For a moment, she imagined him offering to pull her up behind him, bodies pressed together on the saddle, and a spike of discomfort ran through her. Of course, it would be another thing if it were that silver-haired woman she saw earlier than Darius. But Darius is a man in the end, after all.
When she realized he intended nothing of the sort, she exhaled silently in relief.
She stepped to the horse's side, placed a hand on its back, and drew on the strength of the body she now lived in. With a light spring of her legs, she lifted herself smoothly into the saddle, settling with more grace than she believed she possessed.
Darius paused, eyebrows lifting. "Miss Mirror," he said, sounding genuinely impressed, "you know how to ride?"
"N-not really," she answered quickly.
In truth, it was less knowledge and more instinct, carried by Rin's well-trained frame. Her muscles handled the motion as if they had done something similar many times before. Her mind lagged behind, fumbling.
"I have heard...," Darius went on cheerfully as he took the reins and began leading them forward, "that House Mirror is famous in Stormspire City for their skill in riding and archery. If you were a man, I'm certain you would make an excellent rider and warrior."
"Why only if I were a man?" Nova asked, her brow knitting slightly. "Can't women ride and fight as well?"
Darius's steps did not falter, but his sigh was quiet and long. "Of course they can," he said. "In these times, they often must. The demons run wild, and the warriors of the land fight amongst themselves as much as they fight the monsters. The future looks bleak. Even near Drakamor, beasts and spirits attack from time to time. For men, if they do not die by a demon's claws, they are pulled into wars and die under another man's banner. And women… many of them are forced to take up the sword too, to kill and die in battles they never wished for."
He shook his head. "It is something to be ashamed of as a man, watching the world drive even its women into endless slaughter."
His words drifted through the trees, blending with the whisper of leaves.
Nova looked up at the sky, where the clouds shifted slowly across the face of the moon.
So this was the world she had fallen into: an empire of ghosts and demons, where even peace felt brittle, and hope was something carried at the edge of a blade.
Her thoughts turned inward.
Alice's face in the mirror. Alice's body, now hers to move. The weight of responsibility pressed down along with the tiredness in her limbs. "Senior…" she thought silently, her chest tightening. "Can I really protect you like this? Can I keep your body safe in a place like this? Can I truly walk the path of a female warrior? If our roles were reversed, if you were the one standing here, what would you do?"
The ache in her heart flickered again, brief but stabbing. The sky above them stretched on without answer.
The sway of the horse's slow walk, the soft creak of the leather, the steady sound of Darius's footsteps, all of it blended together into a dull, rhythmic lullaby.
Eventually, fatigue crept over her in thicker and thicker waves.
She had spent the night walking strange streets, hiding from demons, staring down monstrosities that should never have existed. Her mind, shocked over and over, began to retreat at last. Her eyelids grew heavy.
She did not remember the exact moment they closed.
As she drifted, the copper mirror at her waist, hidden beneath layers of cloth, caught a fingernail's breadth of moonlight. For a few heartbeats, its surface gleamed faintly, like a closed eye flickering in thought.
*
Darkness gave way to a different kind of sound.
Not wind. Not drums. A steady, mechanical rumble, low and constant, like a metal beast breathing.
A voice crackled over unseen speakers. "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for flying with Osaka Airlines. We are now at an altitude of eighteen thousand meters over the Sea of Japan. We will arrive at the capital in approximately one and a half hours…"
Sunlight filtered in through a small oval window, falling across a narrow plane seat.
A western-looking boy sat there in the midst of Japanese students save a few foreigners like him, his shoulders slightly hunched, his hands clasped too tightly in his lap.
He wore a school uniform, the same as many others on this flight, but his fingers dug anxiously into the fabric. His eyes flicked often toward the window, but never stayed there long. The plane's gentle shaking made his stomach flutter.
It wasn't only the height that made him nervous.
Beside him, sharing the armrest and the faint scent of recirculated air, sat a girl in the same school uniform. Just like him, she was also a foreigner.
Long black hair fell smoothly down her back, her posture straight even in the cramped seat.
Over-knee black socks framed the lines of her legs where they crossed at the ankles. She held an open book in her hands, her gaze calm and steady on the page, as if the plane, the sky, the world beyond the little window did not exist.
He stole a glance at her from the corner of his eye.
Senior…
The word echoed in his mind, filled with both joy and aching distance.
Alice, seated right next to him, as close as anyone could be in that row of narrow seats, yet still feeling as unreachable as a star behind glass.
As the plane slid deeper into the clouds, the light outside the windows dimmed to a dull gray.
The bright blue sky vanished behind a wall of mist, and the world beyond the glass turned into blurred streaks. Inside the cabin, the brightness of earlier settled into a softer gloom.
Many passengers had reclined their seats, closed their eyes, or lowered their heads over blankets and headphones. The hum of the engines filled the silence, steady and numbing, like a long sigh stretched over miles of air.
Only the boy near the window felt too awake.
His heart had not once calmed since takeoff, and now, wrapped in this muted half-dark, his nerves tangled even tighter.
Senior sister, the girl he had a crush on, sat beside him, close enough that he could feel warmth radiating from her arm.
The faint fragrance of her shampoo mixed with the thin scent of recirculated air, creating something that felt unreal, like a scene he might have invented for himself before sleeping.
Usually, he only saw her from the back of a classroom or across a courtyard, her figure framed by distance.
Now he could see the slight flutter of her lashes when she turned a page, hear the soft rustle of paper as she shifted in her seat. Every tiny movement made his chest feel too small.
He told himself not to stare, yet his gaze kept sneaking over in quick, guilty glances.
Her profile, calm and focused on the book in her lap, was even more striking up close.
The line of her nose, the shape of her lips, the smooth curve of her neck disappearing into her uniform collar.
In his mind, he heard a ridiculous thought: if he could sit beside a girl like this for the rest of his life, he could die without regret.
The idea came with a bitter twist, because he knew how far he really was from that kind of future. A boy like him, who never knew what to say in crowds, felt worlds away from her.
Even the so-called "big names" at school, the sons of wealthy families and the boys with expensive cars waiting after class, had been turned away by Alice's quiet refusal.
She had smiled politely at them, thanked them, and then created a distance they could not cross.
If they, with all their confidence and backing, had failed to reach her, what chance did someone like him have? A nobody, a quiet otaku who belonged more to the background than to the main story.
If not for the exchange program between their school and one in Japan, and the strange luck of a lottery that chose him as a representative among the student council helpers, he would never have come this close.
Even now, it felt less like fate and more like an improbable glitch, as though someone had drawn his name from the wrong box and forgotten to fix it.
The irony stung. Of all the people on this flight, he was probably the only one hoping the plane would never reach its destination.
Every minute in this air, every second beside her, felt precious and terrifying.
Yet the announcement earlier had said there was only a little more than an hour left before landing. An hour. Sixty-something minutes. The number rattled in his skull like a countdown.
He hadn't spoken a single word to her.
His throat felt dry just thinking about it. How was he supposed to start? "Hello, senior?" "Nice weather?" "Are you enjoying the trip?" Everything sounded ridiculous.
What if he said something clumsy and she looked at him with that polite, distant smile that meant she was already stepping away?
He imagined himself stumbling through a sentence and then spending the rest of the flight burning with shame in his seat. Remaining silent felt safer.
But if he let the flight end like this, with both of them stepping off and going their separate ways, he knew he would hate himself later.
He sat like that, trapped between fear and desire, his fingers curling against the armrest, his thoughts chasing themselves in circles. The engines droned on. The clouds thickened.
The plane shuddered.