Perspective: Kaiser
Date: March 15, 2012
Time: 2:16 AM
Location: Asura Academy — Girls' Dormitory, Elfie's Room
She was still holding on.
Both arms around my neck, face pressed into my chest — she hadn't moved since she threw herself at me off the floor. The impact had knocked me flat onto the pillows. I'd stayed flat. My cracked ribs had registered an official objection and been overruled.
The room was quiet. Cement walls, the small study desk crowded with her celestial notes. The cold cup of tea she'd left there told the story simply enough — she'd made it at some point while I was unconscious, never touched it. All 6 of my vials were lined up on the desk corner in height order. She'd done that too, because keeping her hands moving was how she got through things she couldn't fix.
I'd been out for a few hours. Pulled from the water after the exam, carried here, gone under. The usual shutdown when the brain hits its ceiling. Everything I needed to remember was still there — the island, Lucas Reinhardt, the drop into the sea. Intact. Good.
She was still in her home dress, her pink hair tangled from the floor rug she'd refused to leave. Her eyes were swollen from hours of crying alone in the dark while I wasn't conscious to do anything about it.
I raised my bandaged hand and set it against her hair.
She didn't let go. Her breathing slowed down anyway.
"Don't— okay. Good. Good, that's—" Her breath went somewhere uneven. Then she hit my arm. Light, but with intent.
"Your heart STOPPED, Kai. You overdid yourself!"
"Briefly."
"You don't get to say 'briefly' about that!"
"I did my best okay!"
"That's not—" She pressed both hands over her face and breathed into them for a second. When they came down, her eyes were puffy and furious at the same time. "Rigel said it in the hallway. Just... said it. Like weather. 'Oh, Tin can collapsed in the water, anyway.' And I had to stand there and smile because everyone was watching."
"Rigel had no clue it was me. The story must've been sick tho."
"There's no GOOD way to tell that story."
Fair. I let that one go.
She'd relocated to sitting cross-legged on my shins at some point in the night — her seat now, apparently, ownership transferred without consultation. She looked at my wrapped ribs, then away, then back.
"Does it hurt."
"I am fully healthy."
"Don't do the thing where you pretend to be okay."
"Trust me."
"Kai."
"It hurts, Elfie. It hurts and I'm not doing anything about it because the medicine's for worse days than this. Better?"
She blinked. That had landed somewhere she wasn't braced for — honest answers from me tend to do that.
"...Yeah," she said quietly. "Better. Thank you."
She refolded the blanket corner she'd already folded twice, then seemed to remember she'd been sitting on a grievance.
"So. The Knight."
Ah. The legendary tale of solo wiping.
"The whole class is calling 'it' the weapon of class C," she said, picking at my blanket with fake casualness. "A hero. Axel says a wandering mercenary. Delyra says a ghost. Lucia said — and this is Lucia — 'at least somebody in this class has a spine.'"
"Our classmates have vivid imaginations."
"Mhm." She turned my blanket corner over. Turned it back. "So when did YOU get to the island?"
"Same as everyone."
"And why did you pretend you aren't the knight?"
"...For dramatic effect."
Silence. She didn't yell. That was worse.
"You told me you weren't fighting!"
"I wasn't. The Knight was."
"You were the KNIGHT, Kai."
"There's no proof of that."
"YOU TOLD ME!" she said, and her voice didn't rise at all, which was how I knew it was real, "I just didn't like you going off on your own."
I considered several responses. Jokes, deflections, a rebuttal about technicalities.
I discarded all of them.
"I know," I said. "It failed though, I suppose we'll have consequences."
"That's not the point."
"I know that too."
She stared at me for a long moment, jaw working like she was chewing on everything she wanted to say and couldn't fit any of it through. Then she just leaned over and put her forehead against my shoulder, hard enough to mean something, and stayed there.
I let her. My hand found her hair on its own; it usually does.
There was a version of me that would have filed this under "expected emotional response, tolerance required." It's embarrassing how long it's been since that version was in charge. She ruined him. Best sabotage anyone's ever run on me.
"Tell me about the consequences," I said, after a while. "You've been circling it for an hour."
Her forehead stayed where it was.
"We lost."
"I know. How bad's the aftermath?"
"Bad. Like... bad bad. Not fight-bad. Worse." She sat up and started counting on her fingers, lost count of what she was counting almost immediately, and kept going anyway.
"Lucia's saying it should be the lowest scorer, which — she means you, she just hasn't worked up to saying it yet. Delyra wants a vote. Lucia says a vote is rigged because I'm Representative and I'd protect everyone, and the horrible thing is she's right? I would. I would SO protect our class. Novenol's is saying someone gets to pick, which is a nice way of saying me. Some say the wishes failed us, which is also me, except they won't say it because I'm the representative, so they just do this face at me in the hallway. You know the face."
"I've received the face. It's my most frequent mail."
That got a wet half-laugh out of her. Then it collapsed.
"And everyone keeps coming up to me and going 'hey, so, random question, sort of, hypothetically' and then NOT asking the question. That's the whole class right now. Nobody's said it. Everybody's said it."
"It seems we're forced to expell someone soon..."
"I know," she said, quieter. "I hate that I know the ending. If it was me — if someone was going to make ME disappear — I'd be scared too. I'd probably do the exact same hallway thing. That's the worst part. Everyone's doing something I understand. There's nobody to even be mad at."
There it is. The thing about her that three nations would fail to measure with any instrument. Not the magic. She can't even make an enemy properly. Everyone stays a person to her, even while they're circling.
"If you had to pick right now," I said. "Who."
