Disclaimer: I don't own Bravely Second, all rights to the owners.

Takes place after the demo but before the events of Bravely Second.

"I still think we all got high on mushrooms." Janne argues as he forks egg into his mouth. "Or drunk."

"I should hope not." Nikolai disagrees. He gracefully spreads jam on a slice of bread, and places it on the plate of the third member of their group before taking some bread for himself. "Master Yew is far too young for that."

"I'm an adult!"

"In Gathelatio perhaps, but you, yes you, Master Yew, should know full well that Al-Khampis considers eighteen to be the age of adulthood. Besides, even in Gathelatio you can't drink."

Yew pouts at the oldest Cavalier and then goes back to searching through his diary, ignoring the food in front of him for the moment. "I probably wouldn't like beer anyways. It smells bad."

"And I pray you keep that mindset forever…"

"So I can't take Yew out to get smashed when he turns eighteen?" Janne jokes.

"You most certainly cannot." Nikolai frowns. "Absolutely not."

"Bah, you're boring old man."

"Apparently you guys were writing in my diary." Yew interrupts. He holds up the diary up over the table for them to see, and his two companions lean in. "See? That's your handwriting Janne, and yours is near the bottom Nikolai."

"So it is." Nikolai murmurs, his frown deepening. "How peculiar…"

"What the fuck." Janne says. His eyes continue to scan the page while one of his hands fiddle with a fork. "That's so weird."

"How much happened in those three weeks?" Yew asks, and pulls the diary back to him and flips to the next page. "I mean, apparently I let you guys write in my diary for the first time ever, we accomplished Her Holiness' mission, and we fought some giant monster out in the desert, and we don't remember any of it."

"Mushrooms." Janne says emphatically. Nikolai silently shakes his head.

"That doesn't account for such a long stretch of missing time though, not unless we were consuming them every day." Yew says. His eyes move across the text slowly, taking in every possible scrap of information. "And even then, we'd have to consume a nearly fatal amount of them to actually result in such extensive memory loss."

"Hey, if you have a better idea I'm all ears." Janne says. He stabs another egg with unnecessary force and jams it in his mouth.

"And the flower… why the flower…?" Yew mumbles. His gaze flicks to the magnolia blossom sitting on the table next to his plate. "What does it have to do with this?"

"Fangirl." Janne grunts.

"Janne." Yew says in exasperation. "Be serious."

"I am serious! Are you forgetting the gaggle of people that used to flock around us when we studied here?" Janne asks, and jabs his fork at Yew. "There's got to be at least a few of them still around. It's not out of the question that one of them gave you the flower."

Yew licks his lips. He remembers that 'flock' of people. He always felt like the girls, especially the older ones, cast looks at him and laced their words with double-meanings that he didn't understand, and interacting with them always made him intensely anxious because of it. He doesn't want the flower to be from a fangirl because the flower feels important. He wants it to be more important than that. "I-I guess."

They fall quiet for a moment. As quiet as they can be with Janne aggressively stabbing his food anyways. Yew continues to ignore his meal in favor of reading, and for the moment his companions allow it. They're in no rush.

After a few minutes, Yew speaks again. "Uh… someone else wrote in here."

"Yeah, us." Janne says in exasperation.

"No, no, I mean, a fourth person." Yew says. "They used a different color and everything. They've got different handwriting than us."

"Really?" Janne blinks. "Huh."

"I need to check something, I really should have looked there first." Yew mumbles. He quickly moves from the bestiary section (which he was looking through before) closer to the middle of his diary where his most recent proper diary entries would be. "Let's see, uh… fourth moon, twenty… first. Arrived in Al-Khampis, sunny, waiting around... guide came..."

"What the fuck are you mumbling about Yew?" Janne asks.

"Language." Nikolai murmurs.

"Needs help, uh, okay, I think I found something." Yew says. "Our guide. We were supposed to get a guide, remember?"

"Oh yeah, I guess we were." Janne blinks. "Don't know why Her Holiness insisted. We used to live here."

"Do remember Her Holiness can't go from the Sanctum from her room without getting lost most days." Nikolai points out, a fond smile crossing his face. "She likely assumed everyone else has as much trouble finding their way around as she does."

"Anyhow. Our guide was called… Lady Lune? Spelt L-U-N-E. Not loon like, uh, loon."

"Wow. Real clear there Yew." Janne snarks.

Yew flushes and continues. "Sh-She asked for our help tracking down something called a ba'al."

Janne raises an eyebrow. "And we just agreed?"

"Apparently." Yew nods. "Oh, but she promised to help with our mission in exchange."

"How curious." Nikolai says. "Does you diary say anything else about her."

"Uh… oh! Yes!" Yew's eyes light up. "I wrote a description!"

"Let's hear it." Janne says.

"She's female, about five foot seven, with skin paler than snow, blood red eyes, and straight silver hair that goes down to her waist." Yew quotes from his diary. "She wears a blue dress with a plunging neckline and slits along the sides, along with gloves and boots of the same colour. She also carries a glaive with a hook facing opposite the blade built into the crossguard, and a small magic hourglass on her hip."

"Sounds like someone out of a fantasy story." Janne says bluntly. "Are you sure you didn't make her up Yew?"

"I don't remember! Probably not though." Yew frets.

