They called me trash so often that I started to believe it, the way you start to believe that the damp under your mat is just part of the floor and not a leak that will rot your feet off by winter.
The night air over Eight-Crane Sect's lower yards tasted like smoke and boiled soy. Oil lamps swung from iron hooks along the alley of the kitchens, throwing long yellow blades across piles of cabbage leaves and fish bones. I picked through a bucket, ignoring the grease chilling my fingers, searching for anything with color in it. A shard of carrot. Half a dumpling. Salt, if I was lucky. I had a lot of luck in the wrong directions.
"Oi, Ren," someone called, slurring my name around a laugh. "Trash boy! Save some for us dogs! Hahaha, ah, you already did."
Two outer-sect disciples clattered by in blue-edged robes, eyes bright with drink. One flicked a cabbage leaf at me. It stuck to my cheek for a heartbeat, cold and slick. I peeled it off and dropped it back. They wanted me to react. I didn't. I wanted my hands to stop shaking.
They left, bored. The kitchen door thumped open with the usual roar, steam, curses, metal on metal. The stew master's assistant, Mei, caught my eye for a fraction of a breath, her mouth thinning at the sight of me shoulder-deep in swill. She didn't say anything. We'd done this dance for two years. She lasted past the part where people tried to fix me.
A boy darted past my knees and grabbed for the bucket. Eight? Nine? Skin like mine: winter-thin. He had a scarf that used to be white tied in a careful knot. His hands moved the way my hands used to move, fast, apologetic, like he could outrun a kick if he was quick enough.
"Don't," I said, not loud enough, because I didn't want to bring down a storm.
He got a dumpling and stuffed it into his cheek. His eyes were too large in his face, the whites bright as lamp oil. "I'm, I wasn't, my sister, she's..."
"It's fine," I said, even though it wasn't, because the universe loved a phrase like that. "Eat."
He nodded furiously, chewing, and I knew the exact moment the cardinal mistake happened: he saw me. Not just the bucket or the mess or the shadow I made against a barrel, but me. It felt like stepping out from behind a curtain without wanting to. Eye contact, and the little gut-deep shift that said you recognized something. A line. A shape.
Someone else saw him too. "Thief," a voice sang out in the warm, ugly tone people reserved for a person who couldn't fight back. "Look, a rat."
I didn't even have time to hate the word before two more boys, outer-court, sashes tied carelessly, had the kid by the scarf and the wrist. He yelped, bread-crumbs flying. They laughed.
"I'll pay..." he started. That made it worse. The tall one jerked him forward.
"You'll pay? In what? Fleas?"
The boy looked at me again. The mistake compounded. I had a choice right there. Sink lower. Let it go. Being invisible had kept me alive more than once. People can't stab what they don't see.
"Let him go," I said, and my voice came out steady, which felt like a betrayal of everything I'd built. I stood, shoulder aching from a kitchen haul earlier, grease numbing my knuckles.
The tall boy looked at my rag coat and the hole in the left sleeve and the fact that one of my sandals was held together by wire, and smiled. "Trash boy wants to be a hero," he said. "You heard Mei, she said save scraps for the dogs."
"I didn't say that," Mei snapped from the doorway without stepping out. She didn't step out a lot. Stepping out had costs. Everywhere had costs.
"Ren," she said low, trying to catch my eye again. As if a look could anchor me down.
The other boy flicked the dumpling from the kid's mouth so it rolled, slow, into a puddle of dish water. Little eddies formed around it. I watched the swirl. Stupid detail to notice.
"I'll take the beating," I said before I could stop, because it was always better when you lay down the terms. "Let him go."
"Ren," Mei hissed. "Don't."
The tall one's grin sharpened. He shoved the kid into me, hard enough that we both staggered. "Look at that," he said. "He thinks he has something worth hitting."
They hit me.
It wasn't even creative work. Fists, elbows. An easy rhythm. The first blow rattled my teeth; the second woke up an old ache in my ribs. The world shrank to the smell of soy and ash and the warm copper of blood when it slicked down your throat and you couldn't decide whether to spit or swallow. The kid disappeared under the tumble of feet. I bent over him, because he was small, and I was in the way on purpose.
"Enough," Mei said, too late. Stone scraped my palms as someone shoved me to my knees. A heel caught my ear. Sparks. My head thudded off a crate. Water dripped somewhere in a careful pattern that had nothing to do with me.
They got bored fast. People always do with me. I don't break in satisfying ways. I don't beg. I don't rise. I absorb. There's no tale to tell afterward, no story to polish in wine over how the trash boy snapped. I didn't. I never do. That's the trick.
