Chapter 55: Not-so-polite Vanishing
They met before the bells remembered they had a job.
The Eon hall held the golden light of almost-morning like water in a bowl. Light came in thin, obedient stripes through the high windows. Veins of luminite climbed the ribs. The floor was all dark plates and crosshatched channels sloping toward copper grates, as if the room preferred its accidents tidy. Between the columns, those patient black wall panels waited the way old cats wait - calm, sure, hungry only if you give them a reason.
Raizen stood alone in the center ring with his jacket folded on a pillar and both twins settled low at his back. Breath in his ribs, not his throat. Knees soft, but not weak. Hands relaxed to the edge before grip. He wasn’t thinking about speed. He was thinking about "yes."
He drew the left blade a thumb-width. The steel took the faint gold of the hour and turned it into intent.
"Again" he told himself, and didn’t mean harder. He meant truer.
The air prickled against his knuckles, more suggestion than sting. He held it three breaths, then let it die at the guard where he’d told it to die. Dust near his boots flirted with levitation and thought better of it.
He slid the blade home, stepped his weight forward heel to toe, invited a line, and the floor lost the right to argue for a second. He fell through his own yes. A short dash – not-so-polite vanishing. The after-sound was the smallest fold of fabric and the soft catch of breath at the end.
"Morning, calamity!"
Kori’s voice arrived from the doorway like she’d been leaning there since last night. She hadn’t. But the grin riding the edge of her mouth said she approved of pretending.
Raizen didn’t startle. He lowered the tip, because you don’t point awake steel at Kori, even by accident. "You’re early."
"You’re earlier." She wandered in with hands in pockets, boots not quite echoing, eyes on the ring like it was a rumor. "Show me what you’re cooking before the kitchen opens."
He didn’t posture. He didn’t warn her. He stepped - heel, ball, toe - then invited the line again. The room didn’t blur. It cooperated. The dash cut clean. He stopped on an exhale so quiet it could have been a page turn, pivoted, crossed his first line with a second, then stitched a third between them and landed exactly where his right foot had promised.
Kori didn’t speak for two breaths. Or didn’t breathe for as much time as she would speak twice.
He lifted the right twin, called the flashes again, kept it on the whole blade, but controlled. Small lightning with manners. He held it three beats longer than before, felt the wasp-bite at his knuckles sharpen, then sent it away. No drama. No smoke. Control, not applause.
Kori circled once around the ring like a cat deciding whether to sit. No tease today. Only that exact attention she kept for knives and problems worth loving. "How long?"
"Three mornings" he said. "Two nights."
"And sleep...?"
"Defined broadly."
She breathed a laugh without committing to it. "You braided it into movement, not just steel. Good. That’s harder to ruin." Her gaze flicked to the nearest black panel, then to his hands. "Price?"
He rotated his wrist. The tendons complained in a language he understood. A small heat lived under the skin at the base of his thumb - yesterday’s bill. "Payable."
"Pay it" she said. "Wrap the right. Water now, salt later, food always. You’re strangling the hilt between thumb and heart line when you get greedy." She stepped in, took his hand, and with two fingers set his grip a nail’s width different. "There. Let the bone carry what your stubbornness keeps trying to carry alone."
He obeyed, because that is the other thing he does when Kori uses that voice.
"Thank you."
"Don’t thank me" she said. "Thank yourself."
He nodded. The twins felt lighter after she moved a finger’s worth of grip. It was annoying and wonderful at the same time.
Kori half turned away, then cut back with a sliver of grin. "You’re not building a party trick" she said. "You’re building a door. Keep your carpentry straight." She pointed her chin toward the windows where the yellow was bleaching. "Bells in ten. Go pretend breakfast is food. Bells don’t wait. Old woman waits less."
He slid the steel to sleep, pulled on his jacket, and followed the corridor’s growing noise into the day. Kori stayed a moment longer, looking at the black panels like they were old enemies she’d grown fond of despising, then drifted out after him with her hands in her pockets and mischief back on her mouth.
By First Bell the hall had shed its hush. Students came in sets of unorganized chaos, shoes making the room’s tidy acoustics earn their pay.
The old woman stood at the front with her staff and a slate under one arm, spine so straight it made the columns feel sloppy. Kori took the rear pillar like a thief takes a vantage point - casually, decisively, pretending it belonged to her because of course it did.
"Welcome back!" said the old woman. "Fail again. Better."
The center strip glowed with a clean, impersonal light. "New rules" she said. "Three attempts per head. Four breaths between. If you feed the wall, you bow to it, then bow to me, then practice humility for a week. Begin."
