I waited with Nito until she finished painting, then we headed into the temple together. By then, the sun was starting to set. We headed through the main hall into the corridor at the side. Four doors led off of it, and a quick check of the closest two revealed bedrooms behind each.
Since night was beginning to fall, we wouldn’t be able to rely on light from the windows to see our way around, either in the corridor or in the rooms. I was long since used to sleeping in clearings out in the mountains or even on wide-open plains, but I didn’t think I’d ever get used to sleeping in abandoned buildings. The remnants of people’s lives had seeped into spaces like this, even if they weren’t visible, and it always made me vaguely uneasy. Even using the flashlight on my phone, I could still see shadows lurking farther down the corridor and in the corners of the room we were currently looking into.
“What do you want to do?”
I directed the question over my shoulder to Nito. She gave me a conflicted look in return.
“What do you mean?”
“Why does your face look so stiff?” I asked.
“It’s not stiff in the slightest,” she answered, and if she hadn’t been gripping her easel so tightly, it might have been more convincing.
“There’s a few rooms to choose from. I was asking which you liked the look of.”
“Like?” she muttered, looking around and peeking into the room in front of us, then looking up at me and repeating, louder, “Like?”
“You can give me disbelieving looks all you want, but there are beds here, see?”
I shined the light into the room to reveal a full (albeit fairly plain) set of furniture. There were two beds, a writing desk under the window, and a two-seater sofa with a round coffee table.
“So,” I continued, “you can have this room, and I’ll take the one next door.”
She glared into the room, still clutching her easel.
“You’re telling me to sleep in here?” she asked pointedly.
“Yeah?”
“Alone? In this dark room?”
Despite her grumbling, she refused to use the word “scary.”
“I’ll leave the lamp with you.”
“That’s not the problem.”
“Then maybe I should sleep in here with you?”
“But, um, t-they’re next to each other,” she stuttered, pointing at the beds and the fairly small space separating the two of them.
“Well, there’s one each, then.”
“Obviously! What do you think you’re talking about?!”
✦ ✦ ✦
Considering her age, I didn’t feel like sharing a room would be much of an issue, but with her being a girl, maybe I was wrong. Even if it didn’t bother me, as long as it bothered her, it was still a problem.
“Yeah, I guess I didn’t think things through enough. I’ll be next door, then.”
“Ah, no,” she said, shaking her head.
The faint light from my phone fell onto the wall behind her, and the pale shadow of her hair shook in time with the movement of her head.
“It’s not like I’m against it! And, um, it’d be better if we’re in the same room. There’s no helping it.”
“There’s no helping it?”
“D-Doesn’t it bother you?” she asked, glancing up at me.
“I’m just fine with it...?” I said, trailing off questioningly.
She grumbled and hunched her shoulders.
“Then I’m completely fine with it too. Completely, utterly fine.”
She pointedly refused to meet my gaze as she walked past me and dumped her things on the bed closest to the door. She put her easel between the beds and even set up her sketchbook on it.
“The other side of this border is your territory. This side is mine. We’ll have a non-aggression pact. Okay?”
“Well, that was a quick territorial dispute.”
“I may be a small nation, but I will protect my lands with my life. My soldiers are strong.”
“I don’t think I’d like what’d happen if I invaded thoughtlessly. I’ll take care.”
“A wise decision,” she stated, looking at me like a stray cat on its guard.
Under her wary gaze, I put my things on my own bed. Either because the room had been shut up or because it hadn’t been left empty for very long, there wasn’t any dust on the bed. I sat down and sank into the mattress. Even the bedding was smooth under my hands. Clean, safe, and soft. Beds are such wonderful things, I thought, letting myself fall back.
All the familiar sensations of tent sleeping—the rough rocks digging into my back, the damp, the chill—were completely absent. The bed gently enveloped me in softness. Was it stuffed with down, maybe? I closed my eyes to savor the feeling and my body suddenly remembered how tired I was. My eyelids were so heavy that I couldn’t open them again. As I lay there, I vaguely heard Nito speak.
“Keisuke?”
“Let’s have the negotiations later,” I managed. “My soldiers are on vacation.”
“So you’re sleepy?”
“Hardly... We’re open all hours here.”
“You’re already sleep talking. Go to sleep.”
“What a kind neighboring country I have... Here’s the light.”
I held out my phone without opening my eyes and felt a small hand take it from me.