A few days passed. Physically, I was about where I'd been before the Yokai hit me: ribs still raw, legs still aching, but somehow I could walk. That was a surprise.
Ito said I had a strong body—that I'd become a great Taoist. So I guess I'm already pretty good at this, I thought, though hearing it out loud felt different than feeling it.
Akira pushed my black-and-white hair back and stared at himself in the mirror. A pale crown-scar ringed my scalp like a brand. The mark on my chest—if it had ever been anything more than a birthmark—had felt like a promise.
When it started to fade, I panicked.
If it disappears, maybe the promise disappears too, I told myself. So I did something stupid: I grabbed a knife and cut, trying to force the scar back. It worked. But the other kids at the orphanage got scared. So I was thrown out.
Now Akira pulled a shirt over his head—plain white, bold black letters across the back: KING. The fabric settled against his ribs. The word felt less like arrogance and more like a challenge I'd shoved at the world. "KING shirts, never thought I would be wearing luxury for training."
After I recovered, they moved me to a Yoru military base outside the city where I'd taken that bodyguard job—some city whose name I couldn't recall if my life depended on it.
Akira eased the door open and stepped into a long, echoing hall. Two teens were there—one leaning against the wall, the other fiddling with a blade at his hip.
"You're Akira, right?" the girl said, stepping forward. Blue hair tied back in a messy knot, a grin that was more daring than friendly. "I'm Sora. This is Gaku."
She shoved the boy toward Akira with a flick of her wrist.
He weirdly played with his hands before saying his name, "Gaku, nice to meet you." The boy said Shakley.
Akira shook Sora's hand aggressively, not knowing how to shake a hand properly. "Eh, thought you were supposed to be strong," she said as she squeezed Akira's hand almost to the point of crushing it.
She shrugged and stepped back. Gaku bowed again, quieter this time—apologetic for whatever Sora had poured onto Akira.
Ito padded up behind me and ruffled my shoulder like a veteran might ruffle a recruit. "She'll warm up," he said, then led him and Akira down the hall.
The door at the end opened into a wide dojo. Sunlight sliced through high windows and landed on the floorboards. In the center, like a deliberate imperfection, a single small plant pushed through a circle of stones.
"This is where you'll learn Tao, although i expect it to take more than a day." Ito said. He let the word sit between us. The plant looked ordinary—green, stubborn—but it hummed with a faint light. "This plant only grows from Tao. If it absorbs too much, it returns that Tao to the user."
He looked at a door a few leaps from the Dojo. "Since actually teaching you Tao won't take so long, I wanted to tell you about how Tao works. Most Taoists are born with some innate talent. If you lack it, learning Tao takes forever. Sora has no natural gift. She learned through sheer determination. That's why she expects talented Taoists to be stronger than her."
"Good for her," Akira said aloud. "But it's kinda dumb, even if we train the same amount, she will still be weaker than me."
Ito cut me off with a patient, almost tired shake of his head. "Yeah, so do you really think she trains the same amount as prodigies like you?"
Akira crouched near the plant and let the silence stretch. The dojo smelled like old wood and sweat and the kind of discipline you could see in the posture of soldiers who'd been drilled into readiness.
"All right," I said finally. "Let's start, then. I have catching up to do."