I Enslaved The Goddess Who Summoned Me

Chapter 690: In the inn

The mat was comfortable enough.

Nathan settled onto it and placed Kyōmei on the floor beside him within easy reach — the habit of years, the blade never more than one motion away regardless of how safe or unsafe the immediate environment appeared to be. He crossed his arms behind his head and looked up at the ceiling.

The ceiling was trembling.

Not structurally — the building was sound enough. The trembling was the specific vibration of activity in the room directly above, transmitted through the floor and into the ceiling above him in a continuous, irregular rhythm that was accompanied by sounds he did not need to interpret.

He looked at the ceiling for a moment.

Then he closed his eyes.

He had slept in worse places and under worse conditions and with considerably less distance between himself and things that genuinely wanted to kill him. The sounds above were simply sounds. He set them aside with the same ease he set aside everything he didn’t need and let the darkness behind his eyes be dark.

Half an hour passed.

The knock at the door was light — three taps, unhurried.

Nathan was upright before the third one landed, moving from horizontal to standing in a single continuous motion. He crossed to the door and slid it open.

Nana stood in the corridor.

She was holding a tray with both hands — a full tray, properly arranged, a bowl of noodles still steaming, a smaller dish of something pickled alongside it, a cup, chopsticks placed across the top with care. She was smiling with the specific brightness of someone who has decided to do something generous and is pleased with themselves about it.

”You must be hungry, Ryo-sama,” she said.

Nathan looked at the tray.

Then at her.

He wasn’t certain whether this was a service the establishment offered or something she had done on her own initiative — the gold coin sitting somewhere in her kimono suggesting the latter more than the former. Either way he had eaten nothing since the morning and the smell of the broth was doing something direct and persuasive.

He stepped back from the door.

She entered and placed the tray on the low table with practiced ease and settled onto her knees across from it, arranging herself with the natural grace of someone for whom the posture was entirely ordinary. She showed no immediate intention of leaving.

Nathan sat down, picked up the chopsticks, and started with the noodles.

The broth was hot and the sauce was genuinely good — the kind of flavor that suggested someone who knew what they were doing rather than someone producing food as an afterthought to the establishment’s other services. He noted this without commenting on it and ate with the focused efficiency of someone who was hungry and was addressing the situation.

”You’re new to Minato, aren’t you, Ryo-sama?” Nana asked.

”I am,” he said, not looking up.

”Then you should be careful,” she said. Her voice carried a warmth that was not entirely professional. ”This town is dangerous even for ronins. And you seem young.” She tilted her head slightly. ”It worries me.”

”Age means nothing,” Nathan replied.

Nana looked at him with the expression of someone examining a claim and finding it both arguable and somehow completely believable coming from this specific person. His skin was unmarked — no visible scarring, no weathering, the clear complexion of someone who had either lived gently or healed with unusual thoroughness. His hands on the chopsticks were steady and unhurried.

He looked young. He also looked like someone who had been killing people since before he looked this young and had no plans to stop.

The contradiction sat in the room between them and Nana decided to leave it alone.

”Where are you from?” she asked instead.

”North,” Nathan said.

Nana blinked.

She had not expected that. She recalibrated silently — the clean appearance, the educated quality of his speech, the gold coins that appeared from his kimono without ceremony the way ordinary people produced copper. Coming from the north, from the capital’s territory, it assembled into a picture that made a different kind of sense than the ronin category had suggested.

”You came all the way down here from the capital?” she said, a small laugh underneath it. ”You could have stayed there. It’s considerably more comfortable than this.”

”There are matters here,” Nathan said. He picked up the smaller dish. ”I heard Ayame was somewhere in the south.”

Nana went still.

It was immediate and complete — the warm, easy quality of the conversation stopping as though a door had been closed on it, her hands going motionless in her lap, her eyes widening slightly before something more controlled came down over them.

