“Today we say goodbye to three people. Thank you everyone for coming to the funeral of Sullivan Streits, Genevra Lionheart and Linus Tenford.”

“Who else is here besides us?” I asked Marina.

“Well, it makes it sound grander that way.” She went on to explain, “I don’t want to make it sound like we’re the only ones present. I mean, we’re technically only attending Gramps’ funeral, since we only have his body with us. Plus we’re burying him in the snow outside the lodging, so it’s not even a bona fide funeral.”

“I see, then please continue.” I let her speak.

“Thank you,” She continued her speech with an ahem, “I have known these three for a very short time-”

“Just under a month to be exact.” I corrected her.

She glared at me once more for interrupting her, so I quickly shut up and continued quietly sitting on a chair we brought out.

“These guys had helped us on our journey… well, not really.” She stuttered, “Err, they made it more enjoyable?... No, not quite. Okay, let’s put it this way, the journey wouldn’t be the same without them.”

“Yeah, it’d be way more fun.” I commented under my breath, “You’re the only one who seemed normal out of them, I imagine we’d already be done if it wasn’t for their antics.”

“No time for flirting!” She teased.

“Wha-! I didn’t mean it like that! I’m engaged, y’know that?” I shoved my left hand at her that was missing it’s pinkie (and to-be wife’s engagement ring).

I immediately realized what she was gonna say, so I quickly put my hand in my pockets to try and play it off.

“…” She stood there for an unbearably awkward amount of time, “Y’know you’re not engaged until both you and you’re girl put the ring on, right?”

“I know that! Shut it!” I teared up from the embarrassment of my own blunder, “And isn’t this supposed to be a funeral or something? Come on, no time for jokes!”

She giggled a bit more after she won this little back and forth against me, then continued her speech, “As I cry (fake) tears, I would like to humbly ask my funeral assistant to lower the body.”

I was wondering who she was gonna bring out, but then realized she was staring directly at me the entire time.

“…” I looked behind me then pointed at myself as if to make sure, “Y-You want me to push him down the hole?"

“Don’t make it sound so rude!” She told me off, “And yes! Get to it!”

“I don’t wanna.” I said with a deadpan expression.

“And why not?”

“I don’t wanna be known as the guy that pushed a Dead Old Man down a shallow grave in the middle of Sibirus.”

“Fine!” She scoffed, “Then we’ll do it together!”

“That’s what she said.” I saw the opportunity and took it.

After my hilarious joke (which flew right over her head), we promptly shoved the Old Man down the shallow grave, gave a prayer or two then headed inside to get some sleep and heat back up.

“…” Marina stood quietly in front of the now empty table where she had previously played chess with the Old Man, “So he’s really gone, huh?”

“Yep.” I answered back, “I say good riddance.”

She found my comment quite inappropriate, but chose to not say anything about it, “Now I don’t have a chess partner. I really wanted to beat him on this last round.”

I was really getting tired and just wanted to head to bed. But while I laid on my side I noticed she still hasn’t moved an inch from that table. I sighed before getting up.

“Fine, I’ll play with you.” I sat down adjacent to her, “I’ll be his replacement until you find a better partner.”

I noticed her eyes light up immediately upon hearing that, and she quickly got the table ready, but stopped midway to ask me something.

“Does that mean I have to call you Gramps now, Big Bro?”

“Only if I start calling you Granny.” I shot back in an attempt to sound witty.

“Who knows? Maybe one day that’ll be the case?” She giggled once more to herself.

“What the hell do you mean by that?” I asked.

“Well…” She looked around the room before looking back at me, “… I hope we don’t join the others of our party until we’re as old as Gramps. Yeah, that’s what I meant.”

She’s obviously hiding something, but I’m not sure what. I’m not sure why, but the thought of Ed laughing at me suddenly appeared in my head as well. Strange…

After that, we played a game… Then another one… Then another one after that. As it turns out, we’re quite evenly matched! I’d win one game, then she’d catch up on the next! It was easily the most fun I’ve had since getting off the boat. Even still, we played through the night until the candle flickered out.

“Aww,” Marina said disappointedly, but quickly changed into an excited emotion, similar to how a puppy would react, “Oh! I’ll go get another one then we can continue!”

“No! I’m all done for tonight! I wanna go to sleep!”

“But the night’s still young! Come on, just one more?” Marina begged me to continue.

“Where’s the rush?” I asked, “We can play whenever we want. Didn’t I say I won’t ever leave you until you find a better chess partner?”

