The landlord's son opened the townhouse with a key that squeaked like it hadn't made up its mind yet. Dust drifted in flurries through the shutters; the gutter outside sulked in a crooked line. The place smelled of old wood, old water, and a promise that would keep if someone held up their end.
Trixie lifted her slate with the satisfaction of a clerk facing a solvable ledger. "Shutter sticks; gutter loose; beam flexes by the hearth; ceiling joist good enough to hang a light bag if we brace."
Taro set a palm to the doorframe and breathed. The frame breathed back—straight enough, not proud. "We'll make it honest."
They walked through the rooms. She tapped the baseboards with a knuckle and wrote 'no rot'; he pressed his shoulder into the hearth beam and felt it agree to carry if someone asked nicely. In the corner of the main room, a ceiling joist ran true across plaster that had seen better summers.
"Hook there," Trixie said, tail making one quick punctuation before it remembered propriety.
"Rope there," he answered, pointing to the wall stud that would take a brace.
They set the day like a fight: warm up, work, cool down.
They started outside. Taro held the ladder with his hips stacked, ribs closing on the exhale; Trixie worked the gutter bracket with a mallet and a patience that made the metal remember its job.
"Don't overstrike," he said up to the sky.
"I won't," she said, soft and sure. The bracket bit wood. The long run straightened under her hands. When she leaned back to sight the line, he stood and anchored the ladder with a palm at her heel.
"You're steady," she said.
"You're precise," he said.
They both pretended the compliment hadn't done what compliments do.
Recognized Training (utility).Anchor Step (Concept) — better balance while bracing load on exhale.
Inside, they lifted the hearth beam a finger with a jack and wigged a brace under it on the out-breath. The floor stopped telling stories underfoot. They scrubbed stone until the hearth smelled like wet slate instead of neglect. When they straightened, shoulders brushed. Neither of them moved away in a hurry. But both enjoyed the quick warmth from each other despite the cold hearth lacking any heat.
Effort Acknowledged.
Blessed Growth (+2 to all stats).
"Lunch," Trixie decreed, because Rule Four had begun to run the house as surely as the gutter did.
They ate bread and stew on upturned crates with the window open to honest air. After the bowls were licked clean and repurposed in the washbasin, Taro buckled his guard, Trixie checked her buckler strap, and they went below for coin.
F2 met them with its cool, clean patience. They ran Niya's flank instead of heroics. Wolves made work; a warg pair tested Trixie's high-low and found Buckler Guard I had learned a new answer. At a bench that still smelled of bad ideas, a goblin alchemist tried to own the rhythm of the fight; Counter-Tempo took it back, and the crooked retort token went into Taro's pouch without drama.
He capped Surge at three—ribs still remembered lessons—and let Guard Melt do the softening where a wall wanted to pretend it was a wall. Trixie's cadence kept the file from stepping into the second tripline nobody points at.
They left with sacks that sounded like a plan.
Combat Adaptation Registered.
Blessed Growth (+2 to all stats).
Call-and-Breath I (progress ↑).
Kelda thumped coin like she meant to teach numbers manners. "Two dire—twenty-four. Ten wolves—thirty. Ears and fangs—ten. Token—forty. Total—eighty-four silver. Spend it on rope before your ceiling finds religion."
"We were thinking rope," Taro said.
"Good. When the storm hits, I want gutters holding up more than swearing."
They bought rope, hook, sand sacks, nails (−16s), then oil, thread, strap, wax (−12s). On the way back, a second-hand shop yielded a straw tick (−8s), linen (−2s), and a rough blanket (−4s). Purse math ran itself in Trixie's neat hand on the slate.
"Start eighty-six," she murmured. "Minus forty… forty-six remain. Add guild eighty-four… one gold, thirty silver. Keep ten for food, four for lamp oil. Leaves one gold, sixteen silver."
He looked at her like a man admiring neat footwork. "You make days into stairs."
"You make stairs feel shorter," she said, then blushed at herself for saying it out loud.
They set the hook with the care you give to anything that might fall on your head. Taro breathed out and drove the auger. Trixie braced the ladder, one hand steady on the rung, the other ready with the bolt. The rope hissed through his palm; the bag—three sand sacks inside a stitched canvas—rose, turned, and hung.
