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It was a nice and sunny day in the Creme Republic. Well, at least that’s what Jagae thought until she saw a certain Buttershell fox. Ok, scratch off “nice.” It was a pretty sunny day though. Jagae just sighed and turned on her heel when she heard someone calling to her. It was Manju. He was leaning against a fountain and his arms were crossed and it seemed like he had some kind of potion with him. Jagae turned around again and began to walk towards him. Then shifted her weight to her right and crossed her arms.
“What’s that?”
“A potion, obviousl-“
“No shit, Sherlock. I meant what kind of potion that is.”
“…”
“You mean you don’t remember whatever the fuck that potion is?” she scoffed after saying that.
“Oh, your memory’s so great? Where on earthbread is the Cookie Kingdom, hm?”
“Oh, Fuck you.”
“Exactly.”
Switching up the conversation, she says “Shouldn’t you be working instead of sitting here and lazing around?”
Manju just rolls his eyes and starts tossing the potion from one of his hands to the other.
“Stop that. You’re gonna drop it and it’s gonna break.”
“It’s not going to break!”
He continues to keep tossing the potion from his hand to the other then he almost misses it when he then grabs it. Jagae flinched as she thought he was gonna drop the potion. Manju looked up at her with a grin and continued to what he was doing.
“You scared the shit out of me! What the fuck was that, Mandu?!”
“Oh come on, you’ll be fine. I’m pretty sure this potion is harmless”
“Don’t “I’m pretty sure” me, who knows what that potion could do to someone.”
Manju looks away for a second only to actually drop the potion. It creates a big puff of smoke and as the smoke clears, Jagae turns her head to the side out of the smoke and starts coughing to get whatever poison that could be or get in her system but Manju just brings a sleeve to his face.
““It’s not gonna break” he said.” She says as she starts walking away to the Iridescent ship.
Manju just sat there in disbelief then gets up and starts heading to the Red Knot ship.
-
The next morning, one of the crew members sprints toward Jagae.
“Captain, it seems that the Manju Guild’s Captain got sick with a fever. Apparently someone anonymous requested that you take care of Manju and the Manju Guild’s crew…”
“Thank goodness it’s only a fever…” she looks to her left, trailing off. Then she turns back to the crew member in front of her.
“Since we’re going to depart back to Pearl Choco Bay later today, I’ll go on the Red Knot ship since I think the Manju Guild’s next destination is the Hollyberry kingdom. Do you think you and the rest of the crew can get back no problem?”
“Yes Captain.” The crew member salutes to his captain and goes back to work.
Later on, a crew member from the Manju Guild escorts Jagae to Manju’s cabin. When Jagae opened the door, she saw Manju sleeping peacefully in his futon with a towel on his head and a small wide bucket of water near the top left corner of the futon. The Manju crew member closes the door as Jagae walks towards the left side of the futon and kneels into a sit and she started to watch Manju’s chest rise and fall as he’s sleeping. Jagae takes the towel off his head and soaked it in the water bucket and then twists it and as she’s twisting the towel, Manju’s eyes flutters open and tries to sit up but gives up from getting light headed. Then Jagae looks at him as he looks at her. Then she tries puts the towel on top of Manju’s forehead but he turns his head away to his left. She then uses one of her hands to grip the towel and the other to grab Manju by the chin to turn his face to hers. Then she puts the towel on his forehead and then lets go of him and stands up to leave the room.
“…Wait”
She turns her head over her shoulder to look at him and his mouth was kind of open to say something to her but nothing came out. Then he turns away a bit, looking disappointed.
“…forget it, nevermind.”
She smiles at him.
“Let me know if you need to talk to me, ok?”
Then she turns her head back and opens the door and exits, closing his door.
Later during the day, Jagae leans against a railing and watches her guild’s ship departing from the docks and waves back to her crew members as they’re waving to her.
-
The next day, the Red Knot ship docks at the Hollyberry kingdom.
“Alright, crew! I’m gonna be the Captain until Manju gets better, got that? Lets see if you soft breads can handle Captain Jagae! It took 3 days for my crew to get used to me being captain. Lets see of ya’ll can do better!”