When it was over, they shoved me onto my back, said something about dogs and laughed as they left. Mei finally came out to roll me, muttering, into the lee of the bread oven where it was warmer. The boy crawled up, eyes wet and furious, cheeks blotched.
"I'm sorry," he said, his little mouth wobbling. "I didn't mean, they, I..."
"It's fine," I said again, and this time it was a lie edged with tired. "Eat this."
I found the dumpling in the dishwater, rinsed it, tore off the worst bits. I put it in his hands. They shook.
He looked at me in that way again, and I wanted to look away. Respect is a knife blade. People will cut their thumbs on it, and if you stand nearby, they'll tell all their friends you handed them the knife. I hated respect. Loved quiet. Loved being no one. People who were someone got dragged. Noticed. Used.
But the boy was learning the wrong thing. That no one would stand between him and a foot. That everyone would look away. I had learned that lesson too well.
His chin tipped down. He pressed the torn dumpling to his lips like it was a ritual. Then he said it. "Thank you." The real kind. Not the sideways kind. "I... I respect you."
I flinched, cheating instinct, like he'd thrown a bucket of cold wellwater.
Something moved, not outside but in the place behind my eyes where dreams sometimes pooled. A sound like a gong cracked in the drowned distance. Then a line of words burned across the dark, spare and clinical and very much not mine.
[Respect Accrual System initializing...]
My first thought was that I had a concussion. The letters held anyway.
[User: Ren (Outer Sect Chore Division, no clan, no backing)
Status: Orphan; Resource Deprivation; Social Standing: Contemptuous]
[Respect: 0]
[Mission (Tutorial): Earn one instance of genuine respect. Reward: Physical Fortification (minor), Access: panel. Penalty: persistent minor misfortune.]
"Absolutely not," I said out loud, to the oven mouth, to the dripping, to Mei's skeptical eyebrows. My heart thudded hard enough to make my ribs creak. I had no appetite for heavenly jokes.
"What?" Mei said.
"Nothing. I'm, dizzy."
The boy chewed, still watching me with that awful, destructive openness.
"Please don't," I told the air, which I knew was stupid, but it felt less stupid than answering quietly in my head. I had done a lot of things. Being crazy was one. Talking to a hallucination would be two. "I don't want… any of that. Keep your missions."
[Note: Mission already in progress.]
I swallowed another curse to keep from teaching the boy any good ones. The words hovered. They didn't blink. They didn't fade. They were… there, like a brand.
"Do you..." the kid started, and trailed off, small mouth clamping shut like he'd bitten a thought.
"What," I said, softer than I felt.
He looked at my hands. "Your knuckles are bleeding." Then, after a tiny beat, he said, very adult for a boy in a scarf that used to be white, "I respect you."
[Respect +1.]
[Reward dispensing...]
Heat rolled through me like I'd swallowed a too-hot sip of tea that somehow spilled into my blood. Muscles I'd forgotten woke up and pressed against my bones. The ache behind my ear ticked higher, then… smoothed. Something stitched shut inside my shoulder with an itch that made my fingers curl. I gasped because it broke through the numb I was good at.
[Physical Fortification (minor): +1 Body Tempering progress. Current: 0.2/10.]
[Panel unlocked.]
A ghostly shape clicked into focus: a few lines, a name, a hungry bar that was almost empty and wanted to be filled, the way all empty things do.
I shut my eyes until the light behind them went red. "No," I whispered. "No. Take it back."
[Unable to decline reward.]
Of course. Heaven, fate, hilarious machinery, whatever the hell this was, never offered choices that mattered. It offered trapdoors. You step or you fall. The difference is cosmetic.
"Ren?" Mei's voice, close. Her hand hovered over my shoulder, then landed, then lifted. "You should lie down. Your pupils are off. Did Song and Le kick your head?"
"They kicked my everything," I said. My voice sounded like I'd been sucking smoke. "It's fine."
"It is not fine," the boy said, tight and fierce. "They're bullies."
"They are," I said, and couldn't stop the smile that twitched my mouth. "And you, what's your name?"
"Jin." He straightened like a soldier. "Jin is fine."
"You're not fine," I said. He drew himself up more, as if the sentence had missed and landed on the world instead. I nodded at the scarf. "Who's the scarf for?"
"My sister. She thinks the knot makes us lucky." He looked down at his free hand and flinched, like he'd said too much.
Lucky. Right.
The inside of my skull chimed softly.
[New daily mission: Accrue respect from an entity of higher standing (any tier). Deadline: dawn. Reward: Access: Minor Technique (Breathing), Respect Unlock: 10 → reveal bonus. Penalty for failure: increased contempt (social), micro-misfortunes (stacking).]
