The smell came first. Not smoke, not dust, not the copper bite of blood that had rimmed the edge of Raizen's last memory. Antiseptic and lemon, cool air that hummed through a clean vent, and the soft thrum of machinery hidden behind walls. Not like the Underworks… The sound is clearer. He rose toward that hum like a diver breaking for air.
Light pressed against his eyelids. He pried them open.
A white ceiling waited above him, not plain white but veined with hair-thin threads of luminite that pulsed in a slow, reassuring rhythm. The panels were cut like leaves and fitted together with the precision of a clock. Every pulse sent a faint blue reflection skimming the polished floor. Somewhere, a diagnostic node clicked and exhaled. A second, gentler rhythm whispered at his bedside - his vitals scrolling in patient, green glyphs.
He tried to turn his head and the world sloshed, heavy and delayed. The pillow crackled under his cheek. Cool weight slid a little on his forehead.
"Careful..."
A familiar face was inches above his, just like the first time he saw her awake.
Hikari leaned back from his face into a chair that had clearly lost a battle with sleep. One knee pressed against the bed frame, hair not quite contained, pale strands with the same black ends softening the angle of her cheek. In her hands, she held a sealed foil packet and a square of fresh cooling gel. She peeled it, slow and exact, then lifted the old pad from his brow with two fingers and replaced it with the new.
"There," she murmured, like she was convincing the air. "You were getting warm again."
Raizen blinked until Hikari came into focus and the ceiling stopped pretending to melt. His throat felt like he had swallowed dust. He gathered the edges of his voice and found something that sounded like him.
"I was dreaming…" he said. "About winning."
"You did." The corner of her mouth twitched, torn between relief and scolding. "You beat me with a very surprising move, I have to say! You dashed like lightning itself. Then you very dramatically lost to gravity. Fainting was not a great follow up, but I guess that winning against 3-4 of the strongest contestants made you push your limits…"
He let cold soak into his skin. The last images braided themselves at the back of his head. The golden snap of speed that felt like tearing through a membrane. Hikari's staff lit by blue veins that chased every swing. The arena cracking, a roar under their feet as the floor slumped and spat rubble. His cut landing true. Her suit flooding from dark orange to red.
"I feel heavy," he admitted. "Like someone poured iron into my bones."
"That is because you used your body faster than your body was designed to." She flicked a glance at what looked like a medical tablet on her lap, thumbed it awake, and scrolled through a crisp list. "You were out eighteen hours and nineteen minutes. Dehydration, muscle strain, mild luminite overuse. That's what they told me… And I quote, please stop frightening my instruments with your intensity."
"You kept a log?"
"Of course. I tracked your every hour." Her chin lifted a fraction, then immediately dipped, as if she realized she had sounded too proud. "I didn't know what they would need, so I wrote down everything. When you moved. What you said. You don't talk much in your sleep, by the way, which was disappointing."
"What... What did I say?"
She pretended to consult the tablet. "A lot of grunts. And water. Mostly random things… And my name, once." Pink rose at the tips of her ears. "Probably to tell me to go away because you were busy being unconscious."
His smile found him without permission. It tugged at his face and made some complaint in his jaw flare.
"Thank you," he said.
She didn't respond. Her smile did.
Hikari was strangely open, when it was just them two. She talked freely, and talked quite a lot. The room around them was gently alive. A translucent window showed the curve of the Academy's medical tower, the city beyond hazed with morning. They could finally look out the window and see the cloud blanket, the sky. The bed's rail was folded down, and a white warm cover sat carefully tucked at his hips. A bag of clear fluid hung from a slim armature, its slow drip ticking time.
Hikari swept the old gel pad to a disposal slot and tugged the blanket into alignment like a soldier setting a uniform seam. Her hands were steady, but her eyes kept flicking to his face, checking breath, color, something invisible in the space between his brows.
"Does anything hurt?" she asked. "Do you feel sick? Any stabbing, burning, buzzing, or the strange feeling like your limbs are ringing?"
"Ringing?"
"Enough to notice. The dash looked like it shook the world around you and then also your insides. You completely destroyed the nearby building! Aaand... You didn't reay look like you were enjoying it, which I suppose is how winning often looks."
