All of the next day, she spent jogging and sprinting to the next town over. When she finally reached the river, she bathed for the first time in days. Dirt scraped in layers off her pale skin. She scrubbed her robes and pants, too, and hung them on a nearby greeting pine tree to dry.
After she had redressed, she sat beneath the pine to munch on dried fish, seaweed, and tangerines. The tangerines were delicious, sweet and ripe and sour. It was a pleasure to eat them while watching the river flow by.
As she retied her hair in a messy dark bun at the back of her head, there was a snap-ping noise.
Abrial swore.
She brought her leather hair tie to her eyes to see that it had snapped in two. It had a small golden piece on it. If you looked closely enough, you could see that the gold was carved in the shape of a lotus.
"Shit! Shit, crap! Fuck!" she cursed, turning the pieces over in her hands frantically. "What kind of shitty luck is this? First I get separated from Finley, and now I broke the only present from Finley I have left! What the heck?! I'm gonna have to get a new one for now…" Still swearing at her bad luck, Abrial carefully stowed the broken hair tie away in a fold of her scarlet and black robes to be fixed later.
She set off grumpily towards the town, her long, dark hair fluttering in the breeze.
______
"Is there someone who sells hair ties in this market? Or even leather?"
"Hmm. Old Woman Gur-eum sells accessories! You can find her at the other end of the market, on the right side."
"Cool!"
As Abrial elbowed her way out of the market after plucking a plain hair tie off the stand of blindingly glittering hair accessories, she got stuck in a bustling crowd. Huh? What was going on here? Abrial was forcefully pushing her way through when she heard someone holler loudly over the din:
"Villagers of Futou! Travelers and merchants! Young and old! The annual Jiu contest will commence soon! Join quickly if you wish to participate!"
Abrial's eyes glittered with curiosity, and unconsciously, she started to push her way towards that voice. She didn't know what this annual Jiu contest was, but a contest sounded super fun! She'd never had other people except Instructor Wei to compete with before! Finally, she'd get to try something that people in the outside world did! Except…
Her face hardened, and she reluctantly forced herself to push the other way through the crowd, away from the announcer. Who was she kidding? She didn't have time for a contest! Who knew how long that would take? She would be wasting precious time from journeying back to Finley and the house!
But then, the shouter added emphatically:
"The winner will receive the fastest horse in Futou!"
Abrial's ears perked up.
"A horse!" she muttered, obsidian eyes sparkling again with excitement. "I could get back to the house so much faster with a horse, right? I could be back — in a day or two! Maybe. I'm not really sure how horses work, heh."
She forced her way through the crowd members until she stood at the front, right before the announcer, who was a short man standing on a stack of crates and hollering into a paper cone. The small crowd surrounding him chattered excitedly.
"I'm only traveling through," explained one person loudly. "But I stopped in Futou this year just for the Jiu contest! It's famous in the north, after all…"
"And the horse this year!" exclaimed another. "Have you heard? He's a pure black horse, the fastest one bred in Futou yet!"
"Wow! A fast horse and a smart horse? What a prize! Plus, by Futou's standards, fast horses can practically fly like birds!"
"Hey, excuse me, you!"
The crowd went silent. Everyone stared incredulously at Abrial, who was waving a hand around wildly and shouting up at the short announcer man.
"Hey, you! Short man! I have a question!"
"How disrespectful," muttered one member of the crowd to another. "How can she just yell 'short man' and "Hey!" at him when he's clearly her elder?"
"She didn't even call him 'Sir'!"
"She must be uneducated. Or — pah! — what if she's the daughter of a nobleman, ha!"
"That's a good one! With that plain robe, there's no way she's rich!"
"Hey, you! I wanna ask something!"
At last, the short announcer man took the paper cone away from his lips and looked down at Abrial, furious.
"What is it?! Why are you so loud?! Can't you see I'm trying to advertise here?!"
"What do I need to do to win that black horse?"
The crowd burst into mutterings of disbelief.
"Does she think she can win it, just like that?"
"How arrogant!"
The announcer man frowned disgruntledly down at her.
"Miss, don't you know that only men traditionally enter Futou's annual Jiu contest? You're a woman, you wouldn't like some of the activities —"
"Hey! Don't tell me what I can and can't like! I don't care what the activities are. You said to join. How do I join?" Abrial stared up at him, her eyes gleaming somewhere between annoyed and excited. This short announcer man was really getting on her nerves, but at the same time, the idea of winning a swift black horse was making her blood spark with excitement.
The annoying announcer man looked flabbergasted by her bluntness. "Well…Well, ahem, if you're really…really set on it, the Jiu contest will begin very soon, at the twelfth hour. To join, you would need to go to the courtyard — "
"Where's the courtyard?"
"Ahem, you don't know? It's past the east entrance of the market — "
His words were cut off when Abrial abruptly turned and waded back through the crowd and out of sight, headed towards the east entrance.
The announcer man and the crowd stared after her, bewildered and aghast.
"What an unmannered young woman!" someone exclaimed.
"No sense of social norms!"
"I've never in my life seen such a complete, utter lack of respect!"
The announcer man, however, suddenly got a greedy twinkle in his eye. He was a businessman at heart, and here was an opportunity for advertisement, right? He lifted his cone to his lips again and started his advertisement anew, except slightly tweaked now:
"Villagers of Futou! Travelers and merchants! Young and old! The annual Jiu contest will commence soon! Come and watch if you want to see a GIRL compete! A GIRL, I said! A woman will be competing! You heard me right! Go and see, go and see! Don't forget to pay for your tickets on the way in!"