Chapter 13:
The Night of Divine Grace
THAT EVENING, A-Ka finished packing his things into a small bag. To Heishi, who was lying on the bed, he said, “The pontiff mentioned there was a festival today, so I want to see it. Want to go together?”
Heishi was silent for a moment before he nodded.
Together, they went to explore Dragonmaw City. There was one major difference between this place and Phoenix City: Dragonmaw was filled with humans as far as the eye could see.
Moran had given A-Ka some money, and he spent a little of it buying a few of his favorite foods, like the buttered crepes they made on this mainland. They felt too expensive in Phoenix City—though he often bought some for Percy, he was loath to eat them himself.
When A-Ka bought a crepe at the stall, he was salivating so much that drool almost spilled from his mouth. However, when he handed a crepe to Heishi, he only stared at A-Ka oddly. Regardless, A-Ka stood in front of the stall, wolfing down his food. They had even put fresh fruits in the crepe! The sunset stretched its rays down the long street, and he felt that if every future day of his unfolded like this, he would be very lucky indeed.
“You really like to spend time among other members of your species,” Heishi noted.
“This is called liking a good crowd!” A-Ka explained as he grinned. “You know, I’d imagined that when you came back to Phoenix City, I could take you around and show you the sights. Phoenix City has its charms, though it isn’t as good as Dragonmaw City.”
Heishi was wearing a pair of sunglasses as he and A-Ka walked side by side through the market. There were quite a few hawkers selling their wares along the street, and A-Ka curiously stopped to check a few of them over before buying a little trinket for Percy.
“What about you? Do you like this kind of life?” A-Ka asked.
“It’s all right,” Heishi responded after a moment’s thought. “You enjoy being around these people because you are the same as them, but I’m not.” Unlike his typical reticence, Heishi seemed to have quite a lot to say today.
“If you think of yourself as a human as well,” A-Ka suggested with a smile, “then you might not feel as lonely.”
“Perhaps.” Heishi had on a strange expression as he passed a girl selling flowers on the roadside, as if he couldn’t figure out why she would harvest the genitals of plants living in the wild only to sell them to her own people at a higher price. At another stall, A-Ka bought a small voice changer and a signal transmitter. When he looked back up, he saw that Heishi was still judging the flower seller.
The girl’s face turned slightly red under Heishi’s attention, but she smiled. “Sir, would you like to buy a flower?”
“No,” Heishi said flatly.
He can be such a boring guy, A-Ka thought.
As A-Ka was haggling over the price of his new tech with the stall owner, Heishi knelt down in front of a different stall—one that sold bracelets.
“Do you want one, sir?” The owner smiled. “It’s just seven silver pieces!”
Heishi lifted one of the bracelets, framing it with the sunset as its backdrop.
Squeezing through the crowd, A-Ka asked, “Do you want it? I have money, so let me buy it for you.”
Heishi waved his hand, pulling out a small box from the chest pocket of his jacket. When he opened it, there were multiple golden bullets of varying lengths inside. “I’ll trade these for your goods,” he said. “I only want one.”
“This is a matching pair of bracelets, so they’re a set,” the owner said. “They’re not sold separately!”
“I only want one,” Heishi repeated.
Seeing that the owner had no way to get his point across to Heishi, A-Ka cut in. “Let’s just get them both. Give me the one you don’t want.”
Heishi shot A-Ka a glance before flipping a golden bullet to the stall owner. He then picked up the two bracelets and tossed one of them at A-Ka.
How strange Heishi’s personality was. A-Ka hoped that, if he were to keep interacting with humans in the future, those exchanges would teach him how to act, little by little.
Neither of them was familiar with the area, and since Heishi and A-Ka both didn’t know where they should go, they meandered through the market, one following after the other. When the setting sun smeared a lavender glow across the distant mountain range, the market grew even busier. Colorful lights were strung in unruly lines above the streets of Dragonmaw City, and more and more people appeared, so A-Ka had to grab Heishi’s hand to prevent them from being separated.
A-Ka suddenly remembered that, given Heishi’s personality, he disliked being around so many people. Obviously, he would hate being jostled by the crowd.
“Sorry, you don’t like noisy, bustling places, do you?”
Heishi took off his sunglasses, glanced over at A-Ka, and responded, “I don’t mind.”
“Why don’t we go back?” A-Ka offered.
“I really don’t mind. You like it here, so I’m all right with it.”
A-Ka drooped a little. “Is there anything in particular you want to see?”
“There isn’t.”
A-Ka didn’t know how to continue. He enjoyed cozy cityscapes like these because they felt beautiful and full of life, but Heishi clearly didn’t care for them at all. He’d only come along to keep A-Ka company as he browsed.
“You can’t keep doing this,” A-Ka said. “How will you live your life if we’re no longer together?”
Heishi’s eyebrows pulled together prettily, as if this was the first time he had thought of this question as well.
A-Ka smiled into the distance and pushed on. “As long as you live on this land, you’ll eventually have to interact with humans, won’t you? But I feel like you don’t like us.”
“Not really. To me, humans are about the same as trees, birds, or insects.”
“That’s why this isn’t right.” A-Ka turned his smile upon Heishi. “You’re actually the same as humans, aren’t you?”
“I suppose.”
A-Ka couldn’t win. “Are you hungry? Should we get dinner?” he asked, trying a different tack.
Though Heishi didn’t have strong preferences, he was much more mellow than he had been when they first met. At least now he was no longer actively trying to keep everyone at arm’s length with his icy aura.
A-Ka found a restaurant up on a terrace, and he and Heishi sat down.
“What do you want to eat?” A-Ka asked.
“Anything’s fine.” Heishi was absentmindedly watching the multicolored street outside, and without even thinking about it, he left the problem of ordering food to A-Ka.
A-Ka was not very sure what was good, so he simply ordered two of the same meal. In Phoenix City, he had always thought about eating at a restaurant, but he’d been broke, so there hadn’t been a chance to do so. Back then, he had constantly imagined that when Heishi came, he would take him to see the world of the humans and experience a few things that he never had before. Now his wish had been fulfilled at last, but it was under these hopeless and rather laughable circumstances.
The waiter filled their glasses with wine and lit a candle. When their food came, A-Ka cut his steak with his fork and knife. After Heishi observed A-Ka for a while, he picked up the entire piece with his hand and took a bite out of it as though it were a biscuit.