"I'm sorry. Did I scare you?"
After a long while, Xiu Yuan slowly opened his dejected eyes and spoke.
"Here, grilled fish." Kazuha offered him a freshly grilled fish.
Xiu Yuan froze at the sight of it.
He looked at Kazuha in disbelief, seemingly unable to understand what he was doing.
"Kazuha, you..."
"You said it yourself: don't let the past affect the present. What's past is past."
As he spoke, Kazuha held the fish out to Xiu Yuan.
"You really do take everything in stride."
Xiu Yuan paused, then gave a wry smile and accepted the fish.
"When I set out to wander the world, I was already prepared to die at any moment. After all, I don't have anything left to lose."
Kazuha took a bite of his fish as he spoke.
"You saved my life." Xiu Yuan took a bite of his fish too.
"You saved mine too."
"But I caused that danger in the first place."
"But that wasn't you."
"It was still controlling my body."
"Well, if you put it that way, there's nothing I can say." Kazuha shrugged.
Then something suddenly occurred to Kazuha, and he changed the subject. "If you want to repay me, get me some wine. I haven't had a drink in ages."
"Wine? That won't be a problem." Xiu Yuan sounded utterly certain.
"You can get wine?!" Kazuha's eyes immediately lit up.
Drinkers really were all alike. The moment they heard about wine, they couldn't take another step.
"Of course. Getting some would be a piece of cake." Xiu Yuan was very confident.
"You're not lying to me again, are you?" Kazuha asked suspiciously.
After all, in the few days he had spent with Xiu Yuan, he had been fooled more times than he normally was in an entire year.