"It felt like opening a door I didn't know was there." He tried to lift a hand and discovered his arm had a personal relationship with gravity. He settled for flexing his fingers.
"Gold light in the corners of my eyes. A ton of heat behind my knees. Then there was nothing between me and where I wanted to be."
"That's not terrifying at all," she said, deadpan. The slate beeped and she made another neat entry. "Please don't do it again until you can handle it..."
"Alright... Anyways, it was the first time I ever tried..."
She took a breath like she had been holding one for a long time and set the tablet aside. For a second, her awkwardness leaked through the seam of her concern. She reached as if to adjust the blanket again, then changed course and smoothed hair from his forehead. The gesture surprised both of them. She withdrew her hand and busied herself with the empty foil.
"I thought you wouldn't wake up," she said to the packet. "I mean, I knew you would, logically."
But logic and fear aren't friends.
He turned his head. It cost him, but he did it anyway. "I'm sorry I scared you."
"Do not be sorry." She met his eyes. Whatever humor had been a shield a moment ago softened. "Win again. Just don't put yourself in danger like that..."
A chime ticked from the doorway. The glass partition hissed open.
Kori stepped in, accompanied by the pleasant cooling wave of hallway air and the smug aura of someone who knows she has good news and better jokes. She wore Academy standard - dark jacket, cuffs pushed up, collar skewed like it was allergic to sitting straight. Her knuckles weren't taped, not as always. The medics behind her gave up trying to stop her and retreated with dignified resignation.
"Oh look," Kori announced around the pastry, then took it out so words could do their job. "Sleeping Beauty: the Original and Sleeping Beauty 2.0!" Her eyes took them both in, bright with mischief. "Am I interrupting something, or can I continue being my charming self?"
Hikari straightened so fast her chair squeaked. "We were discussing medical data."
"Hot." Kori said, then approached the bed. Up close, she smelled like laundry powder and cinnamon. She took a bite of pastry.
"So. You two broke the arena. Half of it. I am billing you emotionally."
"Did we win anything besides emotional debt?"
"You won me not chewing you out for another thirty seconds," Kori grinn. "Also a lot of applause, some very dramatic gasps, a new fan club that is already arguing about which of you is the brains and which is the chaos, a spot in the Academy proper, assuming you like being pushed down more stairs... Stuff like that" She waggled her pastry. "And you, Raizen, won the right to sleep through three separate debriefs. Heroic, as your very devoted nurse documented."
Hikari's ears turned a suspicious shade of pink. "I am not a nurse."
"You are a terrifying, polite hurricane," Kori corrected. "Which is close."
Hikari opened her mouth, closed it, and selected a safer target. "How much did we break?"
"Enough that the maintenance crew got to use the big foam sprayers," Kori said happily. "They live for that. It's alright, though, the setup was already scratched, old and rusty." She took another bite, then caught the way Raizen was watching her like someone at the edge of a mystery.
"You want to ask it, so ask it."
"The leaderboard," Raizen said. The word settled the air. He had not realized how badly he wanted to hear it until it was there, solid and real. "Where did everyone land?"
Kori chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, and flicked crumbs from her fingers. Very official, very ceremonial, very... Kori.
"Order of heroes and gremlins," she said, like she was opening a festival roster. "At the top, Raizen. I have to admit, you impressed me there! I'd guess you unlocked a solid... what? 20%? Anyways. Then Hikari, right under you, grumpy because she hates second place only slightly less than she hates paperwork."
"I don't hate paperwork!" Hikari exclaimed, affronted. "I hate poorly formatted paperwork."
"Next, Arashi." Kori tipped an invisible hat. "Keahi after him, because fire makes everything look like a highlight. Then Lynea. Very clean, very efficient, I don't think she even scuffed her boots. Ichiro with his own share of personal modifications to the arena. Esen, who tried three new strategies in ten minutes and two of them worked. Then Iris." Kori rolled her eyes. "Our little mage with the healer glow. Good heart, lots of brilliant flares, used her luminite to patch strangers mid chaos and somehow still racked up assists. The judges got sentimental. She is going to be insufferable for a week."
Hikari made a small, diplomatic sound that might have been agreement or basic courtesy doing its best. "She did keep the casualty count low."
