A Night of Tenderness
“Come to think of it, Chibi-chan...”
One night, the bespectacled mage Adachi and Chibi were on duty watching the campfire. Chibi wasn’t talkative, so Adachi had been keeping quiet too, but then he suddenly struck up a conversation.
“You don’t talk, generally.”
Chibi nodded.
Adachi was quiet for a while. Then he opened his mouth again. “I’ve been thinking about that for a while.”
Chibi nodded again. Though she didn’t speak much, it wasn’t the case that she didn’t listen to people, or that she didn’t want to hear what they had to say.
“I’m curious about why you don’t talk. It’s not that you can’t. A long time ago, I asked Sassa—uh, are you okay with me talking about Sassa?”
Chibi nodded. Adachi smiled just a little.
“So, I asked Sassa about it, and she told me something that she said was a secret I couldn’t share with anyone else. But it’s okay to talk about it with you, right? Chibi-chan, you talk in your sleep sometimes, don’t you?”
It was embarrassing for that to be brought up, but Chibi smiled faintly. Sassa had told Chibi about her sleep talking. At first, she’d thought that Sassa must have been lying. But then one day, Chibi had woken up in the middle of doing it, and realized it was true.
“Is there some reason you don’t talk? I mean, if there isn’t, that’s fine too.”
Chibi looked into the campfire as she thought about it. It was second nature now for her to speak as little as possible. She struggled to come up with an answer to the question. Even if there was a reason for it, some inciting event, maybe it was so long ago that she had forgotten it.
Oh, right. Even if there was any such event in her past, it must have happened before she had come to Grimgar. Which meant that Chibi herself didn’t know.
“Mm...” She managed to vocalize something. “Mm... Ahh...” She touched her throat. It felt a little itchy.
Adachi was staring at Chibi. Their eyes met. He smiled.
“It’s fine,” he said. “You don’t need to talk. We’ve known each other for a long time, so I can more or less guess what you’re thinking. It’s not really an issue.”
“Mm-hmm... Yeah...”
“But this feels nice. Novel.”
“Yeah...”
“If you don’t want to talk, we don’t have to. But if you do, you’re welcome to.”
“Yeah...”
“As for me... Yeah. I guess I do have something I want to talk about. Or at least I feel like I probably do.”
“Go...ahead...”
“It’s nothing major. But maybe I should tell you while I can. I dunno... I don’t mean anything deep by that. It’s just what it sounds like. I mean, it’s not like there’s any guarantee that we’ll still be around tomorrow or the day after to talk about it. That’s...just a fact. That’s reality.”
“Yeah...”
“So, I was thinking that, if there’s anything I want to talk about...no matter how stupid, then maybe I should.”
“Talk...”
“Huh?”
“Talk... Please... I want...to hear it.”
“Oh, okay.”
After that, Adachi hung his head for a long time. Chibi mostly watched the wavering flames, only occasionally looking up at Adachi.
“Well, you see, I...”
When Adachi opened his mouth to speak again, for some reason Chibi already knew what he was going to say, so she wasn’t surprised at all.
“I like Renji. I mean...really like him. I’ve...wanted to talk to you about it for ages. Maybe you already figured it out, but I still wanted to tell you. I wanted you to know. I wanted you to remember...that I told you I love Renji.”
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