Three days.
I lasted three days before going back.
In my defense, I had a plan. A real, legitimate, strategic plan. Not the "buy bread and hope for the best" kind — an actual framework for establishing contact with the protagonist in a way that would naturally lead to a mutually beneficial—
Who am I kidding. I had nothing. I just kept thinking about the trembling hands and the boy who made a crying child laugh, and on the third morning I woke up, got dressed, and told Rumia I was going out.
"The church again, young master?"
"What makes you think—"
"You're wearing the plain coat. You only wear the plain coat when you don't want to be recognized.
And you only don't want to be recognized when you're going somewhere you shouldn't be."
I stared at her.
"Rumia, has anyone ever told you that you're uncomfortably perceptive?"
"You have, young master. Eleven times."
"You've been counting?"
"It's a small household. I find my entertainment where I can."
I left before she could psychoanalyze my breakfast choices.
---
The eastern market district was louder in the daytime than I remembered. Street vendors shouting over each other, carts rattling across broken cobblestones, children weaving between legs like they'd been born in a crowd and never left. The smell was the same — sweat, bread, iron — but warmer now, thickened by a sun that didn't care that the buildings here were crooked and the gutters overflowed.
The church was easy to find. Just follow the line.
It was shorter today — maybe fifteen people instead of thirty. Brother Maren stood at the door, same clean robes, same bored expression, same open palm. Three silver clinked into it as a woman shuffled past with a bandaged leg.
I watched from across the street for longer than I should have. Told myself I was observing. Assessing. Being strategic.
I was stalling.
"What are you going to say? "Hello, I'm the noble who dropped twenty gold on your pew and ran away. I'd like to be your friend now, please. Also, I know your entire future and you're going to be the most important person on this continent but let's not talk about that.""
"Brilliant. Really brilliant, Naive. Just walk up and be weird at him. It worked so well last time."
I crossed the street.
Brother Maren spotted me before I reached the door. His expression shifted — not quite welcoming, not quite hostile. The expression of a man recalculating the value of an interaction.
"My lord. You've returned."
"I have."
"For healing?"
"No."
"For... prayer?"
"Sure."
He didn't believe me. I didn't blame him. I stepped past him into the dim warmth of the church before he could invent a reason to stop me.
---
Inside, the scene was the same as before. Pews pushed aside. Bedrolls on the floor. The sweet-warm hum of healing magic in the air like distant music you can't quite place.
Elian was at the far end, kneeling beside a man with a badly infected cut on his forearm. The golden light pulsed between his palms, steady, patient. The man's face slowly unclenched.
I stood at the back. Waited.
It took about ten minutes for the current patients to cycle through. Elian healed three more after the man with the infected arm — an elderly woman with joint pain, a dockworker with cracked ribs, a girl no older than twelve with burns on her hands from a kitchen accident.
He spoke to each of them. Quietly. Personally. Not the rote comfort of a professional — the genuine attention of someone who saw the person, not the wound.
The girl with the burns was scared. She kept flinching before Elian even touched her.
"It won't hurt," he said. "I promise."
"How do you know?"
"Because I've done this before, and I've never broken a promise."
She let him take her hands. The golden light wrapped around her fingers like warm water. When it faded, her skin was smooth. She looked at her hands with the wide-eyed disbelief of someone who'd forgotten that pain could just... stop.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"Of course."
He said it like it was nothing. Like healing a child's pain was as natural as breathing. Like there was no version of the world where he wouldn't do this.
"This guy is going to be the death of me. And I mean that in the emotional sense, which is a nice change from the literal sense I've been dealing with lately."
The girl left. The church emptied. And Elian stood up, rolled his shoulders — I heard something pop in a way that shouldn't happen to someone our age — and turned around.
He saw me.
His expression didn't change much. A slight widening of the eyes. A brief pause, like he was flipping through a mental catalogue and finding my entry.
"You're back," he said.
Not a question. Not an accusation. Just a fact, stated with the same calm he used for everything.
"I am."
He wiped his hands on a cloth and walked toward me. Slowly. Not warily — just the pace of someone who was used to being careful with people.
He stopped about five feet away and reached into the fold of his robe.
