Gilded Ashes-Chapter 69: True Day Off

The Glowline was even better than they thought.

Vendors shouting over each other. Bells ringing from cart handles. Steam curling off grills. Paper lanterns strung between balconies, swaying in a breeze that smelled like frying batter and burnt sugar. Music from three different speakers colliding in the middle of the street and somehow making it work.

The eight of them stood in the center of everything, faces tipped up, eyes jumping from color to color.

"Pick one direction" Arashi said.

Nobody picked. The street picked for them.

A man in a light purple vest waved them toward a long counter with polished toy rifles laid out in slots. He thumbed a switch and targets rose on rails behind the counter - not cardboard cutouts, but small round drones with glossy shells and blinking green lamps. A shot counter ticked up on the board behind his head.

"Hey, young man! You look like you have good aim! It’s simple" the vendor shouted. "Hit three, win a prize."

Raizen lifted a rifle first. Heavier than it looked. He planted his feet the way Kori drilled into them in the rust room and sighted down the barrel. Feris copied his stance and nearly dropped her gun, which made her laugh at herself. Esen inspected the stock like he planned to write a detailed review.

They fired one by one. The rifles kicked - a short electric snap. Raizen’s first shot missed. The drone jittered left a tiny bit before the bolt reached it, dodging on prediction. Feris missed by a palm’s width and laughed again, genuinely surprised by how much fun failing could be. Esen missed every single shot, and managed to hold himself back from destroying the drones with his luminite rings. The drones kept moving - always a milisecond ahead, always somewhere the shot wasn’t.

"They’re cheating" Esen whispered.

"They’re predicting shot trajectory and dodging" Raizen said, still firing, still missing. "That’s obvious enough"

Arashi sighed. The long, full sigh of a kid who recognizes a rigged game. He whispered something in Esen’s left ear. Esen’s eyes widened, but he took of three rings without comment. Arashi took them and put them on, all on the hand pressing the trigger. Then he raised his rifle, squeezed – and the small luminite gems in the rings flashed once at the last instant. The plastic bullet leapt out straight and then curved midair, hooking sideways. It caught the drone from the side. The target chirped once and collapsed, lights turning red.

The vendor stared. "Lucky."

"Nah, it’s skill" Arashi said. He fired again. Another curve, same result. A second drone dropped.

"Hey, hey." the vendor said carefully. "No funny business, yeah?"

"The only funny business here is your rig" Arashi whispered, loud enough only he heard it. His third shot traced an impossible arc and tapped the last drone.

The vendor grumbled but slid a prize across the counter - a small black stuffed thing with bright button eyes. Arashi handed it to Lynea without looking at her. She took it without thanking him. The exchange was so fast and casual that only Keahi noticed, and she said nothing.

Esen leaned close to Arashi’s ear. "You cheated."

"You say that like the game was fair." Arashi smiled, handing the rings back.

Next - a glass-bellied claw machine stuffed with plush beasts. A winged turtle. A nine-tailed fox. A soft round thing that was supposed to be a Class-1 Nyx but looked too friendly to actually take seriously. The claw hung above them all, shining and completely untrustworthy.

Feris pressed both hands to the glass. "That one. The fox."

"Bold" Ichiro said.

"Don’t you already have a plushie whale...?" Lynea asked.

"You can never have too many plushies" Feris protested, and fed the slot, holding the whale plushie in her other hand. The claw descended with purpose, and then at the last pull, lost all conviction. It brushed the top of a turtle and drifted back up, empty.

"One more" Feris mumbled.

The second attempt was worse. The claw grabbed air and seemed proud of it.

"Allow me" Esen cracked his knuckles. He dropped a token in and squared up to the machine like it could be intimidated. He tracked the claw, positioned it over two prizes at once, and held his finger above the button. On the drop, he flicked the glass - rings shining again. The claw came down and snagged two plushies by their tags. The fox and a turtle.

Then it rose. Only one tag kept hanging. The turtle tumbled back into the pile. The fox swung once, twice - and thunked into the chute.

Esen cleared his throat. "As intended."

"You nearly got two!" Lynea gasped.

"I deliberately didn’t" Esen answered proudly, as if it was true.

Feris hugged the fox and whale to her chest.

A booth attendant waved Raizen through a door into a cramped space lined with small panels all around. No sign. No instructions, except: "Hit the light when it blinks."

The first panel lit - barely, just a fraction brighter than the rest. Raizen’s hand flew towards it, followed by a soft chime. Another glimmer, left side. He hit it quickly. A flicker on the right. He hit that too.

The pace climbed. The lights came faster. His feet shifted without him telling them to. His hands moved with his eyes. Hit, hit, hit - each chime blending into the next. He didn’t know he was smiling until the last light went dark.

He stepped out. The board above the door blinked his score and a blue ribbon icon. The attendant whistled.

"New record" the man said. "Not close, either!"

A few people nearby started clapping. Raizen wanted to disappear.