He tapped it with two fingers. "Housewarming."
She smacked it with the buckler and grinned when it answered with a clean, honest thud.
They did ten minutes of touch-work only: Guard Melt flick-flick in one breath; Call-and-Breath cadence under a window that let in the good light. Sweat made dark commas where the pauldrons sat. Trixie reached in to tighten the strap a hole; he ducked and let her, very aware of the closeness and very unwilling to call it anything uncareful.
Technique Progress.
Anchor Step (Novice) — improved stance under overhead load.
Call-and-Breath I (progress → 70%).
When they stopped, the room felt more theirs than the gold ever had.
"Bed?" Trixie asked, practical as a ledger, ears tipping with something that wasn't only practical.
"Bed," Taro said.
They unrolled the straw tick by the hearth where the floor was most honest. Trixie shook the linen out—sun-warm from the shop—and smoothed it flat with both palms. The blanket went on, rough but willing.
"Rest," she said, the word gaining weight in her mouth. She looked at his shoulders, then at the new hook, then back to his shoulders. "You're wearing the morning and the dungeon. Let me… help you ease them off your load."
He started to demur; the truth of the ache made the decision. He unbuckled the face guard, set it aside; pauldrons, bracers, gloves; then tugged the sweat-damp shirt over his head. The air touched his skin like a blessing; cool draft from the window, warm spill from the late sun.
Trixie's ears colored at the edges. Her tail swept quietly but warmly, her eyes trailed the toned muscle, a map of a man who knows effort and no shortcuts. With a smile she refocused on her task.
She set a small jar on the hearth—simple oil that smelled faintly of pine and something sweet—and warmed it between her hands. "Lie," she said, gentle but not asking.
He stretched prone on the linen. Muscles showed their day's story in ridges and knots; old gym hours had carved him, and the new world had been content to keep carving. He let his breath flatten to a low tide.
Her hands found his back.
She began broad and patient, palms gliding from the base of his neck to the belt line, not pressing yet—teaching skin and muscle that help had arrived. Oil caught light; her fingers made clean lines. The first real pressure came with the next exhale: thumbs along the spine gutters, then heel of the hand across the shoulder blades. He groaned once, low and honest, the sound of a knot deciding what to do with its life.
"Too much?" Her voice was a whisper that thought it was alone.
"Perfect," he managed, a little hoarse.
She worked the traps with small circles, then slid to the lats, following the grain as if reading a book. Every so often she paused, listened with her hands, and adjusted a degree left, a finger-width lower. The room made new sounds—cloth creak, soft breath, the tiniest clicks as something let go.
"Ribs feel like they argue with you here," she murmured, smoothing along the angles he'd taught to close like a book. "Breathe for me."
He did. On the exhale she pressed a hair deeper. The pain was warm, then not pain, then a feeling like a door opening in a house he'd been living in for years without noticing that room.
"You're good at this," he said to the floor.
"I like making lists," she said, and he could hear her smile. "Bodies are a kind of list. That and when you have three older brothers who all work hard as guardsmen you learn how to take care of hardened muscles full of use at a young age."
When her forearms had given what they could, she wiped her palms, hesitated, and then stood lightly on the tick, one foot testing the edge of his thigh. "I can walk if you like," she offered, cheeks pink, ears a tell as her toes drummed a bit against his thigh, eager to use what she can to help ease his tension and to test if he accepts her help.
"You won't break me," he said, amused and very not joking.
She climbed onto his back like a dancer finding a mark—careful, balanced, toes finding purchase where muscle wanted it, not where pride did. Her feet were warm from the constant movement of the day, but soft from her caring for them where it counted. The first press of her heel into the long run of his hamstring made a sound move through him that was not a word. She shifted—heel to glute, toe along the ridge of his ilium, a light step across to the other side. She rode his breath, pressing on the exhale, letting up on the inhale, learning him as she went.
He felt the flex in her ankle, the articulate roll of her toes along his erectors, a heel kissing a stubborn knot beside the scapula. When she crossed the blades she used the ball of her foot and a tiny rocking motion that coaxed rather than conquered. It felt absurdly good—useful in the way only things learned honestly can be. She did another pass, her toes and heel gliding along his back as she switched feet to keep her grip and pressure sure and fresh. he enjoyed the sensation with groans and exhales of relaxation and gratitude. She smiled at his non verbal thanks as she saw the next place to tackle with her skilled feet.