I watched her face while I asked it. Looking for the flicker — the half-second of calculation everyone else in that class would have.
Nothing. Her eyes just went glassy and empty of targets.
"Nobody."
"It has to be somebody."
"I know it has to be somebody. I don't have a somebody." Her jaw set, and for a second the Class Representative stood up inside the girl. "23 classmates gave everything they had. Rigel trained with his squad. Sophia did her best to patch people up. Leena too tried her best. Nobody failed, Kai. We just lost. Losing isn't a crime. I don't care what the results thinks."
And if the class finds its own target — and it will — the wishful thinking is short. One credit on the public record. Magicless. Formally pulled from Unit 1 before the exam started. Already blamed for the dungeon. Actively disliked by girls, resented by guys, distrusted by half the roster.
I'm the answer to their expulsion. I've been the answer since january. It's a little flattering how efficient their hatred is.
"Well," I said, "if they vote me off, I'll come back under a fake mustache. I'll enroll as Beardsley. Your personal aide."
"Kai!!!"
"'Miss Lunaris, your three o'clock is weeping in the corridor again—'"
"STOP IT!!"
I looked at her.
"Stop making it small," she said. Her voice shook and she didn't fix it. "Please. Just for a minute. It's not small to me."
The joke had somewhere to go. About four of them, all ready.
I let them die where they stood.
"...Okay," I said. "Sorry."
She blinked, evidently as surprised by the apology as I was. Then she wiped her nose with her wrist and nodded once, accepting the terms of the ceasefire, and for maybe 30 seconds neither of us said anything at all, and SOMEHOW Rocky clucked, and the radiator ticked.
It was during that silence that I finally stopped filing what I'd been noticing for the last 20 minutes.
Her hand, drifting down to press flat against her lower stomach. Twice. Both times moved away when she thought I wasn't looking. Her breathing, with a small catch at the top of the inhale — shallow, guarded, left side. Shoulders half an inch above baseline.
Tired. More tired than lack of sleep.
Somethings off.
She coughed.
Small, at first. The kind you do when you laughed wrong and it went down the wrong pipe. She covered her mouth with the back of her wrist, out of habit.
"Sorry — tickle—"
Then she coughed again.
Harder. From lower down. Her shoulders curled around it like a fist closing.
I stopped talking.
The third one lasted longer and shook her whole frame. She pulled her wrist away from her mouth.
A red trace on her skin. Barely a speck. Anyone else in the world would have called it nothing. Anyone else in the world would have been right.
There it is...
"Kai?" Her voice had gone careful, because I'd gone still. My stillness frightens her more than shouting ever has. "It's just a cough. Everyone coughs. The dorm's old, there's dust—"
"Don't talk for a second."
2 fingers on her wrist. Pulse fast, thin at the edges.
Palm to her forehead, then the side of her neck. Warm. Half a degree above her morning baseline, and she always runs warm when it's active.
"Breathe out slowly for me."
She did. The catch at the top of the inhale. Chest, not throat.
Her hand in mine. Fingertips cold.
I looked at the air just off her shoulders, where her mana leaks when she's unstable — the faint heat-shimmer, like the world mildly disagreeing with her outline. Under her collarbone, one small celestial spark, gold, flickering at the edge of her skin.
Active flare. Mid-stage. And from the fatigue hanging on her — not her first today.
"When did your cycle start?"
Her mouth opened. Closed. Her ears went pink.
"Just yesterday. Kai, you can't just ASK that, there are—" She gave up on the rules mid-sentence, which told me more than the rules would have.
"When did the coughs come back?"
Silence.
That hesitation was a complete chart. It said: days. It said: I watched it get worse and stayed quiet anyway.
"Elfie."
"...Since the island." Her fingers found the blanket and started pleating it. "It got worse last night. But it's fine, it's normal fine, not bad fine, periods just do this, and you were hurt, and your heart literally STOPPED, and what was I supposed to do, come to you and go 'hi Kai, welcome back from dying, also my tummy hurts'?"
"Yes."
"That's RIDICULOUS."
"That's the deal."
"There's no deal!" She was working herself up now, and her voice cracked in the middle of it, which she hated. "You already do too much. You cooked for me, you slept next to me holding me. I didn't want to be... more. I thought I could just handle it. Like a normal person."
And there it is. Her mistake, stated with pride. She decided suffering privately was a gift — that her pain, carried silently, would arrive at my mind as a gift..
She tried to stand up off the bed. Presumably to demonstrate wellness. The cough folded her over halfway up, and I was moving before it finished.
It's about time.
"Kai — lie DOWN, I can do this myself, I've done it a hundred—"
I looked at the red smear on her wrist.
"Excellent evidence," I said.
I picked her up.
"KAIRGH—"
She beat a polite drumroll against my chest while I carried her in my arms back to the bed.
"Put me DOWN. I can walk! I'm perfectly capable of—"
"You are staying there."
"This is MY corner! I've been sleeping on that rug for YOU—"
"If you stand up, I'll put you back into my arms. Every time. Understood?"
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Ran the assessment — my tone, my shoulders, the fact that I'd just lifted her on cracked ribs without a sound — and arrived at the correct answer, which she expressed by crossing her arms and scowling at a volume words couldn't have improved on.
"...Are we doing," she said finally, to the blanket, "you know."
"The routine."
"...Yeah. Okay." A pause. "Strawberry one, though. You gave me lemon last time on purpose."
"The flavor is random and out of my control."
"You control everything."
"Stay here for a bit."
She got me there. Noted for the record.
I went to the wardrobe to get her necessities, and lifted out the old steel case. Corner-scratched, older than the academy, crossed two provinces and one ocean hidden in a bread bag.
