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It had been a clear, fine late-spring evening when Ayaka had retired early, lulled to sleep by the sound of waves lapping the shore beneath the early moonlight. Her dreams were light, her sleep restful, and when she woke up only a few hours later she was momentarily disoriented—she had not been woken by bad dreams or worries, but the moon was high overhead and it was silent in the way only the darkest part of the night could be. What had woken her?
There was a thump over her head. Not over her head, precisely, but above her, on the roof. There was another thump.
Footsteps.
Ayaka was instantly wide awake, her sword bare and in her hand as she threw the futon off. Her yukata was folded at the side of the bed, and in her haste to grab it she did not actually manage to get it all the way on, one of her arms jabbed through the sleeve. She nearly tripped over it as she ran, stumbling in her bare feet before she grabbed it and hiked it up under one arm, too tired to move her legs, trade her sword between her hands, get the other sleeve on, and do it all at the same time.
Moonlight flashed in the corners of her eyes as she ran past windows and shot out onto the engawa. Two guards shouted in surprise, already turned toward the roof as the footsteps from above slowed, reached the edge, stopped.
Ayaka stood, gasping for breath, her blade bare glinting and her hair a luminous halo, almost floating in the moonlight as it fluttered around her face, rumpled from being down while she slept. Her yukata hung off one shoulder. Barely.
Ayaka stared at her roof.
Lumine stared back.
Ayaka blinked.
Paimon clapped her hands to her mouth, gasped almost comically loud, and squealed “Oops!”
Her yukata gave up the ghost and with a long whispering schluff slid off her shoulder, down her arm, and fluttered helplessly to the ground. It was only at that moment—her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath—that she realized she was wearing nothing at all but a fundoshi, and what was heaving was her bare chest.
The guards had politely turned away. Paimon had covered her eyes. And also her mouth, for some reason.
Lumine was staring. When Ayaka caught her staring, Lumine raised her eyebrows even higher, appreciatively. Ayaka gave her a look—as if to say right now?—and lowered her sword.
“Lumine,” she said at last, her voice rough with sleep, “Why...are you on my roof?”
“I thought there might be treasure,” Lumine replied. Ayaka lowered her sword even more and made a face that was somewhere between consternated and baffled as she stared at her girlfriend. Who was staring at her breasts.
“Why,” Ayaka managed at last, in the way one speaks to a cat who has attempted to eat something it is not at all supposed to eat, like lavender melon or Archons forbid, radish, “Were you looking for treasure on my roof?”
“Because usually there’s hidden treasure on roofs of important houses,” Lumine replied, like it was the most sensible thing in the whole entire world. “So I thought I would check.”
Ayaka was so completely flabbergasted that she simply stood there there, her mouth working and no sound coming out, for so long that Paimon started to peek between her fingers, saw that Ayaka was still naked, and yeeped as she covered her eyes back up again. At last, when she found her voice, she croaked,“In the middle of the night?”
“I was just passing by.”
Kamisato Ayaka was not so poorly bred that she would smack her palm into her face in disappointment, but at that precise moment, it was a very near thing. Instead, she replied with her voice as parched and brittle as a pen that had been forgotten halfway through writing and then left to dry with the ink still stuck on the nib, “Did you find any treasure on my roof.”
“Well,” Lumine grinned, wolfish, “Not on the roof.”
Ayaka looked down to see where Lumine was staring.
It was at her breasts.
She looked back up, gave her girlfriend her least pleased expression. “My eyes are up here, Traveler.” One of her guards snickered. Lumine flushed bright up her ears, giggled, and finally looked away from her tits to meet Ayaka’s eyes, chagrined. “Get off the roof.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” the Traveler and Paimon chorused at once, and went to get down off the roof.