Sharing a Room with Cioccolata

After they returned from the stone house, Cioccolata barely spoke.

Kexi tried several times to start a conversation, but he couldn't find the right words.

By the time they stopped again on a street in Egla Town, it was completely dark.

Kexi looked up at the sky, then at Cioccolata's slightly weary profile, and spoke up. "It's too late today. It'll take hours to get back to Ragunna City, and it's not safe. Let's stay in town for the night."

Cioccolata had no objection and nodded.

The two walked along the town's main street for a while and found an inn that looked reasonably clean.

A wooden sign swayed gently in the night breeze, bearing the faded words "Wavecrest Inn." A string of seashell wind chimes hung by the entrance, jingling as they pushed open the door.

A middle-aged man wearing round glasses sat behind the counter, listlessly leafing through an old ledger.

Hearing the chimes, he looked up and glanced back and forth between Kexi and Cioccolata before putting on a professional smile. "Good evening. Looking for a room?"

Kexi strode up to the counter, pulled a heavy money pouch from inside his clothes, and set it down.

The Shell Credits clinked crisply inside the pouch, sounding particularly pleasant in the quiet lobby.

He leaned forward, coughed twice, and winked at the innkeeper.

The innkeeper's gaze fell on the pouch of Shell Credits. He looked at Kexi's winks and grimaces, then at Cioccolata standing by the door with a lute on her back, and immediately understood.

He adjusted his glasses, gave Kexi an "I understand" smile, and cleared his throat. Loud enough for the whole lobby to hear, he said, "Oh, what bad luck. We have an unusual number of guests tonight, and there's only one room left."

Kexi looked back at Cioccolata and spread his hands, putting on an innocent "What can we do?" expression.

Cioccolata leaned against the doorframe with her arms crossed, watching the two men, one tall and one short, put on their act in front of her.

The corner of her mouth twitched.

The Wavecrest Inn was deserted, and there was plainly a "Vacancies" sign hanging by the entrance. It was still swaying in the night breeze, creaking as though even the sign were embarrassed by the innkeeper's acting.

But she didn't expose them. She merely tilted her head and looked at Kexi with eyes half hidden beneath the brim of her hat, the faintest hint of laughter in her voice. "What a coincidence."

Her tone sent a slight chill down Kexi's back, but he'd already said it and slapped his money on the counter. Backing down now would be too embarrassing.

He steeled himself, turned around, and pushed the pouch across the counter. "All right, one room it is. Sorry for the trouble, but could you show us the way?"

The innkeeper promptly took the money, fetched a copper key from the key rack, and eagerly led them upstairs.

The hallway was long and narrow, and the wooden floorboards creaked underfoot.

The innkeeper stopped at the door at the very end, unlocked it, and handed Kexi the key. He gave him an encouraging look that said, "Make the most of it, young man," then tactfully withdrew.

Kexi pushed open the door. The room was small but clean and tidy. The wooden floor had been polished until it shone, and a pot of little white flowers he didn't recognize sat on the windowsill. Scattered lights from the town were visible outside the window. There was only one bed.

Kexi stood in the doorway, suddenly at a loss. He'd been quite confident while putting on his act downstairs, but now that he was actually standing in the room, the bed suddenly looked enormous and glaringly conspicuous.

He scratched the back of his head and stole a glance at Cioccolata.

Cioccolata, on the other hand, didn't stand on ceremony. She walked straight into the room, leaned her lute against the bed, took off her hat and hung it on the coat rack, then sat on the edge of the bed and began untying her shoes.

"Um," Kexi said, clearing his throat, "you take the bed. I'll sleep on the floor."

"Obviously." Cioccolata didn't even look up. "You didn't think I was going to let you have the bed, did you?"

"Hey, hey, hey," Kexi grumbled as he pulled spare bedding from the cupboard and laid it on the floor. "I paid for this, you know. Can't you show your benefactor a little respect?"

Cioccolata had finished untying her shoes and was sitting cross-legged on the edge of the bed, loosening her lute strings.

At that, she looked up and glanced at him with eyes that seemed especially clear in the dim yellow light. The corners of her mouth lifted slightly, and she spoke as casually as if stating a fact. "I didn't ask you to pay."

Kexi paused in the middle of laying out the bedding and opened his mouth to argue, but on second thought-she really hadn't asked.

He was the one who'd offered to pay from the start, and he was the one who'd winked and gestured at the innkeeper.

After struggling for a while, all he managed was, "Fine, you're ruthless. You're paying next time."

"Next time?" Cioccolata loosened the last string, leaned the lute against the head of the bed, and casually brushed aside a strand of hair hanging over her shoulder. "You'll pay next time too."

"Why should I?"

"Because you're the young master of the Montelli family. I'm just a wandering singer. Wouldn't you be embarrassed to make me pay?"

Kexi realized he was no match for Cioccolata in an argument.