Arashi went first as if he hadn’t planned to but the room agreed he should. He drew his pistols again and set himself like a sentence that knew where the comma went. He didn’t look at anyone. He breathed like he was apologizing to pride. Then he traced a small, exact motion with the tip of the barrels - a line through air and a turn that did not ask to be seen.
A filament of light ran along his guns and died in the first thumb-width. He didn’t chase it. On his second attempt the same thread found a second thumb-width and stopped because it had been told to. On the third, nothing new happened, which is how you know something useful is happening.
"Pretty is for funerals" the old woman said, which in her language meant good. "Current, not calligraphy."
Lynea stepped in with the intelligence of neat handwriting. She cupped her fragments as if measuring them, grounded feet like a person who had read the manual and understood posture, then tried once - nothing - and didn’t try again immediately. She adjusted a shoulder, whispered something to her own wrist, and on the second attempt a clean ripple skated the flat of the metal and stopped exactly at the point she had chosen. On the third, she made the same thing the same way.
"Measure. Then commit" the old woman said. Lynea didn’t smile. She made a note.
Feris smiled at the floor like it might whisper a secret if she were polite. She didn’t raise her blade first. She hummed - low, steady, a coin spun on wood - and then lifted the weapon through that sound. The plates blinked a little pulse as if approving a joke. On her second try she kept her mouth shut and the pulse came just the same. She looked mildly offended it did not require a melody. On the third she made it smaller and nodded as if accepting an omen’s terms.
Esen set his feet a hair too wide, corrected, rolled his shoulders like he was loosening jokes. "Stand back" he said to the room. "I have a plan and it’s bad." He clapped his hands, pushed a brutally honest packet of intent forward and sent a shock that was enthusiastic, powerful, and not at all where it should have gone. History was bound to repeat again...
The nearest black panel drank it like a plant that hasn’t seen water in decades. Ripples chased themselves across soot-skin and sighed out at the edges. A gust of hot air cuffed the back of Esen’s head. His hair made an argument with itself and lost.
The hall laughed - a good laugh, relieved and delighted. Kori’s knuckles touched her mouth. The old woman tapped her staff once; the panels calmed.
"Again" she said, crisp. "You did not set one. The room saved you. Try that in a real situation, you would probably just blow up. Second."
Esen swallowed pride and air. He set a small bleed in his wrists like he was measuring pressure, pushed again, and this time the shock went where asked and died in his palm instead of the wall. His rings let out a small controlled shine, then calmed. He hissed at the bite and shook out his fingers.
"Third."
Esen made the same thing the same way. Then bowed to the wall anyway. "We’re friends now" he whispered. The wall did not answer. Everyone else did.
Keahi stepped into the circle with shoulders square and mouth careful. The temperature shifted a degree toward expectation. She drew her sword.
Pink light answered like a word arriving at last.
Not a blaze - a living border along the steel, heat rolled thin and disciplined out to a narrow halo that wrapped the blade. The color wasn’t pretty. It was correct. The air breathed outward in a small, respectful wave. The black panels did not stir. The old woman’s hands tightened around her staff and relaxed.
Silence like approval.
She breathed once and let the flame thinner. On her second attempt she took it down to a hairline and held it until the tremor in her elbow threatened to make its own decisions. On the third she set the line in a neat band a hand-length long. It obeyed like it belonged to her because she belonged to it.
"Birthright" the old woman said, soft. "Plus work. Elbow. Hip. You know. Good work!" Keahi’s cheeks warmed, and she nodded once like a vow.
Hikari stepped forward with her staff as if it had been born in her hand and only recently learned its name. She didn’t throw anything. She didn’t make shapes to be admired. She woke the lines.
Blue woke with them - a thin pulse at the core, then a run along channels carved so discreetly you’d miss them until they spoke. Circles nested in grids. Arcs met partners with little clicks you could nearly hear. A hum found the room and the room agreed to bear it. On her second attempt she set the hum shorter and gentler; on her third she damped it on a breath.
"Same thing" the old woman said, eyes a fraction softer. "But somehow better. The flow has been improved."
Ichiro... Did what Ichiro usually does: Same ground touch, same everything.
"Raizen."
He had been quiet all morning - respect and another secret now sharing a coat. He stepped into the circle and slid the right twin a breath from home. Kori’s voice no longer lived in his hands. Endless practice did.
First attempt - a whisper of static kissed his knuckles and fled. He adjusted his grip the way Kori had set it - a nail-width of humility in his thumb, a little less pride in his palm - and did not push.
