The Swaying Green Carriage
Dawn was just breaking, and the Lahai-Roi Defense Line had yet to wake from the quiet of the night before.
Zhou Yu had already brought two yawning girls, sneaking over to the freight platform at the edge of the defense line.
Clang.
A rusty green carriage was coupled to the locomotive, swaying heavily.
The carriage door stood wide open. Inside, the smells of engine oil and rust mingled with the scent of some living creature.
Sigelica pinched her nose, her brows tightly knotted.
"Couldn't you find a normal way to travel?"
She glanced at the carriage, which looked ready to fall apart, then at Zhou Yu's face, as if he saw nothing wrong with it.
"Like a passenger line?"
"We're lucky to have this." Zhou Yu brushed the dust from his hands. "A dedicated line for the budget market. Affordable, economical, and no ticket checks."
"You mean fare dodging."
"I mean the optimal solution once the budget hits zero."
He jumped into the carriage first and tipped his chin at them.
"Besides, you fed your entire scholarship to strawberry cake. What are you complaining about?"
Sigelica: (╬▔皿▔)
Unable to argue, she resigned herself to it and followed him aboard, supporting Dania.
The carriage was dim, packed with crates covered in canvas. Several large iron cages were crammed into a corner.
Cluck, cluck, cluck.
A plump Gulpuff poked its head through a gap in the cage and tilted it, studying the three new uninvited guests.
Dania stopped dead in her tracks.
"That... is alive."
"Obviously. Could it make noise if it were dead?" Zhou Yu's voice came from deeper inside the carriage.
Dania squatted down, face-to-face with the Gulpuff. It clucked twice more and flapped its wings.
Dania: (๑• . •๑)
"Xixi, so that's what the stuff in the cans looks like."
The corner of Sigelica's mouth twitched.
"Yaya, could you stop drooling while you stare at it?"
"I'm not drooling." Dania rubbed the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. "Maybe a little."
"That's someone else's cargo. Get back here."
Zhou Yu found a relatively spacious corner deeper in the carriage. He tore a large, reasonably clean piece of canvas off a tattered burlap sack, spread it on the open space between two wooden crates, and patted it.
"A seat reserved for the empress dowager. Available for a limited time."
Dania gave the Gulpuff another reluctant look before shuffling over in small steps and sitting down.
The canvas was a little stiff, but it kept out the cold and damp from the floor.
Zhou Yu pulled an old military canteen from some nook, unscrewed the cap, and held it out to her. Warm vapor wafted over her face.
"Keep warm."
Dania took it, and the warmth slowly traveled from her palms up her arms.
She looked up at Zhou Yu. He was already leaning against a cargo crate, munching on half a roasted sweet potato left over from last night. He looked so practiced that it hardly seemed to be his first time riding in a carriage like this.
Sigelica sat down beside them, her eyes never leaving him.
From laying out the canvas to handing over the hot water, he hadn't hesitated for even half a second, as though he'd rehearsed it a hundred times.
"Zhou Yu."
"Hm?" he answered indistinctly, without opening his eyes.
"Did you used to look after kids for a living?"
Zhou Yu swallowed the sweet potato in his mouth and scoffed.
"Looking after kids? You're overthinking it."
He lifted his eyelids, his gaze drifting lazily to the spiderweb on the carriage ceiling.
"I used to cultivate workplace blessings."
"What workplace blessings?"
"Finding a meal in the pie in the sky my boss promised, catching up on sleep during a fifteen-minute lunch break, and pondering life on the last train home from work."
He pointed at the canteen in Dania's hands.
"That's an essential for staying healthy at your workstation. Goji berries and malva nuts: the perfect companions for late-night overtime."
Zhou Yu: ╮(╯▽╰)╭
Sigelica studied his profile for two seconds.
"Don't you get tired of turning all your hard times into jokes?"
"Tired of what?" Zhou Yu wadded up the sweet potato skin and flicked his wrist, tossing it straight into the pile of trash in the corner. "I lived through it all, didn't I?"
He paused, then added another sentence.
"More than whether I'm tired, I care what time the bun shop opens tomorrow morning."
Sigelica opened her mouth, but in the end, she asked nothing more.
It suddenly occurred to her that this flippant fellow was a little harder to read than she'd imagined.
Sigelica: (-_-;)
Clang.
The train jolted sharply and slowly began to move.
The wheels rolled over the rails, filling the carriage with a rhythmic sound that made them drowsy.
Dania leaned against a cargo crate, the gentle rocking like a cradle.
She turned to look out the window. Lahai-Roi's broken walls, blackened by smoke and gunfire, were gradually receding behind them.
"Zhou Yu."
"Mm."
"The colors outside are changing."
"We've left the defense line." He kept his eyes closed. "The farther we go, the greener it gets. Over by the academy, the streets are full of trees."
"What do trees smell like?"
"You'll know when we get there."
Dania hugged the canteen a little tighter, its warmth resting against her chest.
At some point, Sigelica had also fallen asleep against a crate. Her breathing was steady, and her brows had finally relaxed.
Zhou Yu leaned motionless against a cargo crate, eyes closed, as though someone had suddenly switched off his power.
Cluck, cluck, cluck.
The Gulpuff in the cage was still calling, and the wheels were still rumbling. All the noise and clamor were the sounds of life.
Dania's eyelids grew heavier and heavier.
On the edge of consciousness, she murmured.
"Pork and scallion soup dumplings."
Her voice was barely audible, full of sleepiness and anticipation.
Across from her, Zhou Yu leaned against the cargo crate without opening his eyes. His lips moved.
"Seven o'clock. Don't be late."
The corners of Dania's mouth curved up, and her eyes closed completely.
Dania: (︶｡︶✽)
The green carriage swayed as it carried the three of them away from that gray battlefield.
Toward breakfast, toward the bun shop, toward a morning when no one needed to go to their death.