragging me down into the dark, and Rin was dragged with me, her feet skidding on the moss, her claws — she had claws, I did not know she had claws — digging into the dirt.

“ALFRED!”

Sakuya lunged. His hand reached for Rin’s cloak. His fingers brushed the fabric. His dark eyes were wide for the first time, the calm broken, the mask cracked, and I saw something behind it that I did not have time to name.

He missed.

His fingers closed on air.

The ground swallowed us.

Rin and I fell into the dark, and the opening closed above us like a mouth shutting, and the last sliver of green forest light narrowed and narrowed and vanished. The gray hand let go of my ankle. I hit a stone. Rin hit me. We tumbled, rolled, and came to a stop on cold flat rock in absolute blackness.

Silence.

Total silence.

The forest was gone. The wind was gone. Sakuya was gone. The world above was a ceiling of stone and packed earth, sealed tight, and we were somewhere deep, cold, and old.

“…Rin.”

“Here.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Where are we?”

“Down.”

“Yes, Rin, I gathered that we are down.”

“…cave.”

Her eyes. I could see her eyes. Honey-colored, glowing faintly in the dark, the way a cat’s eyes glow when there is almost no light. She was pressed against my side. Her hand was still around my wrist. She had not let go. Her claws were out. I could feel them, small and sharp, pricking my skin through my sleeve.

“Alfred.”

“Yeah.”

“The thing that grabbed you.”

“Yeah.”

“It is still here.”

I stopped breathing.

In the dark, somewhere ahead of us, something very large exhaled.

【Sakura — PoV】

I woke up on the floor of my room.

I woke up on the floor, which was strange, because I had been sitting at my desk, and I did not remember falling, and my nose hurt, and my hands were shaking, and there was ink on my cheek from the letter I had been writing.

The letter.

I looked at the desk. The letter was ruined. A long streak of black ink cut across the paper where my hand had dragged through it on the way down. The pen was on the floor next to me. The ink bottle had tipped over and was dripping, slow and steady, onto the stone.

I sat up.

My head was splitting. Not a headache. Deeper than a headache. The kind of pain that lives behind the eyes and in the base of the skull, the kind that means something you were holding has been ripped away from you, hard and sudden, like a rope snapping under too much weight.

I pressed both hands against my temples.

I breathed.

I breathed again.

Something was wrong.

Something was wrong with Alfred-kun.

I did not know how I knew this. I did not know what was wrong. I could not see him. I could not hear him. He was a hundred miles away, in a forest I had never been to, doing a test I had arranged for reasons I had planned very carefully.

But something was wrong.

I could feel it. In my chest. In my hands. In the place behind my ribs where I kept the things I did not talk about.

I stood up.

My legs shook. My vision blurred at the edges. The ink was still dripping from the desk. The ruined letter lay in a black smear. Outside my window, the sky was blue and bright and completely indifferent to the fact that something had just broken inside me.

I walked to the window.

I pressed my forehead against the cool glass.

I looked south.

“…Alfred-kun.”

My hands were still shaking.

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, they were dry and steady. The shaking had stopped, and whatever had broken inside me had already begun to knit itself back together with the slow, patient, absolute certainty of a girl who had been waiting for ten years and was not going to stop now.

I sat back down at my desk.

I took a clean sheet of paper.

I began a new letter.