Inside, in their foam beds: the mana monitor — palm-sized brass, a hairline glass gauge, built from salvage and one very tense week. Two protected doses, wax-sealed. The brown jar of tablets. Sterile kit. The soft cloth. Lollipops — strawberry and lemon. Heating packs. And the emergency supplies that exist for the version of this night I don't let myself picture.
I checked the dose slots.
2 doses left.
There'll be enough to work on something else.
"Room preferences?"
"...Warm," she said, small, from the pillow. "And the blue lamp. Please."
I adjusted everything for her. Curtain to half, heater on low against the March draft, the handmade lamp from the storm night clicking to life, washing the walls in soft yellow-blue. Bedding shaken out. Rocky relocated to the desk with a bribe of food.
The syringes I prepared at the desk, back turned, sleeves down over my hands. Wax seals cracked one at a time, quiet as tearing bread. Everything she'd need to see, kept behind her sightline.
Then I pulled my shirt over my head and dropped it on the chair.
"It's hot in here." I said.
Elfie stared at me with her cheeks flushed. At the heater she had personally watched me set to low. At the window I had personally just closed.
"You JUST made the room warm for ME."
"Go to sleep, Elfie."
"It's the middle of the MORNING—"
I picked up the case and walked back to the bed.
---
Perspective: Elfie
I know the routine.
I've known it since I was 9, when the sick feeling first got bad enough that Kai stopped pretending it was just a cold. Back then it was simple. He'd sit next to me and hold my hand and talk in his boring-slow voice — about cloud shapes, about the celestine, about the correct way to cheat at hide-and-seek — and somewhere in the middle of all that, the hurting would just... lose interest. I'd never even notice the pain going. He's sneaky about it. I've tried for 2 years to catch him.
But this is more than it used to be.
Kai sat back against the headboard, and then he looked at me, and then he said "come here" like it wasn't even a request, like it was just the obvious next thing that happened in the world, and my body agreed before I'd finished processing the sentence.
He pulled me onto his lap.
Not sideways. Onto his lap. Facing him. My knees ended up on either side of his hips, which was a situation I had not prepared for emotionally, and my face immediately started flushing.
His bare chest was right there. Just — there. Warm and real and not going away. He pressed his palm flat against the center of my back and pulled me in until my chest met his, and I felt his heartbeat before I even thought to look for it.
Thump. Thump. Slow. Like a clock that had decided time wasn't going anywhere.
"Closer," he said, quiet. "I need you to breathe with me."
"I AM breathing—"
"You're breathing wrong. That's swallow breathing."
"That's not a thing."
"Quiet down and breathe with me."
I pressed my lips together and didn't say anything, which was as close to admitting he was right as I was going to get. He smelled like clean soap and something under it that didn't have a name, just — him. The particular Kai smell that has meant safe since I was small enough to fit under his arm without ducking.
His left hand moved to my spine. Flat palm, right between my shoulder blades. Not rubbing — just warm pressure, solid and still, like he was grounding me to something.
"In," he said. "4 counts."
I breathed in.
"Hold."
I held.
"Out. Slow. All of it."
I let it out, and something in my chest that had been pulled tight since the island went with it, just slightly.
He did it again. And again. His own chest rose and fell under my hands — I'd braced against his shoulders, my fingers curled over muscle and bone — and without deciding to, mine matched his. 3 beats behind. The way it always has been, like my lungs learned to follow his a long time ago and never stopped.
"...You're warm," I said, into the space between us. "It's not fair."
"I'm naturally hot."
"And I'm the one shivering. It's not fair."
He didn't answer. His hand moved instead — left palm sliding slowly up my spine, applying even pressure along each vertebra, all the way to the nape of my neck. He cupped the back of my skull.
My whole neck went slack. I tipped forward against his chest like a marionette whose strings had been cut very gently.
"You're being weird..." I mumbled into his collarbone.
"I'm being thorough."
"Those are different things."
His right hand found my wrist. He pressed his thumb over my pulse point, and I understood immediately — he wasn't holding my hand. He was counting. His thumb traced slow upward along my forearm, learning something, and the fact that he was basically reading me like a book should have been annoying and was instead extremely comfortable, which I feel complicated about.
"How do you know where it hurts," I mumbled. "I didn't tell you about the shoulder."
"I understand you better than you do."
"That's—"
His other hand found the knot at my shoulder — the one that had been living there since the island, the one I'd been ignoring because his ribs were cracked and I wasn't going to be the problem — and pressed in, slow, two fingers, right into the center of it.
It hurt for 2 seconds. The real kind. The kind that means something releasing.
Then my back just — melted. All at once. My shoulders dropped half an inch without asking my permission, and I slumped further into him, and I could feel him register it, a small adjustment in how his arm was holding me.
"You're watching me like I'm an experiment," I accused, muffled against his chest.
"Quiet down princess."
"That's SO—" I yawned, hugely, right in the middle of the sentence, and the rest of it got swallowed. "...That's rude."
"Mhm."
His hand moved from my wrist to my jaw. Fingertips first, tracing the line of it — light, barely there, the way you'd touch something you didn't want to disturb. His thumb brushed the corner of my mouth, then drifted down to the side of my throat, and he held it there.
Feeling my pulse.
I knew that's what he was doing. He does it every time. It should be clinical. It is not. I don't know what to do with that information so I put it in the same drawer as his heartbeat speeds up a little sometimes when I hug him and he always knows when I'm lying and seal the drawer shut.
"Your heart is calming," he said quietly.
"It wasn't—" I started.
