Chương 33: Book 1, Chapter 33: Moment to Breathe

John awkwardly laid the dragon woman on the mattress she had been sleeping on, stepping back as she immediately curled up like a sleeping cat the second she touched fabric. It was weird, awkward, and he wished he were doing anything else, but it had to be done.

"How long is she going to be like that, you think?" He asked, turning to Yuki as he glanced around. It felt a bit… strange to be in what may as well be the bedroom of another while they were passed out, even if it was just a warehouse he owned. It didn't feel much like a living space, even accounting for the fact that Rin didn't bring much with her.

"Perhaps a few hours at most," Yuki shrugged, unconcerned.

"I expected her constitution to be a bit greater, but, in retrospect, her being unused to high-quality reagents was a forgone conclusion." There was… some worry in how the corners of her muzzle dipped into a frown, but he couldn't place why, if it was not about Rin. Quite the thing to misguess, in any case. John wasn't sure if she reminded him more of someone drunk enough to show up on some trashy "real policing" show or a four-year-old hitting a sugar crash the way most people hit brick walls.

Still, the process answered some questions about Rin and Unbound as a whole. His entire array of devices couldn't capture everything, but he gathered enough to understand the basis of much of what the pair were doing, even if the exact methods eluded him.

"Say, speaking of that, would you mind clarifying some things for me?" he inquired.

"I have some theories and some questions after what I saw."

"Of course!" Yuki responded.

"Tell me, what does our local genius think happened?" There was something distinctly uncomfortable with being called a genius, but he pressed on.

"You isolated the elements you didn't want to interact with, then you somehow broke down the elements you wanted to interact with. It reminded me of…" How would he say chemistry to someone without the context? If there was a word for it, he didn't know it. He could just say alchemy, but for all he knew, that may have greater implications.

"The process of extracting iron from ore, but… Ugh." Frustration crossed his face as he searched for examples.

"It's like fire. With the right prodding, it transforms one thing into new matter composed of the original parts. You manually stirred it up, then added the right things, and used the energy released to have the process drive itself. The pot kept unwanted things out, so nothing interfered." A simplification. It seemed to act like a semi-solid barrier, only letting magical energy above a certain level through, and only when it was concentrated into specific points. Sometimes, he wished that Yuki could speak English.

Other times, he didn't know how he'd feel, seeing another English speaker after all this time. Bah. He had a creeping suspicion that she was somehow boosting the rate at which he was learning the language, anyhow. One day, he'd probably be able to find out a way to communicate all these complicated ideas with her that way.

"From there, Rin drank the mixture and somehow integrated it with herself. The energies around her intensified, but it wasn't quite like they got pointedly stronger. It was more like they became… larger? Her energies stretched out further from her before she pulled them back into herself.

While it was hard to read what was going on inside her, I could at least tell that some compound mana was harder for her body to process than others, and the easier to process stuff not only burned up faster, but gave her a bigger boost. I assume that was the stuff related to… what she is or how she was Unbound? Things closest to a dragon with power over storms." He finally stopped, taking deep, puffing breaths. Yuki waited for him to recover as he started coughing, a dry scratchiness hitting him with full force.

When he was finished blinking the stars out of his vision, he saw the kitsune holding out a cup of water to him, which he accepted with a dip of his head, unwilling to try to voice his thanks. The cooling drink was soothing, softening what felt like jagged edges in his throat.

"You are close," Yuki admitted, "but paint an incomplete picture." She paused for what he was sure was dramatic effect, softly exhaling as she closed her eyes.

"To the average person, their body and soul are not in unity. To an Unbound, they are closer together. To a yokai, they are one. I, and every other yokai, do not operate on the same rules as anything born of the mortal plane." All at once, dozens of different things clicked, and John gasped. He could feel them, and he could touch them, but yokai material always acted a bit… weird, not entirely obeying natural laws like how the pieces of Nameless in storage seemed to shed shadow.

Did they even exist on an atomic level? What if they were just projections of some immaterial soul into the material world? Yuki could function despite being poisoned, with much of her leg outright missing, walking as if nothing had happened. Even if it didn't kill her, the sheer biomechanics shouldn't have let her stay upright due to being unable to control anything past the damaged section. Nameless were much larger than spiders could be in an Earth-like atmosphere.