Arashi bumped his shoulder. "You’ll never live that down."

"From you" Raizen answered, "I’ll survive."

The strength tester was old-fashioned - a post, a target, a lever, a bell at the top, and a wooden mallet that looked like even your grandma used it. The scoreboard held numbers high enough to embarrass anyone who tried.

Feris took the mallet from the attendant and rolled it once. Felt the weight. No wind-up. No showmanship. She planted her feet, drove the strike through her hips the way she drove her mace - and brought it down.

The slider shot up the track and hit the bell hard enough to make the sound echo through the general chaos. The lights maxed out and flickered, confused about what came after maximum.

The young attendant stared at the board. "That’s - that’s a record. Several records. P- please don’t sue me if something breaks... It’s my first day here-"

Feris didn’t listen. She put the mallet down. "Average" she said, turning to the others.

Five steps later - whack-a-mole. A table, a row of rubber mallets, cheerfully painted letters above. Black rounded heads popping from holes with eyes that looked permanently amused. Still trying to be Nyx immitations.

...Too bad living nightmares aren’t for kids.

Keahi picked up two mallets. One in each hand.

"Maybe just one-" the attendant tried.

She didn’t hear him. The first head popped. She hit it like it owed her money. The machine squealed. The second head lasted half a second. The third even less. By the fifth, the attendant had both palms raised and the expression of a man calculating repair costs in real time. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

"Mercy!" Arashi said, laughing. "Mercy, warlord."

Keahi set the mallets down. The attendant sagged with relief. The score blinked numbers that made no sense for a game designed to eat coins and give a few minutes of fun back.

They drifted to the quieter edge of the square, where the noise pulled back and the stalls got smaller. One of them had a wooden rack with handmade pieces - brass, silver, threads knotted into bracelets, rings with small imperfections that made them "authentic".

Hikari stopped.

On a folded cloth lay two shiny brass earrings shaped like four-pointed stars. Small. Simple.

Her fingers hovered over them, then she brushed her unpierced earlobe once - then pulled her hand back, shook her head and turned away.

Raizen saw it. The way she looked at them. The way she stopped looking. The way wanting something turned into deciding she wasn’t allowed to want it.

He checked his pockets. Twelve coins, everything he had left. And another old bronze coin Obi gave him from the Scrapper’s Gauntlet. Raizen was pretty sure it didn’t work in Neoshima.

He turned to Keahi. "You got any money left?"

Her eyes narrowed. "For what?"

"I’ll pay you back."

Keahi studied his face for exactly one second, and dug into her jacket. A bunch of coins and a folded old voucher. She dropped them into his palm. "You better."

Lynea caught on without being told. She pressed two coins into his hand, then after a small hesitation, a third.

Raizen closed his fist. "Be right back" he said quickly, and slipped into the crowd.

He circled back to the jewelry stall from the other side, keeping his head down. Hikari was already pretty far away - he could see her back, her hair. The vendor was an older woman with wrinkled hands and reading glasses pushed up on her forehead. Raizen put the coins on the cloth beside the earrings.

"Those two" he said. "Is it enough? It’s all I have"

The woman counted the coins, looked at the earrings, looked at him. He was short by three.

"Oh well..." he said with a disappointed face, and turned to leave. "Have a nice day, ma’am."

The old woman stopped for a second, looking at Raizen. Then, without a word, she folded the earrings into a small square of paper and pushed them across the cloth.

"You know what? It’s close enough" she said.

Raizen took the small package, nodded and slipped it into his jacket pocket. His chest felt tight in a way that had nothing to do with training, fighting or anything Kori could put on a clipboard.

Back to the group, Esen challenged a plate-spinner and lost immediately. Ichiro watched two jugglers with the calm attention of a man who could do the same thing with rocks. Lynea bought a paper cone of roasted nuts and ate them slowly, one at a time. Esen grabbed a handful without asking and got slapped by one of Lynea’s fragments.

At the far end of the vendor row, Kori and Kenzo closed the ledger and shook hands with a shop owner who thanked them for helping him with the back-door latch. Kenzo tucked his pencil behind his ear. Kori stood too straight for someone who just spent an hour checking random shops, drain valves and brass fittings.

"Well... That’s the last one" Kenzo said. He looked strange without a task in front of him. Slightly lost. "We still have some time. Want to look around?"

Kori’s ears did the thing they always did when Kenzo stood too close - forgot how to behave. She reached up and smoothed a flyaway hair that didn’t exist.

"If you really insist..."

They stepped off the duty line and into the lights.

✦ ✦ ✦

The Glowline kept doing what it did - noise, color and the kind of joy that doesn’t need a reason.

Somewhere in it, eight teenagers were winning prizes they didn’t need, eating food they couldn’t really afford, and just living their best lives. And in the middle of everything, a boy with a small debt in coins had a pair of brass earrings in hiss chest pocket and trying to figure out how to give them without making it mean too much.

...Or exactly enough.