"You sure? 'Blood red eyes'? 'Skin paler than snow'? What is she, a vampire?" Janne asks incredulously. "A ghost? And silver hair, on someone young? That can't be real."

"Now now, I'm sure Master Yew chose that description with great care." Nikolai soothes. "He has quite the artist's eye, after all."

"Sure, sure." Janne scoffs. "Ghost girl guide that dresses like an exotic hooker. Right. It sounds more like Yew got horny while trying to write a fantasy novel."

Yew blushes bright red. "J-JANNE!"

"While high on mushrooms, maybe." Janne says. "Again, it all comes back to the mushrooms."

"We did not 'get high' on mushrooms." Nikolai says firmly. "And we'll thank you not to tease Master Yew again. He is taking this seriously, unlike you."

"What? You're actually buying this?" Janne asks. "A clearly fake name? A reverse hook on a glaive? Super pale skin for someone who's lived in Al-Khampis, which is in a desert, so she should at least have a tan or something from the sun? None of it makes sense Nikolai."

"I'll admit it sounds unlikely, but while Master Yew has occasionally embellished stories, he never lies outright." Nikolai reminds the younger man. "I think it foolish to dismiss his diary entries out of hand."

"So what then? We actually did get led around by a ghost girl?"

"Perhaps." Nikolai says. "Or perhaps her features were more tame, and Master Yew simply exaggerated a bit."

"Mph." Janne grunts, and slouches in his seat. "Only so much you can exaggerate red eyes and a reverse hook."

Yew watches this not-quite argument hesitantly, while clutching his diary and fighting down the redness on his cheeks.

"Regardless, do not dismiss Yew's words so easily." Nikolai reiterates. "Please continue Master Yew."

"G-give me a minute to read." Yew says, flipping through some pages. "O-Oh, uh, apparently you guys were writing in the diary sections too? When did I ever think that was a good idea…? No, wait, it looks like we had dedicated summary pages after important events. I think the fourth person who wrote in here is Lune, judging by some of the lines here."

"I guess Yew knows how to fake someone else's handwriting then." Janne mutters. Nikolai actually glares at him, and the man sighs and sits up straight. "Alright, alright, fine. So ghost girl is our mystery fourth. What did we actually do though?"

"We, uh… we fought some asterisk holders, apparently." Yew frowns. "Kamiizumi, DeRosa, La Mode, and two non-Eternian affiliated holders called Geist Grace and Aimee Matchlock, apparently."

"We fought asterisk holders?" Janne frowns. "But why? We were sent here to deal with monster problems, not start an international incident."

"I don't know." Yew says honestly as he tries to read some of the entries. "I… I really don't know. I think there's some context missing from these entries. They make the battles sound like they just sort of happened after we followed some rumor or another, except the entries never actually mention what the rumors are. There's a mention of a missing kid in one, and a haunting in another, but not how those figure into the fights."

"Because there's no need to explain every little detail unless you actually forget everything, which the entries assumed we wouldn't." Janne mutters. "Well great."

While Yew continues to search through his diary, he doesn't find much else of immediate relevance. Nikolai eventually convinces him to put down the book and actually eat.

But even while eating Yew can't stop thinking about what he read. He hasn't told the others, but a lot of the writing he saw in those diary entries seemed to imply he and Lune were good friends. Apparently he had long talks with her about… well a lot of things. Mostly monsters, admittedly, but apparently they spent an afternoon talking about spear design, and another about the theoretical use of the legendary Wellspring Gem, and yet another where he apparently gave a long-winded speech about economics.

Economics is super boring, Yew would know. So if Lune was willing to listen to that she must have been a really good friend, and so Yew hates not remembering her all the more. Friends are a precious thing. After a lonely childhood Yew really knows the value of a good friend, and he's lucky to count Janne and Nikolai and maybe Her Holiness as his, and it pains him to think he's not only lost a friend but can't even bring her face to mind. A thousand words is not worth a picture, despite what the common saying would suggest, and he hardly thinks there are a thousand words about her in his diary at the moment anyhow.

Yew also has an idea where the flower is from now. He hopes he's right. If he can't have a picture, he can at least have this flower. Even if it isn't from Lune, he's never going to be able to know otherwise, so he can at least pretend it is.

He also needs to press the flower, Yew realizes, if he wants it to last. So when the meal is finished and Janne and Nikolai are quietly discussing something or other, Yew goes up to his room, finds a blank page at the back of his diary, carefully arranges the flower's petals, and closes his diary on it and then stacks a few more books around the room as well as his backpack on top of it. It won't be a perfect press, but as long as he can preserve most of the flower he'll be happy.

He'll need to buy something to keep the flower in though. He can't very well keep it in his diary or it'll fall out or get damaged. Maybe he can get a picture frame…

If Janne or Nikolai think it's strange he vanishes for a few hours and returns with a small frame they don't say anything, and even Janne doesn't make a snarky comment when Yew explains later that day that he's pressing the flower.

By the time they leave Al-Khampis Yew still doesn't have many answers. All he has are passages in his diary the Cavaliers don't remember writing, a vague sense of loss for a girl with silver hair who may or may not exist at all, and a newly-pressed magnolia flower inside of a small picture frame.

I really don't know why Bravely Second's demo captures my imagination so much. There's just something about it...