Thank goodness - Jhin was out cold, completely oblivious to everything happening over here.
Pecorine let out a long breath, then turned her head with a weary look at Kyaru and Megumin, whose squabbling on the bed had escalated into an all-out brawl on the floor. "Are you two going to sleep or not? Don't wake Jhin up."
The magic words did their work. Both of them fell silent at once, shot each other a cold sniff, and lay down back to back.
Kyaru pressed her legs tightly together. All that thrashing around had only made the heavy, overfull feeling in her belly worse, and when she saw Kokkoro still lying there lost in thought, something in her snapped. She seized the girl's cheeks and mauled them thoroughly, and only then did she close her eyes and go to sleep, thoroughly satisfied.
When Pecorine woke at dawn and saw the state Jhin was in beside her, she covered her cheeks and let out a whimper like a kicked puppy. "Tomorrow I'm sleeping on the edge."
The other three treated the whole spectacle as if it were nothing worth noticing, which left her feeling like she was the youngest one in the room. She crept out of bed to wash up, splashing cold water on her face several times before the heat finally drained out of it.
After breakfast, with Jhin still snoring away, Pecorine took the chance to announce to the others that from now on she would be sleeping on the very edge. Nobody objected in the slightest - if anything, they had only put her in the middle the night before so they could check on Kyaru's condition, and would never have made her do it otherwise.
Jhin slept straight through until the afternoon, and even after waking he still looked short on rest, yawning one yawn after another.
"Kokkoro, is he really all right like this?"
"Please don't worry. All of this is perfectly normal. In a few more days Master will be back to his old self - right now he is simply adjusting to an origin essence that is gradually awakening."
"Dragons sure can sleep. Now I've got nobody to play with." Megumin twirled her [True Crimson Flame Staff] around in irritation. With Jhin unavailable for their usual trading of insults, her urge to unleash Explosion magic was climbing by the hour.
After shoveling down a couple of mouthfuls of rice, Jhin wandered back to bed under the watchful eyes of the girls and went right back to sleep. They had no choice but to leave one person behind in the room to keep an eye on him while the rest went out shopping.
Kyaru volunteered on the spot, but there was every chance she would guard the henhouse by eating the chickens and turn the room into a battlefield, so the others simply ignored her. In the end it was Kokkoro who stayed. Given the choice between going out to play and sitting beside her Master, she preferred the latter - she could pass an entire day at his side in unhurried contentment, even doing nothing but staring into space.
The moon hung high in the night sky and Jhin was still asleep. Pecorine got her wish and settled down at the edge of the bed, telling herself that when she woke in the morning she would be spared any more of those overstimulating sights.
Her thinking was far too naive. When the morning light roused her, her companions' sleeping postures delivered another full-force shock.
Megumin had both arms wrapped around Jhin's neck and her head resting on his chest, drool from her open mouth soaking into his shirt, her oversized nightclothes slipping down to bare most of one snow-white shoulder.
Kokkoro was curled into his armpit like a fledgling bird. Apart from the head poking out of the blanket, all four of her limbs seemed to be wound around him.
Kyaru's lower half was sticking out from under the covers, which meant the lump bulging over Jhin's stomach had to be her head. Whether she was awake or asleep was anyone's guess, but her cat tail was swaying along a trajectory even Pecorine could read as pure happiness.
The room was filled mostly with the faint fragrance the girls gave off, and yet somewhere in it Pecorine caught the distinct scent of photinia blossoms.
Once upon a time she might not have understood what that meant. Not anymore. Having seen the ancient-battlefield state of Kyaru's bedroom, she knew exactly what that smell implied.
Afraid that one of these mornings she would open her eyes to a full-blown party in progress, she volunteered again at breakfast to sleep in the middle as a dividing line.
None of the other three objected. They only asked whether she really wanted to do that.
"I think it's absolutely necessary!"
Pecorine would come to deeply regret those words. What she hadn't known was that Jhin had a habit of hugging things in his sleep.
One morning she woke inside a pair of reassuring arms, tilted her head up, and found Jhin's face barely an inch from her own. For a moment she thought her heart was going to burst.
"Hueh?" She blinked, refusing to believe it.
Why am I in Jhin's arms?
Did he mistake me for Kokkoro or one of the others?
Those firm, powerful arms were clamped around her waist and back, and pressed together as they were, two very different heartbeats sounded between them - one steady, one racing.
She didn't mind the pressure against her chest at all. It came with the feeling of being protected.
Just... savoring it a little longer shouldn't hurt anything, right?
With that thought, Pecorine took two fistfuls of Jhin's shirt, buried her face against him, breathed in deeply, and let out a sigh of pure contentment.
Perhaps it was too comforting. When the sea breeze drifted into the room and pried her eyelids open again, only the two of them were left on the bed; her companions had vanished without a trace.
She simply stayed where she was, drifting back to sleep in Jhin's arms.
That sleep may have been the most peaceful Pecorine had known since the day she fled the palace. The unease and fear she kept buried scattered like shadows meeting sunlight, gone without a trace.
She even dreamed of her parents. They stood on the palace terrace, stroking her hair with gentle hands while she was still small. "When you meet someone you truly like, you'll understand on your own what kind of feeling love is."
"Mm... I like Papa and Mama. Doesn't that count as love?"
"Hahahaha!" Her father let out a hearty laugh. "Of course that's love. We love you too. But... liking us and falling for someone else are two different things. You're the brightest pearl in all of Landosol - I'd honestly rather no snot-nosed boy ever found his way into your heart."
"Shoo, shoo, don't say things that will leave her alone for life." Her mother wiped the crumbs of snacks from the corner of her mouth. "That kind of feeling can't be explained with words alone. You only understand it once you've felt it yourself."
"Mm!"
Standing in the shadow of the building, Pecorine watched the scene in silence, biting her lip as tears slid traitorously from the corners of her eyes.
Papa, Mama... I've met the person I was fated to meet. But I... I don't have the right to tell him how I feel.
I've lost my identity and my name. All I do now is scrape by in this world wearing a face that isn't mine.
"What's wrong - bad dream?" Woken by the tears dripping onto him, Jhin gently wiped them from Pecorine's face.
Surfacing from the dream, she shook her head and gave him a brilliant smile. "Nope. It was a happy dream. So happy it made me cry."
The flicker of gloom at the back of her eyes didn't escape him, but he let the lie stand, only tucking her messy hair behind her ear. "Then you must have quite an appetite. Want to get up and go eat something huge?"
"Ohh, that's my Jhin! We were thinking the exact same thing!"
Without a moment's hesitation Pecorine slipped out of his arms and went bounding off toward the bathroom.
____
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