Apple Cider

The swordmaster was suspended.

Not dismissed, of course. That would have required someone with authority to admit fault, and there were too many fragile egos at the outpost for that. But he was removed from training sessions, assigned to quarters, and given a week's silence to reflect.

It was the sort of punishment that did not heal wounds so much as hide them.

No one spoke of the fight in official terms. But among the apprentices, it spread like mold in a damp archive. Every corner held a different version. In some retellings, Rowan had challenged the man to a duel for insulting her family. In others, she'd thrown the first punch without provocation, wild-eyed and grinning.

Yunhua didn't correct any of it.

She didn't speak of the incident at all.

She simply watched the days shift like pages turned too fast. And somewhere beneath her stillness, she waited.

Yunhua did not seek Rowan out.

But the problem with proximity—the kind that grows slowly over time, in glances and borrowed silences—is that it becomes difficult to ignore when it shifts. Even slightly.

Even subtly.

A knock on the garden door that came too early. A missing presence in the scriptorium. A quiet that used to be welcome, now ringing slightly off.

She noticed it.

Noticed the absence the way one notices the absence of pain: with a strange, low-level alertness. Like her body hadn't quite gotten the message.

Rowan was missing for two days.

Not officially. She showed up to meals, slouched at the back of morning call, walked the corridors with her usual uneven steps. But she was missing from the places that mattered.

From the garden.

From the long shadows of the eastern path, where she used to leave half-finished jokes for Yunhua to ignore.

From Yunhua's periphery.

And it was worse than silence.

It was distance.

The library was near-empty. Most apprentices preferred the weapons yard or the mess hall in their free hours, and the smell of drying ink and parchment deterred all but the most determined scholars.

Yunhua sat in her usual corner, transcribing herbal classifications into neat, slanted script. Her inkstone had been refilled twice. Her hands were steady. Her mind was not.

"Didn't think you'd be here," an all too familiar voice spoke and Yunhua's poise almost shattered.

"I'm always here."

Rowan huffed, finally sitting opposite her. "You're never here when people expect you. You just... appear. Like fog."

Yunhua looked up. "You didn't expect me?"

Rowan blinked at that.

Then, quietly: "No. I thought you'd be avoiding me."

"I thought you were avoiding me."

"Well." Rowan scratched the back of her neck, wincing slightly as her shoulder protested. "That makes two idiots."

Silence.

Rowan's eyes were serious. No smirk. No mischief.

And Yunhua, despite herself, felt something uncomfortable stir in her chest again—an ache that wasn't pain, but wasn't peace either.

"I didn't ask you to fight for me."

"I know."

"You didn't have to."

"I know that too."

Yunhua looked away. Her voice came out quieter than she intended.

"I don't want anyone getting hurt because of me."

"You didn't hurt me."

"No. But he did. Because of me."

Rowan shook her head. "He did it because he's a bastard. Not everything revolves around you."

Yunhua opened her mouth, then shut it again.

Rowan leaned forward, elbows on the table. "You think I did it to protect you."

"You did."

"No. I did it because I was angry. Because he's cruel, and smug, and thinks no one will call him on it. I was just the first one who could afford to."

Yunhua blinked.

Rowan's voice softened. "You weren't the reason, Yunhua. You were the excuse. Don't mistake one for the other."

Silence settled once again between them—almost broken the moment Rowan set an apple on the table like a peace offering. To Yunhua, however, it looked more like someone trying to appease and approach a hissing stray.

Finally, she reached to grab the apple—not out of hunger—and more out of acknowledgement.

She pretended to inspect it for a moment. Unlike the other ones they shared, this wasn't bruised nor bitten. It felt cold against her palm and she could easily tell that it was one of those mostly green ones that crunched deliciously and tasted slightly sour.

Yunhua loved apples like that.

"How's your shoulder?" she asked at last.

Rowan smirked faintly. "Stiff. But still attached."

Yunhua nodded.

Then, unexpectedly, Rowan asked, "Have you ever hit someone?"

Yunhua blinked. "No."

"Ever wanted to?"

She paused.

"...Yes."

Rowan grinned. "Next time, you can have first swing."

Yunhua snorted. "That's generous."

"I'm very giving."

They didn't speak after that.

But Yunhua didn't return to her transcription. And Rowan didn't leave.

And that, somehow, felt like progress.

Days passed. The frost deepened. The garden dulled beneath brittle leaves and hard earth.

But Rowan kept showing up.

Not loudly. Not demandingly.

She simply found ways to be nearby. Sitting beside Yunhua during lectures. Taking adjacent sparring partners. Leaving apples. Once, a pair of gloves—new, with warm lining and mismatched thread.

Yunhua never asked where she got them. But she wore them.

That, too, felt like a kind of acknowledgment.

The others noticed. Of course they did.

But Yunhua had stopped caring what they whispered. And if Rowan noticed the glances, she didn't show it.

It was a quiet evening when it happened.

The two of them were walking back from the scriptorium, coats tight against the wind. Rowan's hair had escaped its binding again—wild and ruddy in the lamplight. Yunhua thought it looked like something that shouldn't belong in this cold, stone place. Something too alive.

They reached the fork in the path—Rowan to the barracks, Yunhua to the outer dormitories.

Rowan paused.

"I had a dream," she said.

Yunhua waited.

"You were in it."

"...Was I dying?"

"No." Rowan laughed. "Gods, you're dramatic."

Yunhua tilted her head. "Most dreams involving me are nightmares. Statistically speaking."

"This one wasn't." Rowan rubbed her hands together, breath misting in the cold. "You were in the garden. But it was spring. And you weren't alone."

Yunhua's brows lifted.

"There was someone else," Rowan said. "I couldn't see them. But you were smiling."

Yunhua looked at her. Carefully.

"I don't smile."

"You did in the dream."

They stood there in the hush of falling snow, neither moving.

Then Rowan leaned forward—not close enough to break the unspoken boundary, but enough to be felt.

"I think it was me."

Yunhua's throat tightened.

She did not answer.

But her silence did not push Rowan away this time.

And when they parted—Rowan with a nod, Yunhua with a barely-there glance—they both walked slower than necessary.

That night, Yunhua had a dream too. She dreamed of a road.

Winding. Unfinished. Flanked by tall trees and colder winds.

She did not know where it led.

But someone was walking ahead of her, curls like wildfire in the dusk.

And Yunhua tried to follow.