It was usually the Akido Sailing Federation that called these post-qualifier press conferences, and the sponsor companies would decide if they wanted their teams to attend. Year after year, Mister Sienyang—their roving manager and main conduit with Cloud Connectors—had been cloyingly insistent about signing them on to attend. This year, they had not bothered to protest it.

So here they sat in a waiting room of sea-blue curtains, lit by a baring white Thread glow. Because of the sheer number of sailors involved, the teams would take turns walking into the next room to face the press. All the attendees—representing six of the fifteen finalist teams—had been lined up in velvet chairs by their facilitator, in order of presentation.

The coffee a distant memory by now, Anqien was starting to wonder about dinner, but sensing Jinai’s high-strung silence they could not fully settle their nerves. For they had found themselves seated to the left of the AmaShiru Mirages—the reigning champions—who had been lined up to go in first.

Anqien and Jinai’s encounters with Zera and Xye had long been coloured by the heat of rivalry. The latter member, especially, was something of a press darling—not that she was beloved, but that she seemed to have a penchant for sending tabloids flying off shelves.

The facilitator, Mx. Mo, had warned them to keep their silence, but the Mirages did not need to speak to make their presence felt. Xye wore her signature shades, perched in her bleached blonde hair, reclining with one leg crossed over the other and her chin raised. Beside her Zera looked professional in a white blouse and black suspenders, hands smartly clasped together.

Anqien hardly felt dressed in comparison, favouring, as they always did, a collared t-shirt and an unbuttoned jacket. They glanced over at the Mirages every now and then, trying to suss out their mood. Their impenetrable smugness always seemed to shroud them in a glaring aura, and paying them attention felt just a little wrong, as if they were feuding families in a drama, forbidden to lay eyes upon each other.

But in this strange, neutral light—outside of the action and the tumult of the race—Xye and Zera were briefly comprehensible: ordinary people who had thrown themselves into extraordinary lives. Ordinary people who had an incredible penchant for being noticed.

The Mirages weren’t the only ones Anqien recognised here: to their left sat the crew of the Catcher—Kainara something and Shimizu something. Anqien had properly begun to take notice of them now that they knew who they were: the Niro-in pair who seemed to favour sleeveless tunics and cloth belts, never far from each other—holding hands with their heads bowed.

The door squeaked open to their right just then, and the bald, goateed head of Mx. Mo poked in. “Mirages, you’re on in five minutes,” they said. A small spike of nerves jolted Anqien out of their people-watching and they shuffled on their cushiony seat.

The room fell back into a hush for the rest of the wait, save for Zera and Xye whispering between themselves. Five minutes later, the same head came through the door. Exchanging grins, the Mirages rose with a stretch and followed them out.

From their seat, Anqien craned their neck to listen through the cracks in the door. There were the formalities and introductions, polite applause, and then began the grilling. But it was never a grilling for the Mirages. They knew how to take control of any public appearance.

The journalists’ probing, fashioned to squeeze sellable reactions out of them, included an assortment of poorly-scoped delights such as the second question thrown out by the first reporter: “It’s an aggressive field this year, what do you have to say about your competitors?”

Here, Xye seemed unable to resist stating into his tympanum, “Well, you wanna know what we think? None of them are credible threats. Except the Cloudlanders, and even then, eeeh, I think we can thrash them three for three, easy.”

Camera clicks, mutters. “Oh, that bastard,” Jinai growled. A little chatter rippled across the waiting room.

“Not a threat?” On their left, Kainara began to curse fluently in Niro-hei, arms folded, until Shimizu reached around their shoulders and squeezed them.

“You're confident of the win, then?” the reporter pressed on.

“Absolutely.”

“I think we have a better chance than anyone else,” Zera added.

A scattering of standard questions followed—how do you feel and what is your strategy for the finals—all of which the Mirages answered easily.

“So what do you have to say to your opponents?” the third reporter of the day asked.

Zera chuckled. She chuckled at the question. “Well, I’d like to say…watch out,” she replied, a grin in her voice. “It’s about time you stopped underestimating us.”

Then, of course, the inevitable kicker to end things off: “Will you be at the afterparty tomorrow?”

