Since that night, I haven't been able to sleep. To be precise, I must be sleeping. Otherwise my body wouldn't hold up. But even in my dreams, I hear the sound of the Shosho burning. The dry crack of timber splintering. The sound of the ship's bottom planks—leveled over three years—falling into the flames. Sheera Tomasena sat at her desk, staring blankly into the darkness before dawn. The candle had burned down to half. Scraps of calculation sheets lay scattered across the desk, left there since last night. Quantities of timber. Necessary funds. Estimates of construction time—all of them bore the marks of hands that had stopped mid-work. She would realize her thoughts had drifted elsewhere, start writing again, then stop. The cycle repeated endlessly. She picked up the two things resting at her bedside. One was a leather tube. Inside it lay a sheepskin chart left behind by her mother, Marina, carefully rolled and stored. The other was a small metal fragment she'd found yesterday in the mud of the burned wreckage. Circular, with concentric patterns etched into its surface. Whether it had been there before the fire or dropped by someone that night, she still didn't know. (Without a ship, a sea chart is just paper.) She hadn't meant to say it aloud, but the words repeated in her mind again. Three years of materials and labor had burned away in a single night. That was reality. She understood. But her hands were careful as she put the chart away. She pressed the tube's opening gently, tied the cord in a double knot. Telling herself this was separate from resignation. The sky outside began to lighten. Sheera put on her coat and left the house. 　　＊ Before heading to the harbor street, she made one detour. Two days had passed since the fire, but the wreckage of the timber yard still hadn't been cleared. Only charred beams and soot-blackened stone remained. The morning air was damp, and the smell of smoke still lingered faintly. Sheera set down a piece of timber she'd brought, leaning it against the wreckage. A scrap of Kusena cedar. She'd kept it thinking it might be useful somewhere, but this morning she felt like doing this instead. She pressed her palms together and closed her eyes briefly. Not praying for anything in particular. Just standing there. That was enough. Then she walked slowly toward the harbor street. The morning market was already in motion. Stalls displaying dried fish. An old woman selling salted shellfish. A boy carrying a basket full of root vegetables. From the direction of the port, she could hear fishermen hauling in their nets. It was an ordinary morning. Even after the fire, Caldia's dawn remained unchanged. A small port town of roughly twenty-four hundred people had that kind of strength. As Sheera was selecting a salted horse mackerel at a dried fish stall, a strange figure appeared beside her. A girl in traveling clothes, carrying a lute case on her back. Around sixteen years old, perhaps. She had long honey-colored hair with waves, braided into two sections, and bright green eyes like spring foliage that darted around curiously as she studied the display of dried fish with serious attention. The fabric and fine stitching of her clothes were out of place on this harbor street. She'd been traveling for a while—mud splattered her hem—but even so, an unmistakable refinement clung to her overall appearance. The girl picked up a piece of dried fish and asked the stall owner hesitantly. "Um, this... how much is it?" "Two selta per piece." "T-two selta?" The girl repeated it in a small voice and pulled a coin purse from her pocket, beginning to count out coins with fumbling fingers. The careful way she checked each coin one by one was unmistakably the gesture of someone unaccustomed to handling money. Still, she managed to produce exactly two selta and bought just one piece. Sheera watched this from the corner of her eye, then paid for her salted mackerel and left. There was no reason to speak to her. She heard the girl murmur something behind her. "...Is this really the same creature as the fish I ate at that restaurant in the royal capital?" She seemed to be asking the question seriously to the dried fish itself. Sheera disappeared into the crowd without looking back. 　　＊ As evening came, the wind grew a little colder. Sheera headed toward the tavern "Barrel of Tide Sounds" in the middle of the harbor street. Her purpose was singular—to speak with the proprietress, Yorda Messe. Anyone in the port knew that Yorda was Caldia's best source of information. She wanted to ask if Yorda had seen any suspicious people before or after the fire, if anything unusual had occurred. She also wanted to confirm things about that metal fragment. But her feet stopped before the door. She heard a sound. A lute. There was a melody. Not just strings being plucked—an actual song. And one she'd heard before somewhere— (What is this...) Sheera became motionless. The contours of the melody caught on something in her memory. A song her mother Marina used to hum softly in the kitchen window at dusk. "The Azure Wayfarer's Song"—an old sailor's folk ballad passed down along the coast, nothing rare. But for Sheera, that melody was burned into her mind alongside the light of a specific dusk, the sight of Marina's back as she wiped her hands on her apron. Before she realized it, she'd opened the door. In the shop, about half the seats were filled. Near a pillar in the back, the girl from the morning market stood holding a lute, playing. Sheera moved closer to the pillar and stopped. The girl playing—Ria—bore no trace of the helplessness she'd shown when talking to the dried fish that morning. Her back was straight, her fingers moved across the strings without hesitation. Her green eyes were half-closed, the face of someone existing in a world of sound alone. The voices around her, the clink of cups, everything seemed distant. Removed. (Not a