She raises her hand to her head to salute and everyone just looks at her confused. Normally, after giving instructions to her guild, Jagae salutes to her crew and they do it back to be dismissed but this time, she’s with a different guild. She awkwardly salutes to them anyway and dismisses them. Then she walks towards Manju’s cabin and enters and kneels into a sit next to Manju.
“Morning! How’re you feeling?” She scoots closer to him and lifts the towel off his forehead and brushes his bangs out of the way a little bit and presses the back of her hand onto Manju’s forehead. “he’s warm…” she thought. Then she soaked the towel in the water bucket and twisted the towel and gently puts the towel back on his forehead but as she put the towel on his forehead,
he grabbed her wrist and turned towards her and looked into her eyes and brings the back of her hand to his lips and pressed a soft little kiss onto her hand and smiles. Then he loosens his grip on her wrist to hold onto her hand. Jagae feels heat rising to her face and turns her head away to avoid Manju’s reaction to her blushing.
He then tries to scoot closer to Jagae but she slips her hand away from his grip and as he tries to reach for her hand back, she gets up and rushes out of the room.
Manju looks at the back of his hand and then tries turning to his left and closes his eyes, disappointment washing over him while small tears form in his eyes.
Later during noon, Jagae walks back into his cabin with a tray with a bowl of soup. Then she kneels-into-a-sit next to him on his right side to see his back facing her. Her smile shifts into worry.
“Manju, are you alright?”
“…”
“Can you turn towards me? I brought you soup. You have to eat so you can get better.”
He turns towards her and pretty much greets her silently with a pissed off looking face and then twitched his ear but her face turns back to a smile either way. Then he tries sitting up and Jagae puts a hand on his back and a hand on his shoulder to help him sit up, then again twitching his ear. Then she picks up the bowl of soup and scoops some soup with a spoon and blows on the soup so it isn’t too hot for him and brought the spoon to his mouth with a hand hovering under the spoon to keep the soup from spilling out the spoon but Manju refused to eat, so Jagae used her free hand and grabbed his chin so his face will face hers. Manju sighs and starts to eat the soup. When he was finished, Jagae offered to help him lay back down but he shakes his head and turns his head away from her.
“Are you alright? What’s up with you?” Her smile dropping again.
Manju turns to face her half-expecting to see her mad at him but she looked at him worried. Then he furrows his eyebrows and lowers his ears.
“…sorry.”
before Jagae could react, Manju scooted towards her and lied his head in her lap and wrapped his arms around her waist and looked up at her.
“…can you sing to me or something?”
“Oh! Uh- I-I’m not really a singer”
“Please…?”
“Alright…”
Manju put his head back down on her lap and turn to his left and closed his eyes while Jagae sang a lullaby and stroked her hand through his long hair. I think the lullaby was about a small mountain rabbit with long ears because their mom ate long leaves. When Jagae was done, one of the Manju guild’s crew members opened the door to get a word with their “temporary” captain but Jagae lifted a finger to her lips as if to say “be quiet.” The crew member noticed how Manju was sleeping while clinging to Jagae and then knew that Jagae was occupied so they closed the door and let the 2 be.
-
Around a week after Manju got better from his fever, he met Jagae at the docks of the Flower City and handed her a long wooden box.
“What’s this?”
“It’s for you. A thank you for watching over my guild and caring for me while I was sick.”
Jagae opened the box to see a hair stick. It had a charm with a crescent moon. She took her hair stick out and put in the new one. Then she playfully punched Manju’s arm and they both laughed a little. Then she quickly realized that she probably needed to Manju something in return knowing him. She reached into her pocket for a coin bag but Manju quickly grabbed her wrist.
“You don’t have to do that”
“You know I don’t like to owe-“
Manju leaned in and shut her up with a kiss.
“There. You don’t have to owe me anything now.” Then he laughed and walked into the Flower city while looking over his shoulder and waving to Jagae.
But she just stood there in shock trying to process what just happened, the scene replaying again and again like a broken record. She felt heat rising to her face and raised a hand to her cheek and it felt warm. All she could hear was her heart beating. Then a smile crept up to her face as she started to walk into the Flower City.