Eclipse (Avatar the Last Airbender)

Chapter 17: Spicy Soup and Grilled Mochi

A long time ago, the old man who taught her how to play pai sho told her that she had a habit of rocking around when she was stuck. As though observing the board from different angles would help her come up with a solution to a difficult problem. She had replied rather firmly, while still rocking around, that it really did help her come with solutions. Hence, the reason that she continued to rock around whenever confronted by an unexpected situation in pai sho. She looked up when she heard a quiet laugh and found the sturdy, young man watching her with amusement. "Sorry, whenever you do that, you look a little like a turtle seal."

"I see," she murmured in response. How she looked hardly mattered in this instance, especially if it was an unintentional distraction. It worked after all, so she wasn't particularly compelled to stop. She felt a faint smile tug at the corners of her lips as she saw a way forward and took her move.

"Ooh, that's a tough one," Daichi murmured.

"You learned fast."

He grinned at her then. "I had a great teacher."

She felt her lips tug up into a teasing smirk. "Indeed, a rather skilled one at that."

"Yup, yup. And she's not afraid to praise herself for it either." He laughed loudly and she granted his joke some breathed laughter in return before he turned his attention back to the board.

While he stared at the board, she flipped through the war logs that Master Pakku had given her. They weren't the most interesting to read in terms of prose, but when she visualized each moment in her head as though it were a game of pai sho, it became rather interesting. Not to mention the fact that it helped her get a firmer grasp on how the military theories that she had read about when she was with Zuko actually played out in reality, and how one could react to them outside of the author's predictions.

She was in the middle of guessing at what she would do if faced with the same predicament in the war logs when he took his move and she turned her attention back to the board in front of her. "By the way, what are those books that you're always reading?" he asked.

"Just some old journals that I came across," she replied absentmindedly as she took her move. He had reacted to her last turn as she had predicted he would. It technically wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the whole truth either. It wasn't to say that she didn't trust him, but it was the same the other way around. There was no reason not to trust him, but there was no reason to trust him either.

"You read the strangest things. Are they interesting?"

She hummed thoughtfully. "A bit. Like hearing about a friend's day, but with more detail than they would normally give you? It's not the most entertaining thing in the world, but it gets the job done."

"Speaking of jobs, you started working a new one right?" he asked.

"Oh yeah, I forgot that I never told you more about it after mentioning it." She glanced at the board to make sure that he hadn't taken a move yet. "I started serving tea in a tea shop. It's nice. Far more stable, but the owner is a little-" She hesitated. "We'll call it 'enterprising.'"

He looked up at that and seemed to sit up straighter. "'Enterprising'? What did he do?"

Miyuki noted the concern in his voice and she set her book down. "Nothing that serious, really. He forced my hand a little and made me play the guzheng as a sort of hiring condition when he found out that I was performing on the streets. It just isn't the sort of thing that I'd prefer to do."

"He had no right to do that."

"I'm fine, really," she insisted, "and he won't do it again."

"You can't know that."