decoration.) The words surfaced in Sheera's mind unbidden. She didn't know how this girl had come to be in Caldia. But that performance was genuine. Not just technique—something lived within the sound. When the final note faded quietly, scattered patrons applauded. Only Sheera forgot to clap, standing frozen. Ria's gaze lifted and found Sheera. Despite remembering Sheera's coldness from the morning, her expression didn't cloud at all. Instead, it brightened, and she hurried over. "Did you know that song?" "...My mother used to sing it." She hadn't meant to answer. But the words came out. Even Sheera was surprised. She watched the words hanging in the air as if they were floating there. Silence fell. Then the proprietress Yorda appeared from the back. A woman in her mid-forties with broad shoulders and a sturdy build, she placed a plate in front of them with a damp cloth tucked into her waist. Braised seafood with herbs—the signature dish of the Barrel of Tide Sounds, fifteen selta per plate. "I got paid for the girl's performance. Yours... well, I'll put it on your tab." Sheera looked at Yorda. Yorda wiped her hands with the cloth as if nothing had happened and headed back to the kitchen. Ria sat down beside the plate with a composed expression. In that moment, Sheera realized the girl had earned her meal through performance. Something shifted slightly inside her. The girl was living more genuinely than she'd thought. 　　＊ The two of them ended up sitting across from each other in the back booth. Ria spoke about herself first. She talked quickly, but in an organized way that was easy to follow. She was from the Violas family, one of the five great noble houses of Granavice—the capital of the Virtia Kingdom, about three hundred eighty kilometers from Caldia by land. She'd left home in resistance to an arranged marriage her father Ernest had decided on. In the royal capital, music was the only thing that was truly hers, but her father saw it only as "a refined ornament." "Even if it was an ornament at first, at least it was thought to have value. Recently I realized it's not even that anymore." Her tone was matter-of-fact. Her voice remained bright, her expression unchanged. But within that discord, the weight she'd carried for so long seeped through. Sheera glanced at Ria's profile. She was different. Different upbringing, different circumstances, everything different. She couldn't imagine a noble's daughter and a port town's apprentice shipwright sharing the same loneliness—and yet. (I can't say we're similar, but...) She was surprised at herself for thinking it. When Ria's story reached a natural pause, Sheera spoke about herself in minimal words. Her ship had burned. She had her mother's sea chart. That chart bore symbols indicating the location of Nal Soma—an island said to exist beyond the Azure Sea, marked on no official map. She had intended to go verify it. Each sentence was short, with pauses between them. Those pauses conveyed more than the words themselves—how precious this story was to her. Ria held her cup in both hands, listening intently. The same light that had been in her eyes during the performance remained there as she listened. "Let me come with you." It was immediate. Sheera said nothing for a moment. "There's no ship. No money. Right now I can barely move alone." "I understand." But Ria's eyes held that same quality as during the performance. Unwavering. Decided. "I want to be useful to someone in a way that isn't just decoration. I've been searching for that all along." Something in Sheera went still. To be useful to someone—those words existed everywhere. But now, in this moment, they touched something inside her that she'd never spoken of, something she'd carried alone. Her dream. Her mother's chart. Nal Soma. The quiet weight of the fact that no one in this port town had ever known about it. (I can't answer tonight.) Sheera stood up. "I can't answer tonight." With only those words, she left the tavern. 　　＊ She sat down on the stone embankment of the beach and looked out at the sea. The night Azure Sea was dark, waves sounding their steady rhythm. Far out, a fishing boat's light bobbed faintly. Beyond the coastal waters, about two hundred kilometers out, lay the Rope-Cable Trade Route—the north-south passage—and beyond that waited the Great Maelstrom. Even if tonight seemed calm, the sea beyond was different. Ria's words repeated in her mind. To be useful to someone in a way that isn't just decoration. Sheera had never considered taking someone on a journey. She'd convinced herself that her mother's dream of the sea chart was hers alone. Alone was faster. Alone meant she could decide. Alone meant no one else would be endangered—that logic had become almost habit without her noticing. But. (That performance was genuine.) That much was certain. That melody had drawn her mother's dusk back to her after three years. That girl had done it. Unintentionally, simply by plucking the strings. Waves struck the embankment. It was getting cold. Sheera sat there a while longer. 　　＊ Meanwhile, Ria had taken a room at the inn "Lantern House" on Hill Street. A modest establishment with eight rooms total. When the proprietor Tamil Ove said "please make yourself comfortable" in his gentle voice and left, the room fell silent. Ria held her lute case against her knees and looked out the window. From the royal capital Granavice, you couldn't see the sea. From the windows of the Violas family mansion, all you could see was the manicured garden and the stone walls of the noble district across the way. This was the first time she'd seen the night sea spread out like this. "You couldn't see the sea from the royal capital." Her own voice dissolved into the room. She wasn't speaking to anyone. She just wanted to put it into words. In her chest, a certain sense of freedom and the quiet fear of being alone coexisted. Both were true. Not one or the ot