Dawn light filtered through the narrow window of Mr. Ace's office.
On his desk: three boxes. Shin Jin's confiscated belongings. Books. Notes. A lifetime of service reduced to catalogable items.
Orders from Yuusha were clear. Process everything. File officially. Preserve what's useful. Destroy what's seditious.
Mr. Ace's bandaged hands moved through the first box methodically. Training manuals. Meditation journals. A pressed flower from a student—the kind of small kindness that marked a good teacher.
The second box held correspondence. Letters from former students. Requests for guidance. Thank-you notes written in careful script.
The third box was smaller. Personal items. A worn prayer book. A photograph of a young girl—his niece, the one believed to have died at the Devil's Cradle.
And beneath it all, a classification manual. Standard issue. Edges worn from years of use.
Mr. Ace opened it.
The marginalia stared back. Shin Jin's handwriting, scattered across the pages like breadcrumbs. Other voices too—students, priests, the voices of those who'd questioned and doubted and suffered.
This is where we see who they really are—before the power, before the creed.
Sometimes leadership means standing between your people and the orders from above.
She would weep to see what we've built in her name.
Protocol demanded he redact them. Black out the dissent. File the document clean.
The wards around Mr. Ace's chest pulsed. A reminder. Obey.
His hand hovered over the redaction pen.
Then moved past it.
He closed the manual. Filed it intact. Marginalia and all.
A small act of rebellion. One Yuusha might never notice. Evidence of resistance, preserved in plain sight.
If he could not fight, he could at least bear witness.
Mr. Ace returned the manual to its archive sleeve and set it aside. The morning shift would process it officially. By afternoon, it would be filed in the central records.
Available to anyone who knew where to look.
He opened the next box and continued his work.
Outside, the cathedral bells rang for morning prayer.
Inside, the truth waited in ink and margins, patient as stone.
...