Arai and Sui started fidgeting upon seeing the dried fruits, and she tossed some to them. Yae chewed on some herself as she thought. The problem was she didn’t have a sense for naming. She doubted little corner or land under the cliff would be good enough. Dried pears sure are delicious, she thought. Pears… The Japanese word for pear is nashi. She could reverse the syllables and make it Shina.
“…What about Sh-Shina?” she suggested. Regret over choosing something so simplistic filled her chest before the name even reached her lips, causing her to stumble over it.
“Shishina?” Arai responded.
“Ah, no, that’s not—,” Yae blurted as the brothers cocked their heads in thought.
“It’s good enough for me. Shishina it is,” Arai said before drawing kanji that matched the syllables in the air.
“I like it. I think it would make a powerful word for charms. It sounds like a place that gods would one day settle,” Sui added, contemplating the name and giving it a stamp of approval that Yae found a little frightening the more she thought about it.
Is that really okay? Well, it’s not my fault if anything terrible happens. Having no desire to think about the name any further, Yae elected not to argue and tossed dried fruit into the brothers’ mouths. Arai and Sui took a great liking to the snack, and from that day forward, they began to pester her for it on a regular basis.
Yae decided she would make dried fruit soaked in honey once their lives settled down.
After being bestowed its new name, Shishina received several more visits from the suspicious human figures. The third time it happened, Yae finally got a clear look at them and realized for certain that they were men from Miya Province. There was little doubt Yae was their reason for coming here. And being coldly driven off by Arai and Sui was doing nothing to quell their attempts to contact her.
One afternoon, the men appeared again and watched Yae from the shade of the trees atop the cliff. The reason they weren’t coming any closer was probably because the brothers had carved a symbol into the trees there on the day they named the land. The symbol was the character for “gate,” and it seemed to serve as a boundary marker.
Yae was working hard on cleaning the lidded glass bottle next to the Can House when they appeared. Arai was napping on a handmade hammock outside the soda can, and Sui was away looking for food.
His intuition sharp as ever, Arai snapped awake and got down from the hammock upon sensing the men’s presence. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said as he started off to send them away, but Yae stopped him.
“They’re men from Miya Province looking for me, aren’t they?” she asked.
“Beats me,” Arai replied curtly.
Yae had been going along with the brothers’ decision to repel the men immediately every time, but watching in silence was getting harder for her to do. She grabbed the ends of the heavenly garment hanging around Arai’s shoulders and looked into his face.
“I’m going to try talking to them,” she said.
“Why? You don’t need to,” Arai protested.
“I was supposed to marry a man over there, so they might want to know that I’m safe.”
“Really?” He frowned and looked down at her. “Don’t try to pretend you’re okay with things you aren’t by acting like you’re being rational.”
Yae gulped. Arai’s words could be scathingly direct sometimes. She could tell by his expression that he didn’t mean to offend, but that made the wound to her heart even deeper.
“I don’t know if they’ve come here to find out if you’re alive or not, but it’s been way too long,” he continued. Those last few words carried heavy emotion. “They first showed up here a full ten days after they abandoned you. If they were actually concerned for your safety, they would’ve come looking for you sooner.”
“…Yeah.”
“If they’re just now starting to search for you after leaving you for dead all this time, they must have an ulterior motive. They don’t care about you, and they don’t have a guilty conscience, either.”
“I know,” Yae answered quietly, feeling bitter. It really had been too long. Even if they were looking for her, that wasn’t going to bring her any joy at this point. The wound that had just started to close would only get wrenched open again. She didn’t want to remember that pain, so she wished they would just leave her alone. Unfortunately, however, her old habit of putting up with a little pain in the hopes that people would come to like and need her was rearing its ugly head again.
“Yae?” Arai looked at her quizzically. Yae extended a hand to brush away the thick bangs over his eyes, but she stopped before she reached him.
“Even if that’s true, I think it would be best to hear them out, at the very least. They might have come back this many times because something terrible has happened. Depending on what it is, it could affect our lives here. Anyway, it doesn’t seem like they have ill intent…” She trailed off.
“Don’t give me that stupid smile,” Arai interrupted coldly. Yae realized her expression had become strained. “I’m tired of repeating myself. You are my life. That means I’ll eliminate those you hate. Don’t lie to me about what’s in your heart.”
Yae listened to him with mixed feelings. She was of course happy and relieved to hear him declare so definitively that he was her ally. That relief was joined by a feeling of gloominess, however. Arai himself once tried to kill me, and he refuses to tell me why. Can I really believe that was only because he was mad at me for trying to make him submit during the ceremony?
Yae had thought the misery she felt when she was almost killed had begun to fade, but if she looked deep inside her heart, it was still present as a hazy, smoldering feeling. It actually seemed that the more time passed and the closer she got to Arai, the more the image of his shining blade swinging down on her without hesitation weighed on her heart.
“I’ve decided. I’m going to go talk to them,” Yae declared, disguising her stubbornness by acting like it was the rational thing to do, exactly as Arai had said she would. She pretended she didn’t notice his scowl and let go of his garment. She then looked up the cliff and waved slightly at the men.
When they saw Yae’s signal, the men moved at once. Two of them emerged from the trees and began to skillfully descend the uneven face of the cliff. She heard the faint neighing of horses, but it seemed like they had been left on top of the cliff. That might mean there were more people up there staying behind.
Yae started toward them as well and stopped next to a giant tortoiseshell fountain pen mysterium that was jutting out from the ground. Arai followed her, showing open displeasure. Yae felt a little bad about how coldly she had acted toward him, but apologizing didn’t feel right, either, so she was at a loss for words.
The two who appeared before them were a man in his mid-twenties and a boy in his late teens. In this world, those in their upper teens were treated the same as adults. They were both taller than Arai and had thick waists and arms. Their impressive physiques left little doubt they were Wild Natures. They both wore robes the color of hydrangeas closed tightly around their necks and matching pants. It was summer, so the fabric was thin.
The man in his twenties had short black hair and green eyes. His eyebrows were thick and bold, and his lips were shapely. He was handsome and masculine and gave the impression of a black wolf. But despite his rough aura, his eyes had a shine of intelligence. Yae saw the interlocking circles of the ring crest in his green eyes and realized he was the man who had led her horse in the procession to Miya Province. He was most likely her intended husband.
The boy in his teens had chin-length white hair and red eyes. He was attractive as well and gave the impression of a strong young buck. He had splendid deerlike antlers on his head, which were a brilliant red to match his eyes, and in his eyes, which were long and narrow, he had a flower-shaped ring crest. His aura was somewhat prideful and standoffish. Unlike the green-eyed man, he seemed unable to hide his emotions, probably due to his youth, and he stared at Yae rudely with caution as well as curiosity.