“Kieli looks so pretty in that. You could almost mistake her for the bride,” the radio sighed in a voice full of emotion, like a father who’d just walked his daughter down the aisle. “What are you, a doting parent?” Harvey jibed exasperatedly. The Corporal was way too partial to her. Though now that he mentioned it, Harvey did have to agree that the understated little wreath of flowers with its simple white lace looked tailor-made for Kieli (…Does that count as being partial?). Still, the smile she was giving the camera was so awkward and stiff that he didn’t think anyone could mistake her for the woman of the hour. “She’s grown up so fast…I can die happy now that I’ve had the chance to see Kieli all dressed up like this.” “You’re already dead,” Harvey snarked on autopilot. He was busy tipping his ash into the tray he’d brought with him from the counter when the radio’s static suddenly cut off. There were a few seconds of silence. After an odd pause, he heard the usual white noise start up again, along with a slightly subdued voice. “Say, Herbie…” “Harvey.” “I want to ask you a favor.” “Huh? Don’t just burst out with something like that. It’s creepy.” “When I break down and stop working for real, take me to Easterbury. To that grave at the mine.” Harvey settled his cigarette back into place and let his eyes roam the hall as if this were nothing much, really. He didn’t know how to respond for a moment. The cigarette’s thin stream of smoke dissipated into the white strobe light and the bustle of the bar, nearby but at the same time sounding far away, nothing to do with him. He could hear the photographer saying, “Relax your expression a little.” Harvey turned to look at the radio, the movement of his neck sort of stiff and awkward for some reason, and frowned. “…What are you saying?” “Hmm? Oh, I’m just talking about ‘somedays.’” The radio’s tone turned joking. “I ain’t kicking the bucket for a good while yet. I’ve got enough bones to pick with you to last another fifty years, easy.” “Ugh, not another fifty years,” he answered. The whole conversation was seriously souring his mood now, though. Stupid Corporal, bringing up something like that. Over the regulars’ heads, Kieli’s eyes caught his in a silent plea for help. Something made him avoid her gaze. Habit sent him reaching for his pack of smokes, like he always did when he felt uncomfortable. When he bent to pull a fresh one out with his mouth, the half-smoked one already between his lips fell into his lap. “Ow!” Jeez, what the hell am I doing? He heard a little giggle from the center of the room. When he managed to rescue his cigarette and look up again, a stupid little sound of surprise escaped his lips. Behind the faintly smiling Kieli, though he doubted either she or the other guests noticed it, the ghosts from the band were leaning out over the edge of the stage and striking poses for the camera with their instruments, eager to get into the picture. Sheesh… As Harvey sighed, the flash lit up Kieli’s face for the second time. Late at night, with the party over and the guests gone home, the bar seemed even more horribly quiet after how bustling it had been all day. He distinctly remembered the opposite phenomenon being the norm for this bar not too long ago…But the number of dead customers gathering for the late-night concerts had started to lessen little by little in inverse proportion to the growing number of regular customers during the day, and tonight they seemed to have finally reached the point where not a single one showed up. There was only the four-member ghost band, quietly performing a slow number on the dimly lit stage. After Kieli and the new bride had gone upstairs to bed, Harvey somehow ended up sitting at a table with the bartender. “The day’s over now, but congrats.” “I really don’t know how to feel about hearing that from you.” “Why?” “Eh, never mind. Thanks.” They clinked their drinks together across the table, and Harvey brought his half-full glass of amber liquid to his lips. “You gonna drink? I don’t see that too often.” “Well, today’s a special occasion.” When he tilted the glass, ice shifted with a barely there sound and touched his lip. Harvey didn’t know whether it was because he was an Undying or because of his specific constitution that alcohol didn’t affect him, but either way, to him it might as well have been water. So he’d never particularly sought it out to drink. Though he did often think he’d like to get drunk once. Speaking of things you didn’t see too often, he noticed that the bartender wasn’t polishing any glasses today, either. “We’ll be clearing out soon. I’m thinking we’ll start traveling again.” “Don’t be shy. You’re welcome to stay here. Yana and I both like having people around.” “Yeah, well, I don’t want to be a freeloader in a newlyweds’ home,” Harvey answered, not bothering to hide his distaste. The bartender hunched his shoulders, looking displeased. It was true, though. And even if it weren’t, they’d ended up staying here a long time; longer than he’d