A/N: Wow, first of all I wanna say that I was absolutely floored by the response to chapter one - thank you! Second, yes, there is more! The plan is to update roughly once a week until it's done, so please bear with me! Thanks again for reading, and keep letting me know what you think!
2
Obi wanders through the gently falling snow, not paying much attention to where his feet take him. He wanders through his memories, too—Tanbarun, and his failure. Miss kidnapped—despite that damn mountain monkey Mihaya's information about the pretty boy Kazuki—despite Master's urgent letter warning of the companion Itoya—despite his own presence in the room!
All it took was a split second of distraction.
His fault. All his fault.
Miss forgave him, and so did Master, but that didn't mean he forgave himself. Or that he ever would. And seeing that wound again, after all this time?
Well.
It was no wonder Miss kept it covered. To be constantly reminded of those hellish days with each passing glance at a mirror, at a window...
Obi fusses absent mindedly with his scarf, exhaled breath forming a foggy haze around his head. He's stopped wandering and takes stock of his surroundings. The snow continues to fall, harder now—the trees mere blurs against the swirling white.
Ah.
This is the ridge where they watched the sun rise, after Little Ryu taught her to make the medicine for the Northern Flu. Ryu fell asleep before Miss finished the second batch, and Obi carried him to bed. And then they had come here, using the high paths normally reserved for the soldiers. And he told her then, that Master had made him a knight and sent him to be her attendant.
That he would stay in Lyrias with her.
She had looked so marvelously happy, in the pre-dawn twilight.
Obi nimbly scales a tree, and makes himself comfortable. Or, at least as comfortable as he was going to get, perched carefully amongst the study branches of a dormant evergreen, back and head resting against rough bark, sheltering from the freezing midnight of a Northern winter snowstorm.
Miss kept the scar a secret, huh?
That was her decision to make, but still...
He tugged his scarf up over his nose.