In Kuroinu

Filia found me the next morning in the room they'd given me at the temple. Small room, stone walls, a cot that was better than the floor but only just. I'd been staring at the ceiling for about an hour trying to figure out how to bring up the fact that everyone in this party needed me to have sex and nobody was talking about it.

She knocked twice. Came in before I answered.

"We need to talk," she said. She closed the door behind her and stood in front of it with her arms at her sides. Her armor was on. It was always on. She had her sword at her hip and her hair pulled back and she looked like she was about to deliver a field briefing, except her cheeks were slightly flushed and she wasn't making eye contact.

I sat up on the cot. "Okay."

"Yesterday's attack made it clear that our current situation is untenable." She was looking at the wall behind me. "You have no combat ability. Your only strategic value has been observation, which, while useful, will not protect you or us in a sustained engagement. We need your power active."

"Agreed."

"Your power requires..." She stopped. Started again. "The Hero's Blessing activates through physical intimacy. We discussed this when we summoned you. We understood the requirements."

"You did."

"We all did." A beat. "We need to activate it. Which means someone needs to..." She cleared her throat. "Be the first."

I leaned back against the wall. "You're asking who's going to sleep with me."

Her jaw tightened. "I'm saying that we need to discuss the logistics of activating your power in a practical and timely manner."

"Right. The logistics."

"Yes."

From outside the door, muffled but perfectly audible: "I DIDN'T AGREE TO ANYTHING."

Filia closed her eyes.

"Llusse," she said, without raising her voice. "If you're going to eavesdrop, at least be quiet about it."

"I'm not eavesdropping. I'm standing in the hallway. There's a difference."

"You're standing in the hallway with your ear against my door."

"It's a THIN door."

From slightly farther away, Tianne's voice came through, soft and measured: "We all agreed it was necessary, Llusse. Before the summoning. You were there."

"I agreed to SUMMON him. I didn't agree to- to- the other thing."

"Nobody is asking you to do the other thing," Filia said.

"GOOD."

"Llusse-"

"I'm leaving. I don't care about any of this." Her footsteps moved down the hall. Stopped. Came back. "And I wasn't eavesdropping." Then they moved away again, faster this time.

Tianne's voice, gentler: "I'll talk to her."

Her footsteps faded. The hallway went quiet. Filia opened her eyes and looked at me, and her composure was fraying at the edges. Her mouth was tight and the flush had spread from her cheeks to her ears.

"Sorry about that," she said.

"Don't be. It was informative."

"I'll do it." She said it fast, like ripping off a bandage. "I'll be the first. I'm the party leader. It's my responsibility to ensure our combat readiness, and this falls under that responsibility."

I looked at her. She was standing very straight, chin up, hands at her sides. She looked like she was volunteering for a dangerous mission.

"That," I said, "is the least romantic reason anyone has ever offered to sleep with me."

Her mouth fell open. Closed. She made a sound that was half a word and half a breath and her face went from pink to red.

"This isn't- I'm not- this is a strategic decision based on-"

"Filia."

She stopped.

"I'm not going to make this weird," I said. "And I'm not going to make fun of you for it. Well, a little. But only because you just called sex 'combat readiness' and that's objectively funny."

The corner of her mouth twitched. It twitched again.

"We'll figure it out," I said. "Tonight, tomorrow, whenever you're ready. No pressure."

She nodded once. "Tonight. After training. We shouldn't delay."

"Efficiency."

"Practicality."

"Sure."

She turned to leave, and her hand was on the door when she stopped.

"Haruto."

"Yeah?"

She was facing the door. The back of her neck above her armor collar was flushed too.

"Thank you for not being... difficult about this."

"You summoned me to do exactly this. Being difficult would be kind of a waste of everyone's time."

She left. I sat on the cot and let out a long breath. Then I got dressed and went to the training yard.

The afternoon session was supposed to be footwork drills. Filia ran them every day, patient and methodical, and I was getting marginally better. The improvement from zero to one felt like a lot when you'd only ever been zero.

Today was different. Filia was there, practice sword in hand, but every time she corrected my stance her hand hovered before making contact, and when she did touch me it was brief and pulled away fast. She'd moved behind me to adjust my hips twice in the previous sessions without hesitating. Today she stood two feet away and gestured at what I should do instead of showing me.

I swung. Bad.

"Your weight is too far forward," she said.

"Show me."

She stepped closer. Put her hand on my shoulder to push me back. Her fingers landed and stayed for a second and then she pulled them away and stepped back.

"Like that," she said.

"Your hand was barely there."

"That was sufficient."

"Filia."

"What?"

"You can touch me. It's fine."

Her jaw worked and she looked at the training dummies lined up along the far wall. A beetle was climbing one of the wooden posts. She stared at that beetle for a long time.