”I... it’s Princess Ayame,” she said. The correction came out fast, the honorific arriving with the instinctive speed of someone for whom the title was automatic and important. ”And why — why would you think she’s here?” The wariness was present now underneath the question, not hostile but alert, the specific alertness of someone who has been sitting with a secret and has just heard someone else say its name.

Nathan looked at her.

So it was not nothing.

The reaction alone — the freezing, the correction, the immediate wariness — told him more than a direct answer would have. Nana knew the name. Not as a rumor, not as a distant story about a princess who had once existed in the capital and disappeared. She knew it as a name that meant something specific and close and worth being careful about.

”I heard some people say she was somewhere in the south,” he said, his voice easy, the shrug arriving with it. ”I didn’t know exactly where.”

Nana was quiet.

She was looking at him and thinking — he could see her thinking, the calculation moving behind her eyes, the question of what this young man from the north wanted with a name that was not supposed to be said in this town.

”Why do you want to see her?” she asked. The wariness had settled into something more measured — not fear, but the careful posture of someone deciding how much to give away.

”She’s a princess,” Nathan said. ”Anyone would want to see a princess.”

Nana looked at him for a moment longer.

Then something in her settled — not satisfied exactly, but the specific deflation of someone who had built up toward a question and received an answer that made the buildup feel slightly unnecessary. She let out a breath that was half a sigh and half a laugh.

”That’s true,” she said, and shook her head slightly at herself. ”Forgive me. I ask strange questions.”

She smiled again — the genuine version, the professional one temporarily set aside.

Nathan said nothing.

He looked at the noodles.

Nana sat and watched him eat without filling the silence with anything.

It was a comfortable quality. She sat on her knees with her hands in her lap and let Nathan finish at his own pace, the building’s sounds continuing around them in their various registers, Minato’s night going about its business through the window with no concern for anyone’s attempts at rest.

When the last dish was empty she reached forward and began collecting the plates with the practiced efficiency of someone who had performed the motion many times.

”Was it good, Ryo-sama?” she asked, looking up at him with the warm directness that seemed to be her natural expression when she was not performing anything in particular.

”It was,” Nathan said. He set the chopsticks across the empty bowl. ”Now leave. Don’t disturb my rest until morning.”

Nana laughed — light, unoffended, the laugh of someone who had been dismissed in worse ways and found this version almost endearing. She freed one hand from the stack of dishes and reached out to stroke the fabric of his kimono at the shoulder with the unhurried ease of someone making a point rather than a demand.

”Are you certain?” she said, the smile carrying everything the question was actually asking. ”I can keep you company through the night. You would sleep very well afterward, Ryo-sama. I can promise that.”

Nathan looked at her.

He caught her wrist — not hard, just present, his fingers closing around it with the specific quality of a full stop at the end of a sentence.

”When I am finished here,” he said. ”If I have time.”

Nana looked at his hand on her wrist. Then at his face. Then she smiled.

”That is enough for me,” she said.

She gathered the remaining dishes, rose in one fluid motion, and walked to the door. She slid it open and stepped through it and looked back at him once — the smile still in place, smaller now, something more genuine in it than the professional version — and then slid the door closed behind her.

The room was quiet.

Nathan lay back on the mat and crossed his arms behind his head and looked at the ceiling. The trembling from above had stopped at some point in the last hour. The sounds through the walls had thinned. Minato outside the window was still producing its continuous noise but the night had settled it into a lower register — the late hours finding a different quality than the early ones, less animated, more sustained.

He closed his eyes.

Tomorrow — Morosuke. The man was apparently present on a schedule that didn’t include last evening, which was an inconvenience but not an obstacle. He would go in the morning, present the gold, ask the question, receive the answer. Then Ayame. Then the road north.

He adjusted slightly on the mat and let the darkness behind his eyes settle into the particular quality that preceded sleep.

He thought briefly, as the edge of consciousness softened, that he should ensure Nana did not decide the room’s other mat was available for her use tonight.

He unfortunately wouldn’t need to do that and worry about that ever as the very next morning, he would find Nana dead.