extremely !!!important!!! detail to take note of is that Torou actually wears pants under her dress in the manga and not leggings/tights like in the anime
now you can successfully graduate from Torou masters no problem
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Shirayuki was counting out coins to pay for the herbs when Kiki moved.
Suddenly she stood between Shirayuki and the crowd, with the apothecary’s counter at their backs. Shirayuki caught her breath, pulse quickening at the forewarning of violence.
She glanced towards the herbs arrayed behind her — their vendor looking around in confusion — there were pepper dusts and sneezing agents and many other irritants that would cause enough discomfort to hamper an enemy, but how to warn Kiki or any of the bystanders?
It wasn’t worth the risk of harming her friend, or other innocents, by accident.
Instead Shirayuki gripped the lacing of her hood and prepared to run.
...
She was just tall enough — she peeked over Kiki’s shoulder and saw the source of the disturbance.
A tall curvy woman with gleaming hair stood grinning at them, barely an arm’s length away. She set both hands on her hips, showing off her ample figure and also showing her empty hands –not that they would be far from grasping a weapon, should she hold it concealed somewhere about her generous sash or the wide belt beneath it.
Her posture bespoke confidence, but not a threat; Shirayuki felt herself relax fractionally.
...
Kiki, however, kept her guard up. She had not drawn her weapon —to do so would risk inciting panic in the crowded marketplace, to say nothing of the legal action that might follow if she could not show proper cause — but she maintained a fighting stance, angled with one foot back, and she rested her hand on the hilt of her sword.
When the woman didn’t speak, only smiled, Kiki shifted as if to draw her charge away.
“Wait,” Shirayuki broke out suddenly. “Kiki, wait—we know her!”
The stranger, now recognized, crinkled her eyes into crescents of delight. “The lady remembers,” she purred.
Kiki made no gesture of assent, only kept her gaze fixed on the other woman.
...
Indeed, it was not likely that she could have forgotten such a face, under such circumstances as Shirayuki now recalled — the inn, the dinner, the teasing, the empty bed, the dark manor, the crash in the trees, the open wound.
Had she forgotten, though, that key point — the most important detail?
“Kiki,” Shirayuki persisted. “She knows Obi!”
“Ah,” said the woman, with a knowing tilt of her head. “So you’re the one he’s running from.”
. . .
Kiki bought them all drinks at the tavern: cider, hot and spiced.
If Torou would have preferred stronger stuff, she made no mention of it, kept her complaints to herself.
Traces of wildness clung to her, even as they did to Obi, and Shirayuki looked at her with mingled hope and yearning.
Torou was the closest link to him that Shirayuki had found in what felt like an interminably long time, the nearest chance they had of finding him.
For the moment, however, she was playing coy.
...
“Mmmm…” Torou drained her mug. “You do know how to eat, you knightly people! Ah, but what’s happened to your friend – the tall handsome one? Now, him, I wouldn’t have minded seeing again…”
“He is unavailable,” said Kiki, impassive.
Torou heaved a sigh. “Too bad…but what would two fine ladies like yourselves want with a ne’er-do-well like that Obi?”
She winked.
Shirayuki looked back steadily. Without blush or stammer, she said, “He is my husband.”
...
Torou, for all her arts and all her experience, could not keep her composure so well.
She blanched.
“Your… you mean…” Her mouth opened wide, hesitating between a laugh and a gape of astonishment. “You mean… he tied himself down to a —”
“I was a royal pharmacist of Clarines,” Shirayuki said, proud and erect. “He was my guard.”
...
Torou lapsed into silence, staring at her. Occasionally, her angled auburn eyes darted to Kiki, as if to probe at the knight for explanation, but Kiki remained as unreadable as if she had been wearing a visor.
At last Torou said, low and gravelly, “So he was yours… and you lost him.”
...
Kiki’s eyes narrowed fractionally; the air between them chilled.
Shirayuki only shook her head. “He left,” she corrected Torou gently, and her voice was suffused with sadness.
Kiki laid a hand on her shoulder, not shifting her gaze.
...
Torou slouched in her seat, regarding the pair of them. She didn’t like to discover a new angle in a game she had thought she knew, a line of thinking that cast all the rest in a different light.
Obi’s reception at the inn felt more personal now, knowing that he had behaved that way out of some sense of obligation to another woman.
She prided herself on breaking down such petty objections.
Besides, what was there left for her to gain, since Obi had taken himself out of the game entirely? He was boring now — no good to anyone.
...
She might have left then, made her excuses or simply slipped away and left them none the wiser—but there was just one more factor to consider.
Obi might be useless, but he was definitely in danger.
The knight was competent, and the lady was the key to it all.
If Torou wanted to find him, she would meet with no better chance.
...
She surveyed the two women again, appraising them: slight and fine-featured; one sweet, the other sharp.
Obi’s wife — his wife! — had the eyes of a child, wide, open, clear.
She was unremarkable in looks, Torou thought, but for the tendrils of brilliant red that curled like flame at the edges of her hood.
...
Obi had always liked playing with fire, but this time he had shut himself in a furnace.
...
Torou had all but made up her mind by then, but transparency and decision were not in her nature.
Rather than declare herself, she threw out a lure.
“I see, how very sad, and that’s why you came this way then…but of course you know that he isn’t here.”
...
She might as well have teased an icicle for all the reaction this produced from Kiki, but Shirayuki took the bait.
Leaning forward, she fixed Torou with her luminous eyes. “Please, if you’ve seen him–if you know where he is, please tell us. I would be so grateful.”
...
Not much of an appeal, but Torou had her own reasons for playing along. “As it so happens, I was thinking of going that way myself,” she mused, tapping her chin.
She paused, casting the other women a sideways glance. “Is it a good idea, though? He left, you say… then what good is it to me, if he won’t be happy to see you?”
The hit sank home.
Shirayuki’s gaze dropped, and she tucked her chin.
...
Kiki’s eyes were boring into Torou, but neither spoke — it was for Shirayuki to answer.
At last she drew breath and said, “I just want him to know — I want to tell him… not to leave because of me. He should know that…”
She raised her head.
“...that I want us to be together.”
Something in the simplicity of this touched Torou, beneath all the layers of cynicism and self-interest.
Her mind flashed back to what had rekindled her interest in Obi in the first place — that something different, an indescribable change that cast him anew.
Here it was again, in this slip of a woman.
Torou didn’t know what it was, but it spoke to her.
...
With more sincerity than she would have thought possible of herself, Torou replied, “If that’s the way of it, then follow me, and I won’t say no — but I will say you’re headed the wrong way.
My oneshot for Day Three! Here's a snippet of Obi and Torou's relationship (just a headcanon or guess) and Obi and Shirayuki's friendship and how they differ from Torou and Obi's.
