The next day, Rika and I were in the clinic, though I was the only one who bothered with the chair. Rika sprawled across one of the beds, boots dangling, eyes tracing a lonely patch of cobwebs in the corner. A spider, long dead, hung there, cocooned in its own forgotten silk. The air pressed in, sharp with dried herbs and that stubborn, metallic ghost of old blood that clung to the stones. Everything seemed washed out, as if the world had lost its color. Rika sighed, the sound bouncing off the cobblestone walls, her voice weighted with something I couldn’t quite name.
“Why aren’t we doing anything together anymore?”
I pointed at my belly and offered my suggestion.
“Ehm, maybe because I’m pregnant?”
Rika shot me a look, unimpressed, seeing straight through me. My excuse felt as flimsy as those ceiling cobwebs, easy to sweep away like a dissolving memory.
“Come on, be serious.”
“I am serious. This is a lot harder than it looks, even for me.”
Sometimes I ache to complain, to let someone feel the weight I carry, but healing magic smooths over the worst of it. For me, pregnancy is mostly wild mood swings and the awkwardness of carrying around extra weight. Whenever I try to say how hard it is, guilt slinks in, whispering that I am a fraud. Still, last month was brutal, the twins sending me racing to the chamber pot more times than I could count.
“Yeah, but when was the last time we did anything together. Nowadays, you are always with Janus; you are almost like his shadow.”
She wasn’t wrong. For months, it’s been just Janus and me, circling each other like we’re the last two souls left in an empty void. I can’t say I hated it; if anything, I craved it, but somewhere along the way, I let my friendships wither, left them out in the cold. Rika, of course, wasn’t finished.
“But the worst thing is that the two of you don’t even do anything other than fucking.”
Her bluntness hit me harder than I expected, and I just stared at her, mouth half-open, words stuck somewhere between my heart and my lips. Was she right? Had Janus and I really done nothing but hide away, tangled up in each other, pretending the rest of the world didn’t matter? My cheeks burned as I realized we hadn’t even managed a single real date. The only times we’d left our little cocoon were for the winter and spring festivals, and even those felt more like obligations than anything else. No lazy afternoons in a café, no stolen moments in a market, just us, behind closed doors, pretending the world outside didn’t exist.
With nothing clever to say, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, hoping it would cover the awkward silence stretching between us.
“You’re just jealous.”
To which Rika just shrugged her shoulders and easily admitted,
“True, but that doesn’t weaken my argument, or does it?”
True? For a moment, I wondered if she meant it, but then I remembered how she was the one who kept nudging me toward Janus, practically shoving me into his arms. She never wanted him for herself. Maybe she just missed having someone to drive away the loneliness. And as much as I wanted to dismiss her point, jealousy or not, it still stung because she was right.
“Okay, fine, you’re right. But I’m pregnant, and there’s just so much to do. I barely have time to breathe between patients, lesson plans, trying to keep up with my own magic, getting ready for the trip to the capital, and then all the things Janus has on his plate…”
Rika cut me off before I could finish, propping herself up on her elbows and pinning me with a look that made my words stumble and die.
“Wait, wait, wait. You don’t even know what he does all day, do you? Have you even asked?”
Her question struck deeper than I wanted to admit, leaving a dull ache blooming beneath my ribs.
Because she was right, and I hated it. I didn’t really know what Janus did all day. Sometimes he’d come home, tired to the bone, and I’d ask about his day, but he’d just mumble something about monsters or Ibasan movements. The rest was a mystery, a whole part of his life I’d never bothered to step into.
I hated this side of her, the way she could turn thorny and sharp in an instant. Lately, she seemed always on edge, and I never knew what would set her off. Sometimes, it felt like she was the one with the mood swings, not me.
“There just isn’t enough time, okay?! And since when are you the relationship expert?”
I didn’t want to snap at her, but her constant reminders that I was somehow failing at love wore me down, scraping away at my patience until all that was left was irritation.
The words slipped out before I could catch them, and I didn’t think they’d matter. I just wanted her to stop, maybe even to leave me alone for a while. But something shifted in the air, the temperature seemed to drop, and the faint light from the window felt colder. Rika sat up completely, her hands gripping the edge of the bed so tightly her knuckles went white. Her eyes locked onto mine, but her mouth stayed pressed in a thin, tight line. The space between us felt thick, heavy, like a storm about to break, and I braced for her to explode. But she didn’t.
At first, I thought she would get mad and lash out at me. I saw anger flare in her eyes. But then, just as quickly, her anger cooled. She turned her head away, her posture collapsing into resignation, and she admitted, sarcastically:
“Fine. It’s your relationship; I’m just the jealous, forever-single woman. What do I know?”
I rolled my eyes, ready to argue, but before I could even try to stand, Rika was already at the door. She yanked it open with a force that startled me, the wood slamming against the wall right where an old dent marked years of slammed doors. The door hung open behind her, letting in a brief gust of chill air from outside. As she disappeared, a thin trickle of sand spilled from the long run dry dent and scattered across the floor.
My hand, still half-reached for her, dropped back to my lap as I slumped into the chair, suddenly too tired to do anything else.
Woman? She was acting more like a sulking teenager. Yet somehow, I was the one left feeling like the villain in my own story.