fate/first order derivative

Part II.10

> continue: iteration 28, day 6, late night

"Ow," I mumble, trying not to whimper. It's tough to talk around the mass of gauze in my mouth, not to mention while holding an ice pack to my lower jaw to tamp down on the swelling. No helping it, though. I look up at the person across the table. "There's nothing, uh, special you could do about this, right? Like... make me grow a new one or something?"

"Believe it or not, magical dentistry really isn't something I've spent much time on." Rin pushes back her hair and stares at my cell phone screen.

We're down in her dad's workshop in the basement of her house. Archer brought me here after he picked me up out of the alleyway. Seems that Rin sent him out to keep an eye on me tonight, albeit from a distance to avoid Gilgamesh picking up on his presence. He stands over by the door, arms folded, doing his whole Cool Detached Badass shtick. My tooth sits in a red-stained glass of milk on the table next to Rin's first aid kit, amid the scattered piles of books and notes.

"This is him?" She taps on Gilgamesh's face in the midst of the grainy photo.

"Yep." The bandage over the big scrape on my cheek comes loose again. I press down on it with my pinky.

"I've seen him before." Rin closes my phone and slides it back to me. "Twice."

I raise my eyebrows. "Seriously?"

She nods. "The first time was last week. I ran across him and Sakura talking down the road from her house."

"About what?"

"I couldn't get close enough to hear them. She obviously wasn't happy to see him, though. I could tell that much." Rin furrows her brow. "Then today, I saw him hanging around outside the Matous' house. Like he was waiting for someone, I guess? But no one came out. Eventually, he just wandered off."

Seems like ol' Gil's in pretty thick with the Matous, then. The occasional murder and/or literal stolen heart aside.

Rin runs her hands through her hair. "Do you think he has something to do with... whatever happens to her next week?"

I shrug. "Maybe. Right now, your guess is as good as mine." I glance at one of the book piles. "Any luck finding out what a karagoze is?"

She shakes her head. "Nothing. It's probably either a von Einzbern secret or just something really specialized. Mages aren't the greatest at sharing information, you know?"

Sounds like I'll need to make time to ask Illya about it at some point, then. Which is probably what I should've done in the first place, if I'd been thinking about it.

> lot going on right now

"So, wait..." I blink. "What were you doing outside the Matous today?"

"G-gathering information, of course!" Rin juts out her chin and looks away, her face reddening. "Don't go reading into things! It's not like I'm worried about her or anything!"

"Uh... huh." I spend a second or two processing that reaction. "Hold on. Real talk: is this a magic thing? Does that contract geas you're under keep you from even acting like you care about Sakura?"

"Wait, you know about that? Well... no, not exactly, but..." She deflates and looks away. "I guess pretending like I don't care just makes the rest of it easier to handle. And it makes explaining things a lot easier, too. What else am I supposed to tell normies? 'I have to keep my distance from that person, or this spell I'm under gives me migraines?'"

"It does?" I raise my eyebrows. "You've never mentioned that before."

She shrugs and waves at the shelves and piles of books around her. "My inheritance as a Tohsaka, you know? It may not be much fun... but it's all I have."