We moved to the main hall to talk, because I was sure Jill would never be able to relax in a closed-off room. Even with three seats’ worth of space between us, though, the conversation was slow to start.
“Um, what happened?” I asked.
It was pretty blatant that she needed to talk to me about something, but I had no idea what it might be. The most I knew was that, with her personality, it would have taken an immense amount of courage to come find me on her own.
Jill made to speak but couldn’t get out what she wanted to say, and her face twisted in conflict. Every time she met my gaze, she bit at her lips. Clearly, she couldn’t just dive right in with the main reason she was here, so I figured that maybe it would be better to calm us both down with some meaningless small talk.
“Did you come here by car?” I asked.
“I did,” she answered hesitantly.
“The one Paula drives?”
“It’s, um, one that I found before I came here, so...we share it.”
“Were you brought up here too, then?”
She shook her head.
“I-I’m...from Barcia...and that’s where I met Paula.”
“So you’re old friends, then?”
“We haven’t been friends for that lo—” she began, before cutting herself off. “I’m...sorry. It must be infuriating... I can’t really talk with people, but I just don’t...”
“I’ve actually been to Barcia,” I interrupted, changing the topic.
I laughed at the shocked look and gasp that my comment garnered.
“It was a beautiful town, with pretty impressive buildings.”
“Yeah...it was. There were so many people in it back then.”
“Was it an easy place to live?”
“It was,” she answered with a small smile. “No one would pay attention to someone like me there...”
“So how did you get to know Paula?” I asked, then quickly added, “Oh, I’m only asking out of curiosity. It might sound a bit rude, but you don’t seem all that similar.”
“Right. We’re not...at all.”
Jill chuckled slightly, and then a sigh left her lips and seemed to take the tension from her shoulders with it. As she began to speak, her eyes flicked upward like she was reliving a treasured memory.
“Do you know that Paula used to work in a tailor shop?”
I nodded.
“Well, I had a dress made by that shop. My gran was holding some kind of event and I had to participate... Anyway, it was Paula that made my dress for it.”
“I don’t know whether I should ask, but, back then, did she, um...”
“She dressed as a man and had short hair combed right into place. She spoke like a stereotypical man as well...”
Jill grew more amused the more she spoke. This unburdened expression was probably what she was really like under the shyness.
“I could never deal well with men... I could barely be near them, let alone talk to them. It was bizarre, though—none of the usual panic happened with Paula, and she was fun to speak with... Thinking back on it now, I wonder if it was because she was a woman at heart,” she mused, pausing briefly.
“It’s somewhat embarrassing to admit, but...” she warned as she continued, “I thought it was love... I wanted to see her more than anything, so I had her make me five outfits in two months. I was never even planning on wearing them.”
With this sudden revelation from the adult in the room, it was me that ended up feeling embarrassed.
“Then, um, are...the two of you together?”
Jill gasped and waved her hands in front of her face in denial.
“No, no, we’re not. Um, Paula noticed how I felt and told me about herself and then apologized for leading me on... That wasn’t what had happened at all, though, I’d just gotten ahead of myself... Either way, that’s how my first love ended, but we became really good friends.”
Jill then seemed to fall into a reverie, but just before I’d actually decided she had, she lifted her chin and fixed me with a serious look.
“I heard from Paula that she told you and Nito about things...between her and her mother.”
“She did,” I said after a moment.
“I’ve got a request. Help me get them back on good terms...”
I’d thought she might say that. She was closer to Paula than anyone else, so I’d figured she had to know what was going on and be concerned about it. It must have been weighing on her mind far more frequently and more seriously than it did on mine. Now that she’d gotten it out, it was as if a dam had finally broken, and the words gushed from her mouth.
“She, um, really loves her mother. That’s why she stays here even though it hurts her. She won’t go and actually speak to her, though. With the way I am, I can’t ever force any issue and so I gave up on it...but I’m sure she wants to make up with her.”
Her shoulders were heaving with ragged breaths, and her cheeks had gone ruddy. She seemed embarrassed at her own uncharacteristic actions but still didn’t stop.
“She comes out here every morning,” she said quietly. “She comes all the way here just to hide and watch her mother clean the temple. She laughs about how well her mother looks once she gets back, and all I can do is nod... I don’t know how else to deal with it...”
Then she lowered her head toward me, leaning down so deeply it was like she was trying to touch her forehead to the seat of the chair.
“I know how strange a request this is, but I can’t do anything about it alone... Please, would you help me think of a plan and see it through?!”
“Jill, calm down, sit up!” I yelped, panicked.
I couldn’t keep calm when someone older than me was bowing so deeply at me. That being said, I couldn’t haul her up by the shoulders either, so I just dithered, my hands twitching reflexively. All I could do was answer her feeble plea with a “yes.” Timidly, she lifted her face and peered at me.
“You will?”
Still, her gaze looked far less panicked than I’d have thought, and I started to consider that she might even have acted so drastically as a ruse.
“That’s not fair...” I told her.
“Well...I am still older than you.”
Her expression was both apologetic and amused, like a young girl caught in the middle of a prank. I was sure that it was the kind of expression that men would never be able to stand up against from a woman. Regardless, Nito and I were in the same position as her.
“We don’t have any good ideas either, though.”
“Figures. There’s nothing from your world that’d let you just snap your fingers and fix it, huh...”
“I’d love a pocket full of gadgets from the future,” I answered before noticing that she’d just dropped the fact that I wasn’t from this world as if it was nothing. “Did Paula tell you? That I’m from another world, I mean.”
That seemed to me like a pretty obvious explanation, but Jill shook her head.
“I, um, I knew as soon...as soon as I met you.”
“Is it that easy to tell? Is it how I act, how I look?”
Again, though, Jill shook her head.
“Um...can you keep a secret?”
I couldn’t help but nod, waiting with bated breath at her secretive tone. I was sure there was no man in this world that’d refuse a secret from a woman when she asked like that. Jill leaned ever so slightly forward and put a hand next to her mouth. I leaned in as well, catching a whiff of a fresh floral scent.
“I’m a witch.”