8
part one
"Th-that," Shirayuki stammers, "That's, reassuring."
Suddenly, she tips forward, and Obi immediately reaches out to catch her. But she steadies herself first, regaining her balance with a quick half-step, and her forehead brushes against his chest.
She makes no move to step away.
He freezes.
"Obi... Don't scare me like that," she sighs. Finally. Finally. She can breathe again. She takes several moments to do just that. Inhaling slowly. Inhaling deeply. Holding his scent in her nose, in her lungs.
He wasn't going anywhere.
He was going to stay.
And it felt like she was…floating. As through she'd suddenly broken through to the surface when she hadn't even realized she'd been drowning.
"Sorry," Obi exhales, voice barely a whisper. He slowly lowers his arms, shaking his hands slightly in an attempt to to rid his fingers of their endless twitching. To no avail. So he glances down his nose at the head full of red hair resting quietly against his collarbone.
But he doesn't relax.
Not yet.
"Um, Miss," Obi begins lightly, hesitantly, half expecting to be cut off once more.
Shirayuki makes a non-committal noise, something halfway between a grunt and a sigh, then clears her throat and replies properly:
"Yes?"
"Aha, well," Obi continues, fidgeting a little, shuffling his feet and shifting his weight, finally noticing just how tense he really was.
"Miss, actually... you said that, not me."
"I, what?"
"Um. Yeah. I just... Agreed? With it?"
He cringes in the ensuing silence, wondering if he should have simply accepted all the blame and called it a night.
But.
'Do my thoughts not matter?' she had asked him, in the forested mountains of Tanbarun.
This misunderstanding, this rift between them, stretched far too long, too wide, already. He owed her his honesty, surely. He probably owed her a whole lot more, but he had to start somewhere.
"Wait, you...and then I..." Shirayuki reaches up, digging both hands into her hair and clutching at it, scratching at her scalp, hoping the friction would help jog loose the memory.
"No...and then..."
She tugs once again at her rosy locks, then her arms fall limp to her sides.
Obi peers down at her. He can't see her face, but the tips of her ears peeking out from beneath her hair gradually change color to match.
"You... right. You just... repeated, what I said. Um. Wow."
For a moment, neither speaks. Neither moves. Neither breathes. They simply stand, Shirayuki red-faced, Obi still trying to steady his hands. Both conscious of the rapidly shrinking chasm, now only as wide as the gap between their toes.
Then Shirayuki bridges that gap and breaks the silence.
"Oh, Obi, I'm so—"
"Don't—" He pats the top of her head, preventing her from looking up at his face just then, "—worry about it too much, Miss."
"But, Obi—" she protests, into the soft fabric of his shirt.
He gently ruffles her hair in response.
"Ah—there's... plenty of other reckless things that did come out of my mouth, to be angry about."
"...You do say strange things, sometimes…" she admits, with a sigh.