"This is scary."
Haruki muttered in a shaky, quiet voice as he looked at the troll through both of his hands, forming them into the shape of a telescope and holding them in front of his eyes.
Yamka redirected her gaze from the creature above to Noroi beside her, an annoyed, bored frown carved into her expression, stubbornly persisting in preventing her from entering a fight.
She exhaled, then flipped her axe upside down and struck its head into the ground to fix it in place. She sat beside it, keeping one hand tightly wrapped around its wooden handle while resting her chin on the other in boredom.
She spoke in an irritated tone that made her annoyance clear.
"Alright,if we won't fight. What are we going to do, then?"
Haruki followed her by sitting down, crossing his legs beneath him. Both of them looked at Noroi, waiting for him to start explaining the plan.
Noroi turned his head to the right, and his eyes caught sight of a broken wooden stick beside a tree trunk. He walked over to it, bent down to pick it up, then returned to them and sat in front of them. He dragged the stick's tip across the soil until he formed a rough outline of the fort: a square with five trees inside it and empty space around them , a simple sketch of what they had seen.
A laugh slipped out of Haruki's mouth before he could hold it back, and he mocked Noroi, saying.
"Leonardo da Vinci himself has honored us today."
Noroi shot him a look that made Haruki's mockery die in his throat, and he sat there tensely under the weight of Noroi's deadly glare. Haruki cleared his throat before whispering in a low, apologetic voice.
"Sorry… go on."
Noroi tore his eyes away from the other boy and looked at the sketch he had drawn, thinking for a few seconds before making up his mind. He moved the tip of the stick to the eastern side of the square, beginning to explain the plan he had reached.
"The number of trolls drops once their eyes fall asleep. A few of them must stay on guard at that time. I'll send Mini up to check the guards' positions so we can figure out the best spot to sneak inside."
Yamka let go of her axe so she could slam her fist down onto the drawing of the trees, ruining it. Her lips lifted into a wide, feral grin as she said with excitement and brutality.
"We go in, stomp them, and then find what we were looking for."
"No."
Noroi answered immediately, rejecting her plan without a second thought, bursting the cloud of imagination that had formed above Yamka's head.
Yamka's excited expression collapsed after her dream of a brutal fight was shattered and that idea was torn to pieces, so she shouted in shock, her voice coming out in a loud tone that echoed through the place.
"What?!"
Noroi lunged forward, his foot ruining the drawing completely, only so he could cover Yamka's mouth with both of his hands. The girl fell silent from the pressure on her mouth, still not realizing what exactly she had done wrong, and Haruki beside her was just as shocked as she was, but the words died in that moment and he didn't utter a single one.
Noroi looked at the fortress with furrowed eyebrows and a cautious, dangerous expression, as if making sure of something. Moments of tension passed in the air before Noroi turned his gaze back to Yamka, his face dangerously close to hers, whispering a strict warning.
"What do you think you're doing, you lunatic? Troll's ears can detect sounds from far distances."
Haruki looked at the two of them from the space between their faces, placing the tips of his fingers on his lips, his brown eyes sparkling.
He whispered in a soft voice.
"So romantic."
Both Noroi and Yamka turned their heads toward him; everything that had just happened vanished at his comment. Haruki avoided their eyes by pretending to look at some point in the distance.
Noroi sighed in exhaustion as he moved back to the spot where he had been sitting, folding his arms in front of his chest before continuing to explain his plan, ignoring what had happened.
"We will sneak into the camp, look for the location, then leave. What's so hard about that? And don't do anything that could lead to us being discovered."
He put special emphasis on the last sentence, not wanting to deal with any more stupid situations because of them.
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Thank you for reading! If this moment touched you even a little , please consider adding it to your library.💐