John had always suspected magic directly influenced their air intake somehow, but… Wait. Did that mean the kappa bit off a part of his soul to—"I know what you're thinking, and this next part is important. What you saw in Rin and what yokai are composed of has many names. Essence. Core Form. Spirit. It's all the same. The Soul, in a formal sense, is the core of the self. The Spirit is the metaphysical weight bound up in it." More things clicked.

The way Yuki tore the souls out of Nameless, binding their souls into an orb for her to devour… the way they died was unusual. Normally, they never withered away and solidified, but when Yuki tore their souls out, they did. She must have done the metaphysical equivalent of hollowing them out! The only Essence, Spirit, whatever the hell you want to call it, left was probably what was most tied to their physical form.

If he took that statement about Unbound being closer to that at face value, their unusual resilience, even beyond the Aegis, suddenly made sense. John couldn't do much besides laugh.

"You have no idea how many things this clears up. I have many more questions, but first, I need time to think about how to put them. For now, if you excuse me, I should probably go finish that flying—" Yuki put a hand on his shoulder as he glanced toward the door. He jolted and tensed, eyes darting over to meet hers, he saw… he wasn't quite sure. Sympathy? Worry?

"I would like to talk to you about something, too," Yuki requested. After a moment of thought, John acquiesced, dipping his head.

"Would you like to talk about those priests from earlier?" she delicately asked. He reeled, the phantom heat pulsing against his torso like a strobe.

"No!" he stated, perhaps a bit too roughly, and a bit too harshly.

"No, sorry," he repeated, more quietly in a way that made him feel small.

"Maybe another time." Her gaze searched his, although not harshly, and he couldn't escape the feeling she was looking at him with pity. After a moment that stretched far too long, she broke eye contact first.

"Very well." Internally, he slumped with relief.

"However, you are doing far, far too much with too few breaks. You need some time to relax." Pursing his lips and choosing his words carefully, he took a moment to reply.

"I don't think so. We have so much to do all the time."

"Don't think I haven't noticed you entirely losing yourself more and more, John." Yuki tutted like a disappointed parent.

"You were practically comatose the whole walk back. You bounced back from the first Nameless incident quicker. You're clearly stressed and suppressing it." Was he? It couldn't be that bad.

"These last few days have been rough, sure, but I just have to power through. It's not that bad. I've even been sleeping fine! Sure, the stuff about you, the Nameless, Rin… It worries me, but I can manage it. If I don't deal with things quickly, it could spiral out of control if something else comes up! What if my flight isn't finished by the time we need it, or if—" John cut himself short as a slightly annoyed glare manifested on Yuki's face, aimed squarely at him.

She took a deep breath, and it was gone again, replaced with pure sympathy.

"John, please, you need to rest. Unless we provoke something, no attack is coming," she soothed.

"You'll do everyone no good if you stress yourself into a heart attack." He winced.

"How are you so sure about the attack? They didn't need an announcement for the last one."

"The letter said nine days," she stated.

"It's doubtful that the letter was written by an uninvolved third party, so why would they tell their puppets to move clear before then if they planned to wipe us out before then?" That… was a good point. It still didn't excuse passivity, but at most, they'd probably catch some probing attacks before then. Even when they last attacked, it was only when the town's militia accidentally provided an extra bit of leverage, so they didn't seem confident enough to commit outright.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. Ugh, he was getting dangerously close to agreeing with her. Still, Yuki has a vested interest in keeping him alive and healthy, and she couldn't benefit in any way from having him be ill-prepared. Was she truly just trying to get him to relax for his own good without any ulterior motive?

He far preferred to keep himself moving, busy, and productive, but that was admittedly a development since he was stolen from his home. Winters were rough, sometimes, especially when he ran out of projects in his workshop.

"There are too many things to do," he weakly defended.

"Anything outside the fort would be best served to do with Rin for the extra combat capability, once she recovers, and if you lose yourself while working on one of your projects in the workshop, it might waste dozens of hours with a single misplaced cut." Yuki pressed the attack, looming over him as she leaned forward slightly.

"A mind needs rest as much as a body needs food." She wasn't going to let this go, he could tell. What was more troubling to deal with: a few hours of downtime or an insistent kitsune?

"Fine," he sighed after taking a long moment to ponder that quandary.

"Be warned, much of what I do have around the fort is more suited to a single person." Wait, she just wanted him to relax. Why did he assume she'd like to join him?