“Obviously,” Xye said. “We love Sail Fed parties.”

“That’s a solid maybe for me,” Zera added.

That was the note the interview concluded on—to another smattering of applause and camera clicks—and then, not long after the clapping had died down, Mx. Mo slipped into the side room again, calling Jinai and Anqien outside.

Almost as soon as they stepped out through the door, Anqien started to tremble with nerves. As they always did, they smothered it with a grin and turned to Jinai. Her face was a stone wall. That’s no good.

Following the facilitator, the pair took their seats at the table behind each tympanum. Now they got a good look at the press—almost in their noses, craning over the velvet barricade that held them at bay. Tympanum bells and camera lenses glinted and flashed between heads and clipboards, waiting to catch every word and gesture.

Off to the side, the Sail Fed deputy chair looked on with cordial mirth—an agreeable, stocky man with a brushstroke moustache and hair combed back over his head—and Mx. Mo looked on expectantly from a side table, a tympanum in their hands.

“Cloudlanders,” she said, all eyes flying to the two at the table. Cameras clicked, leaving bright rectangles in their vision. “You had a very strong showing today, as I think we can all agree.” Click, click. “How are you feeling about it?”

Jinai and Anqien glanced at each other. They nodded first, she nodded back, and turned to the eyes and bells. “Fantastic, actually,” she said. “We had some good fortune reading the wind and that got us out in a good position early.” More clicks and flashes, a bit of polite chatter.

“Have you been up to much since your qual ended?” A different voice this time.

When Jinai didn’t speak immediately, Anqien piped up— “We had a quick gander around the Sparkling Reef.” Their head spun—they felt like they were treading water in a riptide—but they knew they had to do this. “It’s a beautiful place, we’re really fond of the coffee, and the garden. We don’t get to visit all too often, so—” The flash of another camera in their eyes pulled them back to the present—this was a press conference, not a chit-chat—and they ended limply, “so, yeah.”

“Ah! Glad to hear you’ve enjoyed the amenities here. Did you watch any of the other races?”

Anqien could feel, despite their best efforts, that their composure had started to unravel. They shot a glance at Jinai, who cast a sidelong glance back, then said, “Yes, we saw the second qual race. They were quite dominant as always, the Mirages.”

“Yes, indeed. The Mirages have told us, as you may have heard, that they could thrash you easily. What do you have to say about that? Are you concerned about a repeat of last year’s finals?”

As the question came, Anqien saw the gears grind to a halt in Jinai’s eyes. Her gaze darted from their face to the journos, to the flashing, clicking lights—but no words.

Answer—or at least look like you’re about to answer, gods! they screamed internally. “I mean, with—” they forced their gaze back towards the journalists— “with our opponents being as strong as they are this year, you know, especially the Mirages? We’re definitely not slacking off.” Under the table, they tapped Jinai’s hand. Just make sense. String some words together. “We’re gonna do our best not to let any details slip by us—their strengths, their weaknesses…” Their pitch lifted on that last syllable and they felt their throat clam up.

But by now, then Jinai’s hand had slipped over theirs, and was gripping it tight. In stern and clipped syllables she said, “And we’ll run the course a hundred times. Till we know it like the lines on our hands. We'll be in top form, and you can count on that.”

The crowd answered with nods, mutters, and some camera flashes. Then that reporter was shooed away, and the next to step up—to their gratitude—took a more jovial tone, asking about the coming afterparty, their training routines and suchlike: easy questions that, for a time, took their minds off what had felt like seconds from a trainwreck.

All the while, Anqien felt Jinai’s hand tightening on their own.

“And before we go, how are you feeling going into the finals?” The question came after the one-minute signal.

Jinai gave Anqien a listless nod that signalled, you field this one. They resolutely met the journalist’s eye. “Good, as good as we ever have,” they said, lungs threatening to run out of breath. “With Jinai, I feel like nothing’s impossible.”

By the time the facilitator thanked them and guided them to the exit on the far side, Jinai was still gripping Anqien’s hand like a vice. The cameras continued to click, click, click as they brisk-walked to the exit, taking shelter from the burning flashes.