"It was."
He was right. I could feel it. The pounding I'd had in my chest since the cough this morning had dropped to something slower, something that wasn't trying to escape my ribcage anymore.
His thumb moved — not away, just slowly, tracing down my throat to my collarbone.
I forgot whatever I was about to say.
Then his hand slid under the hem of my hoodie and settled flat over my lower stomach. Palm down. Warm and heavy and completely still.
Then he started massaging me.
The cramps — which had been wringing themselves out all morning in slow, grinding twists — went quiet almost immediately. Like they'd been waiting for permission to stop.
"Does it help?" he asked.
"...Yes," I admitted. It came out smaller than I meant it to.
"Good. I'll keep it there."
He did.
I sat there on his lap with his hand warm on my stomach and his heartbeat under my cheek, and for a little while I didn't say anything at all, and neither did he, and the lamp glowed blue-gold, and Rocky 'pak-pakkk' on the desk, and the rain kept going against the window.
Then his free hand found the nape of my neck again. He traced one slow line down my spine — just 1 finger, unhurried — and my back stopped hurting, and my shoulders stayed down, and my eyes went heavy.
"Kai."
"Mm."
"Tomorrow."
"Mhm."
"I want it to just be us..." I pressed my cheek further into his chest, feeling the warmth of his skin against my face.
"Can we go out together? Only us..."
A pause. His hand kept its slow movement against my back.
"Yes," he said.
"We could go somewhere," I said, half into his collar. "Anywhere. I don't care where. I just want to walk with you. Like normal. Like we used to do as kids."
"We'll walk."
"And eat something that isn't academy food."
"I'll handle it."
"And you're not allowed to talk about the expulsion vote or the scoreboard or any tactics."
"Noted."
"And you have to actually be there. Not planning things in your head while you look like you're present. Promise?"
Something shifted in how he was holding me. Subtle. His arm pulled me about half an inch closer.
"...Okay," he said. "I'll be there."
I turned my face into the crook of his neck and closed my eyes.
I love him, I thought, with complete clarity, directly followed by the immediate impulse to never say that out loud ever. Not because it's not true. Because it's so completely true that saying it out loud would make it a thing with edges, and right now it doesn't have edges, it's just everywhere, and I'd rather keep it that way.
His thumb traced another long, slow line up the back of my neck.
My thoughts went soft.
His hand moved to my hair — I noticed the moment it happened, which means I was still watching for it even half-asleep — and started moving in slow circles against my scalp.
I was losing the argument on purpose, and I couldn't even be mad about it, because losing on purpose to Kai is just called trusting him, and I've been doing it since I was small enough to crawl across cold floorboards in the dark to find his sleeve.
I found it every time.
He always stayed.
"Kai."
"Mhm."
"This is more than before. I feel... warmer..."
His hand paused on my hair. Half a second. Then it kept moving.
"You're growing," he said. "Everything about you is more."
"That's not an answer."
"No."
I could have pushed. I didn't. His hand was doing the slow circles, and the cramps had gone quiet, and his heartbeat was right there, and some arguments I lose on purpose because the alternative is being right and alone, and I don't want to be right. I want to be here.
His hand left my hair — my hair, when did it get to my hair — and came back holding something soft.
He laid it over my eyes.
Darkness. Warm. Smelling faintly of clean soap.
I shot upright — well, upward by about 2 inches, which for me counts as dramatic.
"WHY do you have that."
"It helps you rest."
"It's a blindfold, Kai!"
"It's a cloth."
"Cloths aren't this DARK—"
"Lower your voice or I'll also take the lollipop."
"What lolli—"
Something sweet touched my lips. I bit it before I realized.
Strawberry.
...He DOES control the flavors. I KNEW it.
He settled me back against his chest. His thumb drew slow lines across the back of my hand, and his voice came from just above my ear, low and unhurried, like none of this was urgent.
"Tell me something from when we were small," he said. "Something good."
"...The oak tree," I said, after a moment. "When you used to take me there in the mornings. Before anyone else was awake."
"What about it."
"It felt like it was just ours. Like the whole world hadn't started yet and we got there first." The lollipop clicked against my teeth. "I used to think you took me there on purpose. Like you picked me only."
"I did."
The word landed very quietly. I didn't move.
"...You never said that."
"No."
"Kai."
"Mhm."
"Say something."
A pause. His breathing stayed even. His hand stayed in slow motion across my knuckles.
"I picked the tree," he said, "because you liked it. I kept going back because you were there. That's the whole thing."
My eyes stung behind the cloth.
"...Okay," I said, very small.
"You asked."
"I know."
The dark was just Kai-colored now. His voice from above. His heartbeat below. His hand on mine. His skin warm everywhere my skin touched his. His breathing going slow and even on purpose, and mine copying it without permission, 3 beats behind.
I hate injections...
He'd know when to do it. He always did. That was the part I couldn't figure out — how he always knew the exact second I was calm enough.
Maybe that was the point.
His fingers found my hand and laced through them. Squeezed once.
"Trust me?"
"Always."
Perspective: Kaiser
Breathing: 10 a minute. Deep, even, no catch at the top.
That's the signal I wait for. Her lungs running on my sequence instead of her own.
Pulse slow and full under my thumb. Shoulders completely dropped. The shiver in her fingers stopped about 6 minutes ago. Her hands had been cold since early morning and now they weren't.
On the desk, the brass gauge — I built it from scrap parts and 1 very bad week — had been creeping left with every exhale of hers. The last visible gold spark near her collarbone just blinked out.
The gauge crossed the line.
There it is.