planned. He’d considered this wedding the perfect nudge to get them moving again. Harvey put his glass down and straightened up just a little on his stool. “Thank you for everything…Be happy together.” He bobbed his head in a tiny bow. The bartender knit his brow, clearly wanting to say something, but in the end he just sighed, apparently giving up on it. “What about Kieli? You’re taking her with you, right?” “Well, yeah, that’s the plan.” The conversation broke off for a time. The band’s current number was just drawing to a close, too, and the quiet in the background made their own silence feel all the more uneasy. It was the bartender who eventually broke it, in a more serious, almost admonishing tone. “Just so you know, Kieli’s more than some stranger’s kid to me, too. She’s Setsuri’s gift to this world, and I care about her. So take responsibility and make her happy, you got that?” “……” He couldn’t nod. But when he just stared with downcast eyes at the ice cubes sinking to the bottom of the amber liquid in his glass as they melted, the bartender repeated, “Harvey.” It sounded like this one question he wasn’t going to back down on until Harvey answered. So Harvey reluctantly opened his mouth, but the only words that came sighing out were “…I’m gonna be sick.” And with that, he let his head thunk down on the table in front of him. “Huh?!” came the bartender’s surprised voice from somewhere above him. “What, don’t tell me you’re drunk?!” “No,” he tried to say, but somewhere along the way it turned into a groan, so instead he shook his head without lifting it. The hard table felt uneven against his forehead. He wanted nothing more than to be left alone, so he let himself lie flopped there in that position and tried to project a “go away” aura. After a few moments he heard the bartender give an exasperated sigh. The performance ended and the band took a break. With a brief word to the other musicians, a man climbed down from the stage and walked toward them. It was the bandleader. He was also the saxophonist, a rare thing to see in a rock band— but in truth, the hands holding his instrument had decayed in his grave long ago. When the bartender turned to look at him, he jerked his chin toward the stage with a bit of a sardonic smile. “Yo. You want to join us for a number?” The younger man blinked. “Huh? Me…sir?” he responded, with a strange belated politeness toward his former leader. Then the bartender cast a questioning glance in Harvey’s direction, so Harvey assumed an indifferent expression and left his face firmly planted on the table. (He didn’t want the guy looking to him for help.) The bartender shot him a miffed look, but he rose from his chair nevertheless and gave a shy smile. “Well, okay then…” Harvey’d never once seen him playing the old acoustic guitar he brought out from around the side of the stage, and yet it appeared well looked after. The leader gave a satisfied nod at the sight of it, and the other players welcomed the bartender, clearing a place for him at center stage. Before the leader returned to the stage, he addressed Harvey. “Would you listen to us? You’re our only audience.” “…Sure.” After some simple tuning, the ghost band with one lone physical guitar in its midst began its eerily real concert. They’d given the bartender the lead guitar part. Harvey was no music expert, but even to untrained ears his playing sounded clumsy in spots. Seeing him like this, it was easy to believe he’d been the lowest guy on the totem pole when they were all alive. Though it was thanks to that he’d gotten released from prison, of course. For a while Harvey drank alone, at his own pace, letting the chords filling the room wash over him without thinking about them overmuch. Personally, he found tobacco more useful than alcohol for distracting himself out of a bad mood, but he’d screwed up and left his cigarettes in the pocket of the coat Kieli’d taken upstairs. Ugh, I’m gonna be sick… A chunk of ice fell into his mouth. He chewed it with a grimace. Make her happy. How? he felt like asking. He had the feeling he’d get yelled at (by the Corporal) for asking someone else that, though, so he kept quiet. But however you looked at it, no matter how much he might want to, there was no way he could make her happy forever, was there? Things might be fine as they were for now, but Harvey strongly felt that one day Kieli would have to find her own path toward a future all her own. At the same time, though, he also sometimes wondered whether feeling that way was only his way of shirking responsibility, and the longer he thought in circles like that, the more it seemed to trigger some kind of immunological response within him, until he felt like throwing up. But at least he didn’t try to just walk away from the whole thing, which meant he’d grown a little…right? At some point while he was spinning his empty glass on the table to distract himself, he realized he’d missed the last chorus, and the band was already getting near the end of the song. They’d asked him to