"This note bears my Mana. It will allow you to establish a connection between your and my communication scroll.
May our paths cross again.
Yours truly,
Pantera"
This was the note Tana left on the floor-table.
I woke up at around 10 am. I had no hangover or any side-effect one usually get from drinking too much. I felt normal, I felt able. But the only thing that bothered me was, 'I gave in to my carnal desire'.
I was ashamed, disappointed, disgusted. I didn't expect things to go the way they did. It was my first time drinking alcohol, but having lost control and being manipulated into doing what I did, hurt me.
Those feelings soon turned to hatred that was pointed towards myself, not Tana. She was most likely feeling the same way I did.
'I really feel like...'
I subconsciously grabbed an empty bottle and broke it. Then, I slid the broken glass across my chest. It left a cut that was about 5 centimeters long and on my left chest.
"Serves me right... How could I have been this careless?" I reminded myself.
I focused on the unfiltered pain. I was normally under adrenaline or some kind of other hormone that reduced the pain from cuts, slashes or strikes. But this time, the pain was much more intense. The pain from the cut was meant as a punishment for losing myself.
"I won't always be there to point out your mistakes. You will need to figure out how to learn from them, no matter how." My mother's words echoed in my head.
***
*Knock*Knock*
"It's me, Niam."
"Coming!"
The door to room 555 opened and I was greeted with a shy smile.
'Does she know?' I thought. 'I feel like she shouldn't know about it.'
Seeing the blood mark on my chest, Tsuki's eyes widened.
'Worry? Again?'
"What happened?" She pulled me inside. "The wound looks fresh. What happened?"
I saw her look for something to cover or clean the wound with.
"It's nothing serious, calm down."
Her back was facing me, her chin was down and her arms hung loose beside her.
"Niam, I haven't known you for that long, but I'm willing to know more about you. You need to at least give me a hint on how you got this injury." She stated.
She was right. I was going to go on a several month long trip to Japan with her. There had to be some kind of trust and familiarity between us.
'I guess she needs to know more about me.'
"I punished myself for a mistake I made. Call it family tradition."
Tsuki didn't answer right away.
'Did she not expect an answer?'
She took out a bandage from one of the bags and told me to lift my arms up. She then proceeded to wrap the bandage around my chest and over my wound.
"Thanks." I said.
"Hmm." She scoffed.
"Where were you the whole night? I couldn't even rest properly."
"Sorry about that, Tsuki. I met someone who-" I stopped mid sentence.
'Tsuki doesn't need to know about Haru and Tana, not yet.'
"I met someone who I was sure would spill some information if they drank enough. I was wrong. Instead of getting anything useful out of them, my time was wasted and it led to me doing something I shouldn't have done."
Tsuki kept to herself, mostly. Occasionally, she would ask questions and I would answer. Mostly out of necessity and sometimes out of curiosity. She was the kind of person I had a hard time figuring out, and because of that, I wasn't sure how to act. Adding that to the desire of having her as a companion with a great Salan ability made me act unusual, unsure and confused. Even though we had passed a point of no return, I needed Tsuki to trust me. I couldn't afford to lose someone who could technically see into the future.
"Well... When will we be continuing our journey?" Tsuki asked.
"In a few minutes. Of course, only if you're ready."
"I think you should take a shower before we leave, just saying." She put two finger sideways under her nose.
'Look at her. Telling me I smell bad. Was to be expected after last night...'
"Alright."
***
"I think you should wear your hair down. I saw a lot of men with long hair wearing that style when I looked out of the window." Tsuki suggested.
"If you say so."
I brushed my hair back and used Supreme-Control to make my hair stick to my head. Only a few strands of hair were hanging on my face.
"Let's eat, then go." I suggested.
Tsuki nodded and we made our way downstairs.
Back at the entrance, I noticed something that wasn't there the night before. Posters were hanging around the entrance. I took one of the posters and looked at it.
The poster had a small part written in English, that said:
"Tana Zaman committed patricide, killing her father, his Highness, the Emperor.
The homicide took place on September 18th at around 10 pm.
After an argument, Tana snuck up on his Highness when he was distracted and murdered him."
There was also a quick description of Tana.
"We have to go! Now!" I ordered.
As most people would be after my sudden order, she was confused. Not knowing why I said what I said, she froze up. I realized quickly that she needed a quick explanation first.
"The person on the wanted poster is the one I talked with yesterday. We need to go, whoever is looking for her will find out I talked with her."
"Okay."
We exited the Inn. We walked around buildings, avoiding the the town's people.
At a distance far away from the town, I looked at the map to see where we were at that point.
"At least 10 days to reach old Lebanon." I informed Tsuki.
"Let me take a look at the wanted poster."
I handed the poster over to her.
"The princess?!"
"Yeah..."
"How? Why? You with her?"
"Quite the coincidence."
"I can't believe this. Since I met you, only weird things started to happen. Before meeting you, I never even saw someone from the Piranha School, let alone someone from another Land."
"I think you feel that way because of your Salan ability. You never got into detail, but I suspected that you avoided conflict as much as possible. Am I right?"
"You are."
"Let's just continue our journey. We're in a hot spot. We need to walk until sunrise to get even a small advantage over possible, horseback riding, pursuers."
"Considering all things, I feel like this will be our least challenging part of the journey."
"Might be right about that."
The map I got depicted the whole Arabic Land. Between our current position and old Lebanon were a set of mountain ranges, forests and a lake. Neither towns, nor cities were depicted on the map, so we couldn't know what places to avoid.
Our provisions were still clean and edible. We had enough credits and rest. We just needed to walk.
'My blades are damaged pretty badly. Who is to blame? The sword-smith or me? Normally a chipped blade was the smith's fault. But in this case, I used a sword that was forged for normal people to fight someone with magical abilities. I need to be careful from now on. I can't afford to break my Katana. I need to find a way to fight efficiently with only my Salan ability.'