Resigned, he shook out the quilt, laid it on the floor, and plopped down on it.

The wooden floor was hard and uncomfortable. Given his height, his feet stuck out beyond the bedding when he lay down, making him look like a beached whale.

The room fell quiet. Outside the window, the occasional distant bark and the muffled sound of waves breaking against the shore could be heard.

Cioccolata didn't lie down right away. She sat on the edge of the bed, gazing absently out the window.

Kexi lay on the floor with his hands behind his head, looking at her silhouette outlined in moonlight. Suddenly, he thought the scene would be perfect for his next love letter.

But he quickly dismissed the idea. The shadow of Cioccolata's criticism earlier that day had yet to fade, and he decided against any literary endeavors that night.

"Hey," he said, turning his head toward the figure on the bed hugging her knees. "What are you thinking about?"

"That song." Cioccolata's voice was soft. "To the Yue Maiden Far Away. It's been fifty years, and the score was already incomplete when it came into my hands. But the manuscript we saw in that stone house today-that version was much more complete than the one my master passed down to me. If I had a few more days, maybe I could restore it to something close to the original."

"Then Yaoyue would be very happy," Kexi said.

"It's not just for her." Cioccolata lowered her head, her fingers unconsciously tapping a rhythm on her knee. "How many songs can a bard write in a lifetime? Most are washed away by time like sand.

"But this one's different. It's been passed from person to person for fifty years, from Rosinante all the way down to my master, then from my master to me, and now from me to Yaoyue.

"It'll keep being passed down. That's the most wonderful thing about being a bard-the person dies, but the song lives on."

Kexi was silent for a while, then said softly, "Yours will too."

"Hmm?"

"Your songs will be passed down too. For longer than fifty years."

Cioccolata didn't reply.

Moonlight filtered through the window lattice, falling on her silent, downturned profile.

After a long time, she let out a soft laugh, her voice carrying a tenderness Kexi had never heard before.

"You say that like you know what you're talking about."

"I don't understand poetry or songs. But I understand you." Kexi stared at the ceiling, his tone uncharacteristically serious. "When you sing, the whole world ceases to exist. How could a voice like that possibly last only a few decades?"

The room fell quiet again. Just when Kexi thought Cioccolata had fallen asleep, an exceptionally faint reply came from under the covers, as if spoken to the pillow, or perhaps to the moon. "Maybe."

Then she rolled over to face the wall and pulled the quilt up, leaving a small part of her face and the tip of one ear exposed.

The tip of her ear was slightly red in the moonlight, but she said nothing more, and her breathing gradually grew steady and deep.

In the middle of the night, Kexi woke up from the cold.

Egla Town's night wind slipped through the crack in the window, carrying the dampness of the sea and the chill of late autumn, and poured straight under his covers.

The spare quilt provided by the inn was clearly meant for a normal-sized person. It covered most of his body, leaving his two big feet shivering in the cold air.

He curled up his legs and tried to tuck his feet under the quilt, only for his shoulders to emerge at the other end.

After trying a few times, he finally gave up. To cover himself, he could either use the quilt lengthwise and leave his feet exposed, or use it sideways and leave his shoulders exposed.

At times like this, every disadvantage of being 2.14 meters tall became apparent.

He sat up, clutched the quilt around himself, and sneezed.

A rustling came from the bed. Cioccolata rolled over, her voice carrying both the drowsiness of someone woken from sleep and a trace of impatience. "Cold?"

"...Yeah." Kexi rubbed his nose, his voice muffled.

The darkness was quiet for a few seconds. Then a blanket flew off the bed and landed squarely over his face.

"Don't get the wrong idea. If you catch a cold, there won't be anyone to carry my lute tomorrow."

Kexi pulled the blanket off his face. The soft wool still carried a very faint scent, like fresh grass, with a hint of the slightly sharp smell of rosin from the lute strings.

He wrapped the blanket around himself, and most of the chill immediately vanished.

"Thanks."

He took a deep breath, and then his mouth moved faster than his brain. "Ah, Cioccolata's scent."

The moment the words left his mouth, the air in the room seemed to freeze.

There was silence from the bed for three seconds.

Then Cioccolata's voice drifted down, so calm it was chilling, though a careful listener could hear a trace of unnaturally suppressed tension:

"If you dare do anything weird with my blanket, tomorrow I'll make you the first Montelli in Ragunna to be beaten to death with a lute."

Kexi buried half his face in the blanket and gave a muffled reply. "I'm not that much of a pervert."

"You are."

"I really am not."

"You are. You've been writing love letters to women all over Solaris for twelve years. Can you honestly say you're not a pervert?"

Kexi fell silent for quite a while. Finally, he rolled over in resignation and pulled the blanket over his head. "Let's sleep. We have to travel tomorrow."

A very faint hum came from the bed, as though she couldn't be bothered to pursue it, or perhaps as some kind of subtle victory.