There was something glamorous about the nights in Arcadia, probably thanks to the way the pink peaches were lit by the warm lamplight.
“What am I going to do...?” I muttered to myself as I paced around my room. Since I was the only guy between our party and Frey’s, I had my own room at the inn while all the girls shared a suite. “I gotta ask Cocoa when she’s alone, but everyone’s gonna be in the room...” If I asked Cocoa on a date in front of the others, they’d mock me relentlessly. The endless walking around my room wasn’t giving me any bright ideas, so I decided to get some fresh air.
As soon as I stepped outside, the powerful fragrance of peaches hit my nose, making me a little dizzy. “Ugh. Grow a spine, Kent,” I muttered.
“Why do you need to grow a spine?” someone answered.
“Whoa! Wait, Cocoa?” There she was—the very person I needed to grow a spine for so I could ask her out on a date. “Do you know how late it is?! It’s not safe to walk outside on your own!” Arcadia didn’t seem like a place with a high crime rate, but there were some drunks wandering the streets. They’d sniff out and harass a cute girl like Cocoa in a heartbeat.
“What? You were outside alone,” Cocoa countered.
“Because I’m a guy!”
Cocoa stared at me for a second before chuckling. “I think I can take care of myself...but thank you, Kent.”
“Why’d you come outside anyway? The only places still open this late are some of the taverns,” I said, pointing out that she couldn’t have been planning to go anywhere.
“I heard your door open, so I thought I’d find you out here,” she said, sounding so nonchalant.
“What...?” She came out to find me? “Well, uh... Sure. Did anyone ask why you left?”
“Everyone’s asleep already. Tarte and Lulu always go to bed early, and Sharon’s conked out after walking around the city all day and eating all those peaches. Of course, she must have also been worn out from traveling.”
“Gotcha,” I said. If I’m ever going to ask her out, now’s the time. My palms were sweaty, I realized. I was more nervous than I’d thought. I gotta choose the right words, I told myself, rifling through my mental dictionary with all the brain cells I had.
“Oh, I know!” Cocoa said suddenly, clapping her hands together. “Why don’t we go look at that wild peach grove we were told about?”
“Huh?”
“Well... What do you say?” she prompted.
I probably looked stupid at that moment, but I couldn’t help but notice how Cocoa was blushing. Damn. Scratching my head just so I had something to do with my hands, I said, “Sure. I was also thinking about checking it out.”
“Really? Then it’s settled.” Cocoa beamed.
We walked out of the city side by side. Cocoa and I had been in Sharon’s party for a while, so it had been a hot minute since we’d last been alone together.
“We don’t know what’s out here, so we need to be careful. Don’t walk ahead of me, Cocoa,” I warned.
“I won’t!”
As soon as Cocoa answered, I heard some kind of screech ahead of us. When I looked, I saw some kind of monkey monster with a peach in its hand. It spotted us immediately and chucked the fruit at us.
“Whoa! Taunt!” I managed to deflect the peach with my sword and hold the monkey’s attention. Glad that its attack hadn’t reached Cocoa, I turned to her. “You’re up!”
“Got it.” Cocoa produced her staff and Tome. With offensive items equipped in both hands, Cocoa’s attacks were even more powerful than Luna’s...in my personal opinion. “One, ten, a hundred, a thousand—infinite strands bind those wings and bring judgment down upon the beast!”
Steel chains appeared out of nowhere and wrapped themselves around the monkey. Once the enemy was immobilized, this terrifying Skill struck the target with a powerful hammer. While the monkey was chained and defenseless, I chipped in with my own attacks too.
“All right, we took it down!” I said.
“Yeah! The two of us can handle monsters like that, no sweat,” Cocoa said.
“You said it!” I cracked a grin, seeing how excited Cocoa was, even though we had to be on guard for any more monsters that might pop out. “All right, let’s keep going!”
“Oh, wait a minute! A single monster isn’t a problem, but we’re going to have a tough time taking on a bunch of them in the dark. I’ll use Mana Detection to see where the monsters are so we can move ahead carefully,” Cocoa said.
“You’re right,” I admitted, bringing myself down from cloud nine. “I’ll walk in front if you tell me where to go. The peach grove should be that way.” I pointed.
“Okay,” she agreed.
“All right!” I said to reinvigorate myself and began walking again.
From then on, Cocoa’s navigation kept our monkey encounters to a minimum. We almost got lost along the way, but we eventually managed to make it to our destination.
“This is the wild peach grove...” Cocoa breathed.
“It’s awesome,” I said.
The sight was even more amazing than I’d hoped. When we looked up at the sky from beneath the peach trees, the small pink flowers danced in the wind while the red moon peeked through the gaps between branches. It was a magical sight we couldn’t have seen in the city.
“It’s beautiful here, Kent. I didn’t realize how pretty it would be to see these flowers with nothing but the moon and stars to light them.”
“Me neither.”
We silently took in the peach grove for a while. Soon, I spotted some peach fruit hanging from the trees and remembered my original intention for coming here. Those who eat from this grove together will... My face was burning so badly that I could barely finish the thought.
“Hey, Kent?” Cocoa took a step forward and turned to face me. Against the background of peach flowers and red moon, she looked so... “Peaches! Let’s eat them!” she said with a hint of an embarrassed grin, speaking the words I’d been struggling to form.
“R-Right!”
“Yay! During the day, I bought a peach that looks delicious! Not as good as a Giant Peach, maybe, but it looks pretty good!” She took out a peach a little too big to fit in one hand, along with a plate, fork, and knife—she was going to peel it for us. “Mm! It smells delicious!”
“You’re pretty good at that,” I said, watching her peel the peach.
“This is easy. I helped out in the kitchen back home, unlike someone I know.” She chuckled.
I had no defense for that, except that I’d been trying to learn new things since we’d left our village. “I can cook a few simple dishes now.”
“I like the dude dishes you cook.”
“Dude dishes...?”
“When you cook you’re...energetic,” Cocoa said.
That sounded suspiciously like she’d meant to say “careless.” A small part of me wanted to defend my honor as a chef, but Cocoa had already won the night when she’d suggested we eat peaches under the trees of the grove.
“There you go,” Cocoa said, presenting pieces of the peeled peach on a plate.
“Looks great,” I said. We’d had a bunch of peaches since coming to Arcadia, but they were so good that I didn’t think I’d ever get sick of them. I’d probably eaten more peaches here than I’d eaten in my life up until now.
We raised our plates in a toast and took our first bites. Sweetness exploded in my mouth so powerfully. I imagined that these peaches could get you more drunk than cheap booze.
“It’s delicious. Don’t you think, Kent?”
“Sure is.” I reached for another piece.
Cocoa grinned and said, “I have another one for you too.”
“I’m not that much of a glutton,” I protested.
“Oh? You look like you could eat a whole tree’s worth of peaches.”
“Yeah, I probably could,” I admitted.
We stayed a while longer under the wild peach trees, eating peaches and talking over our adventures so far.