Chapter 2
Seifer's summer vacation is two months long, and includes summer classes in the morning. He spends his afternoons with Rinoa, and sometimes with Fujin, Rajin and Ari. The five frequent the bar they met in and a small comedy club in eastern Balamb. When Rinoa and Seifer are alone, they have dinner in the city's cheap seafood restaurants, go to outdoor concerts, visit garden, and wander the docks and beach, talking late at night.
When Rinoa tells Seifer about her nascent plans for the Forest Owls and Timber's liberation, he listens and asks questions. Ari usually tells her to go liberate more ice from the freezer. Maybe they're impractical ideas – stupid dreams, but they're better than nothing. Now that she's out of school, Rinoa wants to start making changes in the world. Seifer has a stupid dream too. He wants to be a sorceress's knight.
Since the sorceress war twenty years ago, sorceresses are regarded with suspicion and treated like ticking bombs, a radical change from their status as divine beings in religious organizations. Most of those that survive live in isolated regions of Centra. Very few are trained in magic use. Those that are have access to considerably more power than ordinary users of para-magic – sorceresses have direct contact with magical energy. Gossip has attributed many more remarkable powers to the remaining sorceresses, including the gift of controlling elements of nature, telekinesis, the ability to hypnotize the weak-minded against their will, and mysterious powers of seduction.
"I saw this movie when I was a little kid," Seifer explains to Rinoa, as they lie in comfortable leather chairs in the Balamb hotel lobby, "and there's a knight using a gunblade who protects a sorceress from all this shit…I don't know, I guess it made a big impression on me, because when I started garden training I was young enough to learn to use a gunblade, and I did. I've always remembered the movie too, but I don't remember where or how old I was or anything. It was a kind of cheaply made independent film, but it was popular because of one scene where a ruby dragon attacks the sorceress and the knight fends it off. It was famous because the actor was expecting a fake ruby dragon, but they were filming in a real nesting ground, and one of the mothers attacked him. I modeled my fighting style after what I remember from that scene. It's not really traditional though."
"You modeled your fighting style after a movie you saw when you were a little kid?
"Yup." Seifer laughs.
"I picked up some ancient, beat-up little training gunblade from weapons storage when I was, maybe five, and just started doing what I'd seen in the movie. My teacher made me learn a traditional style, but when I was by myself I'd always practice like the guy in the movie. It looked cooler, but it also felt, like…less restrictive."
Seifer demonstrates his unusual stance for Rinoa, brandishing a yardstick in an empty Balamb classroom. He makes several parries and slashes, with rhythmic fluidity, dodging imaginary opponents and using his free hand to help counterbalance wide sweeps of the arm wielding the yardstick. (For lack of a better word,) Rinoa thinks, (it's sort of beautiful. Like a dance.)
"Fighting really is an art." she comments
"Are you kidding? It's a freakin' lifestyle!"
Rinoa laughs and catches the stick in mid-swing. She draws Seifer towards her with it, and he presses the palm of his free hand into the small of her back. They both drop the yardstick as their lips meet, and their arms wind around each other's now-familiar bodies.
Ari: I didn't see much of Rinoa during the summer. When I didn't want to watch them drool over each other, or try to ignore Rajin's clumsy flirting, I'd help out around the hotel. I spent most of the summer vacuuming and folding towels. But Rinoa and I have known each other since we were really little. I used to go to Timber Academy summer school and we'd make trouble for our summer counselors. So I didn't hold it against her. She really liked Seifer, and it was hard for her to make that sudden switch from seeing him everyday to living on different continents.