"Shoulders?" she asked, voice a little breathless from the balancing.
"Please."
She set one foot between his shoulder blades, one on the far side of a trap, and let her weight sink a thumb's worth, then two. His exhale met her heel and something unwound. He made a sound he would not make in the gym and did not apologize for now. The groan of borderline pleasure hit and made her ears twitch and her tail wag in joy at how she made him feel. She then checked to make sure it was the right sound as he made another to her ears enjoyment.
"Tell me if I'm too much," she said, and then as an assurance to herself: "Tell me if I'm not enough."
"You're exactly right," he said into the linen, and meant every word.
She walked him like that for long minutes—heels, toes, ball, a careful chorus over back, shoulders, thighs. When she stepped down, she kneeled and finished with palms again, smoothing oil along the lines she'd changed, sealing something he hadn't had the words for.
She sat back on her heels and looked at him. The quiet here wasn't empty. It had weight—two breaths, synced without trying.
"You're kind," she said, very softly, like a secret she'd decided to keep and share at the same time. "You carry it everywhere and try to hide it behind work."
He turned his head on the linen to see her. "You're brave," he said. "Quietly. That's the kind that lasts."
They looked until looking became too much like a promise and both remembered to blink.
"Rest," she said, scandalized by herself and pleased. "Or I will start a new list and it will be a list of scoldings."
He laughed, rolled to his side, and made room. The tick was small; the blanket made every inch an argument and then a truce. She slipped under, linen soft against new leather at her shoulders, and nestled with practiced propriety that betrayed itself only in a tail that forgot to behave exactly twice.
By the window, the new bag swung a little and then decided to be still.
They woke to the light changing its mind about the hour. They washed, buckled, and checked the rope's knots with hands that remembered having held each other for other reasons.
On the way to the guild, a chalk notice waited under the bell's shadow:
F2 instability confirmed. F3 probe at dawn (Monk preferred). Storm due in two days—secure gutters.
Niya drifted out of a doorway as if she'd been part of it. Her eyes ticked to the face guard, then to Trixie's buckler grip, then back.
"If a door doesn't want to be opened," she said, "bring breath, not bravado."
"We'll bring both," Taro said. He felt the bag in his shoulder, the strap she had adjusted, the house that had taken a piece of their day and given it back in kind.
Trixie's fingers found the back of his gauntlet for an instant, exactly as long as you might steady a step on a stair you meant to climb together.
"Storm first," she said, glancing up at their gutter line in her mind. "Then the door."
He nodded. Breath before coin. Breath before doors. Breath before everything.
Status — Taro
Class: Monk I
Title: Martial God's Champion (SSS)
HP:620 base (10× END 62) → 1120 effective (END 112 during combat/training)
Ki:55
Base Stats(Ch.9 → after Ch.10 day)
STR: 62 → 64
END: 60 → 62
AGI: 58 → 60
SPIRIT: 39 → 41
MIND: 36 → 38
LUCK: 35 → 37
Ki: 53 → 55
Effective Physicals(SSS +50 active)STR 114 | END 112 | AGI 110
New/Updated
Anchor Step (Novice): steadier stance while bracing overhead/ladder on exhale.
Call-and-Breath I (progress ↑).
Blessed Growth: +2 all (house work + dungeon loop).
Team
Call-and-Breath I, Cover Call I (with Trixie).
Trixie — Notes
Buckler Guard I (timing refined); Porter Brace I.
House ledger competence dangerously high; massage competence confirmed by grateful groans.
Ledger
Start: 86s
Supplies (oil/thread/strap/wax): −12s
House kit (rope/hook/sand sacks/nails): −16s
Bedroll basics (tick/linen/blanket): −14s
Midday haul (F2): +84s
End purse: ~1g 16s
Planner — Tomorrow
Dawn: secure gutters before storm; light wall drills (maintenance).
Late morning: F2 patrol (short loop), no overuse of Surge.
Dusk: gear oil; bag touch-work; early sleep for F3 probe at dawn.
And because some victories prefer to whisper, they walked home with nothing grand to say—just a new hook in the ceiling, a straight gutter waiting for weather, and a bed that had learned their weight.