listen, but halfway through he’d started thinking about other things, and his attention had wandered. He focused back on the stage. Sure enough, when he shifted his gaze too suddenly, his right eye lagged behind, making him dizzy. Finally the images overlapped and he could focus on the stage— Huh? The empty glass slipped from his hand. He half-stood up from his chair without thinking and sent the table rocking, the glass falling over with a clunk. In the center of the stage, the bartender’s hands had stopped on the strings. “…Well, take care of yourself.” “Hang in there.” “Be nice to your wife. Don’t drive her to run out on you, got it?” As the band members abandoned their performance to give their congratulations to the bartender, who was now standing stock-still, their outlines began to blur and the stage lights started to pass right through them. The vocals and guitar…the bass…the drums…one by one, the sound of each instrument faded away without waiting for the number to be quite over. By the time all the music had cut off, leaving the song on a strange, unfinished note, only the bartender, the saxophonist, and the tired old sound equipment were left on stage. Now that it was almost vacant, the tiny stage seemed suddenly bigger. “Heh, you just never seem to get better at that, do you?” the bandleader laughed jokingly. The bartender didn’t laugh or make a retort. He bit his lip and hung his head, guitar still hanging limply from his shoulder. “You’re going…?” “Yeah. Looks like it’s about that time. Business is picking up, and it wouldn’t do for us to haunt the place forever, would it? You’re fine now, right…?” The leader gave his answer with a smile, and then his form began to fade and melt into the light, as if to follow the other members. The bartender didn’t nod or speak; he just stared at the floor in silence. But then all of a sudden he lifted his head as if he just couldn’t stand it anymore. “Wait—please wait! I still…” “Don’t look at me like that, you dolt. Otherwise we’ll miss our chance to pass on again.” The bartender’s hand reached out pleadingly, but it only slid through him, scrabbling at the air. The bandleader gave his old friend a gentle smile. Both the smile and the low, chiding voice sank into the quiet that filled the bar, steadily vanishing. “You’ve started to live your own life, to walk your own path to the future. You can’t stay chained to the past with us forever.” “Be happy, okay?…I won’t tell you to be happy enough for all of us. Find your own happiness…” The brass sax lingered until the bitter end, suspended wistfully in midair even after its player was gone. Eventually it too dissolved into silver static and melted into the air around them, and the stage was empty of all sound and light. There was only the bartender in his black vest, standing still in the middle of the newly fallen dimness, his guitar dangling forgotten at his side. “Now that’s just mean…” the man said hoarsely, and let out a tiny laugh. “Right up to the end, I was the worst player—I was the one who stuck out like a sore thumb—and I got left behind again…It’s just mean, isn’t it?” he grumbled, half to himself. Then he turned to Harvey with a smile that looked at once exhausted and somehow cheered. “Hey, Undying. This was the right thing, right? I guess this is the natural thing. I know it wouldn’t do for me to make them stay here forever because they were worried about me…” The tipped-over glass had rolled to the edge of the table unnoticed. It looked as if it was about to fall off. Harvey reached out and caught it with his left hand, and set it back down with a clink before he answered. “…Yeah. I think it was the right thing.” It was the same answer he always would’ve given, but before, he would’ve been able to give it instantly. And yet somehow here he was, unable to get the words out now without a pause. The bartender began cleaning up and didn’t speak again. Harvey was left with nothing to do with himself. That and the fact that he didn’t think he could go much longer without a smoke prompted him upstairs to go rescue his cigarettes. When he made his way up the creaking staircase to the second floor, Kieli was leaning on the hallway wall right at the top of the steps. A bit startled, he asked, “You’re still awake?” “Uh-huh…” Kieli nodded without looking up or moving from the wall. Oh, so you were watching that… Harvey searched his mind for something to say, but before he could find anything she lifted her face to him with an unexpectedly bright smile. “We’ll have to work with Yana and do our best to keep this place lively.” It stabbed him in the heart how transparent her fake cheer was, and in the end he couldn’t come up with any smart, sensitive words for her; he could only give her an unreadable look. “Oh, no! We didn’t let the Corporal hear their last concert. I bet he’ll be angry, huh? Sorry, Corporal!” she chirped in an unnaturally hyper-cheerful voice, and jogged back to her bedroom. Harvey watched her retreating back in silence. Then he let out a sigh