Window's open. That's what I've started calling it — the window. It only stays open for a few minutes. If I'm late, the mana levels climb again and I'm throwing money at a wall.
I slid the blindfold away carefully, left thumb still on her wrist. She didn't stir. Her face had gone completely soft, the way it only does when she's fully out, the unguarded version of her that nobody else gets to see.
"Breathe in slowly," I said, same voice I'd been using for the last 20 minutes — unhurried, like I was still talking about the oak tree. "Hold it. Good. Now out... slow. Perfect."
Left hand steady on her arm. Just pressure. Enough to keep her attention from looking for anything.
The syringe was already in my right.
I slowly injected it onto her arm.
Dose one.
She flinched. Tiny.
"...Did you do it?"
"Do what?"
Silence.
"...Kai."
"You breathed really well just now. I'm proud."
The needle was capped and back in the case before I untied the cloth. She blinked in the lamp light, hair everywhere, lollipop stick hanging from her mouth at a righteous angle.
"You TRICKED me."
"Hey I was comforting you."
"I felt a raindrop!"
"The window leaks."
"IT'S NOT EVEN STORMING—"
I held out the bare stick.
"You did it Elfie."
She stared at the stick, then at me, jaw working.
"How many parts is it this time."
"There's a second."
Her whole face fell like a cancelled holiday.
"A SECOND?!"
"Stay in the bed."
"Kai, what are you even—"
I turned and looked at her. Not the point — just looked at her. The specific kind of look that means I'm not negotiating this.
She kept going anyway.
"You have cracked ribs, you literally just woke up earlier, you can't just—"
I crossed back to the bed in 3 steps. She blinked up at me, still mid-sentence, and I pressed 1 finger against her lips.
Quiet.
She went quiet.
I held it there for a second, looking at her, and her eyes went wide and then indignant and then — because she is who she is — something fluttered across her face that was not indignance at all, which I noted and filed away for a different time.
"You are going to lie down," I said, quiet. "You are going to pull the blanket up. You are going to stay there until I come back. Can you do that?"
She blinked at me over my finger.
"...Fine," she said. Against my fingertip, which was a different experience than a verbal reply.
I moved my hand. She pulled the blanket up, watching me with the specific expression of a person who is complying but wants you to know they're only doing it because they feel like it.
"I'll be right back."
"You better not be slow."
"I'm never slow."
"You're slow when you think I can't see you—"
I left.
---
Food first. The tablet eaten on an empty stomach can cause severe side-effects. Rice porridge — 2 eggs scrambled soft into it, honey folded through, a pinch of salt. The honey is Aetherzyme-C dissolved into something she'll actually eat without making it a whole conversation.
I moved around the small kitchen at the end of the hall, kept my left arm close, breathed through the parts that pulled. Ribs are structural. They'll hold.
I heard the door creak slightly, 3 minutes in.
I did not turn around.
I heard the very careful sound of someone trying to be extremely quiet about leaning forward to look through a crack in the door.
I know you're watching, princess.
I kept my back to her. Stirred the porridge. Cracked the second egg in with 1 hand, folded it into the pot with slow turns. The lamp in the hall threw warm light through the gap and I was aware, in the specific way you become aware of things that are being observed, that she had a clear view of my back.
The door creaked again. Slightly wider.
I let her look.
---
Perspective: Elfie
I'm not staring.
I'm checking on him. Because he has cracked ribs and he's over there cooking like a perfectly healthy person and someone has to make sure he doesn't collapse over a pot.
That's why I'm looking.
This is responsible.
His back was — okay, his back was a problem. It was a problem that had gotten significantly worse since the last time I'd seen it, and I'd seen it weeks ago when he'd had his shirt off, and I had thought okay, he's filled out, that's fine, bodies change and then I'd pressed my face into his chest and not thought about it anymore.
But now he was across the room with the lamp light on him and his shoulders were doing the specific thing that wide shoulders do when a person reaches forward to stir something, and I was staring at his back like it had personally done something to me.
Which it had.
He was about my age.
When did 12 look like that?
I pressed my cheek harder into the doorframe and watched him add the honey, because I genuinely needed to see how he was moving his left arm with those ribs, that was the reason, and his back muscles shifted with the motion and my face did a thing it had no right to do.
It's just muscles.
He has always had muscles.
These are just. Bigger muscles.
This is fine...
He turned his head, just slightly, and I pulled back behind the door.
---
Perspective: Kaiser
I heard her pull back.
I folded the honey through the last of the porridge and let the corner of my mouth do something that wasn't quite a smile.
She has never been subtle. Not once.
I brought the bowl back. She was lying in the blanket in the precise configuration of someone who has been lying in the blanket the whole time and had absolutely not been watching through a door. Her hair was slightly messed on the right side, which was not how it had been when I left.
I set the bowl on the edge of the bed and sat down.
She looked at the ceiling with feigned innocence.
"I'm not that hungry," she said, to the ceiling.
"You're still going to eat it."
"Noooo! 😾"
"Understood?"
"...The porridge smells good."
"Eat it."
She sat up and ate it. Slowly at first — pride — then honestly. Full bowl. Color came back to her face properly. The tired lines around her eyes went softer.
Good.
Then the brown jar.
"Second part." I shook one tablet into my palm. "You remember this one."
Her nose did the thing. Preemptive.
"I hate that one!"
"I know."
"It tastes like— you KNOW what it tastes like."
"I do."
"Do you have anything to make it better."
I held out the water glass, which I had already poured.
She stared at it.
"You had it ready."
"Lucky guess."