Since the candle had stopped burning, the room was only illuminated by the moonlight outside the window. On top of that, we played chess so much that I was too focused on the game to properly take a look at her. Her skin was as smooth as cotton, her eyes as bright as the moonlight that illuminated this very room, and her cheeks were… flushed. She was flustered, and she immediately jolted her gaze away from mine.

She started fiddling with her chess piece, the Bishop, before quietly speaking her mind, “I… don’t wanna lose you like I did the others.”

“…” I raised my eyebrows in sheer surprise.

“Lune, will you really stay by my side until then?” She asked.

“…” I paused once again to look her in the eyes, “Of course.”

I didn’t notice this at the time, but that was the first time she called me by my name.

***

I woke up the next morning pretty late, since we spent most of the night playing chess. An interesting aroma wafted throughout the room, which quickly woke me up. The first thing my eyes saw as they opened was the silhouette of a young woman in an adorable little apron.

She was borrowing the kitchen to make us breakfast, but I didn’t wanna announce myself just yet. I stood there, for whatever reason, and looked on at her from my bed. Simply staring, nothing more to it, but it was certainly a happy sight.

She was a horrible cook, though. From the smell I could tell she was making sausages, but she somehow managed to cut herself with a knife as she tried opening a seasoning packet. Her form was horrible, and I only got up to stop her when I noticed she tried putting sugar instead of salt.

“Hold it!” I screamed out.

“Bwahhh!” She yelped in fear, “Don’t scare me like that, you dunce! I’m cooking!”

“That’s exactly why, dumbass! You’re ruining our limited supply of food, give it here!” I said as I snatched the sugar packet out of her hands.

Cooking is a skill any adventurer should have! And if you’re a klutz, then at least find someone who can cook for you! Food poisoning is our number one enemy here!

That being said, she didn’t get angry at my remark. Instead, she simply peered at the food from behind my shoulder before quietly putting her bright pink apron around me.

“What are you doing?” I asked while seasoning the sausages.

“Seems like you’re the cook in this relationship, so I think you should have it.” She said with an aloof stare.

“Relation-!” I spilled some seasoning on the table in surprise, “D-Don’t say it like that! People will misunderstand!”

“… What people?” She asked innocently once again, “We’re the only ones here. I can make as many misunderstandings as I want.”

I had nothing left to say to that, and in trying to make her realize all the embarrassing things she just said by silently staring at her, I instead found myself to be the one to get embarrassed first and looked away. I regret calling her reliable previously…

“I-In any case!” I said, “Have a seat and eat up, we’ll need all the energy we can get if we wanna make it back to the boat in time.”

“Aww, I wanted to have some more fun in here…” She hunched forward with a grimace.

“Can’t help it, the Captain’s scheduled to be here in a few hours.” I said, “Also, I don’t want to spend another second in this Godforsaken place.”

As such, we ate our food (which was delicious thanks to me) and packed all of our stuff before leaving. We prayed once more to the useless trio’s grave and got going.

The snow was thicker than yesterday, and the blizzard was awful. Wading our way through the freezing climate was certainly a lot more difficult than before, so we had to worry about a lot of things.

I was using Spark as much as I could to keep us warm, but it drained me physically and we would have to take short rests often so that I could recover. Marina was trying to be polite the whole way through, insisting that she wasn’t cold at all and that I should worry about myself, but I know she’s lying. From my experience, girls are definitely more sensitive to the cold than us guys are, so I didn’t change my decision to keep us warm using my Iro.

We passed by two mountains until we made it to familiar ground, which was a clear sign we were headed in the right direction, but navigation was still quite difficult. The fog from the blizzard made it so we could barely see what was in front of us, and we decided not to talk at all during this walk to save energy.

In the end, we saw what resembled the dock, so I got excited and quickly dashed towards it. Just then, Marina pulled me back by the collar, making me fall on my back.

“What the hell?” I reprimanded her, “Why’d you do that?”

“Shh!” She shushed me before pointing to the boat that was docked over there.

“Who are those people?” I asked, “They seem familiar…”

“No clue, but the Captain is a loner.” Marina recalled her trip on the boat, “I’m not sure if you noticed while you were riding the waves on that boat of his, but he’s always alone, and no one else was dispatched to this place but us.”

“Right…” I agreed, “So what do you think is going on? Should we intervene?”

“Dunno, let’s wait and see for now.” She suggested.

As such, we hid behind a rock and listened in through the blizzards howling wind. There were around 10 people, give or take, and the Captain was nowhere to be found.

“Fuck this place!” One of the guys yelled out, “That fucking asshole probably lied to us about the World Wonder having treasure hidden underneath it!”

