Chương 205: 29. Fairy Tavern and Yozora 4

When I woke, it was already morning. Not the warm, forgiving kind that invites you to steal another hour. Harbor mornings carry built-in chill—last night's fog scattered by sea wind into thin gray film that plasters itself against window paper and wooden frames, bleaching everything pale. I lay there for two full breaths, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. Then the memories of the previous night surfaced one by one, like rocks revealed by retreating tide. The eastern gate. The port closure.

The woman who called herself this one. Fairy Pavilion. The room I'd paid for. And the single most creatively embarrassing fact I would ever have to live with: I had paid money to share a room with a woman, and what I'd received in return was one evening of singing. … I've accumulated a respectable catalog of disgraceful episodes, but managing to be this avant-garde about it is genuinely new territory. I pushed myself upright and found that Yozora was still there.

She wasn't sitting at the bedside, nor radiating last night's blade-edged vigilance. She stood at the window, back turned, quietly watching the street. Morning light caught her profile and the tips of her hair, drawing a cool sheen from the dark strands. The hidden-knife sharpness from last night was still there, but retracted—transformed into something quieter and considerably harder to read. She heard me shift and turned slightly.

"Awake?"

"Yeah." I rubbed my still-heavy temples.

"You didn't leave."

"If I had, you'd probably convince yourself the whole thing was a dream." Her tone was unhurried.

"Besides, you look like the type who wakes up and immediately checks for his coin purse, then his kidneys."

"…Do I really project that level of pathetic?" She actually laughed—just a little. Not the guarded amusement from last night, nor anything particularly warm. Just enough retreat of that cold gleam to make her look like a person rather than a nocturnal elven calamity sent to test men's sanity.

"Slightly."

"I'm flattered." I swung my legs off the bed, attempting to recover whatever remained of my dignity.

"Though for the record, I distinctly remember you paralyzing me first."

"Prevention."

"You said that yesterday as well." I sighed.

"Honestly, that 'incapacitate first, establish trust later' philosophy of yours is going to inspire a lot of perfectly innocent men to start drafting personal defense arguments."

"Not my concern."

"Fair point." I nodded.

"About as fair as me paying for a room and getting one song out of it." She turned fully to look at me.

"You weren't satisfied?" I had no immediate response. Because—damn her—she'd sung incredibly well. Which only made the whole situation feel more like a cosmic joke at my expense. I straightened my clothes, confirmed that while my dignity was entirely absent, all essential organs and currency remained accounted for, then followed Yozora downstairs.

The Fairy Pavilion looked marginally more ordinary by daylight—but only in the sense that it had gotten better at hiding what it was rather than actually becoming something different. A few staff were wiping tables, the air still heavy with residual wine and the ghost of perfume that hadn't quite found its way out. The proprietor glanced up with an expression so brief it only confirmed we were both breathing before he lost interest entirely.

This establishment, I decided, swallows secrets nightly and spits the residue into morning light without a second thought. Outside, the streets were slowly filling. A post-closure morning was, if anything, worse than the night—the city's suppressed anxiety had nowhere to go and was pressing against every seam. Street vendors opened their stalls with distracted movements, runners moved at near-sprint pace, and even the distant clatter of garrison armor sounded sharper than usual.

Yozora walked beside me for a short stretch, then stopped and turned to face me. The corner of her mouth carried the faintest curve—the kind that preceded something deliberate.

"Come to think of it…" She let the pause stretch with obvious intent, like she was selecting precisely which detail from last night to weaponize.

"I still don't know the noble lord's name." She put particular emphasis on noble lord. I didn't need a mirror to know my expression was doing something stupid. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Cedric," I said, clearing my throat and working to keep my voice level.

"Cedric Rosa." And then—whether because the echo of her singing still hadn't fully cleared my head, or because I possess an innate talent for saying exactly the wrong thing at aesthetically unfortunate moments—I heard myself add:"You sang beautifully last night." Yozora blinked.

For one unguarded instant, something flickered across her face—a small blank space, like she hadn't anticipated standing on a cold, damp cobblestone street at dawn listening to what hovered precariously between genuine praise and a remarkably awkward attempt at flirtation. Then she lowered her eyes and smiled—quietly, briefly.

"Hoping to hear it again sometime?" The words, taken at surface value, were simply returning mine. But the way she said them—the slight lift at the end, the trailing hook in the final syllable—made it impossible to determine whether she was teasing or testing.

"Thank you." She raised her gaze back to mine, and there was something new there now, a glint that hadn't existed last night.

"Then perhaps you'll come find this one outside the city in a few days?" I reached up without thinking and scratched my cheek. The instant I did it, I wanted to revoke my own hand. That was precisely the gesture of someone who'd just received kind words from a beautiful woman and had forgotten what to do with his limbs.

"If the opportunity—" A long, pointed, theatrical tsk sounded from directly behind me. I didn't even need to turn around. I knew that voice well enough to have developed a mild flight response.

"My, my, my." Jessi stood behind me, arms folded, wearing the devastated expression of someone who had finally caught me stealing pastries during a national crisis.

"Young master, this really won't do. We spend all that time tracking you down, and here you are flirting openly on the street. How exactly are we supposed to explain this in our report?" My temples began to throb immediately.