"You're such a—" She took the tablet, put it in her mouth, chewed, and her entire soul briefly went somewhere else. Her eyes watered. She drank half the glass in one go and came up for air with the expression of someone who had just been personally wronged by chemistry.
"I hate you!!!" She said.
"Like the sour and bitter taste?"
"NO!!"
"Aww adorable."
She glared at me. I watched the tablet go down and stay down.
Now the hard part.
The second dose is different from the first. The first is fast — catches the window, gets into her blood before the mana can rebound. The second one is slower, longer-acting, the one that actually holds. It needs her fully calm. Not almost calm. Not tired-calm. Genuinely, body-not-fighting calm.
She already knew something was coming. I could see it in her shoulders — they'd crept back up while she was being indignant about the tablet.
I didn't restart the blindfold routine. You can't run the same trick twice in a row.
I just lay her back against the pillows. Her hand in mine. My voice low, going nowhere important — the croissant she'd been mad about, whether Rocky could be trained to show preference, whether the baker in town was still there — and her breathing found mine again without being asked. 3 beats behind. Always 3.
"Close your eyes."
She looked at me.
"Elfie."
"...Okay." She closed them. Slowly. Her lashes pressed down against the soft skin under her eyes, and she let out a breath that had been held too tight.
I watched her for a second. Her shoulders were still up. I put my hand there — not pressing, just resting — and felt them drop about half an inch.
Good.
"Breathe out," I said. Low. Unhurried. The same register I'd been using all afternoon. "All of it. Don't stop until it's empty."
She breathed out. Long, slow, until her chest had nothing left.
"Hold."
She held.
"Now in. Slow. Feel my hand."
My palm moved to the middle of her chest. She breathed in against it, and I felt her chest rise under my fingers.
"Hold for 3."
She held.
"Out."
She let it go. Her shoulders didn't come back up this time. Her hands uncurled in her lap, fingers loose.
"Again."
She did it again. And again. Her breathing found the rhythm without me counting after the 3rd cycle — her body remembered. It always does.
I kept my voice even. Kept talking. About nothing, about everything — whether the academy was a free source of electricity, whether Rocky should be made into biryani — and her face smoothed out, one tension at a time, until what was left was just her, actually resting, eyes closed, trusting the dark.
The case was already open on my right.
The second dose is the longer-acting one — it carries differently, distributes slower, holds longer. It also asks more of her blood. Her body needs to accept it, not fight it.
That's why the preparation matters more than the speed.
I uncapped the syringe with my thumb against the needle guard — quiet, no click. Rolled it once between my fingers to check for air. None. I'd checked it twice already.
Her arm was resting against mine. I moved my left hand to her wrist, not holding — just contact, just warmth. Thumb over her pulse.
Resting rate. Good.
I found the site without looking — upper arm, lateral deltoid, 2 centimeters below the muscle head. I'd used this site before. I knew the exact resistance here. I knew how to angle so the bevel went in clean, 25 degrees, no drag.
"Breathe in," I said. "And hold it for me. Right there."
She inhaled. Held.
I went in on the pause — the moment of maximum muscle stillness, when the breath is suspended and the tissue doesn't move.
Smooth. Consistent pressure. No hesitation. The kind of movement that comes from 40 sessions of doing the same thing until the hand stops thinking about it and just does it right.
Aspirated. Clean. No blood.
Pressed the plunger down, slow, even — 30 seconds for the full volume. Never faster. Fast stings. Slow disappears.
"Out," I said. "Slow. All the way."
She exhaled.
I withdrew on the exhale, angled out the same way it went in, pressed two fingers flat against the site and held. Counted to 10.
Then I pulled my hand back. It was done.
She didn't feel it.
---
Then it hit.
Not immediately. The second dose takes 40 seconds to reach systemic circulation. I know this.
At 35 seconds, her breath changed.
At 38, her hands gripped the blanket.
At 42, I caught her.
Her whole body went through something that looked like the opposite of pain — not relief exactly, but release, the kind that comes after a body has been holding something for too long and finally, finally lets it go. Her legs trembled. Her thighs pressed together and her knees drew up, and a fine shiver moved through her from her shoulders to her feet, like a vibration being let out through every surface at once.
"K— Kai—"
"Right here."
"I— it f— feels—"
"I know. Keep breathing."
She was shaking. Not from pain — from the medicine working. The crystals breaking down, the mana stabilizing, her body catching up to the absence of the thing it had been fighting all day. It comes out like this sometimes. Like the body doesn't know how to stop bracing for something that isn't hurting it anymore.
I got an arm around her. Pulled her into my chest and held her there, steady, one hand flat between her shoulder blades. Her legs were still trembling, pressed together under the blanket, and she was breathing too fast.
"Slow down," I said, into her hair. "You're okay. I've got you. Slow."
"I— I c— can't— br—eath... am i—i d—dying...?"
"You're safe preincess. I won't ever let that happen.."
A sound came out of her that wasn't quite a word. Her fingers grabbed the front of my wrist.
"Ka— Kai, it's— something's— I'm—"
"It's the dose working. That's all. Your body's letting go." I moved my hand in slow circles against her back. "It's not hurting you. It's the opposite. Your body just doesn't know what that feels like yet."
Her breath hitched. When I looked down, her eyes were wet.
Not from pain. Just from being held this long, probably. From everything today. From the island and the crying and the morning and all of it finally running out of room.
I pressed my lips to her forehead and stayed there.
"It's over," I said, against her skin. "You did it. Both parts. It's done."
She made a small, wrecked sound.
"I d— didn't even— k-know it happened—"
"That's the point cutie."
"...You're so— annoying—"
"Mhm."