"Which is why she is in and why I am buying her a donut later and telling her to grow a spine." Kori licked sugar from her thumb. "After Iris comes Saffi, by special recommendation. She did not fight and will not fight. Her test is different."
Raizen raised an eyebrow. "Different how?"
"Different like it is none of your business and she will tell you if she wants a thousand questions," Kori said. "Which she probably won't, at least not until she figures out whether you are feral or just very intense." She popped the last piece of pastry into her mouth and spoke around it without dignity. "And finally, crawling in at the bottom, Feris."
Hikari blinked. "She survived the cutoff?"
"Somehow," Kori said. "She booked enough points early by tackling anything that moved and swinging that mace around. Then she picked the wrong person and got cooked by a certain minion I keep around for entertainment. But points are points. The board is the board."
Raizen remembered the crackle of heat in his palms, the way Feris's grin hadn't made it to her eyes. He could still feel the echo of his dash in the soft ache of his calves. He did not quite enjoy the memory. He didn't hate it, either. It just sat there, heavy and complicated.
"Who missed by a hair?" he asked.
"Two faces you will not remember next week and one I will not tell you because it will ruin my fun later," Kori said, back to breezy. "Come onn, Don't make that look at me! Destiny is very fond of circles - let's hope you'll meet them again"
Hikari picked up the tablet again, more to hold something than to read. Her shoulders had dropped three degrees since Kori's arrival. Concern never left her, but it had somewhere to lean. She checked the drip, checked Raizen's pulse like she didn't trust the machine entirely, then sat. The chair surrendered a soft sigh. For a moment they were a triangle - patient, watcher, jester - and the room was big enough for breath.
Outside the window, Neoshima morning sharpened. The medical tower cast a long blade of shadow across the Academy's inner courts.
Kori watched Raizen finish a cup of water. When he set the empty glass on the table, she nudged it into perfect alignment with the edge like she could not help herself.
"Right," she said, tone brightening. "Logistics. You are officially in. That means less dying in public and more dying in controlled environments where I can laugh at you and then help. There is orientation, which I will skip because I hate sitting in chairs, and gear issue, which you will not skip because I like seeing new people overestimate how much weight they can carry."
"Do we stay here tonight?" Hikari asked. The question was practical and quiet, but it held a line of hope. "In the medical wing?"
"Not unless you intend to propose to a bed," Kori said. "They wants the room for a sprain that thinks it is a disaster."
"We can arrange somewhere else," Hikari said, already pivoting. "Dormitories, maybe. Or the lower East quarter has short let rooms and if we take the tram early we can make it before the later traffic and then we can be on time tomorrow and then we will not be tired and then Raizen won't faint again."
"I am not going to faint again," Raizen said, then hedged. "Soon."
Hikari gave him a look that translated to "just you dare!".
Kori crossed her ankles, considering them as if they were a puzzle she had intended to solve later but had decided would be more fun now.
"Where we will be staying?" Hikari repeated, more specific this time. She glanced at Raizen and back to Kori.
Kori grinned. She lived for moments like this - the small drumroll before the cymbal.
"Obviously at my place," she said. "With Keahi and Arashi."
There was a heartbeat of silence while the sentence hit all the corners of the room.
Hikari blinked. "Obviously?"
"Obviously?" Raizen asked at the same time, because when Kori sounded that certain, resistance felt like trying to stop weather.
Kori hopped off the bed footboard, smug and satisfied.
"Great. Pack your dignity and your things, the few things you have. Keahi cooks once a week and it is war, Arashi sleeps like he is posing for a painting, and my couch bites, so what can I say,
Welcome to the Lotus Academy!" She saluted with two fingers and backed toward the door.
"Oh, and Raizen? If you are going to invent new ways to break physics, please warn the medics first so they can put on her their face."
The glass partition whispered shut behind her.
Hikari exhaled, a quiet sound that curled into a laugh before she could stop it. Raizen found himself laughing too, even though his ribs did not love the idea. It hurt in a clean way, like something was finally stretching the right direction.
"Obviously," Hikari said again, as if the word might rearrange to something sensible on the second try.
"Obviously," he echoed. The ceiling's luminite veins pulsed. The morning shifted brighter. For the first time since the arena, the heaviness in his limbs felt less like iron and more like weight he could learn to carry.