After that day, Jingliu threw herself into her sword practice like her life depended on it.
She was a prodigy to begin with, and now she trained until she forgot to eat or sleep.
Naturally, she improved fast.
Felutina had no such gift.
All she could do was train alongside Jingliu while quietly studying the girl’s movements, then corner her after practice to ask what she had felt and understood.
Copying the cat to paint a tiger.
It would never make her a true prodigy, but at least it kept her from being left in the dust.
Jingliu, for her part, read all of it as concern for her.
Felutina was the only thing she had left after fleeing Cangcheng, and now that person fussed over her down to the smallest detail.
Warmth spread through Jingliu whenever she thought about it, like a kitten pawing gently at her ribs.
The clock ticked on.
One day followed another.
They saw the woman in military dress again a month later.
“I am marching out to purge the abominations of Abundance.
The two of you will stay in this room and train properly.
When I return, I will inspect your progress,” the woman in military dress said, sorting through her gear as she spoke.
The Calamity of Cangcheng had sent no small shockwave through the Xianzhou Alliance.
An entire Xianzhou ship, after all, devoured alive by a single demon star.
As Sword Champion of the Luofu, she had to set the example and lead the army out herself.
A hand shot up in front of her and waved.
“I’m going too.”
“…Nonsense.”
The woman in military dress frowned, lifted her head, and looked at Felutina.
“One month with a sword and you think you belong on a battlefield?”
“I’ve sparred with a Cloud Knight a few times.
I haven’t lost yet.
My home was destroyed.
I have to do something, or I’ll never be able to live with myself.”
“…”
The woman in military dress held the girl’s gaze for a long moment.
Only after she was certain that nothing but resolve looked back at her did she shake her head, resigned.
“And you?”
Her eyes shifted to Jingliu.
“I go where my sister goes.” Jingliu stepped forward.
“Then follow me.”
The woman in military dress nodded and dropped the argument.
Disaster had come to the Xianzhou one after another lately, and she could barely carve out the time to teach these two students anything.
So the second lesson would be learned on the battlefield, taught by the enemies who fell there.
…
Felutina hadn’t suddenly been possessed by the spirit of some selfless saint, of course.
She had her own reasons.
[Popularity Event unlocked.]
[The future Sword Champion is still just a child.
Don’t let her life be too miserable — make some beautiful memories for her.]
[Task: Take part in the campaign against the Borisin.
Survive.
And protect Jingliu.]
[Task reward: Qualification to appear in the Act One main story.]
The Act One main story had to mean the Herta Space Station arc — where the little gray-hair would decide whether or not to board the Astral Express.
The place where the dream began, more or less.
The main story.
A few seconds of face time in the OP had already netted her over twenty thousand Popularity Points, and the counter was still crawling along at a snail’s pace even now.
If she could leave a deeper impression in the main story itself, wouldn’t that clear her whole debt in one stroke?
Just thinking about it felt good.
“Sister…”
Jingliu’s soft little call broke into Felutina’s daydreaming.
The girl turned her head, and two pairs of eyes, both like matching rubies, held each other’s reflection.
Hard to believe the cool, distant woman of the future looked like this now — small, soft, sweet.
Adorable.
“Are you scared?” Felutina asked gently.
“With you here, I’m not scared.” Jingliu shook her head.
At some point she had dropped the “Felu” from “Sister Felu,” as though shaving off those syllables could pull them a little closer together.
They really did match, white hair and red eyes both.
Anyone who didn’t know better might well take them for actual sisters.
Felutina blinked.
Something occurred to her, and she leaned in close, sliding an arm around the girl’s slender waist.
“Eep!”
Jingliu let out a small, adorable yelp and hunched her shoulders, but she made no move to pull away.
“Look at the camera~”
“Huh?”
In the half-second she spent blanking out, the flash on the phone went off, preserving one dazed Jingliu next to one brilliantly grinning Felutina.
The lovelier the thing, the heavier the feeling when it gets destroyed.
Later, in a memoir sequence, she could pull out this photo, set it alight, and let the audience watch it curl into ash flake by flake.
It wouldn’t take much for them to start dreading what came next.
Simple, basic technique.
Very effective.
Felutina tucked the phone away, still smiling, and reached over to ruffle Jingliu’s hair.
Little Jingliu had been about to demand a retake, but that hand mussed her long hair and her thoughts along with it.
Her small face went pink and she ducked her head again.
“Little Jingliu, have you decided what you want to do with your life?”
Felutina asked it again, out of nowhere.
“Mm…”
Jingliu nodded, a faint sound in her nose.
“Oh?
What is it, then?”
“I want to stay with you.
Always…”
“Little tagalong.”
“…”
Jingliu’s voice had been barely audible to begin with, and after that her cheeks puffed out like a pufferfish.
But before she could get a word out, a quiet laugh escaped her anyway.
Felutina had only called her a little tagalong.
She hadn’t said no.
It was the first time she had laughed happily since the Calamity of Cangcheng.
“About time.”
Felutina shook her head, stood, and drew her sword.
The woman in military dress had said the second lesson would be taught on the battlefield, and she hadn’t been joking.
As Sword Champion she would be at the very front, which meant Felutina and Jingliu would be too.
The war was one spark from igniting.
Perhaps to prove she could stand on her own now, Jingliu didn’t stay at Felutina’s side.
Sword in hand, she sent out the twelve flying blades of Combat Support all at once, unfurling them like a squall of wind and driving rain, and cut straight into the battlefield.
A prodigy was a prodigy.
The edge was already starting to show.
Felutina watched her back and gave a small shake of her head.
“Ho.”
A cheerful voice sounded behind her without warning.
Felutina turned and found a fox girl with pale violet hair standing there, arrived at some point she hadn’t noticed.
“Worried about that little sister of yours?
Want me to help you catch up to her?”
“…?”
“Oh, that was a bit abrupt, wasn’t it.
Introductions, then: I’m Baiyun.
Pilot.
Adventurer.”
“…”
The only name Felutina recognized was Baiheng, the fox woman of the High-Cloud Quintet — and at this point in time she almost certainly hadn’t been born yet.
Baiyun… Baiheng… Names like that made connections hard to avoid.
Baiheng hadn’t sprung fully formed out of a rock, after all.
Maybe the former was an ancestor of the latter.
Felutina didn’t especially care either way.
“I’d barely gotten back from traveling the star sea before the higher-ups grabbed me for the draft… though this one really does look serious.
They’ve thrown people from several of our Xianzhou ships in together.”
Baiyun’s voice was light and bouncy, nothing like a girl heading into battle.
She took Felutina’s hand without asking.
“All right, enough chatter.
Dawdle any longer and that little sister of yours will be halfway across the field.”
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