Chapter 2: Problems
The walk to Chiori’s place was a blur of fading city sounds and rising meadow quiet. Sen held a bottle of Fontainian red wine, his knuckles white around the neck.He’d changed his shirt three times. Flour was a permanent fixture under his fingernails, a tiny tattoo of his trade. The manicured streets of the city gave way to cobblestone paths, then to a dirt track lined with shoulder-high lavender. The air shifted, the damp mineral scent of Fontaine’s canals replaced by the dry, sweet perfume of thousands of blooming things.Her cottage looked like a sketch from a storybook. White walls, a dark wood door, windowsills overflowing with pots of herbs and tiny, stubborn flowers. An enchanted garden glimmered softly in the twilight to one side, glowing mushrooms pulsing with a gentle, blue light. Wind chimes made of seashells and old keys whispered secrets to each other in the breeze.He knocked, the sound too loud in the stillness.The door opened almost immediately. Chiori stood there, having shed her usual sharp architectural lines. She wore soft, dark linen trousers and a simple cream-colored blouse, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Her hair was down, a dark cascade over one shoulder.She looked younger.She looked real.
“You’re on time,” she observed.“A miracle.”
“You said no excuses,” Sen said, offering the wine.
She took it, her fingers brushing his.“Come in. Don’t stand there like a lost delivery.”
Her home was a symphony of organized chaos. Bolts of exquisite fabric leaned in corners like sleeping giants. Sketches were pinned to a large corkboard, dresses and jackets with wild, beautiful lines.Books on botanical illustration were stacked in precarious towers next to a worn sofa. But it was clean, and warm, and the kitchen—small and bright—smelled incredible. Something rich and savory simmered on the stove, and a crusty loaf of bread sat on a cutting board.
“It’s not a bakery,” she said, following his glance. “But I know how to follow instructions.Sit.”
He sat at a small wooden table by the window. She moved around the kitchen with a swift, economical grace, pouring the wine he’d brought into two simple glasses, checking the pot.The silence wasn’t awkward. It was the silence of two people who had shared smaller, quieter spaces long ago.“How was Liyue?” he asked.
“Loud. Full of merchants who think volume equates to quality.” She brought the glasses over, sat opposite him.“It made me appreciate subtlety.How’s the bakery?”
“Busy. Same.”
She watched him take a sip of wine. “You’re doing the thing.”
“What thing?”
“Where you make yourself very small in the chair. You’ve been out of that house for a decade, Sen. You don’t have to fold yourself up anymore.”
He forced his shoulders to relax, a conscious effort.The old habits lived in the marrow. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Just breathe.” She got up again to tend to the food, and they fell into an easy back-and-forth—shop talk about suppliers, a funny story about a demanding client of hers, his recounting of Mrs.Laurent’s unwavering twelve-second rule. He felt the tight coil in his chest begin, incrementally, to loosen.The food was simple and perfect. A slow-cooked beef daube, the sauce deep and velvety, the bread perfect for soaking it up. They ate without pretense.Halfway through, she put her fork down.“Okay. The food has disarmed you.The wine has greased the wheels. Talk.”
He stared at a piece of carrot on his plate. “Chiori…”
“You told me it was ‘a lot.’ I want the list.”
He took a long drink of wine. The cottage felt suddenly very quiet, the world outside shrinking to the circle of light from the hanging lamp above their table. “It’s Navia,” he started, the name a release of pressure.
“Obviously.”
“I love her.” The words hung there, raw and unadorned.“I have for years. Since the first week I knew her, when she found me crying behind the house because my foster father had broken a tray of my first decent eclairs. She didn’t even know me. She just sat on the curb, handed me a handkerchief, and told me about the time she accidentally dyed her entire prized dress cerulean blue trying to fix a stain.”
Chiori listened, her expression unreadable.
“She was the first kind thing in this whole country for me,” he continued, his voice thickening.“She still is. She’s light. And I… I’m this person who comes from a place where love was a transaction, or a punishment. How do you offer something to someone like her when you’re not even sure you have it to give?”
“Have you told her?”
He shook his head, a quick, sharp motion. “No. Never.”
“Why?”
A harsh laugh escaped him. “Look at me, Chiori. I smell like yeast and regret. My greatest accomplishment is a laminated dough that doesn’t weep. She runs a city-sanctioned organization. She’s… she’s Navia. The idea of her reciprocating is… it’s a fantasy. A selfish one.”
“That’s not an answer. That’s your foster family’s voice talking. Try again.”
He swirled the wine in his glass. “Because I’m scared,” he whispered. “Scared that if I say it, it becomes real, and if it becomes real and she says no—which she will—then I lose the friendship too. And that friendship is the best thing I have. It’s the pillar. I can’t risk the pillar.”
Chiori’s gaze was steady. “And Clorinde?”
Sen’s jaw tightened. The name was a splinter. “What about her?”
“You feel something about her. Don’t you.”
It wasn’t a question.He looked away, out the window at the darkening field. “It’s ugly. I know it’s ugly. They have history. They have… something. Something casual, she says. But I see the way she looks at her sometimes. When she’s not looking. It’s not casual. And I hate myself for seeing it. I hate the twist in my gut when she mentions her. I hate that she gets to be close to her in a way I never will. It’s jealousy. Plain and stupid. It makes me small.”
