The Minnow in the Teacup
“……!”
Hyperion startled and stared—at Laniakea’s sudden movement, and at what the teacup had become.
Only a moment ago, an ordinary cup had sat before him. There had been too much still to explain, and he had scarcely touched it. Until Laniakea carried it away, it had held nothing but clear brown tea.
Now the cup in her hand rattled as if something lived inside, and bubbles leapt and popped from the surface. A faint light drifted around it. She had summoned a spirit. Of that there could be no doubt.
But a minnow?
“Don’t tell me the spirit is…”
“Yes. Let me introduce you. This is Minnow, a water spirit.”
Laniakea held the teacup out to him.
A single minnow was swimming at its leisure through the tea. Warmth still lingered in the hand wrapped around the cup, and what filled it was, without question, tea. A minnow that looked perfectly content in there?
“Minnow likes tea. It likes liquor even more.”
The moment she finished, Minnow flicked the surface with its tail fin. The droplets that sprang up gathered above the rim into a shape: a hand with the thumb raised.
As if the little spirit were declaring this tea the finest thing in the world, Hyperion stared blankly at the bubbles it had made.
“It can be summoned anywhere there’s liquid, but blood is impossible. Or rather—it isn’t so much impossible as something that must never be done. Summon a spirit from within blood, and it’s very likely to lose its reason as a spirit and fall to corruption…”
“Have you tried it?”
“What?”
“You spoke as if you knew.”
“Ah, well… When I was little I got a nosebleed, and I called without thinking, and then…”
Minnow struck the surface hard with its tail again. Tea splashed across the back of Hyperion’s hand and cut his words short.
The droplet on his skin shifted slowly, then drew itself into letters.
“Does this spirit like sweets?”
Instead of answering, Laniakea lifted the sugar bowl and poured it into the cup. Five more thumbs-up droplets bloomed above the rim.
The best. The best. The best. The best. The best.
Minnow’s delight came through with perfect clarity—and not only as a feeling. At the bottom of the cup, the little spirit was happily gulping down the sugar as it settled.
While Hyperion’s attention was wholly caught by the wonder of it, Laniakea let out a breath of relief. He seemed to have forgotten the question entirely.
She looked at Minnow in the tea and thought,
Thank you for helping.
A small droplet beside the cup wriggled this way and that, for all the world like a hand waved in dismissal. Oh, come on. It was nothing.
Hyperion watched the minnow swim, unbothered, through tea thick with sugar, and only after a long while did he ask again.
“Does it always appear like this when you call?”
“Usually. But every so often it doesn’t come. That happens when it’s too exhausted, or when a Spirit King or a high-tier spirit is nearby. If something that strong is close, the chance of being absorbed seems to rise.”
“A Spirit King?”
“Ah. In Priatra, my sisters summoned them fairly often.”
Once the talk turned to spirits, Laniakea’s voice quickened. Spirits were one of the few subjects she knew better than anyone else in the Empire, and now that the secret—that she could call them even outside Priatra—had been found out, there was little of real weight left worth hiding from Hyperion.
She explained eagerly: the kinds of spirits, the order among them, the ways of summoning, and more besides. Within Priatra none of it was any great secret. People simply did not care.
“So a high-tier spirit and a lower-tier spirit cannot be summoned at the same time.”
“It isn’t completely impossible. But it means briefly overturning the order of the world, and that strains the summoner’s body. There have been people who went wrong and could never call a spirit again, so no one attempts it lightly.”
Having said that much, Laniakea blinked, covered her mouth with one hand, and yawned softly.
“Are you tired?”
“Ah. I think I kept Minnow here too long because I was excited. While a spirit is summoned, the summoner keeps spending stamina.”
In that instant Hyperion turned a fearsome gaze on the inside of the cup. Even Minnow, busy eating sugar, startled at that dreadful presence, rose to the surface, and gaped. A question-mark droplet floated above the rim. What’s the matter? it seemed to ask.
“That’s enough. You may send it back.”
At his words, Laniakea nodded.
“Thank you for coming. It was good to see you after so long. Are the others doing well?”
The droplet above the cup changed into the shape of a bird. It had met Baepsae recently. Laniakea sighed.
“Please tell Baepsae to use kinder words, for heaven’s sake. And you must never pick up that habit. Understand?”
Minnow swished its tail. Understood.
While Laniakea watched with doubtful eyes, Minnow turned toward Hyperion and splashed water across the back of his hand once more.
What sort of demand was that—bold as a fish come to collect what it had left in safekeeping?
This time Hyperion emptied the sugar bowl itself into the cup. A delighted splashing followed. Anyone who didn’t know better would have thought the creature was drowning under the sugar.
After slurping up what had settled on the bottom, Minnow leapt from the cup with a pop. For an instant it seemed it would fall—and then it was simply gone.
Hyperion gazed at the teacup, then lifted it to his lips.
One swallow, and it tasted like ordinary tea. There was none of the sweetness of all that sugar, nor the fishy tang that ought to have lingered after a freshwater fish had swum there so long.
When he set the cup down, Laniakea burst out laughing.
“Why are you laughing?”
“I did the exact same thing when I was little. Minnow scolded me then, too—asked if I drank my tea without any sugar—so I put in more sugar than there was tea.”
After Minnow had gone, curiosity had made her sip that tea anyway. To think that Hyperion, who seemed all edges and perfection, would do the very thing she had done as a child.
Still giggling, Laniakea sat on the sofa. She had kept the spirit longer than usual, and weariness came over her.
“The Baepsae you saw then was a wind spirit, you said. What do the others look like?”
“Mm. The earth spirit I’m closest to takes the form of Mole, and the fire spirit looks like Firefly. Oh—and neither of them communicates in the odd ways Baepsae and Minnow do.”
“Come to think of it, you said you did the same thing as a child. How long have you been close with the spirits?”
“Well…”
Laniakea began the story of the first time she had called Mole.
She left out the part where her sisters had abandoned her. There was no need to tell him that, and she did not want to.
Mid-sentence, her eyes slid shut.
A worry she had carried for a long time had come right at last, and she had talked with Hyperion all through dinner. On top of that she had summoned Minnow for the first time in ages. Drowsiness came naturally with the languor.
When Laniakea, half asleep, leaned into the sofa cushion, Hyperion rose from across the way and came to her side.
“Your Majesty?”
She called to him, and a small yawn escaped with the word. It wasn’t that she disliked having him beside her. She was only curious why he had sat down so suddenly.
“The truth is, before the Ensi couple left today, they gave me an assignment. A practical exercise, to be precise.”
A practical exercise? She had thought their talking like this was the exercise.
“If you don’t mind, would you give me your hand?”
It was nothing difficult. At his words, Laniakea offered him her hand. Her sleepy eyes missed the way the corner of his mouth lifted.
“What… should I do?”
When she asked again, blinking slowly, Hyperion answered in a gentle voice.
“You only need to be comfortable. More than that—may I touch your hand a little?”
Laniakea nodded slowly.
He was already holding it, anyway. They had already done far more than this. What was a little touching?
With one hand caught in his, she settled comfortably against the cushion.
A moment later, the breathing of the woman with her eyes closed evened out.
Hyperion studied her as she slept and carefully laced his fingers through hers. Feeling the warmth where their palms met, he let out a low breath.
In truth, he had received a separate assignment from Tamil.