Chương 33: Chapter 32: As Winter Faded

The days blurred together after that first night. I woke on the couch to grey light and a stiff neck. I walked to the bathhouse while the house was still quiet, this time with a clean towel in hand, then checked the fish trap on the way back. Cooked and left a portion on the table for Ella. She appeared sometime mid-morning and ate alone. It had become a routine faster than I expected. One evening, maybe the fourth or fifth night we were sitting on the couch with Yato on her lap.

An episode of something was playing on the computer. Some slice-of-life show I'd downloaded years ago. She didn't look away from the screen.

"The girls in this story wear pants." I stopped mid-translation.

"Yes."

"Often."

"It's pretty common where I'm from." A pause. The episode kept playing. A character was walking through a convenience store, picking out snacks.

"Is it that unusual?" I asked.

"Among nobles? Extremely."

"I don't see why that could be an issue honestly." She didn't answer. But the next morning, she came downstairs in the sweatpants, and she wore them all day. Then the day after that. She wore them while she read, while she watched animes, while she sat at the kitchen table looking at me while I was cooking. She never asked again. It suddenly felt like the dress problem had solved itself. That day, I came back from the river and she was on the couch in one of my shirts also wearing sweatpants, cuffs rolled twice.

She'd found them in my wardrobe on her own. I didn't ask. She didn't explain. But I noticed the dress, clean and folded, sitting on the armchair in the corner of the bedroom. She wasn't done with it yet. The clothes situation kept evolving over the week. She rotated through my shirts — the black one, a grey one with a tiny hole at the collar, a blue one she seemed to favour for sleeping, a hoodie she wore when the house was cold. She'd remove a shirt before the bath, put on a clean one after.

And I'd find the worn one in the laundry basket. By the end of the week, the dress had moved from the chair to the back of the bedroom door. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. Not discarded. Just put away. A few days later, I remembered the forgotten box of seeds in the garage. I'd bought them years ago. A phase. I was going to grow my own vegetables, save money, eat better. I'd bought the pots, the seeds and the little labels on sticks.

A packet of tomato seeds, one of bell pepper and one of courgette. A couple flower packets and also some aromatic herbs I'd never planted. Then I'd realised gardening was actual work and shoved the whole box on a shelf after all the ones I had planted had withered. Now I was holding the seeds, standing in the study doorway. She was at the table. Three books were open in front of her in a semicircle. I set the seeds beside her elbow. She looked at it. A pause. She opened the envelope and peered inside.

"Where did you find these?"

"Garage. I had no idea theses were still in there." She closed it. Held it in both hands, turning it over like it was worth more than everything else in the room combined.

"The soil is still frozen," she said.

"Yes."

"But not for much longer."

"No." She looked at me. A long, measuring look.

"Do you have a few pots?" I thought about it.

"Seedling pots. Small ones. Leftover from the same project."

"Can I plant them and place them in a spot where the sun reaches?"

"The kitchen windowsill gets sunlight most of the day." She nodded once. The conversation was over. She spent the rest of that day in that very kitchen. I found her at the counter with a knife, cutting through the tape around seedling pots I'd dug out of the garage. She filled them with soil from the edge of the garden and she planted the seeds one by one. Small holes. Careful cover. Water from the sink. I watched from the doorway. She didn't look up.

"Is there something you need?"

"No."

"Then stop watching." I stopped watching. The sound started on the second night. I was on the couch, halfway between awake and asleep, when I heard it — a low murmur from upstairs. Voices. Electronic. Familiar. I opened my eyes. The ceiling was dark. The house was quiet. The murmur continued — dialogue, music, the distant sound of a world I recognized. She'd figured out how to use the TV in my room. I lay there for a while, listening. She was watching something.

The audio was low enough that I couldn't make out the words, but the rhythm was unmistakable — the cadence of characters talking, the swell of background music, the pause before a scene change. I closed my eyes. Every night after that, the same sound. Sometimes late. Sometimes so faint I almost missed it. Sometimes I woke in the middle of the night and heard it still playing — a second shift, a different show, the quiet sound of a world she was learning from the inside out. I never went upstairs to check.

By the sixth day, the silence between us had changed. Not filled. Not broken. But different. The kind of silence that came from knowing someone was there and not needing to confirm it. She spent mornings in the study and afternoons on the couch with the laptop I'd set up for her — an old machine I'd dug out of the closet, slow but functional, loaded with everything on my NAS. She'd figured out the media player on her own. She'd found the folder on her own.

I'd come home from the river and find her paused mid-scene, taking notes in the margins of a notebook. Learning the language. The pots sat on the windowsill. Small green shoots now, pushing up through the soil. She watered them every morning before she did anything else. Yato had switched allegiance completely. He'd sometimes slept on the couch with me at night — old habits — but even then, the moment she came downstairs, he abandoned me without hesitation. Followed her to the study across the whole village.

And sat on her lap while she watched Earth through a screen. I pretended not to mind. The snow was almost gone. I noticed it on the seventh morning. The patch of ground outside the kitchen window had melted entirely. The warmth from the road was spreading. The edges of the village were showing stone again instead of white. Winter was ending. I stood at the window for a long time, a mug of hot water warming my hands, watching the drip from the eaves. Somewhere up on that mountain, the dragon was sleeping.

I didn't know what that meant for us — for me, for her, for the fragile thing we were building in this village. The world outside was waking up, and I had no idea what it would ask of us when it did.