The admission felt like vomiting poison.He put his head in his hands, elbows on the table. “See?A lot.And it’s all just… pathetic. Stuck in a loop I can’t get out of. I don’t know how to want something without it also destroying me.”
He heard the scrape of her chair. Then her hands were on his shoulders, firm, grounding.She didn’t hug him. Just held him there, a solid presence in his unraveling.
“You listen to me,” she said, her voice low and clear, close to his ear.“You are not pathetic. You are a man who loves deeply, which is a brave and terrifying thing to be. The world has done a number on you, made you think your feelings are a burden you have to bake into something digestible for others. They’re not.”
He stayed like that, breathing in the scent of her—fabric, ink, and the clean rosemary from the garden.Her grip was the only thing holding him together.
“What do I do?” The question was muffled against his palms.She sighed, a soft, complicated sound. Her hands left his shoulders, and she returned to her seat.“I can’t tell you that. If you want my honest, brutal opinion? You’re probably right not to tell her.”
He looked up, surprised.
“Not because you’re not worthy,” she said sharply, intercepting his thought. “But because you’re not in a place where you could survive the answer, whatever it is.You’ve tied your entire worth to her reaction.That’s not love, Sen. That’s a death sentence.” She leaned forward. “You need to build a you that exists without her approval.A you that isn’t just the guy who loves Navia from a safe distance. Until you have that, anything you do will just be another form of self-harm.”
Her words were a cold splash, shocking and bracing. They didn’t feel like rejection; they felt like a truth he’d been too scared to touch.“How?” was all he could manage.
“I don’t know.Therapy.A hobby that isn’t work. Telling one person a truth that scares you.” She held his gaze, her amber eyes fierce. “Me, for instance.You just did. And the world didn’t end. The pillar is still standing.”
A shaky breath left him. The cottage, the remains of their meal, Chiori’s unwavering face—it all swam into a new, precarious focus. The thunder in his mind hadn’t stopped, but her words had carved a small, clear path through the noise.He nodded, slowly.
She leaned back, picking up her wine glass again.“Good. Now, you’re going to help me wash up.”
The quiet clatter of plates filled the small kitchen. Sen took the scrubbed ones from her, drying them with a clean linen towel. The hot water steamed around her wrists, fogging the window overlooking the dark, glowing garden.
“I forgot you were left-handed,” he said, watching her deft movements.“You forgot a lot of things,” she replied, but her tone held no sting. It was simply fact.
The rhythm was meditative, a silent duet after the cacophony of his confession.His shoulders finally lost their permanent hike. The coiled tension in his gut, the one that lived there like a second spine, began to soften.
“I missed this,” he said, the words quiet against the running tap.“Just… doing something normal. With you.”
She passed him a wine glass, her eyebrow arched. “What, cleaning?”
“No.” He dried the glass carefully, watching the light refract.“The quiet.The one-on-one. It’s different from the group.From the bakery.It’s like back in Inazuma, before everything. When it was just us skipping stones by the creek, not saying much.”
Chiori was silent for a beat, her hands stilling in the soapy water. She looked at him, her expression unguarded in the low light. “We’re here now,” she said finally, her voice lower.“We could always have more of it. If you wanted.”
The offer hung in the humid air, simple and profound.He just nodded, a faint, tired smile touching his lips. “I’d like that.”
They finished the last dish. The kitchen was restored to its state of orderly chaos. The exhaustion of the week, the emotional drain of the evening, it all crashed into Sen at once.He felt heavy and light-headed all at the same time.
“Sit,” Chiori said, gesturing to the living area. “You look like you’re about to fall over.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. He sank onto the worn, comfortable sofa, releasing a long breath he felt he’d been holding for days. She puttered for a moment, turning off the main light, leaving only a small lamp glowing in the corner.
She sat at the other end of the couch, tucking one leg beneath her. They didn’t speak. The only sounds were the whisper of the wind chimes outside and the soft rustle of fabric as she adjusted.Then, almost unconsciously, Sen shifted. He leaned sideways, slowly, until his head came to rest in her lap. He felt her whole body go still, a momentary statue of surprise.“Is this okay?” he murmured, eyes already closed.He felt her breath release. “Yes,” she whispered. Her hand, hesitant at first, came to rest lightly on his hair.Her fingers slowly combed through the dark strands, tracing the shell of his ear.
It wasn’t romantic, not in any deliberate way.It was a gesture of pure, exhausted comfort. A return to a simpler time. The last of the thunder in his mind quieted, replaced by the steady, calm rhythm of her breathing and the gentle pressure of her hand.
“You always smelled like sugar and rain,” she said softly, almost to herself.He didn’t reply. The deep, black fatigue of a baker before dawn finally claimed him. His breathing deepened, slowing into the even patterns of sleep.Chiori didn’t move. She kept her hand in his hair, feeling the weight of him against her. A secret, yearning smile curved her lips, one meant for the shadows and the quiet of the room.Here, with the armor of his anxieties finally shed, he was just Sen. And she could pretend, for this stolen moment, that he was hers.
For his part, adrift in the warm, lavender-scented dark, Sen felt something he almost didn’t recognize: peace.Not the performative calm of the bakery, but a deep, cellular stillness. With Navia, he was always reaching, always hoping.Here, he was just… existing. He felt most like himself when they were together like this, the complicated world held mercifully at bay. The last conscious thought he had was the soft texture of her nylon stockings against his cheek, and then there was nothing but sleep.