of something like self-loathing. “Be happy”…He found himself wondering how many times those particular words had been passed back and forth in this bar today. Him to the bartender, the bartender back to him, the band members to the bartender, and probably lots of other times in other conversations he hadn’t heard. Rather than a blessing, he kind of thought that “Be happy” might be a phrase you used to distance yourself, in a sense. A way of saying “I can’t do anything else for you, so make the best of it on your own.” Suddenly he began to hate those words with a passion. Why did he say that? “Harvey!” He was making a displeased face at his own thoughts when Kieli popped right back into the hallway. The mask of false cheer she’d worn a moment ago had slipped off, and her smile was gone. Still, she didn’t seem depressed, either—if anything, she looked pale and stunned. “The Corporal’s acting weird. He won’t answer,” she said, running up to him and holding out the radio. “Weird…?” “I can’t hear his voice.” Harvey took the radio from her and squatted down there in the hallway. Kieli squatted across from him. The first thing he checked was the power, but it was on. “Corporal?” he called. But just like Kieli said, he didn’t answer. When he put his ear to the speaker, he couldn’t hear even a whisper of the constant static that should always be there even when the radio wasn’t speaking. A cold sweat ran down his spine. “Corporal…Hey!” Automatically he gave it a few good shakes. Kieli looked beseechingly up at him, but he didn’t have anything to comfort her with. After several shakes, he heard a soft snap of static. “……Hmm? What? What is it?” came an absentminded voice from the speaker. When Harvey and Kieli just stared, half-frozen and awkward, the radio went on. “Huh? No wonder it seemed dark—we’re in the hallway! What’s a grown man doing squatting in the hallway? You’re like a kid, always wanting to just plunk yourself down wherever you end up.” There came the usual rapid-fire criticism, as if nothing at all had happened. Getting annoyed, he shoved the machine back into Kieli’s arms. “Oh, Corporal…!” Kieli hugged the radio, relief flooding her face. Harvey stood up and backed a few steps away. Evidently it had just been a loose connection somewhere, or something. “Damn, he pisses me off,” Harvey grunted. Then he sucked in a harsh breath. Maddeningly, his hand was shaking slightly. This happening right after the Corporal’s weird out-of-the-blue talk at the party had made him lose it a little, if he was honest. “For heaven’s sake, what are you two fussing about?” And now the radio who’d caused all this trouble was the only one talking on a different page, as if it was totally clueless. Harvey ignored it and made for his own room, determined to grab his cigarettes and get the hell out of this place. Go on a walk or something. He just knew that if he didn’t have a smoke soon, peace of mind was going to become physically impossible. “Jeez, and it’s late, too. Go on, Kieli, get to bed. Tomorrow’s the big wedding party, you know. It’s gonna be a busy day.” …Wait. What did he just say? Harvey stopped walking with one foot through the doorway. After a moment frozen in that position, he turned jerkily back toward the hallway. Kieli raised her head with equally jerky motions. Their eyes met over the radio in her arms. Tomorrow was the party—? You’re fine now, right…? She’d watched the ghost band say that as they disappeared and had seen double, the friend she’d parted ways with two years ago overlapping with them in her mind. A girl with blond pigtails and a red coat, saying with a bright smile and a bright soprano voice, You’ll be fine without me now, Kieli, before she disappeared. No, I wasn’t fine, she protested in her heart, all this time later. Why would you say something like that and then leave me? It makes no sense that I’d stop needing you just because I met Harvey and the Corporal. Kieli loved all of them. They were all among her very few treasures. There was no one she didn’t need. So why did God take away those treasures one by one after she finally found them? And was God trying to snatch the Corporal out of her hands this time? She’d asked him over and over again, wondering if it was some kind of misunderstanding, but the Corporal really didn’t remember that day’s wedding party at all. From what she could tell, he remembered everything up through two days ago, and then time seemed to have stopped for him. There was the bad connection to think of, among other things, so the next morning they talked to the bar owner, and got the address of a junk shop on the edge of town whose owner did general mechanical repairs. They took the radio and set off. Harvey was back to his usual self this morning, wearing his usual “This is a pain in the butt” expression as he came with her, but Kieli thought he’d been just as shaken as she was last night. The store was a disordered jumble of display shelves and baskets and drawers crammed full of tools and mechanical parts. There