The Sea
Rubina looked around.
Yona, whose hand she'd been holding as she followed along, was busy chatting with a woman about the same age as her — similar, though with a different coloring — but Rubina had no interest in conversations like that.
There were so many children.
Boys, and girls, too.
Her home village had plenty of children as well, but she had never seen kids laugh like that before. Then again, since most of those children didn't seem interested in playing with Rubina, maybe it was only Rubina who didn't know why they were laughing.
"Wow..."
Somewhere along the way, her gaze drifted out the window.
Beyond a gentle rise, a grassland stretched out below.
Having grown up staring at fields where nothing but grain grew in tidy rows, a meadow of tall grass swaying freely felt strangely foreign to her. Just looking at it made her think she could smell the green, and Rubina found herself sniffing at the air without meaning to.
The wind came in and bent the grass. The bending grass filled the whole plain, and following the breeze, it rippled in wave after unceasing wave, weaving its own rhythm across the land.
The white buildings standing here and there were large and rather imposing. At the very least, every one of them looked far bigger than the house she'd lived in back home.
Then a hand came to rest on her head, and when Rubina looked up, Yona was gazing down at her.
At a glance, she seemed angry.
It was that expression that had kept Rubina from getting close to Yona for a while.
Rubina was only a small child, but to the people of her village, a small child was nothing more than a burden to be hauled around.
A pack mule's foal that needed to grow up fast and put its hands to the village's work.
Every adult who said such things wore the same expression Yona wore now.
Approaching them only earned a cold rebuff, and every now and then a slap came flying too.
But Yona was different.
Only her face was like that — and her way of speaking, rough as it was.
In the days they'd spent together, Yona had washed her, slept beside her. She was a good person.
"What do you think? Do you like it here?"
Rubina turned her eyes back to the grassland outside the window and nodded.
Because it wasn't a question of liking it or not.
From the very beginning, Rubina had known full well that coming this far with Yona and Alec was as far as it went.
"I'm glad you like it."
But she didn't want it to end.
Rubina wanted to stay by Yona's side. By Alec's side too.
She wanted to follow them.
But she couldn't say that.
At only ten years old, Rubina understood all too well that she was nothing to them but an obstacle — an inconvenient weight dragging at their heels.
"I like it. I think it'll be nice living here."
No, I don't.
I want to be with you, Yona. Not here.
More than here, I want to be with Alec, and Kayak, and James.
Rubina swallowed the words down.
Because she couldn't say them.
Because she didn't want Yona to hate her for bringing it up for no reason.
So she pressed it all down.
She took the truth that was about to burst out of her, packed it tight, and locked it away for good.
"Yes, you can bring her in two days."
"Two days — understood. Thank you."
Yona flashed the instructor nun a bright, blooming smile.
The instructor nun, a junior colleague of Sister Aize's, returned Yona's look with a smile as generous as her bearing.
"A healer, granted — but a member of the clergy is still a member of the clergy. Sister Aize has raised her students wonderfully."
It would have been nice if not for that pointless qualifier tacked on at the front.
Yona kept the smile on her face even as she thought it.
She'd heard it more times than she could count. Being a healer didn't stop someone from being clergy.
"We'll have everything prepared so she can move in two days, without fail."
"Yes. Then we'll see you in two days."
Yona bowed at the waist.
And beside her, without quite understanding why, Rubina clasped her small hands together, laid them over her belly button, and bowed deep in copy.
"Little miss, we'll see each other in two days. All right?"
At the instructor nun's sunny smile, Rubina managed an awkward smile of her own.
A faint sweat had gathered on her clasped hands.
"Then we'll be off."
"Travel safe."
Yona lingered a moment, staring at the iron gate as it closed behind them, then turned away.
When a small warmth slipped into her hand, she closed her fingers around it tightly.
"...Hungry?"
"A little."
Yona walked on, holding Rubina's hand.
They'd had breakfast at the inn before leaving, but the road to the cathedral orphanage was a long one, and it had taken them a good while to arrive.
Thanks to that, the sun was already high overhead. As the midday glare beat down, an early-winter sea wind rolled in and stirred their hair lightly.
I hope you never become a healer, Rubina.
Honestly, it wasn't something she could just laugh off as a matter of pride.
The ability to project holy power outward — or the lack of it.
That was the entire difference. And healers did everything priests could do anyway...
Pointless thoughts.
Yona shook her head to scatter them.
Telling herself not to think it didn't make it stop, and besides, there was no guarantee Rubina would ever awaken holy power at all.
Healer this, priest that — it was already absurd before anything even started.
The city at noon was brimming with life.
No one's face carried a frown, and their voices rang out loud and boisterous enough to fill every street with noise.
Beyond that, carts heaped full with fish and seafood rolled this way and that, while overhead, seabirds wheeled and chattered on their own endless circuits.
