When Assassins Find Circus Performers

Matsu followed along as Daichi began to head towards the edge of the bridge, listening carefully.

"After we met in Omashu...I went back to my hotel room and found a note. It was an assassination order, if I remember correctly, and I'm sure I do, 'fellow entertainers' were offering me a considerable amount of cash to kill you. " He said, not looking at her. She frowned; one, because she would rather have Daichi speaking TO her rather than AT her, and two, she liked reading his expressions when he displayed them.

"Fellow entertainers? Why, that's silly. The Pasang Circus really doesn't have all that much competition. People are too busy being farmers and politicians to be circus folk. Who could possibly feel threatened by a circus with forty members at most?" Matsu wasn't really asking Daichi, more like she was voicing these things out loud so they didn't flutter away from her mind to where she couldn't get them anymore.

"It doesn't really matter anyway, you're still here." He said instead, to which she felt a mixture of emotions. Was he happy about that? Did he regret not taking the job? Why did her tummy feel so flip-flopsy?

"Does that upset you? That I'm still here, I mean?" She asked, her voice very small and meek, and the second the words were out she hoped he hadn't heard them at all. She made it a general rule to not ask questions she didn't want to know the answers to, and this was one that she couldn't bear to hear if it were anything more than "no, it doesn't upset me."

"You don't really seem all that happy about going back...Is someone pressuring you to or something? I just think you'd be kinda wasted there." He asked her, to which she sighed.

"Where else am I going to go? I'm not like the rest of the world Daichi, and I don't mean that in a self-flattering sort of way. I'm a freak, no one would want me working for them, I wouldn't be able to survive properly without the circus. I'd love to do something else, even for a little while, but it's just not feasible."