Departure
The ship rocked gently on the waves.
“…. ”
“…. ”
Somewhere out on the blue sea, where a faint darkness seemed to linger, a lone ship drifted all by itself, lonely and isolated.
Swish—
Each time a light current passed and the boat gave a small lurch, the red fishing bobber dipped beneath the surface, then bobbed back up again.
A peaceful, tranquil scene.
But Da-eun didn’t seem to think so.
Her black eyes, which had been lazily watching the bobber rise and fall, slowly drooped half-closed.
Gasp!
In an instant, the bobber sank deep into the water.
Her half-lidded eyes flew open, and the hand gripping the rod tightened.
Da-eun’s face, which had been brimming with expectation a moment ago, soured with disappointment as she yanked hard on the fishing rod.
“Hng….”
Not only had she failed to catch a fish, the bait on the hook was still right where it was.
Plop.
With a listless hand, Da-eun cast the line again.
And so began another endless wait.
As her eyes slowly blinked in time with the bobber’s movements, Da-eun spoke up.
“…. Kana.”
“…. ”
“Kana. Kanaaa.”
Why are you pestering me?
I had been sitting beside her, practicing how to sense the flow of mana, but at Da-eun’s continued calls I finally gave in and answered.
“What.”
“I’m going to become a fisherman who catches people.”
The things Da-eun usually said were made up of about half air and half nonsense, so listening to her rarely did me any good.
Sure enough, I could tell she was about to spout more nonsense, and I turned my head away.
“That’s harsh.”
“It’s not harsh.”
Just a moment ago she’d been all confidence when she picked up the rod, and now, apparently bored to death, she couldn’t keep still for even a second.
“If you’re that bored, then why not spar?”
“But if we fight on a boat, it’ll rock around and make it hard to keep my balance.”
“Then you should experience that sort of thing in advance. If it’s really that hard, at least practice your stance. That’ll help with your balance.”
“Pfft… why can’t you just play with me? What’s the harm….”
Da-eun pouted, clearly grumbling in dissatisfaction, but she still carefully set the fishing rod back into its holder.
“Make sure you watch closely and see whether I catch something or not. Got it?”
“…. Me?”
“This is training the way Kana told me to, so Kana has to take responsibility too!”
“…. Is that so?”
The way she said it with such confidence only confused me, and when I tilted my head, Da-eun stuck out her tongue.
“Heh. I’m kidding.”
“No. I’ll watch.”
“Huh? Really?”
“That much is easy…. It’s not difficult.”
The one-armed swordsman and the Shadow of Crumor.
Maybe those encounters had been the trigger, because Da-eun had recently thrown herself into training with remarkable enthusiasm.
She had started going off on her own to practice swordsmanship without me saying a word, and then, to my utter surprise, she even came to visit me while I was laid up in bed to ask about swordplay….
…Who are you?
Huh?
No, never mind.
So I thought my reaction was perfectly understandable.
Da-eun, who had always been such a slacker about training, acting like that?
It was honestly moving.
Wasn’t it only proper for a teacher to reward a student who’d done something praiseworthy?
“Wait! If that’s the case, I’ll take a different reward, so I’m taking back what I just said! I can’t waste the reward Kana gave me on just asking her to watch a fishing rod…!”
“Nope. What’s said is said.”
“So mean…!”
“If you keep at it diligently, I’ll give you another one.”
“You promise.”
She hadn’t even heard what kind of reward I was talking about, and yet Da-eun was already burning with determination.
“But Kana. Have you ever fished? Do you know how you’re supposed to catch one?”
“Isn’t it just a matter of pulling?”
“Wrong! That’s the wrong answer! Sometimes you put strength in, sometimes you let off a little, and the key to fishing is tiring the fish out. If you just yank at it blindly, you’ll waste a ton of energy, and you might even break the rod. It’s a common beginner mistake, so it’s good to know.”
Da-eun went on and on about how the real trick was in the give-and-take, and how the hook set was important.
I stood there in front of the rod, listening disinterestedly to Da-eun’s fishing lecture, and said, “If you’re so good at it, why didn’t you catch anything?”
“…. You little— that hit a sore spot, didn’t it?”
Da-eun had been wriggling her fingers with an ominous sort of glee, but the moment she saw me lift the rod, she scampered backward in a hurry.
“Just you wait!”
Leaving behind a line worthy of a third-rate villain, Da-eun retreated to a safe distance.
I watched her go for a moment, then turned my gaze back to the bobber swaying on the waves.
I’d caught fish before, but I’d never actually gone fishing, so holding the rod felt strangely unfamiliar.
Since I’d never done it before, of course I had no idea how to hold it properly, though perhaps I should be proud that even so, I’d instinctively shifted my stance to find my center of gravity.
It wasn’t even worth considering.
“Better than being clumsy, I guess.”
At least my posture was decent. That was something, wasn’t it?
When I’d first met Da-eun, she hadn’t even been able to hold a proper stance.
Like the sea water flowing steadily onward, I casually slandered Da-eun in the most natural way possible.
No, actually, I was just stating facts, so it wasn’t slander.
For quite some time I kept hold of the rod, using the occasional cry from Da-eun, the waves slapping against the hull, and the sound of the wind as my music, until before long I found myself understanding why some people liked fishing.
It felt like stepping slightly apart from the world and enjoying a little quiet time.
That said, it wasn’t exactly something I wanted as a hobby.
If I had the choice, I’d rather spend the time swinging a sword one more time or sleeping.
Splaaash!
“….?”