The city was the color of gray-white.
The sound of the blue sea carried to every corner of it, and the buildings lining the water were built of gray-painted brick, standing firm and fast in their places.
Hand in hand, Yona and Rubina walked through streets busy with lively passersby.
What should they eat? Yona looked around.
However far she looked, all she could see were fish restaurants.
"...Rubina, have you ever eaten fish?"
"Fish?"
"Yeah."
Rubina looked up at her, big black eyes rolling slowly in her head.
Apparently she didn't even know what fish was, so Yona explained.
"Things that live in the water."
"Oh... no. Never."
Then fish was out of the question.
Yona hadn't eaten fish once since coming to this world either, but in her old world she'd had plenty of it.
Even with cooking techniques advanced enough to strip out the fishy smell, fish dishes divided opinion — and this world's cooking was garbage by comparison, so expecting them to handle the smell was hopeless.
Which meant if she fed Rubina fish as her first-ever taste of it...
That'd be a fine way to waste money.
Holding Rubina's hand, Yona kept walking through the streets, scanning from side to side.
After walking for a long while, she found herself in a plaza without realizing it.
Looking around now, the city itself seemed to be laid out in a circle.
There was a plaza with a fountain at its center, and from that plaza, the buildings rose in wide rings around it — that seemed to be the shape of the whole place.
And the plaza was enormous. You had to open your eyes wide just to make out the buildings on the far side.
Stalls — carts, by the look of them — were busy setting up their spots all around the plaza, too occupied with their preparations to spare anyone a glance.
Except one. One cart had already opened for business, and a small brazier stood on it. A large slab of meat hung over the brazier on a spit, and the owner was turning the meat by hand, roasting it with great care.
That might do.
The slab of meat, fat dripping off it in beads, had already browned nicely on the outside, as if it was more or less done cooking.
No matter how she looked at it, that was no fish, so Yona led Rubina up to the cart.
"What kind of meat is this?"
"Welcome, welcome! That there's pork!"
Yona studied the young man who answered so cheerfully and frowned inwardly.
Pork, huh.
Somehow she doubted it.
Pork wasn't cheap enough to be sold off a street stall like this.
Well, boar or not, a pig was a pig.
Yona decided to go with that.
"Two, please."
The moment Yona placed her order, the owner pulled two loaves of bread from the display and deftly split them with a dull knife.
He slathered some kind of red sauce thickly over the gaping mouths of the bread, then sprinkled a generous dusting of white powder over it.
Then, leaving the bread gaping wide open, he set his knife against the meat cooking over the brazier and began shaving off slice after thin slice.
Very thin pieces of meat slid down like sheets of paper. Catching them on a small plate, he shaved for quite a while longer, then began stuffing the meat between the bread.
The sight was so achingly familiar that Yona couldn't help thinking she should have just bought something else.
She'd eaten that meat sandwich until she was sick of it back home. She never dreamed she'd end up buying one here, of all places.
"That'll be two silver!"
Expensive, too.
The long breakwater was quite well made.
It wasn't one of those sturdy stone breakwaters, but though it was built of wood, it had been anchored firmly against great boulders beneath it, and at a glance it certainly looked the part.
Plenty of tourists seemed to come here too, and wooden benches lined the top of the breakwater. Yona and Rubina sat side by side on one of them, sharing a sandwich each.
Rubina held her sandwich in one hand and stared out at the sea in a daze.
"So that's the ocean..."
Come to think of it, Yona didn't think she'd ever brought Rubina to see the sea before.
Yona had been born and raised by the coast, so there was nothing novel about the ocean to her. Granted, it was her first time seeing a sea with so few ships on it, but the sea itself held no wonder. For Rubina, though, it must have been something else entirely.
How much of a wonder it was — Rubina was staring at the water with her mouth hanging open, having completely forgotten about the sandwich in her hand.
"It's amazing?"
"There's so... so much water. It's amazing..."
"First time seeing the ocean, huh?"
"I think it's... it's bigger than ten of our village reservoirs put together..."
Ten of them. Rubina probably didn't know, but that little village reservoir couldn't have been very big even at its best.
It was likely the largest number Rubina could think of to say.
There was no need to point that out, so Yona bit into her sandwich and chewed.
"And there's a funny smell..."
"That's called the fishy smell."
"Not the sea smell?"
"Uh... yeah. The sea smell. Actually, sea smell is the better way to say it."
"The sea smell..."
Only then, as if the thought had just come to her, Rubina took a big bite of her sandwich.
She chewed it a few times, swallowed, and then turned to Yona with a face split wide by a grin.
"I think I like the sea smell! Every time I smell the sea, I think it'll remind me of eating with you here, Yona!"
So you'll be thinking of it every single day, then.
Yona murmured it to herself, inwardly.