"Of course. Perhaps you would like to learn shōgi?" The kitsune settled back into a gentle smile, emitting a feeling of warmth.

"Shōgi?" He cautiously asked, voice a bit weaker than intended.

"Isn't that what Rin played with that kappa earlier?" The thought of the yokai biting off his own finger still loomed strong in his mind, sending a shiver up his spine. Yuki's smile widened into a grin.

This game was weird. He stared down at the board, brow furrowed, before glancing down at his movement cheat sheet. He was just glad he decided to do this inside, so nobody could see just how badly he was getting beaten. He supposed he should have expected the kitsune to be more than familiar when it took her all of a minute to fabricate a passable board from a square chunk and some scraps from his workshop's bin. Those claws were sharp.

It had to be selective somehow, given she didn't go around putting holes in everything. He didn't pay too much attention to it at the time, as he was thinking about how it turned out that the kappa was technically kinda cheating under the standard rules of the game. Turns out you're supposed to toss a few pieces and see which side they come up on to determine who moved first…

at least until yokai or Unbound become superhuman enough that they get the dexterity to be able to rig that, then they have to find other methods. His previous impression that it was kind of like chess stood, but the more he learned about it, the more that faded into the background. The pieces moved strangely, like the knight equivalent only moving forward. Units promoting into something else when they hit the back three lines of your opponent's side of the board took some time to wrap one's head around, too.

Ah, no. It was that the units were able to be promoted then. Yuki made it very clear that one didn't always want to. He clacked one of the pieces he captured earlier, a lance, threatening check. Suddenly, Yuki couldn't move her "dragon king" without exposing her "king general" to check.

"Good move!" she complimented, much like you'd tell a five-year-old they were smart for managing some basic addition. Truth be told, even though she gave herself a massive handicap and started with perhaps two thirds the pieces he did, she still kept kicking his ass. Even worse, he could tell she was still going easy on him. Several times, he spotted an opening he left only turns later, and Yuki pointedly did not press all of them. She then proceeded to place a captured bishop down that put him into check.

He fought down the urge to curse like a sailor.

"I'm not sure this is my type of game. Perhaps I should see if I can find some children who know the game and work my way up from there," he bemoaned.

"I wouldn't," Yuki commented.

"Any child who knows how to play has probably been trained by their parents since a young age. You either become a person who beat a child at shōgi, or a person who got beaten by a child at shōgi. It's a lose-lose and kind of like fighting a man with no legs; the real way to get easy games is to pretend to be drunk and play other drinkers." John stared at her wearily, trying and failing to unpack all of that mess in his mind.

"There are like three separate stories there," he stated.

"One, actually," Yuki corrected, pouring herself some more water.

"It was an eventful day." She shot him a coy smile.

"Let's just say that any fool who deems themselves all knowing because they're good at what they do is doomed to have the world correct them." …Did Yuki get whipped in fancy chess by a child, go slumming, and come to blows with a man with no legs? Did the fight and drinking come first? He had so many questions!

"Come on now, you can't leave it at that!" he pleaded.

"Perhaps later, once I've had a potent drink or two," she said, with a smile that told him she loved his frustrated grimace.

"Alas, I'd need something with a far more potent spiritual kick than what you have here for that. The local drinks wouldn't even tickle me, so it might be quite some time yet." John grunted quietly, shaking his head.

"Is leaving people in suspense like that a kitsune thing, or a you thing?" he asked.

"A little bit of both, to be fair." She paused, almost like she just realized something.

"Hmm. You said earlier that this wasn't your type of game, didn't you? Tell me, what is your type of game? I'd hate to deprive you of your comforts; I'm sure there's something you're aching to play now that you have a partner." Shit, she had him trapped pretty well, even if she didn't know it, and he had walked right into that. He couldn't explain videogames, which might give him away as otherworldly if her knowledge about the world at large was broad enough, nor could he deny he was into them.

"Ah, unfortunately, I don't recall all the rules for them," he stalled, frantically searching for something.

"Some of the stuff I do needs a lot of special dice and these big, couple hundred page manuals—" The words tumbled out before he could stop them, and his eyes widened. Wait, no, not that!

"Oh?" Yuki's eyes took on a curious, almost hungry gleam, and she leaned forward, the game below all but forgotten.

"What are these… complicated games about?"

