Chapter 10

-With Kamui and Kotai-

-No one POV-

Kamui, Kotai, Maiko and Toru are making their way toward the village of Shirakawa where the two escapes hope to find a place to live. The young albino is walking at the front next to Maiko as Kamui and Toru are silently following, the blonde having a comically big bag for her stature.

"So..." Toru looks at her fellow traveler. "Why did you come in Hoshido?"

The knight turns her head in the maiden's direction. "We weren't really aiming for Hoshido to begin with, our objective was to get out of Nohr the fastest possible. Hoshido was the closest place we could find, so here we are." She explains with a neutral voice.

The curvaceous girl nods at that. "What happened for you to flee with a eight years old child?"

"You don't need to know." The petite girl says with the same indifference.

The two stay silent after this brief exchange but for different reasons. Toru does not want to annoy the girl who thrown a eighteen years old boy over her shoulder, and said girl just likes to stay silent.

After a moment, Kotai runs next to the knight and point at the hills. "Miss Emiya! Look at those rice fields!"

Only for Kamui to sigh. "Kotai, the rice fields are the fields covered with water, not the line like ones, you are showing me tea plantations."

"Oh... Hehehe..." The young boy smiles sheepishly. "I knew it..." He says looking away.

"Right." The knight acquiesces, the shadow of a smile crossing her face.

"Ara ara, you should pay more attention to what is going on around you." Toru tells him while putting a hand over her mouth to hide her smile.

Kamui grabs the albino's shoulder and keeps him next to her. "Miss Emiya?" He stares at her with a questioning look.

"..." She does not answers but looks intensely at the tall girl.

"Oh? What is the matter Emiya-chan?" The latter asks, her smile not wavering.

"What can be qualified as matter is anything that has a mass and takes space." She says with a serious face.

Toru, Maiko and Kotai blink in surprise as they stop walking. "What!?"

Kamui turns around with an innocent gaze. "You asked me what was the matter, I simply answered you." She does not stop and leaves the others standing in the middle of the road dumbfounded.

Maiko is the first to get out of her trance. "I don't understand what you mean."

"How so?" The petite girl asks.

"'What's the matter', it is like 'What is the problem'." She starts. "So what you are saying does not make sense." She says with a frown.

"So you were talking about this 'matter'..." Kamui responds with fake surprise.

"There are different matters?" Kotai appears next to his guardian.

"Hum... How should I put it?" She thinks for a moment. "You see, matter is what everything is made of, from wood to iron or even the air."

"So iron is the same thing as wood?" Maiko frowns a little.

"No. What you understood was that the matter is a unique object. But what I am trying to tell you is that there are a lot of different matters, like there are a lot of letters, they are all different but they are still letters." The knight tries to explain.

"So it is a term used to talk about everything that exists?" Toru questions the blonde girl.

"You can put it like this for now." The latter nods. "And did you know? The matter with which plants are made of is also a part of the matter that composes human beings?"

"W-what!? But I-I am not a plant, am I?" Maiko exclaims with a panicked face while grabbing the smaller girl's shoulder.

Kamui starts to glare at the maiden. "Who allowed you to touch me?" She demands, her voice promising pain as Kotai flinches at her side.

The miko tumbles back and falls on her butt. "I-I-I'm s-sorry!" She squeaks with tears starting to fall at the corner of her eyes. Toru looses her smile and replaces it with a frown as she sees the knight approaching the panicking girl.

Kamui looms over Maiko who is readying herself for the petite girl blows as the other maiden approaches them with a stern look.

But. "Here, take my hand." The blond unexpectedly lends a hand to the confused girl while wearing a small smile.

"Huh?" Is the only thing Maiko is able to utter.

It is now the knight's time to look at her confused. "I was just joking." She mutters, her hand still in front of the the maiden's face.

Maiko turns an unhealthy shade of red as she suddenly stands up on her own, missing the slightly hurt look briefly crossing the prankster's face. "I-It was not funny!" She stutters, trying to look away.

