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They've been traveling for three weeks when the princess suddenly asks, “Why do you think I'm here?”
Shichika ponders the question, staring at the endless blue of the sea stretched out before them.
“Because you feel guilty?” he guesses finally, with a shrug. He thinks she should, but honestly? He couldn't care less.
The princess just laughs her grating, high-pitched laugh and pushes off the railing of the ship, leaving him to his sea gazing.
“Because you killed my lover and I killed yours, and you think that somehow means we belong together now,” Shichika tells her two weeks later over dinner.
“You killed my lover and I killed yours,” the princess repeats slowly. “Oh my, it all sounds terribly dramatic when you put it like that. That's an interesting theory. More rice?”
“Because you want me to do something for you. There's still more to your plan,” he tells her a few days later, and he would probably feel dread now if there wasn't still a Togame-sized hole in place of his heart.
“Rest assured, the story has already ended,” the princess says, eyes twinkling. “This is what comes after the afterword, Shichika. We are the disappointing sequel best left unwritten.”
“Because you want me to love you,” he whispers a month later.
There's no need to raise his voice; they always share a room and the princess always tucks her bedding right up next to his, sleeps with her head almost but not quite pressed to his chest.
“Hm,” the princess says, lifting her head from her pillow to look at his face. “And? Will you?”
“Maybe one day,” he says. “Not now. Not anytime soon.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I'm afraid if I touched you, I wouldn't be able to stop myself from killing you.”
The princess chuckles.
“I'm glad you're aware of that much, at least.”
“Because we're both monsters.”
They're in a little fishing village in the south. It's the middle of summer and the sun is merciless, forcing them to travel from late afternoon to mid-morning.
The princess snorts; a curiously unladylike sound.
“Oh please, don't flatter yourself. Your dear sister was a monster. That unpleasant woman was a monster in her own right, too. The two of us? We're merely objects forged by monsters, for monstrous purposes. There is a difference.”
“But we're still alike,” Shichika clarifies.
“I suppose so,” the princess says. “But that's not the reason.”
“There's no reason, is there?”
He's not sure how long they've been traveling. Years; he knows that much. But time seems to lose its meaning when you are everywhere and nowhere at once.
“Your reason is that there's no reason. You spent your whole life scheming and manipulating, waiting and anticipating, but with your plan fulfilled, you just wanted to do something for no reason at all.”
“We should stop somewhere for a while, don't you think?” the princess says.
“What for?”
“You could put a baby in me.”
“And what would become of that child? A monstrous sword? A cunning soothsayer?”
The princess smiles. She doesn't look much like a princess these days, with her jaggedly cut hair and dusty travel clothes, her once pale skin glowing brown and freckled in the sun.
“I honestly have no idea, Shichika. But wouldn't it be fun to find out?”