"I wasn't—""I thought you might have gotten l-lost somewhere," Alvira said from beside Jessi, her face burning an impressive shade of red, her glare carrying the intensity of someone working considerably harder than the situation required.

"And instead you're out here doing something this disgraceful—!" She stopped mid-sentence. Her gaze had landed on Yozora. Not just recognition of beauty. Something else—the sudden awareness of something unspoken, an instinct that outpaced explanation. The pause was brief. But I caught it. So did Yozora. She tilted her head slightly, gaze moving between me and Alvira with the unhurried interest of someone who had just solved a puzzle she hadn't known she was working on.

A smile crossed her face—faint, unhurried, and precisely calibrated to cause maximum trouble.

"Ah," she said with perfect composure.

"So the elf scent on you—it comes from her." The sound that followed was the sound of a misunderstanding crystallizing into existence.

"Don't phrase it like that!" I protested immediately.

"People will—" Yozora continued as though I hadn't spoken, delivering the final blow with devastating calm:"No need to worry. Your young master and I didn't engage in anything… inadvisable last night." Jessi stared for exactly one second. Then she burst out laughing—completely, shamelessly, and with absolutely no attempt at restraint.

"Priceless." Jessi raised her hand and dabbed at the completely nonexistent tears at the corner of her eye.

"Young master, you paid for her company and all you did was have her sing you lullabies?" I turned my face away. Sorry. That's exactly what happened. The moment she saw my reaction, Jessi's expression underwent a visible upgrade—from I'm here for the entertainment to I have just witnessed a mythological-grade act of stupidity and I will treasure this moment forever.

"No way." She drifted toward me with the adhesive persistence of someone who had found their calling, dropping her voice to that particular register she used when she was about to make everything worse.

"Young master, you finally spent actual money, found yourself an elf this beautiful with a body this incredible, and you spent the night having her recite poetry and sing on the bed?"

"Correct." Yozora backed me up without hesitation or apparent shame. The next second, Jessi's laughter doubled in volume.

"HAHAHAHA—are you serious?! The nobility! The sheer nobility of it!" She was laughing so hard that staying upright required visible effort.

"Everyone else pays for spring nights, and young master pays for a lullaby! This isn't debauchery—this is philanthropy!"

"Are you quite finished—" At this point, I was genuinely calculating whether I could dig a personal grave right here in the cobblestones and have someone carve Died of Mortification, Please Do Not Disturb on the headstone. Alvira's face was scarlet. She looked like she wanted to yell at me but couldn't locate the appropriate starting point. After a strained moment, she produced a deeply unconvincing cough and made a visible effort to restore some dignity to the proceedings.

"A-anyway, enough of that. This is… Miss Yozora, correct?" She looked at Yozora, and there was something new in her gaze now—not just wariness, but the specific alertness of someone whose instincts had registered a signal their conscious mind hadn't yet translated.

"The scent on you isn't just perfume." The morning wind chose that precise moment to sweep through the street. The amusement didn't leave Yozora's face immediately, but something behind her eyes—that slight warmth that had crept in over the past few minutes—quietly withdrew. Her gaze drifted, almost imperceptibly, toward the direction of the outer walls. As if something was out there, moving through stone and morning fog with patient certainty, something only she could see.

She was quiet for two full breaths before she spoke.

"I wasn't intending for you to treat me as an ordinary woman." I watched her, and the unease that Jessi's laughter had temporarily buried began resurfacing, piece by piece. Last night, she'd murmured: Not going back tonight… is safer than going back. Morning had come. She was standing here inside the city walls, but her eyes were still out there—in that stretch of territory none of us had yet stepped into.

I realized that no matter how loud Jessi laughed, it couldn't quite cover the sensation of something approaching from a distance. Like a tide. Or like fire. I drew a breath and hauled the conversation back from the wreckage of my personal history as a patron of bedside musical performances.

"Enough." I pressed my fingers against the bridge of my nose.

"I need to take her to see Ignicia." Jessi's laughter stopped cold.

"…Come again?"

"I'm not joking," I said.

"She might be a lead. The kind that walks on its own two feet and comes with musical accompaniment." Yozora glanced at me. She didn't deny it. Alvira's frown deepened.

"Are you certain you want to bring her before Her Highness?" I was quiet for a moment. Honestly? No. Taking Yozora to see Ignicia felt roughly equivalent to picking up a beautiful feather and feeding it directly into a dragon's jaws. Whether the feather survived would depend entirely on the dragon's mood—and when dragons were displeased, feathers didn't even leave ash. But I also understood that this wasn't a thread I could handle alone.

And that look Yozora had just cast toward the outer walls—that wasn't the look of someone thinking about going home to change clothes.

"Certain or not, we're going," I said.

"Because if she's actually connected to whatever's happening outside those walls—" I stopped, leaving the rest unspoken. Because every minute we hesitate here is another minute for someone else to get there first and burn the thread clean. Yozora didn't press me. Didn't interrupt. She simply stood in the morning light, quiet and still—like someone who had already heard the distant sound of timber splintering under pressure, and had not yet decided whether she was going to be the one to say it's already too late.