"Again," she said.

I swung. We drilled. The sun moved across the yard and the shadows lengthened. Llusse was in a tree on the eastern edge of the yard, pretending to clean her bow. She hadn't said a word since this morning but she hadn't left either. Tianne was on the stone wall with her book, turning pages she wasn't reading.

During a water break I sat against the wall and Filia stood a few feet away, drinking from her waterskin. Neither of us said anything. She kept starting to speak and then stopping, and I kept not helping her.

"One more drill," she said. "Then we stop for the day."

We squared up. She came at me with a practice swing, slow by her standards, fast by mine. I blocked it. She pivoted and swept low and I jumped back and my foot caught on a rut in the dirt and I stumbled forward.

She reached for me. Reflex. Her sword hand dropped the practice blade and her other hand shot out and caught my wrist.

I didn't fall.

Her fingers were wrapped tight around my wrist and her pulse was hammering through her grip. Her face was inches from mine and the vein in her throat was jumping and the sweat on her collarbone and her lips parted, just barely, and her breath was short.

My thumb was on the inside of her wrist. On the vein. Her pulse was fast and getting faster.

Neither of us moved.

I could have let go. She could have let go. We stood there in the dirt yard with the practice sword on the ground between us and the late sun making her hair glow where it had come loose from the tie, and I held her wrist and she held mine.

"You caught me," I said.

"You tripped."

"Your heartbeat is going pretty fast for someone who just caught a guy who tripped."

Her eyes widened. She let go. Stepped back. Picked up the practice sword and racked it with more force than necessary.

"Training's over," she said. "I'll... see you tonight."

She walked toward the temple without looking back.

From the tree, Llusse's voice: "You're both terrible at this."

I looked up. She was perched on a branch, bow across her knees, looking down at me with her chin in her hand.

"Were you watching the whole time?"

"I was cleaning my bow."

"From a tree with a direct line of sight to the training yard."

"It's a good tree." She dropped from the branch, landed soft, and walked past me toward the temple. Her ears were red. "Don't hurt her," she said, without stopping. Quiet. No performance in it.

I stayed in the yard. The sun went down. Mila found me there when she brought dinner.

She came around the corner of the temple carrying a tray with two bowls of stew and bread and a pitcher of water, and her tail was already going when she spotted me. It slowed down as she got closer and she looked around the empty yard and then at me sitting alone on the wall and her ears flattened slightly.

"Is everything alright?" she asked. "You're by yourself."

"Just thinking. That smells amazing."

The ears came back up. She set the tray on the wall beside me and busied herself arranging the bowls, and her tail was going again by the time she straightened up.

"Mila."

"Yes?"

"Have you eaten?"

"Oh, I eat later, when the kitchen closes-"

"Sit. Eat with me."

She stared at me. Her tail froze, then resumed at a new speed, faster and lower, and she sat on the wall beside me and picked up the second bowl and held it in both hands like she'd been given a present.

We ate. She asked about the training and I told her about the goblins, editing out the parts where I'd stood there frozen, and she listened with her ears perked forward and her tail wagging every time I said Filia's or Llusse's name. When I ran out of things to say she told me about the inn and how she'd been working there since she was old enough to carry a tray, and how the innkeeper was gruff but kind, and how she'd always wanted to travel.

A cat had gotten into the temple courtyard and was stalking a moth near the shrine. We both watched it miss.

"You should join us," I said. "When we leave."

Her ears went straight up. Both of them, at the same time, like antenna.

"You- I couldn't- I'm not a fighter, I don't-"

"We don't need another fighter. We need someone who can keep us fed and organized and who actually notices when people are hungry." I looked at her. "You noticed I was sitting alone and you brought extra food."

Her cheeks were dark. Her tail had stopped because it was pressed against the wall behind her, vibrating. "I just... I thought you might want company."

"I did."

She smiled. It was wide and unguarded and her ears twitched with it, and I smiled back, and her tail started going again.

From across the courtyard, Filia passed heading toward my room, chin up, shoulders square. She was carrying a small bag and her hair was still tied back and she disappeared around the corner of the temple without looking at us.

Mila watched her go. The tail slowed. Her eyes moved from the corner where Filia had vanished to me and then back.

"She looked... focused," Mila said carefully.

"She usually does."

"More than usual."

I picked up the last piece of bread. "Thanks for dinner, Mila."

She nodded. She collected the tray and the bowls and stood, and her tail was wagging again when she turned back.

"If you meant it," she said. "About traveling with you."

"I meant it."

The wag doubled. She walked back toward the inn, tray balanced on one arm, humming before she'd made it halfway across the courtyard.

I finished the bread. Stood up. Brushed the crumbs off my pants.

Then I walked toward my room, where Filia was waiting.