Chapter 7: The Common Tongue and the High Pasture

The clearing smelled of blood, thick and metallic in the humid air. Three warriors had closed ranks around the injured woman the moment she went down, machetes still drawn, their eyes darting toward the treeline. As they worked to keep her calm, they spoke to her in a strange language full of sharp consonants and clicking sounds, a rhythm unlike anything Takuya had ever heard.

He watched them with careful attention, filing away every detail. An isolated dialect, he thought. If that's their native tongue, it will take weeks of immersion just to hold a basic conversation.

The largest of the four warriors caught his eye. The man was built like something carved out of a mountainside, his shoulders broad enough to block out the sun behind him, his beard thick and tightly braided. He wiped the blade of his sword clean against a patch of ferns, sheathed it in one smooth motion, and turned to study the three strangers who had just crashed into his hunting party's morning.

Takuya felt his pulse climb, though he kept his face calm. This was the moment that mattered. How do you greet a civilization you know nothing about? A bow could look like submission. Raised hands could be mistaken for a threat, or worse, an insult. He needed something simple. Something that said I mean you no harm and I am not beneath you in the same breath.

He stepped forward and held the big man's gaze, refusing to look away first. Then he extended his right hand, palm open, fingers loose, nothing hidden.

The warrior looked down at the offered hand for a long moment, his expression giving nothing away. Then, without warning, he reached out and clasped Takuya's forearm instead, warrior to warrior. Takuya adjusted at once, gripping the man's leather-bound forearm in return. The hold was firm, almost bone-crushing, but steady.

Still holding eye contact, Takuya used his free hand to gesture toward Kaguya, then toward the bleeding woman, mimicking the motion of wrapping a wound. We can help her. Let my brother treat her.

The warrior's gaze flicked toward Kaguya, taking in his calm posture, the way he stood like a man who had done difficult things under pressure before and come out the other side unshaken. After a beat, the big man gave a single gruff nod and stepped aside to clear the way.

"I think that worked," Takuya murmured without turning his head. "Communication established. You're up."

Kaguya didn't need telling twice. He dropped to one knee beside the woman and began examining the wound, his eyes moving fast and clinical. "Deep laceration through the anterior deltoid, into the clavicular region. She's got heavy arterial bleeding," he said aloud, more out of habit than necessity — a leftover reflex from years spent narrating findings in an operating room.

He glanced up at his brothers. "A tourniquet won't do anything here. You can't compress a junctional wound at the shoulder against a limb, because there isn't one — it's too close to the torso. I need to pack the wound directly and get pressure on it fast. Clean cloth. Now, please."

Inori was already reaching for the hem of his own shirt, ready to tear it apart, when a broad, calloused hand appeared in Kaguya's field of view, holding out a thick roll of woven linen.

"Here. Use this," said a deep voice.

Kaguya barely looked up. "Oh — good tensile strength. Thank you." He took the cloth and immediately packed it into the wound, applying firm, steady pressure over the torn artery.

It took a second for the words to catch up with Takuya and Inori. They turned their heads slowly, mouths half open, and stared at the enormous warrior standing right beside them, arms now crossed.

"Wait — what?!" Inori blurted.

The warrior raised an eyebrow. "What now?"

"You — you understand us?" Takuya said, his composure slipping for just a moment.

"You speak our language?" Inori added, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose as if that might help him process what he'd just heard.

The big man let out a booming laugh that seemed to come from somewhere deep in his chest. "Of course I speak the common tongue. Why wouldn't I?"

Takuya blinked hard, resetting. "Forgive us. That was rude of us — we were simply caught off guard. We assumed, based on the language you were using with the injured woman, that you didn't speak ours."

"Ah, no offense taken," the warrior said, waving a hand toward the woman on the ground, whose bleeding had already begun to slow beneath Kaguya's steady hands. "She's from a tribe deep in the Great Jungle. Isolated place. Her village was wiped out by monsters about a year back — she's one of only three survivors we ever found. The other two picked up the common tongue quickly enough, but she's struggled with it. So we learned a handful of words in her language, just enough to keep her calm when she's frightened."

A common tongue, Takuya thought, and felt something in his chest loosen for the first time in days. The implications were enormous. A shared language across however much of this continent meant trade routes, diplomacy, a shared history — an entire civilization holding itself together in ways he could work with.

"I see," Takuya said, straightening and slipping back into the version of himself that knew how to handle a room — or in this case, a clearing full of armed strangers. "Please, allow us to introduce ourselves properly. My name is Takuya. This is my brother Inori, and the one currently saving your friend's life is Kaguya."

