I’m tailing the mysterious woman across town, taking care to keep my distance. While she did claim to have no intentions of hurting me, and she did seem more bizarre than bad, eccentric than evil, I still have no inkling of her motives or her relation to Gin; better suspicious than sorry. Ahead, I see her fire red ponytail swaying back and forth, accentuated by the torchlight dotting the streets. Around also are a scattering of townsfolk, though the crowd has thinned since the daytime.

Suddenly, a burst of laughter from my left draws my attention away, a group of old ladies deep in gossip, and when I turn back around, I find that the woman has disappeared from view. I feel my eyes quickly pivot to and fro, confused as to where she might have gone. “It was just a second, where did she-?” I mumble softly to myself before a voice from behind causes me to jump in surprise.

“Why are you following me?” The question sounds more a statement, and when I turn, I find the woman from before, emerging from the shadows. As the moonlight reaches her face, reflecting off her pale, smooth skin, I see the blank expression shining in her eyes.

I pivot my head, switching between where she had disappeared and where she now stands before me, trying to gauge the distance. Fifty? A hundred feet? How did she do that? Magic? What else is she capable of…?

“Why are you following me?” she asks again.

I cross my arms, donning on a brave front with a streak of stubbornness. “I have no obligation to tell you that,” I say, throwing her own words back, and I wait, wondering what her response might be. Again, she surprises me.

She tilts her head slightly, the faintest hint of a frown upon her lips. “I take back what I said before. For a child, you’re not cute at all,” she says. And with that, she appears to grow bored of the issue and abruptly starts to walk away. I quickly move to catch up, keeping pace beside her, not bothering to conceal my presence this time, since apparently she has known about my tail from the start. The woman doesn’t object to my actions, and so together we walk, northbound, towards the port.

After about thirty minutes of traveling without a word, it is the woman who finally breaks the silence. Eyes still trained ahead, I hear her ask, “So, what’s your relation to Gin anyways?”

The question makes me ponder as I try to decide what the appropriate answer might be, as well as how much to say to a stranger. Before I can have a chance to reply, however, the woman offers up her own.

“Illegitimate child?”

She says it in such a matter-of-fact manner that I immediately grow embarrassed, a blush rising to my cheeks. “W-what, no? No!” I protest, “We, we’re traveling companions. That’s it.” Feeling on the backfoot, I try to redirect. “How about you? How do you know Gin?”

She ignores me, though whether it’s because she doesn’t hear or because she’s lost in her own little world, I have no idea. Continuing with her own line of questioning, she asks, “Hm, I was just with Gin not more than a week ago, and you weren’t there then. So, you two couldn’t have been traveling together for long, right?”

“A day ago.”

“I see, and how long ago did the two of you meet?”

I hesitate, finally realizing what the woman is getting at. “... A day ago,” I repeat, slower this time.

The woman stops, turning to me with a deadpan expression on her face. “So, you just decided to start traveling with a complete stranger that you had just met?” She leans in close, looking into my eyes, before falling back and offering a shrug. “I forget how stupid children can be,” she muses.

“W-what?!”

The woman raises an eyebrow. “Well, am I wrong? I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but the man you decided to follow around kind of looks like a pirate. Not exactly the most trustworthy type,” she says, shaking her head in almost comic disapproval, “And yet here you are, following me, presumably for his sake, even though you’ve only known the man for a day. How would you characterize that besides stupidity?”

The fact that her voice is neither accusatory nor condescending makes her words bite all the harder. And of course, the not so small amount of truth in them helps as well. After all, I’ve felt suspicious of Gin from the start, still having no clear understanding of just what his motives or intentions are. But unless something changes, I’ve also decided to stick with him for the foreseeable future, and given that I’ve aligned myself to him, I couldn’t very well let an equally suspicious woman be. Naturally, none of this is easy to explain in words to a stranger, and before I have a chance to, I see the woman abruptly stopping.

“We’re here.”

“Here? Here where?” I ask. Looking around, I find that we haven’t quite reached the port, instead stopping at what appears to be a sketchy warehouse district of sorts. Ahead, a run down stone building stands, from which sounds of hearty music emanates. “What is this place?” I ask.

“A brothel,” the woman replies, treating it as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

“Oh, I see,” I begin, but then realizing what she actually has said, I feel my eyes open wide, “W-wait, a b-brothel? You mean where-?”

Before I can finish, I feel a pat on my head. “Stay here. I’ll be right back, beansprout,” the woman says. I watch, flabbergasted at the situation, as she walks calmly into the building. A minute later, the sound of yelling echoes out from within, the protesting voices of men and women, the sound of objects being thrown and objects being broken. I think there is even a cat shriek somewhere within all the cacophony. Then, the splintering sound of wood pierces the night, as I see from the second floor window something come flying out, hitting the ground with a cloud of dust. I run forward, and looking up, I find the woman from before, standing in the frame of the now broken window. Without hesitation, she jumps, landing about twenty feet below, and as the dust settles, I see that she is standing upon a man’s back, the latter of whom is dressed only in underwear.

“Gin?!” I exclaim.

The man notices me, offering a wave. “Oh, hey Jaxon. Wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

The woman steps off Gin’s back with a light hop, finding footing on the cobble road once more. Then she turns to me and says, “You’ve decided to trust the wrong man, beansprout. This guy is a grade A pervert. In fact-” She moves towards me, leans in close and says, “Did you know, he loves to-”

As the hushed whispers continue, I can feel my eyes grow wide, as things I didn’t even know were possible start to draw an unbearable blush to my cheeks.

“Vivian, w-why are you telling those things to a child?! Don’t corrupt the boy with-! Jaxon? W-wait… why are you both looking at me with such disapproving eyes?!”

****

We are back at the inn. I’m sitting cross-legged on the bed, Vivian in the chair, and Gin, now fully dressed again, by the doorway. Addressing us, he says, “Ahem. Let’s try this again, properly this time. Jaxon, this is Vivian. She’s an apprentice of mine. I was on my way to meet her here in Ridge Port when we crossed paths the other day. The reason we’re meeting in this town is because the two of us were assigned a job, a quest if you will. There’s supposed to be a shipment of illegal goods coming into the city by land. Our job is to intercept it before it makes it out to sea and apprehend the smugglers. To that end, I was getting information about the smugglers when I was… interrupted.” I see Gin shoot Vivian a glance.

“Information. Huh.” Vivian says, arms folded across her chest.

“I’m very persuasive, what can I say,” Gin shrugs with a smirk. Then pivoting, he continues, “In any case, I’ve gathered an interesting rumor related to our job, some intel about the location where the goods are to be stored before shipping out. According to Alice, the woman I was with, it goes something like this: ‘I am the beginning of every start, the start of every space, at the end of all pillars, and the direction to the place’.”

“A riddle? What does it mean?” Vivian asks.

The room falls into silence for a few minutes. Then, my gray eyes light up. “Wait, I know!”