And pulled out a leather pouch.
I recognized it immediately. It was the pouch I'd left on the pew three days ago. Twenty gold. I could heer the coins shift inside.
"This is yours," he said. And held it out.
I stared at the pouch. Then at him. Then back at the pouch.
"No, it isn't."
"You left it here."
"I left it for the church."
"The church didn't ask for it."
"Since when does the church not want money?" I glanced toward the door where Maren was still collecting silver from the next round of patients. "Brother Maren seems quite comfortable with the concept."
A flicker of something crossed Elian's face. Not amusement — but close. The ghost of an expression that might have been a smile if it had lived long enough.
"Brother Maren handles the church's finances. This—" he held the pouch slightly higher, "—was left on "my" pew. Next to where I sleep. It wasn't a donation to the church. It was a gift."
"Damn. He's perceptive."
"And I don't accept gifts from people I don't know," he finished.
"We've met."
"You told me I should channel through my palms separately. You left twenty gold on my bed. And you left before I could ask your name." He tilted his head. "That's not meeting someone. That's being visited by a very confusing ghost."
"A very confusing ghost. That's... actually fair."
"My name is Naive," I said. "I'm the youngest son of Count—"
"I know who you are. Brother Maren identified your crest after you left. He's been... concerned."
"Concerned that a noble is visiting?"
"Concerned about why."
The question hung in the air between us, quiet and patient, just like him.
"Why are you here, Naive? What's the answer that doesn't involve "I read a book about your life" or "I need you to help me not die"? What's the real reason — the one underneath the strategy and the guilt and the planning?"
I looked at the pouch in his outstretched hand. Twenty gold. A fortune in this district. Enough to fix everything wrong with this church — the leaking roof, the burnt-out candles, the cracked healing staff I'd noticed last time.
And he was trying to give it back. Because he didn't want to owe a stranger.
"Because everyone who's ever given him something has wanted something in return."
"Keep it," I said. "Not as a gift. As... compensation."
"For what?"
"For the healing lessons."
He blinked. "What healing lessons?"
"The ones you're going to give me. I'm interested in understanding restorative magic. Its theory, its application, its limits. I've read about it, but books can only take you so far." I paused, letting the lie settle into something almost plausible. "I'd like to learn from someone who actually practices it. And from what I've seen, you're the best healer in this district. Possibly the city."
It wasn't even really a lie. He "was" the best. The novel made that clear — Elian's healing magic was unique, tied to something deeper than standard mana manipulation. Something the gods themselves would eventually take notice of.
But right now, standing in a crumbling church with worn robes and tired eyes, he was just a boy trying to figure out if I was trustworthy.
The silence stretched.
"You want me to teach you," he said slowly.
"Yes."
"And the twenty gold is payment for the lessons."
"Think of it as tuition."
"That's..." He looked at the pouch. Looked at me. Looked at the pouch again. "That's an absurd amount of money for lessons."
"I'm a noble. We overpay for everything. It's practically cultural."
That ghost of a smile again. Closer to real this time.
He didn't put the pouch back in his robe. He didn't hand it to me either. He held it, weighing it — not the coins, but the decision.
"If I agree," he said carefully, "the money goes to the church. Repairs. Supplies. Not to me."
"However you see fit."
"And you'll actually learn. I won't teach someone who isn't serious."
"I'll be your most dedicated student."
"I will be your most dedicated student who already knows everything you're going to teach me and has to pretend otherwise. This is going to be exhausting."
Another pause. Elian studied my face with that quiet, careful attention he gave to everything — patients, wounds, burned hands, confusing nobles who showed up unannounced with too much gold.
"Tuesdays and Fridays," he said. "After the last patient. I can spare an hour."
"That's—"
"Take it or leave it."
"I'll take it."
He nodded. Once. Then looked down at the pouch in his hand and seemed to realize he'd been holding it the entire conversation.
"...I'll speak to Brother Maren about the roof."
"Good idea. I could see the sky through it."
"It adds character."
"It adds rain."
That ghost — closer, closer, "almost" — and then it was gone. He turned back toward the patients beginning to filter in for the afternoon round.