While I was absentmindedly letting time dissolve around me, the bobber suddenly plunged deep into the water.
I stared at it as it disappeared completely into the dark blue depths.
“Oh.”
Only after a heavy tug traveled up through the rod did I realize the fish had taken the bait.
“Ah, it bit.”
Da-eun, having sensed the commotion, hurried over in a flash.
“What, what?! It bit?! ”
“Seems like it.”
“…. It really bit? When Kana said it bit, you weren’t talking about me, right?”
Suspicious, Da-eun kept looking at me askance, but she finally let her doubts go only after I deliberately held out the trembling rod for her to see.
“Sorry. You looked so calm I thought you were tricking me.”
“It’s just a fish. No reason to make a fuss.”
“No… but shouldn’t you be feeling the thrill of it, or something?”
“…. Not particularly?”
If we were comparing intensity, wasn’t it more exciting when swords clashed?
At my head tilt, Da-eun let out a long sigh.
“That’s not what I mean…. Fine, let’s catch the fish first, then I’ll explain. You can feel it resisting, right?”
“Yeah.”
“When it’s resisting hard, you ease off the line for a moment, and when its strength seems to drop, you pull again. You repeat that over and over until it tires itself out. Got it?”
“Yeah… no idea.”
“…. Are you saying you understand, or that you don’t?”
“No idea.”
I thought maybe I really could just yank it in.
Rrriiiip—!
“Kyahhh! Kana!”
The moment I tried putting some force into it, the rod bent sharply and made an ominous cracking sound, as though it might snap at any second.
“Ohhh….”
“Ohhh? That’s not the part you should be saying ‘ohhh’ about! You almost broke it!”
“It didn’t break, so it’s fine. Want to catch it for me?”
“No! You have to catch this yourself! I can’t steal Kana’s commemorative first fish.”
A commemorative… fish?
Personally, I was more in the mood of, Do we really need to commemorate something like this? But Da-eun flatly refused, so there was nothing I could do.
I wasn’t fond of this whole teasing, half-hearted struggle.
Hmm.
Fine, let’s do it this way.
The moment I made up my mind, the dark brown fishing rod slowly began to tint pink.
Before long, the lower half was submerged and no longer visible beneath the water, but after confirming that even the fishing line had become infused with mana, I pulled the rod back all at once.
Shwaaah!
With a spectacular spray of seawater, a jet-black fish shot up into the air.
Thud!
Then, following the arc of my swing, it came crashing down onto the deck with a wet slap.
The thing, violently dragged out of its life on the water, flailed desperately in an attempt to return to its home, but the high railing would not permit it.
Still, leaving it like that seemed a little much.
It thrashed so fiercely that if I left it alone, it looked like it could circle the deck and then some.
It seemed like it needed to be calmed down by force.
So… I think it was like this.
Following what I’d seen over someone’s shoulder, I curled my fist and brought it down on the fish’s head.
Wham!
“Ah.”
…Oops. I’d misjudged the force.
The moment I heard wham instead of a neat little bonk, I already knew the fish’s future was doomed.
Crack.
The fish’s head caved in exactly in the shape of my fist.
No matter how small my fist was, a tiny hole in a fatal weak point was enough to take a life.
I offered a brief moment of silence for the fish, which had been thrashing so violently just a second ago and was now limp as a wet rag.
“…. Honestly, I don’t even know where to start.”
Using mana just to catch a fish?
Or smashing it into silence with one punch?
Da-eun, who had been watching my actions, muttered in disbelief.
Even if she didn’t mean the first part, the second part was something she could probably do herself, so there was no need to act so shocked.
“I wonder what this fish is called.”
“It’s obviously a monster.”
“Its name is Monster? That’s kind of neat~”
“No, I mean it’s a monster, not a fish.”
“…. Ah?”
What a stupid conversation.
Only then did Da-eun understand what I meant, and she scratched her cheek awkwardly.
“I thought its name was literally Monster. Don’t monsters have names?”
“The really strong ones that have gone unpurged for a long time do. Not ones like this.”
Just because a creature was biologically the same species didn’t mean its form would remain the same once it became a monster.
If you went around giving names to every monster you saw, you’d never be done.
“…. Then can’t we eat it?”
“We can eat it.”
“Whoa! Then let’s—”
“Just once. Life only comes once, after all.”
“…. ”
“I’m joking.”
“…. Really?”
“Yeah. If it comes to it, we’ve got Celine, so even if you’re in pain enough to die, you won’t actually die.”
“That means we can’t eat it!”
Had she already forgotten why I’d done my own cooking when we were staying at Atisha’s manor in the first place?
She’d recoil in horror at monster meat, and yet for this she was practically drooling.
Da-eun’s shoulders drooped.
“I wanted to show you the fun of eating a fish you’d caught yourself….”
“There are all kinds of strange hobbies out there.”
So that was why she’d been so fixated on it?
If that was the reason, then she didn’t need to show me. I already knew.
Whether it was fun or not, that was another matter.
“If that’s all it is, I already know it. The answer, I mean.”
“…. Huh? But you just said you’d never fished before….”
“I haven’t fished. But that doesn’t mean I have to catch fish with a rod, does it?”
I knew a sword was the answer.
I gave the sea a light swing of my blade.
A spray of water rose, and a moment later a fish with no head floated up to the surface.
“Like this.”
“…. That’s not romantic at all!”
“It’s the same thing as long as you catch it and eat it right away.”
“It’s different! Totally different!”
Even after I’d gone to the trouble of showing her, Da-eun’s face somehow looked even gloomier than before.
…Why?
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