They drifted toward the living room's back wall where the shelf held its little row of frames. Raizen's eye caught on one in the middle because it was older, sun-licked at the edges and worn in the way of things that had been handled often. Seven figures stood shoulder to shoulder in the picture, the background a training ground that might have been the Academy before the current glass and scarlet. The seven wore no uniform anyone would recognize, just gear that looked like it belonged on them. Kori was there, younger by a handful of years and the distance of a whole life, chin up, tape on her knuckles even then. Three of the faces had been scribbled over with black marker, lines pressed hard enough to leave a groove. It didn't ruin the photo. It turned it into a statement.
Raizen found himself closer to it than he had intended. "Who is this?"
Arashi's posture shifted by one notch toward formal. He did not bow to the picture, but he could have. "The Phalanx," he said. "The ones left alive. Kori will throw a cup at me if I try to say something… Discouraging… About them"
Kori ignored the comment. Her voice slightly changed. Not much. Enough. She stepped in beside Raizen and took the frame down, thumb at the edge where the wood had splintered a little over time.
"Teachers would have you recite myths in class," she said. "I won't. The short version is better. We were the City's answer when answers had to be fast. We ran the stairs nobody else ran. We held the lines nobody else wanted. We were not the strongest individually. Except for me. Obviously."
Arashi made a soft sound that was very close to a laugh. "Yeah, Obviously"
Kori lifted the picture and pointed, not quite touching the glass. "Headmaster," she said, and her tone did another tiny shift, respect threaded with affection. "Third seat. Old even then. He carries a sword named nothing at all because he says swords don't require names. If he wants to split a building, he reminds the building it can be split and then he shows it how. When he tells you to duck, you will already be on the ground because the air will have learned from him too."
Hikari leaned in. "Third."
"Third," Kori confirmed. "The numbers are not a ladder. Not necessarily. We were ranked by strength but everyone had their own role and strengths. They're a map. He is our map." She moved her finger. "Kenzo. Fourth. Hammer the size of your dreams when you are fifteen and think you are invincible. He laughs with his whole chest. Hits with his whole heart. He doesn't understand why things break and he loves them for breaking anyway. When he plants his feet, earthquakes apologize."
Raizen felt an involuntary smile and didn't fight it. Kori's words drew people better than any framed light could. And as she was talking about Kenzo, her ears slightly turned a shade of pink.
"Osamu," Kori said next, tapping a figure that never seemed to see a grin in his life "Sixth. Shield that is more wall than shield. He believes in forward motion. He will ask you to hold something and then it will be the sky. He is what loyalty would look like if it could pick up a bus."
She didn't point at herself, but Arashi made a gentle, unkind noise that lived between a cough and a smirk. "And the second," he prompted.
She scowled at him without heat. "I don't like talking about myself."
"You adore talking about yourself," Arashi corrected. "You simply don't enjoy being accurate."
Kori huffed and flicked her eyes at the photo, then rolled them. "Second. Currently the strongest alive because math is rude. None of that matters. What matters is that I am very good at winning and very bad at letting people clap for it."
"You are very good at letting people clap," Keahi said softly from behind them. "You just leave the room while they do it."
Kori pretended to examine a speck on the glass again. Her pink deepened a shade. "Anyway. That is enough ego for one afternoon. The Headmaster called us back because he looked at this year's entrance cohort and said to himself: ah, finally, chaos! Nothing beats a holiday on a jet in these moments. Lotus Academy likes to behave. Neoshima doesn't. So now we are teachers, which is a word that makes me itchy."
Hikari's gaze went to the three black scribbles and stayed there without pushing. "And the others."
"Gone," Kori said. No joke in it. No elaboration. Just the word placed down. She slid the frame back on the shelf and straightened it so it tilted like all the others, not quite right and therefore perfect. "When it is time to know, you'll see for yourselves."
Raizen let the silence sit until it belonged, then nodded like he understood something that did not yet have a name. He looked again at the younger Kori in the picture, shoulders set, mischief already waiting in the tilt of her mouth. He looked at the pink that still warmed the real Kori's ears. He looked at Hikari, who watched grief like it was a new language she intended to learn well so she did not misuse it.