"Hey... I'm sorry. I didn't meant to upset you." Kamui tries to apologies, looking at Maiko's feet.

"Of course she is upset, what did you think?" Toru scolds the blonde girl.

Kamui looks up at her with wide eyes.

"You were really scary..." Kotai adds from next to Maiko.

"..." The knight does not say anything as her hair shadows her face, hiding her eyes. "I understand." She says with a cold voice. "I won't bother you anymore." She starts to walk in the direction of the village, the others soon following her.

...

Toru has always been the big sister of the shrine, she tries to take care of everybody but she took a liking to the shy brunette going by the name of Maiko-chan. The young girl has problem with social interactions, however she has never saw her stutter as much as when she was in the company of Emiya-chan. She starts to suspect that her little Maiko has been threatened by the knight and that she was scared of her, but as the days goes by, she understood what was happening to the young miko.

She was in love with Emiya-chan.

So she secretly swore to help her fellow priestess with her romantic struggles. But she didn't took into account that maybe the knight was a dangerous person, her looks tricking her as she could only see a small girl fleeing Nohr with her little brother. But it was not that simple, she can't let her little Maiko in the hand of an unstable person. She wouldn't forgive herself if any harm came to her, would it be physically or mentally, even if unintentional.

She was really upset by the way the knight terrified the poor maiden just for not understanding what she was saying. She can use difficult words too, even old hoshidian if she wanted, but she never bullied anyone for not understanding her. She does not understand why the knight did that and she does not want to know anyway, what she did was really frightening and Maiko-chan did not need any of that.

"Don't worry Maiko-chan, I am here to protect you." She whispers to the brunette.

"Y-yes..." The young miko mumbles still looking at the ground. "I'm fine, don't worry." She adds with a small smile but even Kotai-kun could have told it was a fake one.

*Sigh* "How infuriating." She mutters to herself.

-At the front-

Kamui was silently crying with her back facing the rest of the group, glad that her bag was hiding her head as she recalls what happened over and over again.

She didn't wanted to be mean to Maiko, she was in fact slightly fond of her, slightly, don't make her say what she didn't. But she couldn't help herself, it was just very bad timing, a pure coincidence, but also a disastrous one.

It is just that, when Maiko grabbed her shoulders, it triggered some bad memories, and the first reaction her body had to that was what she could do the best, scare people away from her. Because if nobody knows you, they can't hurt you and you can't hurt them, it's win-win if you think about it. Why would you try to be friend with the petite depressed girl who send three boys at the hospital after they tried to bully her? Yes... She wouldn't either.

But it is not an excuse to threaten the poor Maiko who only was curious, how did it come to this anyway? Here she was enjoying the company of girls her age for once and she just had to ruin everything, but she is not surprised, she was always better when she was alone. Maybe her body was sending a message to her, after all, isn't her own body what knows her best? It could try to protect her by scaring people, like a wild animal.

However, what scared her the most was the look Kotai gave her after she snapped on the maiden, a look of distrust, a look of fear.

And here she is crying because of the stupid things she did, and she shouldn't be crying, she is the one in the wrong here. And she is eighteen goddammit! What a crybaby, a really strong crybaby, yes, but a crybaby none the less and the Pendragon are no crybabies.

That what she tries to tell herself but it didn't work, in fact it worsened the situation. Here she is disgracing her family yet again, she can only do this anyway, the world does not need her, but she needs the world.

But do not think she wants to lose her life, oh no, it would be the cherry on the cake. After tarnishing her Mother's name, the Legendary King Arthur, she would just kill herself? Everybody would laugh at that, it is why she needs to get her honor back before giving her last breath, it is an obligation.

...

She is brought out of her thoughts when she notices a village behind the trees, Shirakawa village. The place where Kotai and her will try to stay.

She dries her tears and takes a deep breath *phew*.

A small hand wraps itself around her own as she looks down in surprise only to meet Kotai's calm face. "Here we are Miss Emiya." he says with a honest smile, dissipating some of the knight worries.

"We finally did it Kotai, finally." She says side hugging him before making her way to the entrance.