Phaga tugged Ruby's sleeve and pulled her off to the side. He crouched down and hauled up the broken body of Sacrifice No. 2 without even looking at her. "You made Ellen upset again?"
"What do you mean 'again'?"
Ruby puffed out her cheeks, planted her hands on her hips, and protested, "I've been good, okay? I was even trying to set you two up just now!"
Phaga froze for a moment, then glanced at Ellen. Her face was still burning red. She was biting her lower lip, eyes darting away, not daring to look at him at all.
"Then it sounds like you deserved it."
He lowered his head again, grabbed Sacrifice No. 2's arm, and slung the body over his shoulder.
Good stuff. High-tech.
Take it back and study it.
"Hey, what is that thing? Wait—Phaga, you're playing favorites!"
The moment Ruby saw Phaga pull something like that out of nowhere, her curiosity flared. Her earlier sulking and heartbreak vanished like smoke.
Her big eyes sparkled as she looked it over from top to bottom. She even reached out and poked it with a finger.
But when Phaga shifted his gaze toward her, Ruby suddenly remembered she was supposed to still be mad. She immediately put on a disgruntled face again and accused him of being biased.
Phaga just rolled his eyes. "Do you think people's hearts are perfectly centered?"
"Being biased is normal."
Ruby froze on the spot, blinking in confusion for a long moment before she finally wriggled her way out of Phaga's logic trap. She hurried two steps after him and shouted, "Hey! Who said anything about biological symmetry?!"
This time, though, nobody answered her.
In fact, even Ruby herself stopped short.
Because she saw Phaga, just ahead, drop the corpse from his shoulder, reach out, wrap one arm around Ellen's waist and the other around her back, and gently pull her into his arms.
Ellen went completely stiff. She clutched Phaga's coat between them like a shield, blank-minded from the sudden tenderness.
The sun was already sinking in the west. Old and tired, after witnessing a day's worth of petty human fussing, it finally softened and let go of its edge. Bathed in the evening wind, it looked down gently, lingering over poetry and love.
At some point, Ruby had taken out her phone. She turned off the flash, snapped several pictures in a row, then switched to video mode.
Her focus was absolute. She had never held her phone this steady in her entire life.
Watching Phaga lean down to whisper in Ellen's ear, Ruby muttered under her breath, "I'm gonna bleed you two dry with this footage."
"One hotpot meal won't bankrupt Ellen, but every meal? Every day? I'll have Little Fish Snack so broke she can't even afford a dowry."
"Wait. Did that just get recorded?"
After rambling for a while, Ruby finally realized what she'd said. She hurried to check the screen.
If the video had issues, that was dozens of hotpot meals she couldn't charge for!
Meanwhile, not far off—
Phaga spoke quietly. "Did that old lady say some weird things to you?"
"Mhm."
Ellen gave a small hum. Her voice was so soft it was almost inaudible.
She knew exactly who the "old lady" was—Jane, the loudmouthed veteran Phaga once teased.
"She says whatever she wants. Doesn't care at all whether people can handle it."
"Yeah. I know."
Ellen bit lightly on her lower lip, resting her forehead against Phaga's chest. She listened to his heartbeat while the wind brushed past her ear.
The wind sounded like a flute, each note tightening her nerves.
The more tense she got, the more jumbled her thoughts became. She knew what she wanted to ask. She'd always known. But every time the words reached her lips, they retreated.
Her confusion and fear knotted together like tangled yarn. The more she struggled, the tighter it bound her.
The little dried fish who used to be calm and brave no longer had the clarity to find the end of the thread, nor the courage to cut through it in one stroke.
"But..."
Like two people standing at opposite ends of a narrow bridge—if they wanted to meet in the middle, someone had to step first.
Phaga's mouth curved into something gentle. His hold around Ellen suddenly tightened.
The pressure nudged her forward. Even with his arms and his butler uniform still between them, she still ended up falling into his embrace.
Buzz—
Something different surged up and spread through her; a tingling heat swept across Ellen's whole body. The blush that had begun to fade returned to her cheeks, and her heartbeat kicked into a faster rhythm.
Through that warm haze, she heard Phaga say:
"What she said wasn't completely useless. I've thought about what we are, but I kept hesitating. She forced me to the point where I had to make a choice."
"Mm."
Ellen answered softly, and didn't say anything else.
Phaga gave a faint smile. His right hand, which had left her back, lingered awkwardly in the air for a moment before he finally reached up and stroked her hair.
Ellen didn't resist, but her shoulders trembled. Her jaw tightened.
Then, with only the softest call of her name, Phaga lowered his voice as far as he could, and let all his gentleness pour out.
"Ellen, you're not going to be my girlfriend."
"Lovers can't measure feelings. They can't measure time. How much more do we have to stake just to catch up to the starting point where we were already 'family'?"
"We don't need to stake anything else. We've already reached the endpoint of what people can be to each other."
"All that's left is to move sideways through time, within what we already are."
As he spoke, Phaga lowered his head. The scent of Ellen's hair filled his breath.
"I've already decided. After we've handled everything we need to handle, one day in the future—when the clouds turn red in the evening and the swallows fly home—in front of our friends as witnesses, we'll write our names on the same household register."
"Ellen, you— mm!"
Pff.
The butler jacket slid to the ground. Nothing separated them now.
Ellen wrapped her arms around Phaga's neck, rose up on her toes, and closed her eyes.
Phaga's pupils trembled for a moment, then softened. He closed his eyes in return, accepting her—celebrating the moment Ellen turned back into that bold little shark.
"Ah!!! Phone daddy, hurry up and autofocus already!!!"
Ten or so meters away, Ruby—utterly ignored by both Ellen and Phaga, like she was invisible—was bright red in the face. She was scrambling around, trying different angles to capture the moment.
As she filmed, she kept ranting about how stupidly slow her phone's autofocus was, swearing she could do better manually.
But her phone didn't allow manual focus!
So even though Ruby stomped her feet in frustration, all she could do was wait. A few seconds felt like sitting through a full banquet. She kept snapping photos and letting out little hungry-sounding noises under her breath.
After a long while, their lips finally parted.
A clear, gleaming thread hung between them as they looked at each other.
Then Ellen's eyes flickered. She suddenly lunged forward, pounced on Phaga's shoulder before he even realized, and without any hesitation, opened her mouth wide—revealing a mouthful of sharp teeth.
Chomp!
Crunch~
Phaga's face twitched.
Just now, he'd clearly heard the crisp sound of bone cracking.
A moment later, Ellen let go of his shoulder and hopped back with ease. Her cheeks were still bright red. She glanced off to the side instead of looking at him.
Grimacing in pain, Phaga instinctively reached up to touch his shoulder. When he saw the red still at the corner of Ellen's mouth, his expression turned complicated. For a moment, he couldn't even find words.
"Well... sharks always take a bite out of something they're interested in. Congratulations—you've caught a shark's attention."
Ellen still wasn't looking directly at him. She stole little glances now and then, mumbling under her breath.
"So I'm supposed to say 'what an honor'? That's shark behavior. Aren't you Shark-Thiren?"
"I don't care. It's all the same."
Ellen puffed her cheeks. After hesitating for a long moment, she finally turned and met Phaga's eyes. She licked her lips, pressed a finger lightly against his chest, and said:
"In short, the shark has memorized the taste of your blood. You can't escape."