"Stop," I said to nothing, getting to my feet in small, careful moves. The oven's warmth had baked the damp out of my sleeves; steam came off my coat in threads. Everything hurt less and more in new ways. "I don't want, I don't want respect from anyone higher. I'd like to sleep and wake up to the same small life, if that's not too much."
[User preference noted: minimize visibility. Optimization: respect accrual through non-flashy acts.]
"Stop. Talking."
"Stop… talking," Mei echoed under her breath, dragging a coarse blanket from a peg and tossing it at me. "Good. Stop talking and go. If Steward Li sees you, he'll make you scrub stones till your bones liquefy. Jin, go home. Ren, if you're going to pick fights, pick them with a better face."
"Noted," I said faithfully. I pulled the blanket over my shoulders like armor and set my hands to sweeping the duck feathers that had drifted under the oven, a task that would let me pretend I had control over anything at all.
Jin lingered, eyes still large, apology guarding the edges. "Can I, can I help you?" he asked.
"Eat what you can, keep the rest, and run fast when you hear the word thief," I said, which was advice and not advice. He nodded. He didn't run.
A lantern bobbed at the far end of the yard, dropping light over the wet stones, the puddles like coins. Boots clicked. Not the sloppy, swaggering beat of boys. The measured tread that made people square their shoulders without meaning to.
Mei's mouth flattened. "Ren," she said. Warning layered into my name.
[Opportunity detected: Higher-standing entity approaching. Potential respect source.]
"Don't you dare," I told the voice. "We're done for the night."
The lantern came with a man I'd seen before in glimpses, a silhouette on the high path: white robe, black hair tied in the river knot, a cord around his waist holding a stack of bamboo slips as neat as bones. He was older than me by a dozen years maybe, but nowhere near old. He had the tired, dangerous calm of someone who could afford to be bored.
His gaze flicked over the yard and skipped like a stone across all the surfaces, Mei's speckled apron, the line of pots, the weeds in the crack by the drain, before landing on me. On the blanket. On the blood at the corner of my mouth.
Mei bent at the waist just enough. "Senior Li."
"Steward," he corrected mildly. He had a voice like a sleeve brushed across silk. "And you are awake at an hour when my chores ledger says you are usually unconscious."
Mei said nothing. She had learned that our words were rationed.
The steward looked at me again. Not hard. Not kind. "You," he said. "Ren. The one who scrubs the latrines."
My ears burned. Everyone always loved to say what you did as if it was your real name. I wrapped the blanket tighter. "Yes."
"I require a runner," he said, as if we'd been conversing all along. He held out a narrow strip of bamboo tied with two strands of faded red string. The knot was the same as Jin's. "Someone with no one to report him and nothing better to do. The outer instructors are busy with the Sun Trials. You are not busy."
Jin sucked in a breath so small it might have been the oven. My tongue did something traitorous in my mouth. It said: "I am busy."
Steward Li's eyebrow lifted by a hair's breadth. "Scrubbing," he said. Not a question.
"Yes," I said, and I wanted to make a joke about essential work and the hygiene of the immortal path. I didn't. Jokes stuck in the throats of men like him.
He let the bamboo slip dangle. "There is a stipend. Two copper. Perhaps three, if you run and return unbroken."
Two copper meant rice that wasn't husk. Oil for a week. The stew master's stale buns in the morning and maybe less swill in the evening. Two copper meant Jin's sister's knot might hold a little longer.
[Mission prompt: Accept the runner task. Target: deliver message to Inner Library, receive stamp. Potential respect sources: 3. Reward synergy with daily mission.]
I closed my eyes and pressed my thumb hard to the tender place under my ear. The inner pressure of the system words scraped a new rawness I didn't have a name for. I didn't want it. I didn't want any climbing. Respect was a net. I had a way of wriggling out of nets. But also: two copper. And also: if I did it, perhaps they would leave me a little alone. Or perhaps the opposite. Opposites liked me.
Jin's hand ghosted at my sleeve and disappeared. It was a tiny, loyal thing, that gesture. It hurt more than any kick.
Mei looked at the space where my eyes would meet hers if I did such things and then at the ground between us, which was safer. "Take it," she said without moving her lips.
I took the bamboo slip. It was smooth and cold and it smelled faintly of river reeds and ink.
"Good," Steward Li said. "If you return, I will give you three."
"If," I said.
"Everything is if." He turned on his heel, lantern painting the yard with pale, careful arcs. He didn't look back. He didn't need to.