Her shaking was slowing. The tremor in her legs went from visible to faint to almost nothing. Her grip on my shirt loosened, but she didn't let go.
"D— don't leave yet—" she said, into my collar. Her voice was barely there. "K— Kai. Don't— not yet."
"I'm not going anywhere."
"P-promise me—"
"Elfie."
"Promise—"
"I promise." I pulled her a little closer. "I'm here. I'll be here."
A long exhale. The last of the trembling went with it.
She went soft in my arms all at once — not unconscious, rather dose's sleep. Her cheek found the side of my neck. Her breath hit my collarbone in slow, even intervals.
I kept the hand on her back moving. Kept my breathing even. Counted her breaths. Old habit.
After a few minutes, I laid her down properly. She made a small sound of protest when I shifted her — "m-mm—" — and her hand closed around 2 of my fingers the moment I was close enough to reach. The grip was stronger than I expected for someone half asleep.
Her body keeps its promises even when she can't.
I pulled the blanket up to her chin and stayed beside her while her breathing went deep and even and her face smoothed into the version of her that doesn't exist when she's awake — fully open, nothing held back. The version of her that belongs to no one else.
I'm the only person who's ever seen it.
I don't know what to do with that except keep it safe.
Now.
I sat there with 1 arm pinned under a sleeping pink cotton girl and did what I do after every treatment: count, think, and be honest with myself about what I'm doing.
Terminal Aetheric Saturation Syndrome. I named it myself when she was 8, because the physicians who knew about it wouldn't say anything useful to 2 orphans, and the ones who would talk wanted money I didn't have.
So I read everything I could find and named it myself.
Her mana regulator is broken.
The regulator is supposed to say enough when her body produces mana. Hers never does. The surplus goes somewhere — into her blood, her tissue, her lungs. Free mana with no carrier looks for somewhere to settle and it settles as crystal. Fine, tiny crystal, which sounds harmless until you understand where it builds up. Lungs first, which is the cough. The tissue around her cycle, which is why this week is what it is. Then it climbs.
Vessels, joints, organs. Eventually places she doesn't come back from.
She was supposed to die at 10.
That's the thing I don't say out loud. The prognosis I read when she was 8 — a paper from Valerion, 40 years old, the only one that actually tracked the disease. Most cases fatal before the 10th year. The mana production accelerates through growth, through puberty, through any physical stress, and the crystals reach critical mass before the body can compensate.
Her own mana growth was causing her mana poisoning...
She's 11. She's been past the terminal limit.
Every ordinary thing she does — arguing about lollipop flavors, being picky about the cake, the fantasies she builds in her head, the way she grabs my sleeve when she's scared — she's not supposed to be here for any of it. The paper said so.
The paper was wrong, technically, but not about the disease.
Just about her.
I'm why she's past the terminal.
Not because I'm some genius. Because I got lucky, and then I reproduced that luck into medicine.
The loop is the thing. Stress makes her produce more mana. Pain is stress. The sickness feeds itself — bad hour buys more bad hours. The only way out is down, her whole system has to go genuinely quiet, or the medicine doesn't work. You can't inject a flare while it's actively running.
I have to wait for her body to open up.
When she was little, the window was easy to open. Hand holding. Voice. Story. 20 minutes and she'd be calm and the old protocol worked 40 times in a row.
Then she turned 10, and her body stopped accepting the old version.
I ran the old protocol 3 months ago. Her signs looked right — breathing, pulse, the gauge. I was confident enough to inject. The medicine went in and didn't take. Her mana stayed high. I sat in the dark for 2 hours watching the gauge refuse to move, doing arithmetic I already knew the answer to, while 2,000 gold dissolved inside her blood with nothing to show for it.
That was the most expensive and most useful failure of my life.
It told me the past was gone.
I'd also tried the shortcut — drugs that force the nervous system calm by chemistry instead of by me. Sedatives, muscle relaxants, things that bypass the anxiety loop directly. Her body treated every single one of them like an invader.
Vomiting, nausea, mana spikes, a flare worse than the one I was treating. Her physiology doesn't get fooled by external signals.
Her body only responds to real ones.
It made me desperate.
I tried so much, her favorite cakes, skies, stories, songs, kittens... Nothing was enough. Her body had learned, below the level of thought, that a specific thing means safe, and the only substitute for the specific thing is the specific thing.
That's me.
Her attachment figure.
Her only one.
The warmth, the heartbeat, the voice, the words, the skin contact, the years of it.
Maybe I should talk to myself a bit... just to sound a little less crazy.
Here's the biology, since I know you're wondering why I do it this way. TASS — Terminal Aetheric Saturation Syndrome. Her THAU-7 gene is broken. MRP-7 doesn't work. Thaumocytes produce mana unchecked. Free-floating Reactive Aetheric Radicals bind to calcium and phosphate and crystallize in her soft tissue. The crystals tear her lungs when she coughs. They shred her endometrium during her cycle.
They're climbing through her liver and kidneys right now.
The only thing that slows it is cortisol suppression. Cortisol upregulates THAU-7 expression. In her, that means more mana. More crystals.
Faster death.
Cortisol must be below baseline. That's the first criterion.
But cortisol doesn't drop on command. It drops when the brain perceives safety. Real safety. And her brain — her primitive brain, the part that doesn't think — only perceives safety when I'm touching her, holding her, breathing with her.
So I did what I must.
My palm on her scapula activates C-tactile afferents. Those fibers project to her insular cortex. They trigger oxytocin release from her paraventricular nucleus. Oxytocin suppresses CRH. CRH suppression means less ACTH. Less ACTH means less cortisol.