Second attempt - the halo came thin and precise, the golden seam to a measured span along the edge. He held exactly what he could hold, then sent it away before his hands could beg for more. He did not go for speed.
"Move" said the old woman.
He did. One short dash - a clean fold in the world. He landed where he meant to and did not add flourish. Someone in the back forgot to breathe. The panels did not stir. The old woman tapped the staff once, as if telling the room to stop thinking about it.
"Contained" she said. "Asked, not demanded. You bled where you promised. Good. Listen to the part of you that wants more. Then ignore it. Three only in my room. Four breaths between. If your hands hum after, you soak them, you stretch, you write nothing heroic. Impressive!"
He didn’t look toward the rear pillar. He didn’t need to. He could feel Kori’s attention sharpen a half-step, the way a blade catches light without moving.
"Break" the old woman said. "Ten breaths. Then fail smaller."
Raizen took his place by a column and let his hands be hands again. The twins rested light against his hip like they weighed the same as yesterday, which they did not.
Hikari drifted over, lowered her voice until it fit under their breaths. "You’ll keep it" she said. "The yes."
"Obviously" he said, and for once it wasn’t a joke. It was a receipt.
"Again" the old woman called. "Different circle. New humiliation."
They failed better. Arashi stopped flirting with pretty things and made current like a grown-up. Feris kept her mouth shut and her pulse behaved - she looked personally offended that humming had not been necessary. Raizen made nothing on purpose for his second and third sets. He held the absence like a tool. The old woman saw and did not comment. Kori saw and commented only with a very small nod he wasn’t supposed to notice.
On dismissal, the old woman planted her staff and the glow bled out of the plates. "No one died" she said. "Annoying, but acceptable. Eat. Please don’t practice in the hallway. You won’t attempt romance with a wall."
Kori slid off her pillar and drifted toward the door as the room exhaled students into the corridor. As Raizen passed, she touched a knuckle to the back of his arm - nothing to see here, keep moving. "Dawn is yours" she murmured. "My name is on the schedule. Try not to make me regret the political capital I spent bullying an old woman I respect."
"I won’t."
"Liar" she said, fond as gravity. "But you’ll try. That’s the thing with you."
They pretended lunch was food. Esen did commentary on the taste profile of disappointment. Hikari hid a packet of salt in Raizen’s pocket like a conspiracy against cramps. Keahi sat on the edge of a planter and said nothing for a while, then told him quietly about her grandmother’s blade and the way the flame had felt like a voice that had been waiting to be hers. Afternoon class returned them to the hall that had already survived them. The old woman split them to opposite corners and made them do nothing at all for twenty minutes - breathe, hold, stop wanting. It was hateful. It worked. By the end, Raizen’s hands had quieted to a clean fatigue and the yes in his chest had stopped raising its hand at every question.
"Enough" the old woman said, which always meant the day had gone well enough to hate tomorrow less.
As they filtered out, Raizen let his knuckles brush the twin’s guard in thanks he didn’t say. The blade didn’t hum - not here. But in his palm the morning’s seam lived like a secret he would keep correctly.
At the threshold, a first-year with ink on her fingers blocked his path by accident, realized what she’d done, and tried to apologize with her whole body. "S-sorry, I just wanted to say - the way you stopped in the circle, how you didn’t go loud, it was - I mean I thought it had to be loud."
"It doesn’t" he said. "Loud breaks plates."
She blinked, then smiled like she’d been given permission to be the kind of person she already was. "Thank you" she said, and vanished into the current of uniforms.
Kori materialized at his shoulder without materializing at all and angled her head toward the far windows. "Don’t look up" she said, which of course made him want to. "Second-years have eyes. Let them get bored thinking you’re boring."
"I’m very boring" he said.
"Lie better" she said. "Come on, you can control your dash and Eon in two days, but you can’t even properly lie?"
The Academy got louder around them - papers, footsteps, someone very earnestly arguing about trap ethics and being very earnestly wrong. The eight stringed themselves across the passage in the easy formation of people who were learning to carry each other without carrying each other’s weight. Kori peeled off to bully a faculty slate. The old woman wrote something on her board that would frighten chalk for a week. The walls went on being patient.
That night Raizen wrapped the right wrist the way Kori had shown him and didn’t try to be a comet with a kitchen knife. He stretched, he ate, he slept like a person who had decided to be a coward about the right things. The yes in his chest sat down by the door like a well-trained dog.
Before dawn, he would be back in the hall. Not for applause. Not for spectacle. To make a line where a line wasn’t, and to ask a room that didn’t love anyone to keep saying yes.