“That’s…really amazing.”
Even if she could only use it when people were being careless, reading minds could offer a considerable advantage in a fight. While I was standing there thinking about how cool it all was, Filia’s eyes widened for a moment. Then, at once, she turned her back to me.
“P-please don’t look at me for a little while.” She sniffed. Wait, no. That was a sniffle. Oh no.
“D-did I say something bad? I’m sorry! Forgive me!”
She was crying? But why? What had I said?! Was it something hurtful? When I went over it in my head, all I found was a great big void where my interpersonal experiences should be. What had I done?
Filia’s back was to me and her shoulders were trembling. Slowly—I guess because she sympathized with me, or maybe because she could read my mind—she explained: “It’s not that you said anything bad.” Sniff. Hiccup. “It’s just, ah, I feel a little happy.”
“Happy?”
“Mmhm.” Sniff. “It’s because you…you said I’m amazing! The people back in my village, they called it creepy. Telepathy and stuff. Can you, umm,” sniff, nose-blow, sniff, sniff, snifffff, “can you please lend me a handkerchief?”
I handed Filia my handkerchief while her back was still to me. Filia extended her pale, slender arm and took it. She wiped away her tears, blew her nose, and handed the gunked-up thing right on back.
“Hey, uh. You know, this is someone else’s handkerchief?”
“It’s okay.” Sniff, snuffffffff, snofffffffff, snafffffffffffff. “Because I just so happen to be a most beautiful lady.”
“I don’t get what that’s supposed to mean.”
Puzzling as it all was, at least she wasn’t crying anymore. With all that out of her system, Filia seemed a little more back to her normal bewildering self.
I took a deep breath and decided it was okay to start talking again. Her eyes were still red, but she seemed mostly all right. “Feeling better?”
“Ha. Hmph. Usually at times like this, forest-man, people would say something like ‘you can cry on my chest’ or something.”
“You can cry on my chest.”
“Well, I’m done with that part. Besides, I’m not an easy woman,” she added, her eyes still red and swollen. Then, after a few seconds of silence, she opened her mouth once more. “It isn’t as though it didn’t make me happy. Because you praised me and such. So. Thank you.”
Filia suddenly giggled cutely. That smiling face of hers could enchant anyone. Even so, something like “it’s not as though it didn’t make me happy” sounded so strange, as if her words were doing gymnastics. Wouldn’t “it made me happy” be just fine? She really did have trouble expressing herself honestly, and it was worse than I’d thought.
But it was also a little funny. I felt the corners of my mouth curve into a smile.
“Well, I just said what I was thinking,” I said, “there’s no need for you to thank me. Besides, I want you to tell me what you think, too. You think these muscles are cool, right?”
“Your muscles are…cool? I’m afraid I don’t understand.” Filia gave me and my magnificent muscles a cold, probing look.
Ugh, what kind of brute couldn’t understand the virtue of such a sweet bod? So conceited!
We passed the next few days fighting and laughing and the distance between us seemed to shrink further. One day while we were preparing a delicious breakfast of recently slain monster, Filia called out to me.
“Oh, that reminds me, Yuri?”
“What is it?”
“Why do you live here?”
Ah, that question at last. Filia had probably been wondering for a while now.
Filia continued, still peering at me. “Forests certainly aren’t an easy place for humans to live, so I was thinking there had to be some kind of reason. Though, ah, now that I think about it—my apologies if I’m asking something too personal. If it’s difficult for you to talk about, you don’t have to answer. We can just argue about, oh, I don’t know. Muscles, I suppose. But do you mind my question?”
It didn’t seem that nosy to me—honestly, she seemed considerate. Although I’d thought of her as smug at first, the past few days had shown an unexpected side to her. She did think about others. Yeah, Filia was a good person—no doubt.
“It’s not particularly deep. I don’t mind talking about it,” I replied.
“I’m sorry, Yuri, but all I heard was your thought about just how adorable I was—which is true!—and then I couldn’t seem to hear a thing after! Could you please say that again?”
“Yeah, figures.” Good person? Sure. Weirdo? Definitely. I repeated myself. “I’ll tell you. About the reason why I live in this forest, that is. But I gotta warn you, it’s pretty boring.”
I got quiet for a sec as I thought back on all those years ago. “A long time ago,” I said finally, “when I was about five or six years old, I was living alone in the slums somewhere.”
Even that sentence on its own was more concrete than my actual memories. I couldn’t even remember what kind of city I was living in. What I did remember was what got me to leave.
“I didn’t have any relatives or friends,” I continued. “One day, a passerby felt sorry for me and gave me this silly picture book. It was something like, ‘The brave hero is aiming to be the greatest wizard of all time but loses in a contest of magic to his rival. After his defeat, he gives up on magic and gets really into cooking, to the point where he becomes a top-class chef. In the end, he finally wins over the rival wizard by becoming the royal cook at the palace.’ Something like that.”