"Tour continues," Kori said briskly, clapping once as if to wake the room from a nap. "Attic, before the couch eats you. No, I'm serious, its folding mechanism has whims"
They took the stairs at a normal pace, the only pace that was normal. Raizen's irritation with his own body had thinned to patience by the third step. The wood underfoot, old and solid, had the quiet give of something that had been walked by friends. Hikari hovered two steps behind, not offering her arm, but leaning forward a fraction each time as if she could catch him with balance alone. Kori bounced ahead, flicked on a switch, and the attic warmed with soft light.
Two mattresses tucked under the slope of the roof, quilts folded tight as if they had been waiting to be unfolded by exactly them. A small round window peered at the courtyard and the city beyond in a frame of vine leaves. Boxes lined one wall, arranged in military neatness and then covered in fabric like a stage waiting on its cue.
"This is beautiful," Hikari breathed. She went to the quilts and adjusted an already straight edge, then stopped herself and folded her fingers together.
"It's small," Kori said. "It's safe. You'll pretend for the first three nights that the sounds are strange and then on the fourth night you will realize it is the same sounds as always, just telling you something new."
Raizen set his small bag by the bed nearest the window. He did it carefully, not because the bag required care, but because he had decided that if he couldn't control the speed of his body he would control the grace. The act of putting something down gently felt like a victory.
"Tea is ready when you want it. Or food. Or both. Kori is banned from using the spice drawer unsupervised." Kori said, sniffing.
"You once somehow managed to make pasta taste like laundry," Arashi called up from below.
"They were very clean, and I was trying… a new combination" Kori shot back, and Raizen could hear the smile in it.
They came down into a room that felt more like theirs than it had ten minutes earlier. The couch had ever so slightly shifted its posture into an invitation. The plant had decided to throw a shadow like a hand over the wall, fingers spread, protective.
Kori leaned on the back of the couch and ran through rules like a general making sure her army knew where the latrines were. "Curfew is a myth. Noise is fine until someone says it is not. If you wanna cry, the stairs are excellent because the acoustics there make it sound like a storm and then we can all pretend it is weather. If you need quiet, I will yell at Arashi until he dramatically storms out and then even more dramatically returns with ice cream. If you can't sleep, I keep a deck of cards somewhere around here. I'd bet that some were lost in the process of fiercely battling in a game of poker for the last dumpling."
They ate a quick, mismatched lunch of rice bowls and grilled vegetables that Keahi executed with precise shyness, handing plates with averted eyes like the food might be insulted by too much attention. Hikari said thank you too many times. Raizen said it once and meant it with his whole weight. Arashi delivered a single commentary on the merits of presentation barely dodging Kori flicking a grain of rice at his forehead. Keahi, told him that presentation was excellent actually, and he shut up.
Conversation circled back around the arena because all conversations wanted to. Arashi dissected a particular exchange where Hikari had feinted high and reversed grip, and Hikari tried to wave it off. Keahi asked if the dash had felt like fire to Raizen and he said no, it felt like a door opening onto a fall that went forward instead of down. Kori misquoted it later as it felt like tripping stylishly and Raizen decided not to correct her.
Arashi lifted his head, not looking away from his food. "Hey, Kori!"
"Mmm?"
"Who is going to be our teacher," he asked, tone deliberately casual and falling exactly where he wanted it to land, "and sensei, at the Academy?"
Kori didn't even pretend to consider it. She rested her chin on her hands and kept chewing, whilst also trying a grin.
"Eesh ghona tuh b'e"
"Swallow before making a statement…" Keahi rolled her eyes
"Obviously," Kori swallowed audibly, drawing the syllables out like a magician drawing scarves from a sleeve, "it's going to be me."
Raizen met Hikari's eyes over the table. The look they traded was not rehearsed and not accidental. It carried the last two days and the weight of whatever came next and also the absurdity of the universe arranging itself into this exact configuration of people and furniture and tea and rules about numbers.
"Obviously," Hikari said, and laughed under her breath.
"Obviously," Raizen, Keahi and Arashi echoed at the same time.