The big man thumped a fist against his own chest. "Name's Lacy. I lead this hunting party." He tilted his head toward the other three warriors, who were still keeping watch at the edges of the clearing. "And judging by those strange thin clothes of yours, and the fact that not one of you is wearing so much as a scrap of armor, I'd guess you're not from anywhere near here. Where did you come from, exactly?"

Takuya and Inori exchanged a glance — brief, wordless, but enough. The truth was that they had driven a car straight into some kind of glowing machine back in Tokyo and woken up in an entirely different universe. Say that out loud, and Lacy would either think them insane or, worse, dangerous.

Takuya let his expression fall into something practiced and heavy with sorrow. "Honestly, Lacy... we aren't entirely sure ourselves."

Lacy frowned. "What do you mean by that?"

"We think we were in some kind of accident," Takuya said, the lie coming out smooth and unhurried, each word placed with care. "We're not from this region — that much we're certain of. Beyond that, our memories are patchy. When we came to, we were already deep in the northern canopy, completely lost. We've been wandering for days, barely managing to survive. Running into your group feels like nothing short of a miracle."

Lacy's eyes moved over them again — their ruined, dirt-caked suits, the crude bamboo spears they carried, the exhaustion carved into their faces — and something in his posture softened.

"A blow to the head can do that," he said, his voice gentler now. "Wipe your memory clean as a whistle. It's alright. Surviving the deep canopy alone is no small thing." He glanced toward Kaguya, who was tying off the last knot on the pressure dressing. "And it looks like your brother's finished up."

Kaguya wiped his bloodied hands against the grass and sat back on his heels. "The bleeding's under control. She's stable, but she won't be walking anywhere. She'll need a clean environment to recover — infection is the real danger now."

Lacy nodded, something like gratitude flickering across his face. "We'll carry her back to the high pasture. She'll heal there." Then his expression shifted, turning serious as he faced the three brothers. "So. What do you plan to do now? Those wolves you ran into were only a scouting party. Once the rest of the pack realizes their alpha is dead, they'll follow the scent right back here. This clearing won't be safe much longer."

"Could we come with you?" Inori asked, practical as ever.

Lacy shook his head slowly. "I wish I could say yes, Inori. But our pasture stays hidden for a reason. Bringing outsiders there — even ones who just helped save three of my people — would break one of our oldest laws. I'm sorry. I can't take you in."

Takuya nodded, understanding immediately. Every nomadic people he'd ever studied guarded their home ground fiercely; it was practically a universal law of survival. "We understand completely, Lacy. Knowing each other's names doesn't entitle us to your secrets." He paused, then pressed gently. "But if that door is closed to us, might we ask for something smaller? Point us toward the nearest town, or any settlement at all. Traveling with an escort, even part of the way, would mean more to us than you know."

Lacy rubbed a hand along his bearded jaw, glancing toward his three warriors. He spoke to them in low, rapid words in the common tongue, and the four of them conferred for a moment before he turned back, his mind clearly made up.

"You used that dead beast to draw the alpha off my men," Lacy said. "That's a debt worth repaying. I'll walk with you myself, until we reach the edge of a proper settlement. My men will carry her home."

Takuya reached out again, and this time Lacy met the gesture without hesitation, his grip rough and sure. "Thank you, Lacy. Truly."

A genuine smile broke across Takuya's face — the first one in days that wasn't calculated for effect.

They were finally leaving the wilderness behind.

"Before you go," Kaguya said, already crossing toward the remaining warriors, "let me show you the fastest way to carry her." He demonstrated with quick, precise movements. "It's called a pack-strap carry. It shifts her weight onto your core instead of your arms, so you can move faster and farther without tiring."

As Kaguya walked the warriors through the technique with the same brisk efficiency he might have used training junior residents, Takuya stepped back and let his mind wander ahead of his feet.

Everything was about to change. The desperate scramble to survive was ending, and something larger was beginning — a world with architecture, economies, governments, all of it waiting to be understood. Part of him was eager for it. But a colder thought settled beneath the excitement, refusing to be ignored.

We have no money. No name that means anything here. And we look like we fell out of the sky, because we did. He watched the warriors lift the injured woman with practiced ease, using the very method Kaguya had just taught them. We need clothes. We need to blend in before anyone gets a good look at us. There's so much still to figure out.

They were walking into a new society with no map and no allies but each other. And yet, for the first time since he'd opened his eyes beneath an unfamiliar sky, Takuya felt something steady beneath him — like a board had finally been set, and the pieces, however few, were finally his to move.