Juna stood at the edge of the market street shifting her weight from one foot to the other, while Hajin worked out what the clothes had cost him against what he still owed the guild.
"So, how does it feel?" he asked, tilting his head at her, "better than a blanket at least?"
The outfit was standard beastkin wear off a merchant two stalls down, dark shorts with a fitted top that left her middle bare, which had looked practical on the rack.
"It's fine," she said, pulling at the hem of the top with both hands, "it fits."
The tips of her ears had gone pink, which she was doing nothing about, since both hands were busy trying to stretch cloth that had no more give in it.
'She is embarrassed,' he thought, counting the pouch so he had somewhere else to look, 'not that I blame her, dressed like that straight out of a blanket.'
"It fits well," he said, pulling the pouch shut against his belt, "you look good in it."
Her ears came straight up, then she found something on the ground worth her full attention while the color went across her face.
"I-I didn't ask for your opinion," she muttered, with her chin down and none of the bite she clearly wanted, "so keep it."
[ CringeSlayer91: ] he said it. he actually said it
'I will take that,' he thought, turning up the street while she fell in behind him with a hand flat over her middle, 'it is the closest thing to thanks I am getting today.'
[ LurkerNoMore: ] yes hajin, compliment her again, you are learning
Wolf beastkin fought close, built around speed and senses that ran ahead of anything a human could train into himself.
'If half of what the stories say holds up,' he thought, catching her reflection in a shop window, 'she could carry a fight, so it might be worth asking whether she wants one.'
The sun still sat low over the rooftops, which left most of a day for getting outside the walls and putting something down before dark.
"Do you want to go hunting?" he asked, slowing until she came level with his shoulder, "we could be back before the gates shut."
She kept her eyes on the ground.
He counted three stalls while nothing came back at him, then decided to let the question drop before the silence turned into something she had to answer for.
"Okay," Juna said, so quietly that he nearly walked through it.
"Really?" he asked, stopping in the middle of the street to face her, "you actually want to come?"
She jumped at the shift in his voice, her ears shooting up while she stared at him.
'What is wrong with this human,' she thought, with a hand pressed flat to her chest, 'one moment he is calm, the next he is grinning at me like a fool.'
"Can you back up a little?" she asked, both hands up between them while her ears went flat, "please."
"Right, sorry," he said, taking the step back and finding the back of his neck with one hand, "got carried away."
He cleared his throat and put his face back where it belonged.
"Anyway, we should take a few contracts and rank up," he said, walking again with his thumbs hooked in his belt, "fifty silver isn't going to pay itself in a week."
She said nothing to that, though she matched his pace instead of trailing him, which he counted as progress.
He opened the stream tab as he walked, since the numbers were the only part of his life currently moving upward.
'Let me see what this thing actually does,' he thought, letting his feet handle the road, 'because nobody has explained a single line of it to me.'
[ Stream Status: Active ]
[ Viewers: 20 ]
[ Soul Energy: 15 ]
[ Fragment Recovery: 0.001% ]
Twenty was a small number, though it kept the Soul Energy coming in, and small arrows sat beside two of the figures.
'Viewers climbing, energy generating,' he thought, pressing the Soul Energy line to see what fed it, 'so somebody had better tell me what it feeds in turn.'
A breakdown opened under the line he had touched.
[ Soul Energy increases with active viewers, positive engagement, and gifts. ]
[ Current trend: Rising ]
[ Effects: Feeds directly into the Goddess Fragment Recovery. ]
'The more people watch, the faster the Goddess comes back,' he thought, reading the last line twice over, 'plus gifts turn into credits, which turn into anything I can carry out of a shop.'
[ NewViewer_02: ] just got here, what is that bottom number counting to
It came to very little so far, a trickle measured in single digits, though the arithmetic was simple and it held up while walking.
More viewers meant more energy for the fragment, so gifts meant not scraping through the rest of his life on six silver.
'Fine,' he thought, shutting the panel with two fingers, 'keep moving, keep breathing.'
[ ShadowMage44: ] bro is doing spreadsheets in a fantasy world
A voice came up the street behind him, over the noise of the carts.
"Move out of the way!" a guard shouted from the saddle, already level with him by the time the words landed.
Juna had his arm before he understood the sentence, and she pulled him sideways as the horse came through the space where he had been standing.
He got his feet under himself in time to see the rest of it, a line of armored riders looking down at him, with a noble carriage rolling along behind them under the eyes of two more knights.
One of the knights turned his horse across the road to look Hajin over from the saddle.
"Watch where you stand next time," he said, keeping the horse where it blocked him, "or you will lose your head before you know you were in the way."
Hajin kept his head down while his pulse worked at him, since arguing with a mounted man was one way to learn how sharp the sword was.
'I really was not paying attention,' he thought, with her fingers still shut around his sleeve, 'so thank you for that.'
"Sorry about that," he said to the road rather than to the man on the horse, "it will not happen again."
The knight held the look a second longer, then turned to catch up with the carriage.
He let the breath out once the hooves were past, then his attention went to the carriage window without being asked for it.
The curtain moved a hand width in the gap, where a pair of eyes had already found him.
They were sharp and interested, which was the wrong pair of eyes for the inside of a sealed noble carriage.
It was Princess Didi, though neither of them had the first idea what to call the other.
Silver hair sat loose around a face that did not move at all while she looked at him, and she made no effort to pretend she was looking anywhere else.
The way the two of them locked on through the glass would have suggested history to anybody watching, rather than two strangers passing on a crowded street.
[ CringeSlayer91: ] ooooh, new waifu unlocked?
'Who is that?' he thought, holding the look until the wheels carried her past him, 'and why does a face behind glass get to weigh me like that?'
The curtain fell back into place.
"We should keep going," Juna said, tugging once at his sleeve with her ears still half pinned, "before another one of those comes through."
"Yeah," he said, his eyes still on the space where the carriage had been, "let's go."
[ DarkBlade: ] episode twelve and we get a mystery girl already
They walked three streets before she spoke again, which for her was practically an outburst.
"You know her?" she asked, closer to his shoulder now than she had been all morning, "you were staring."
"I have never seen her before in my life," he said, holding both hands up in surrender to a charge nobody had filed, "and I was not staring, I was looking."
"That is what looking is," she said, moving out ahead of him with her chin up, "in wolf terms, anyway."
"Hunting first," he said, steering them toward the west gate with a hand that stopped short of touching her, "you can interrogate me on the road."
"I don't interrogate," she said, without turning around, "I just ask twice."