10.
"You're sorry?" she repeated, lowering her book. "For what?"
Koh fidgeted in his seat. "For all I said. All I did. I… I know it was ages ago now but it still fucked us both over."
He could close his eyes and see her curled on her front in the jungle, shaking with pain and guilt and everything he had added to her.
"Oh." Her voice was thoughtful. "That." A pause. "Yeah you were an asshole."
He risked peeking at her. "So was I though, to be fair."
"You were bad at being one." You always are.
"Still was one." She shrugged a bit. "I wouldn't let you near my sister if I hadn't forgiven you for it."
Koh nodded slowly, closing the book. That was true.
She sighed and closed her own. She flipped up to face him. (He turned his head away so fast it caused whiplash in his neck.) "Look," Sayo said, purple eyes riveted on his in that uncanny way people had in Night Claw when they really wanted to look away from you. "If you feel that bad, help me start prepping lessons. I'm gonna teach rich kids how to be useful. I'll need the practice dummy."
It took Koh a minute to register that sentence. Then he scowled. "Ha ha. Fine. I'll do it."
She grinned. "That's a good bird."
"I'm older than you," he said, feeling no twinge in his back for the first time in weeks.
"Are you?" She shot back. He laughed.
Maybe being a bird wasn't so bad, if it gave him a chance to be friends with his rival. Or at the very least, not walking on eggshells.
His sister was still wrong. He wasn't going to kiss Sayo for a thousand burning feathers.