"Well, funny story…" he trailed off as he tried to pick out what would reveal his true origins the least.

"There's two major types I've dabbled with: either games where you pretend to be a particular character in a group with others, often with one player directing the opposition, characters in the world, and events at large or ones where you pretend to be a general commanding an army and face off against another player." Historical things were a no-go, and so was sci-fi.

"Most of them are pretty fantastical, more… scenarios where you ask what if things were different," he lied.

"What if you could summon avatars of your fears to fight for you? What if the whole world flooded, leaving the only sources of society as scattered mountaintops and floating cities made of lashed-together ships? Things like that." And from a certain perspective, he was telling the truth. Those types of games did exist, and you could even argue the popular ones fell under that general banner.

"Generally, you do stuff like roll some dice to determine outcomes, like whether you disarm a trap or if a sword strike lands or whatnot." Yuki intently focused on him more strongly with each word, golden eyes radiating intensity as she stared him down with unerring focus like a lurking predator. It was starting to make him sweat, and it didn't let up even after he finished. Did he make a mistake in some way and offend her?

"Your people have games that combine acting and gambling?" she asked, barely contained excitement clear in her voice. …What?

"I mean, it's not really gambling. You aren't betting anything," John explained.

"For the war games, it's more about testing your ability to command against others, with some element of randomness for spice, and for the others it's more about playing a role and telling a story with friends."

"John." Yuki's grin didn't abate.

"Games of chance are beloved amongst yokai, and do you know how many are natural actors, like yours truly? Something like that would be incredibly popular. Would you have any means to reproduce something like that in decent quantities?"

"Maybe eventually," he shrugged.

"There are ways to make a lot of—" Wait. He narrowed his eyes at the still-beaming, and now very satisfied-looking Yuki. He had just confirmed the existence of a printing press, didn't he? Ugh, he supposed it wasn't one of his secrets or anything, just something that hadn't come up.

"To be fair, I didn't go searching for that one," she explained with a mild shrug.

"When we first went to town, I noticed you staring at all the signs without words and being put off, so I figured literacy was much higher back where you came from, and I was curious as to why. I had my suspicions as to why when you mentioned that the manuals were several hundred pages long, and they are common enough to be a hobby for many, like board games or dice are here." She paused, expression turning serious for a moment.

"When you have time to make something like that, perhaps even without any magic involved in its operation… It would be one of the kindest things you can do for the people of this land." Her tone was warm, but a frown slowly crept onto her face.

"Perhaps once the Nameless issue is dealt with."

"And here I thought you were interested in playing yourself," he snarked, although there was no heat behind it.

"Oh, I am," Yuki borderline cooed.

"I'm a natural actor, with centuries of well-honed experience under my belt, so I'm rather intrigued by the group ones where everyone plays a character. It'd be nice to do it recreationally with a few amateurs, from time to time. How many people do they need?" John snorted, shaking his head.

"Well, if that's all, then," he responded.

"It depends on the game. The normal group sizes are four to six, though. It'll probably be a while, in any case. Even the simple booklet-sized ones take quite a lot of design work that is not my strength." By that, he meant that he'd just be stealing from his favourites back home and praying he remembered them well enough. Yuki hummed, pondering.

"Well, there's you and I, of course. Rin can read well enough. I doubt… either Aiki or Haru would enjoy it much, even if they could read well enough. They're still rather terrified to be in either of our presences, they'd probably just play the role of submissive servants no matter what we said." The thought made him wince, but it made sense, and he couldn't help but notice how they tried to busy themselves away from the pair of them, even if it was pointlessly sweeping some random bit of stone path.

Did they think of the two of them as so unstable they'd kick them out for some minor offence if they weren't working all the time? To be fair, actually, that was a reasonable worry, given he was some sort of local ghost story and Yuki was ostensibly a member of the yokai aristocracy that just showed up.

"Perhaps we could recruit some of the local yokai," Yuki mused.

"The only one we know is the kappa, and do you think he'd really want anything to do with Rin after earlier today?" A grin returned to Yuki's face.

"You'd be surprised. Who knows, maybe you can lure him with the idea of rolling dice and ambush him with the idea of acting?" John chuckled.

"Oh, and it's still your move, by the way." He glanced down at the board and cursed under his breath, frantically searching for a way out of the corner he was backed into. Maybe a bit of a break wasn't the worst idea, after all.