were some old radios, too, though none as old as the Corporal. The shopkeeper had opened up the radio on his worktable, and was currently investigating its insides. “Oh, wow, this thing is in bad shape! Sure, it’s old, but it seems too thoroughly beaten up for it to be age alone…The circuit board’s really on its last legs. It’s even melted in a few spots. How have you been using it that got it like this?!” he blustered, sounding half-impressed and half-flabbergasted. She thought she could hear a little blame in there, too. “He’s the one who’s too rough on it,” Harvey responded, clearly taking exception to his tone. Kieli doubted the shopkeeper understood what he meant, though. She was sure the way she and Harvey treated it had contributed to the problem, but it was easy to see how overusing a destructive shock wave like the Corporal’s would melt a few of the inner workings. Kieli felt pretty positive that radios weren’t designed to release shock waves. “Can it be fixed, sir?” “Well, it’s so old…My shop doesn’t deal in parts from that era. I don’t think you’ll be able to get any in the towns in this area. Practically speaking, I’d say the easiest thing would be to buy a new radio…” The shopkeeper swept his eyes over the used radios for sale on his shelves, and then looked back down at the Corporal-radio with a sharp eye, as if mentally estimating its value. “Well, it is quite the antique. I’ll give you a good price for it as a trade-in. What do you say?” “N-no thank you!” Sensing the Corporal was in danger, she grabbed his strap and Harvey’s hand, and fled the store. Harvey was the one to mention the northwestern mining district. There were three main mineral deposits on this planet that still managed to provide resources for the people to some degree: the ones in the far south mining district that supplied Westerbury, the southwestern mining district that made up part of the South-hairo continent, and the northwestern mining district that lay west of the capital. As for the eastern part of the planet—the mineral deposits in the Easter-bury region had been tapped out, and the area largely laid waste. Easterbury had been the site of the War’s final hard-fought battles, after all. Of the three remaining mining districts, the northwestern one was the oldest. Apparently it actually contained the remains of an older mine where people found relics of the high-level civilization before the War. There, they might be able to get hold of some radio parts. “I’m only saying there’s a possibility, though,” Harvey waffled. “You want to go?” “Yeah…but what should we do about Beatrix?” Of course she wanted to go, but on the off chance that Beatrix tried to contact them while they were away from the border town, they would miss her message. On the other hand, staying here fretting wouldn’t necessarily bring any developments on that front, either. At any rate, they couldn’t easily decide; they looked at each other pensively for a while, and then ended up just dropping the whole line of thought. “Maybe it’s like what you’d call dementia,” the bartender mused thoughtfully when they told him about it back at the bar. Harvey perched himself on a bar stool and crossed his legs, sighing in agreement. “He said the capacitor’s in bad shape and some of the circuitry’s not working because it’s worn through. And if this is the result, it means the Corporal’s spirit has grown totally dependent on this beat-up radio’s circuit board, and they’re functioning in synch. So I guess it’s basically like his brains are turning into a senile old fart’s.” “Who are you calling a senile old fart?!” The radio jerked violently on the countertop, clearly enraged at being treated like an old man. No matter how carefully they explained what the junk shop owner had told them, the Corporal kept insisting that he wasn’t one bit broken down. He didn’t seem to be aware of his memory loss. “I ain’t kicking the bucket for a good while yet! I’ve got enough bones to pick with you to last another fifty years, easy!” “You don’t even remember you said that same thing yesterday, do you?” Harvey shot back, massaging his temple and looking fed up. His expression didn’t change as he slumped against the low back of the stool and looked up at the ceiling like he was giving up on the whole conversation. When he noticed Kieli watching him anxiously, though, he straightened up a little as if embarrassed. “I-it’ll be okay, won’t it…?” she ventured, forcing a smile. But Harvey only looked away as if it was too hard for him to answer. With no more outlet, the smile turned stiff and unconvincing. She gulped, and asked hesitantly, “What will happen to the Corporal if the radio breaks down?” Harvey’s gaze stayed fixed on nothing in particular. In a voice deliberately stripped of all emotion, he said— “He’ll cease to exist, I guess.” There was nothing to say to an answer like that. Kieli and the bartender listening nearby both fell silent, and there was a strained, awkward pause that went on for several seconds. It was the radio itself