“Just shut up and get moving!” The other guy replied, “We need to move all this cargo outside, according to Kaido there’s a lodging just up ahead where we’ll seek refuge throughout this damned blizzard.”

Are they talking about the Captain? Did the Captain sell us out? I don’t remember his name being Kaido, I’m pretty sure he mentioned it was Dave… No, wait, it’s possible they’re just pirates who overheard him talking about us… But no, this is definitely the Captain’s boat…

“But it’s freezing! I miss the warmth of our base! Heck, I’d even say I miss Lemmy!”

Lemmy, where’d I hear that name from?

“Oh, don’t you go mentioning the kid’s name! Be glad he’s out with his pop-pop, going to some fancy-schmancy school. The kid’s a menace to society, an education would do him good.”

“Yeah, fuck that kid, honestly. Because of that arrogant little shit-stain, I’m afraid of the color yellow!”

Lemmy… Base in the forest… Yellow… Arrogant little shit-stain… Gasp!

“You’re the bandits from before!” I jumped out of our cover, to the surprise of both Marina and the bandits.

“Lune!” Marina shouted.

“You!” The bandits followed her example, “You’re the asshole who burned our place down! Because of you we’re freezing here just to find some treasure to make ends meet!”

“What did you do to the Captain?!” I shouted the question out, demanding an answer.

“Took his boat, of course! We’re bandits!” The one guy laughed, “That Old Man didn’t stand a chance after we whipped out our swords.”

“What?” I stopped upon hearing this.

“Heheh, yeah, he’s probably still in a ditch in the forest, now that I think about it. The asshole was feisty, too, we had to hold him down before we got a few cuts in, but it was manageable.”

“You… killed him?” I asked to reaffirm my suspicions as the world around me suddenly turned red.

“Yeah, we got an earful from Lee, though.” A third bandit joined the fray, “We beat him up too and took over the group. We took pity on him and let him go under the condition he takes care of Lemmy. You remember Lemmy, right?” He jeered, “The kid that knocked you out without even having to touch your pathetic ass?”

“Oh I remember, I got him back good, though.” I said as I prepared to cast Fireball, “But not as good as I’ll get back at you.”

The air around us was getting thinner and thinner as everyone from the boat got off and readied their weapons. I told Marina to stand back as I held out my left hand. The bandits stood there, wondering what I was doing and making jokes, before marching towards me at high speeds.

I had one shot, and I wanted to make it count. These assholes burned my belongings and locked me up in a cage. These assholes made fun of a kind and honest man and shunned him out of the group. These assholes killed the man that taught me chess. I need to make sure they don’t do such things again.

With a sudden high pitched sound, a beam of fiery light spewed from my left hand’s wound, surprising the bandits as they quickly went to duck. The Fireball was sizeable, bigger than the one I launched back on the mountain when I first discovered it. Even still, I aimed too high and missed them entirely, instead hitting the boat dead on and sinking it.

“Nice going, idiot!” The bandits mocked me, “Now neither of us can get back!”

“Who said you’d be leaving this place?” I asked rhetorically, ”Your graves are under this very ice.”

“Lune! Calm down!” Marina tried to grab me, but got burned the moment she grabbed my shoulder.

“Wait, this fire… You guys think it’s something like Lemmy’s Command?” One bandit asked his mates, “If so, we should really be cautious. The guy looks like he’s got a few screws loose!”

“It’s certainly mysterious how he does that…” The other bandit answered, “But I don’t care! This just further enforces the idea that he was the one who burned our base down, and that it wasn’t just a random forest fire like Lee claimed!”

“Just try not to die.” The first bandit shouted back.

“Don’t worry.” I interrupted their little quarrel, “You aren’t surviving this. No need to fret.”

And just like that, I fired off my biggest Fireball yet. It was scorching hot, to the point where it had burned away all of the skin on my hand, and it looked as big as the Sun. Marina was probably terrified, but she still held onto me until the very end.

It was so big that it moved extremely slowly, to the point where it’s speed was actually laughable, but everyone present still dreaded the moment it hit the surface of the ice. The bandits saw what a Fireball smaller than this did to the ship, so they knew running away from this one was a fruitless endeavor.

Once it hit, though, there was no sound. Well, that’s what I thought at first, but looking back that’s probably because the impact burst my eardrums, so I couldn’t hear anything.

I saw only a flash of light before I was blown far away into the sea. In the distance, though, the burnt remains of the bandits was engraved in my mind, but I still smiled upon seeing it.