"Tuesdays and Fridays," he repeated over his shoulder.
"Tuesdays and Fridays."
---
I walked home with the distinct feeling that I had been interviewed, evaluated, and conditionally accepted by someone half my social rank and twice my emotional intelligence.
It should have been humiliating. For a noble, being assessed by an orphan priest was the kind of thing that would make other aristocrats choke on their wine.
Instead, I felt — and I need to stress how unfamiliar this sensation was — "relieved."
He'd said yes. With conditions. With boundaries. With the clear, quiet understanding that he was doing this on his terms, not mine. And somehow, that made it feel more real than if he'd simply accepted the money and smiled.
"Tuesdays and Fridays. Two days a week. An hour each. That's eight hours a month to build a relationship with the most important person in the world, who currently thinks I'm a strange noble with too much money and a suspicious interest in healing theory."
"Could be worse."
"Could be a lot worse."
The evening light was warm on the streets as I crossed back into the merchant quarter. I replayed the conversation in my head — what I said, what he said, the pauses, the almost-smiles, the way he held the pouch like it was a decision and not a bag of coins.
"He was going to say no."
The thought hit me mid-stride.
"He was going to refuse the money, refuse the lessons, refuse me. I saw it in his face when I walked in. He'd already decided. The pouch was out before I said a word. He was going to hand it back and that would be that."
"So what changed?"
I thought about it the rest of the walk home. Through the merchant quarter, past the noble gates, up the gravel path to the estate.
What changed.
""Not as a gift. As compensation.""
I'd given him a reason that wasn't charity. A transaction instead of pity. Something that let him keep his dignity while accepting help he clearly needed.
I hadn't planned it. I'd scrambled for an excuse and tripped into the right one.
"Lucky."
Or maybe — and this was the thought that unsettled me — maybe I was starting to understand him. Just a little. Just enough to say the right thing at the right time.
"That's dangerous, Naive. Understanding people is how you start caring about them. And caring about people in this world is a luxury you can't afford."
Rumia was waiting at the gate. Because of course she was.
"How was prayer, young master?"
"I've arranged tutoring sessions."
"At a church."
"In healing magic."
"You have no aptitude for healing magic, young master."
"I'm aware."
"Then why—"
"Rumia, sometimes in life you do things that don't make sense, and you trust that the reason will reveal itself in time."
"...Is that something you read?"
"I think I saw it on a fortune cookie."
"What's a fortune cookie?"
"Nevermind."
---
""""Your Highness, the weekly intelligence summary."
I took the folder without looking up from the reports spread across my desk. Troop movements in the eastern province. Trade negotiations with the southern alliance. The third prince's new appointments — two minor lords, both with military backgrounds. He was building a war council and calling it a social club.
"Clumsy. But effective, for now."
I flipped to the domestic section. Court gossip, social movements, notable departures from routine among persons of interest.
And there it was. Third page, fifth entry. Marked as low priority.
""Subject: Naive, youngest son of the 13th Seat's Rider. Second visit to the Church of Solene, eastern market district. Duration: approximately one hour. Met privately with the church's healer, identified as 'Elian' (no surname, orphan, ward of the church). Nature of meeting unclear. Subject has arranged recurring visits — Tuesdays and Fridays.""
I set the folder down.
Once was a curiosity. A noble visiting a church in the poor district — unusual, but not alarming.
There were a dozen innocent explanations.
Twice was a pattern.
And "recurring visits" were an agenda.
I leaned back in my chair and pressed my fingers together.
In the memories I carried — those borrowed, stolen, impossible recollections of a future that would never happen — Elian didn't matter. Not at first. He was a background figure in the early chapters of the story, a footnote that nobody noticed until it was far too late.
By the end, he was the axis around which the world turned. The healer who became a saint. The saint who became a weapon. The weapon that even the gods couldn't break.
And my fiancé — the boy who shook when holding a glass of water, who told me the summer air was "brisk," who asked "where would I run to" with the resignation of someone who had already tried — this boy had found Elian before the world even knew to look for him.
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence."
I picked up a pen and drew a thin line under Elian's name.
"Let's see what three times is."