who attempted to snap them out of it. “Hey, quit being stupid, you jerk! I told you, I’m fine!” Then it shouted in an overenthusiastic voice, “Kieli, I’m fit as a fiddle! Just look at this!” and unleashed a shock wave at the wall, completely ignoring the bartender shouting at him to stop. The bartender went pale, and gasped something about how he’d catch it from Yana later. Luckily for the bar, the shock wave didn’t turn out to be that strong. All it did was scorch the wall a little. In fact, the radio was the only one really affected; the recoil sent it tumbling off the counter. “Oh, Corporal…!” Kieli hurriedly squatted down and picked it up off the floor. When she examined it to see if it was okay, she discovered that it had apparently knocked one of its connections loose again, and wouldn’t respond to her. “Again?” Harvey sighed exasperatedly from somewhere overhead. He’d said before that the way to fix old things was to kick them. (She’d heard that from her grandmother, too— it seemed to be an old saying.) So Kieli tried shaking it like Harvey’d done the previous night, and then gave it a few light whacks with her hand. Eventually the static started up again and the Corporal’s familiar voice gave a sleepy grumble. Kieli sighed in relief. “Corporal, are you all right? I get that you’re full of energy, I promise, so just don’t be reckless, okay…?” “Hmm? Where am I?” he asked blankly. Her relief turned into foreboding before she had a chance to enjoy it. Don’t tell me he’s lost a day’s worth of memories again… Kieli hugged the radio to her chest and darted a glance up at Harvey from her position on the floor. He frowned back as though he was a little worried, too. Turning around in his chair to face them, he asked, “Corporal, do you know what day it is?” “What day?” the radio echoed. There was an odd pause. “Wait…who am I?” “Huh?!” Harvey squeaked, sliding half out of his chair. “No—hey—hold on, say that again,” he demanded in a reedy voice. The question he got in response was even blanker: “Hmm? Oh…who are you again?” Kieli listened to this disjointed exchange in silence, frozen in place there with the radio in her arms, unable to make any sort of response. She was seized by a terrible sensation: she was holding the radio to her, clutching it tightly to her with both hands, and yet it felt as if something were being torn out of her arms. “I can’t believe you’re going away so suddenly…” said Yana. She was standing at the bar entrance to see them off, her eyes downcast as if she was feeling lonely already. Kieli gave a polite bow and said, “I’m sorry.” Her shoulder bag bobbed along with her. Yana didn’t know about the “talking radio” yet, so she couldn’t go into detail about why they were leaving. Yana’s expression said she didn’t like the situation, but she didn’t try to force any explanations out of them. Instead, she set about gathering up supplies and putting together a packed lunch at top speed, which she pushed firmly on Kieli. She really was like Suzie. “Write me. Stay in touch, okay?” “Yes, ma’am!” Kieli said, accepting the cloth bundle full of bread and cheese and preserved foods. And then her heart was bursting with so much guilt and gratitude it stopped up her throat, and all she could do was nod over and over. “You sure you don’t want me to take you to the station?” “Nah, this is fine.” The voices of Harvey and the bartender talking drifted to her from a little way off. “Are we going somewhere?” asked the clueless radio hanging from Harvey’s hand along with his backpack. The two men sighed in unison. “Kieli. Let’s go,” Harvey said briefly, shifting the backpack to his shoulder and turning toward the station. He set off at a fast pace and showed no sign of waiting for her to catch up, so Kieli shoved the parcel of food in her bag in a panic and left the couple seeing them off with a hurried “O-okay, bye!” and one last light bow of her head. The rusty radio and the back of the lanky redhead blended right into the cityscape covered in its thin layer of fossil-fuel smog, and for just a second she was afraid she’d lose sight of them completely. She shifted her shoulder bag behind her and took off after them at a run. For the first time in three months, here she was in her travel outfit: big shoulder bag, duffle coat, and the shorts that gave her freedom to move around easily. She’d dragged her travel boots out from their storage spot under the bed, too. Winter’s frosty air caressed her cheeks as she ran. Maybe it was just her imagination, but she thought she could smell a whiff of spring on the breeze. There was only a short distance between her and her companions, but for some reason they felt horribly far away. Kieli upped her pace so she wouldn’t get left behind. Don’t let me be separated from the people I treasure. Don’t let me lose sight of them. Please, don’t take anything else away from me, she prayed silently—to whom, she wasn’t sure. It was the final winter of her sixteenth year—and another journey was about to begin.
Chapter 81
28 min read