"I've never seen the Alcor come into the harbor like this." Yun Jin raised a pale hand to shield her eyes from the high morning sun. "Lady Ningguang must have quite the lucrative business arrangement, to allow the Crux fleet into Liyue Harbor so openly."
Kazuha shrugged. He had chosen to perch on the railing of the bridge, poised like a bird ready to take wing and flight. "Captain Beidou did have us all go to the trouble of retrieving flotsam from the original Jade Chamber that had managed to resurface. A perfectly legitimate commission."
Everyone knew about the arrangement between the Tianquan of the Qixing and the captain of the largest pirate fleet in all of Teyvat. Not the particulars, mind you, but it was evident all the same to their sparse appearances at Yun Jin's operas.
She supposed their arrangement wasn't all that different than that of hers and Kazuha's.
"The Crux Fleet is magnificent." It called to mind verses used to describe palaces of the adepti. "Your ships outshine all others."
Kazuha gave a non-committal hum.
It was funny, how sometimes he would talk for hours in verse—and then other times, he could be quite terse.
At least he was as good of a listener as he was a poet.
She peered at his visage. His eyes were closed, his face turned up to take in the sun and the sea breeze rustling his hair and clothes. He was lost in his own world again. There were places where no one could reach him, that he sometimes went before her very eyes. Yun Jin never entirely knew what to do with that. It was an awkward place where they had yet to fit together.
"I sometimes wonder what it would be like, to cast off this costume and join you on a voyage," she murmured, so softly she was sure that even he would not hear her. She found herself self-consciously touching her headdress, despite the elders' scoldings prominent in her mind. "To be free on the wind."
They were quiet for a moment, in one of those idyllic moments that made life worth living. That this world was all about. It provided a moment of clarity in rumination.
The wandering bard, the last of his warrior dynasty; and the opera heroine, a rising star from a respectable lineage of artisans.
It was exactly the kind of story an opera would tell.
"Run away with me."
Yun Jin turned, startled to see that Kazuha had jumped onto the ground beside her—she had not even felt his impact or heard the thump.
The way he said it, there was a choice: to play it off as a bit of joking between friends, or as a proposal of sorts. A renegotiation of their arrangement.
Much like what she was sure the pirate captain and the Tianquan were doing on top of the rebuilt Jade Chamber.
"I couldn't." It broke her heart to say it so. "As much as I might like to—there are too many people who would be disappointed."
Like her parents, who had poured everything into creating their legacy, a composer and an actress, a herald of the past pushing forward.
But to stay. . . That would disappoint her dear friend as well.
She braced herself, expecting him to say as much—for all that he might delve into poetry, it was at least always honest poetry. She liked that there was no deception to him, that he was straightforward. It was refreshing, given how many acted around the celebrity of Liyue's grandest opera troupe.
Instead he looked out to sea, leaning over the railing more than Yun Jin would have liked.
"If things had been different, I suspect I would still be in the same ship as you."
Yun Jin glanced at the sword hilt hanging off of his hip. In Inazuma, a family sword was a noble's most precious possessions, a reminder of how that clan had come to power alongside the Raiden Shogun.
While he did not speak of it often, Yun Jin did recall that Kazuha came from a noble lineage, and that it was likely the sword he always kept with him was a last vestige of that.
She contemplated a moment, trying to figure out the best way to ask about a past he seemed so desperate to leave behind.
"How did you get the courage, then, to leave it all behind?"
"I didn't." He finally looked her in the eye. "There wasn't anything left to leave behind."
"Oh."
"Winds and fortunes change quicker than we would like to believe," Kazuha continued as he resumed looking out at the ships. "That said, the Yun-Han Opera troupe has stayed as steady as stone. It will more likely than not still be here when you return."
It would.
She was only eighteen years old. Her career was just beginning—but many singers and stars took vacations from time to time.
Why couldn't she do the same?
"When are we leaving?"
He smiled at her as she took his hand. Then she pulled him along toward the docks, towards her first real adventure.