Less cortisol means her mana stabilizes.
That's the chain. That's why my hand is on her back. Arm. Stomach.
My voice works the same way. Low register, steady rhythm, simple commands. It activates her auditory-limbic pathways. It tells her brainstem that she's not alone. That she's safe.
That someone bigger and stronger is watching.
The blindfold removes visual stress. The lollipop gives her glucose for dopamine and tricks her oral fixation into parasympathetic activation. The shirtless contact floods her olfactory system with my scent — her brain associates that smell with survival.
All of it together: oxytocin up, dopamine up, serotonin up, endorphins up. Cortisol down, vasopressin down, adrenaline down.
Once her mana baseline hits near-zero, I can inject.
Dose 1 is Aetherblock-7. Potassium aetherate, magnesium sulfate, calcium disodium EDTA, sodium bicarbonate, dextrose, lidocaine.
Haha explaining my own medicine to myself... or my imaginary friend.
I am truly cooked. 🤯🍉
It binds free-floating mana, chelates crystal-forming ions, stabilizes her cell membranes. It works only if her cortisol is already suppressed. Otherwise the serum burns through the needle before I finish.
The sour tablet is Aetherzyme-C. Citric acid, ascorbic acid, ginger, willow bark, honey, B6. It dissolves existing crystals and reduces inflammation. It must be taken on a semi-full stomach — empty stomach triggers gastric irritation, cortisol spike, and the whole protocol collapses.
Dose 2 is Aetherbind-X. Aetherglobulin concentrate, magnesium glycinate, taurine, L-carnitine, CoQ10, saline. It replaces her non-functional carrier proteins and supports long-term regulation.
It only works if Dose 1 has already stabilized her.
Pain comes. I come. Pain leaves.
Her body learns that lesson a little deeper every time. In 4 years it will know it the way it knows gravity. It's not installed — I didn't design it as a trap. But I keep running it, because the alternative is losing her, and not running it means total organ failure.
I have no options but to bring her close to me as possible for this treatment.
There's a line between those. I know where it is. I've been very careful not to cross it.
What keeps her alive stays pointed at keeping her alive. It doesn't go anywhere else.
That's the rule. I wrote it the night the dose failed.
Her survival may need me. Her choices never will.
The notes.
Each full treatment set costs around 2,000 gold. 3 of the core ingredients grow in exactly 2 places in the world — Valerion and Elyssium. Both governments treat the export license as a personal favor to no one. No substitutes. I've checked, twice, and once more out of stubbornness.
My current debt is roughly 7,000 gold by scamming people on our journey to the academy. Those drug addicts probably think I'm a compulsive gambler or con artist, can't deny I am but... Fine. More than a third of that is her remaining time — doses that don't exist yet, treatments I haven't paid for, the months between now and whenever I find the next solution.
I opened the case.
No sets left.
The next flare isn't going to ask when I'm ready.
I closed the lid.
"I'll need to start earning oney again." I whispered, to the room.
---
She slept. I stayed.
The trend, then. When she was 8, a hand and a story. When she was 10, the full apparatus — blindfold, lollipop, the breathing, the contact.
What's 13 going to ask for? 15? 18?
Every year her body produces more and believes less easily. The window gets smaller. The treatment gets more involved. And at some point the conditions break, unless I solve the underlying problem before it does.
The underlying problem is her terminal disease.
I am not genius enough to cure the incureable yet...
I'll need more time.. I don't know how yet. I know more than I knew last year. I'll know more next year than I know now. I'll write everything down clearly enough that a competent stranger could run the treatment if something happens to me, because her survival can't have a single point of failure.
I won't risk her life.
But I am getting closer...
Everything before that is just time I'm buying, 2,000 gold at a go.
I shifted my glance to her.
Her hand was still around my fingers. The grip had softened to almost nothing while she slept, but it was still there. Her body doesn't let go, even unconscious.
I rubbed her head with my free hand, slow, the way she likes. She made a small sound without waking, and then, without opening her eyes, she pressed her lips to the back of my hand. Soft, automatic, like she wasn't even thinking about it.
"...Kai..."
"Kiss..."
She kissed my knuckles again. Then my thumb. Then the back of my hand again.
"Mine..."
I stared down at her. Her eyes were closed. Her breathing was slow and even. She was definitely asleep.
She kissed my wrist.
"Kai... kiss... mine..."
She kissed the same spot three more times in a row, each one softer than the last.
"...my Kai..."
Her lips brushed against my palm. Then she licked it. Actually licked it. A tiny, sleepy lap like a cat.
I blinked.
"...tastes like Kai..."
What.
She kissed my fingertips, one by one.
"...pretty..."
She kissed my knuckles again.
"...don't go..."
She kissed my thumb.
"...stay..."
She kissed my palm.
"...love you..."
She kissed my wrist.
"...forever..."
She kissed my knuckles.
"...kiss..."
She kissed my fingers.
"...mine..."
She kissed my hand.
"...Kai..."
She kissed my palm again, then licked it again.
I watched her.
Is she actually asleep?!
I checked her breathing. Slow. Even. Her eyes were moving beneath her lids — REM sleep. She was dreaming.
About what?!
She kissed my hand again.
"...kiss me..."
Is she dreaming about kissing me? Or does she think my hand is my face?
"...mine..."
I exhaled slowly through my nose.
She's going to be doing this for the rest of the night, isn't she?
I didn't move my hand. I didn't want to wake her. I just let her kiss and lick and mumble against my skin, her small fingers still loosely curled around mine.
She thinks I'm her pillow. Or her personal hand to kiss. Or both.
She kissed my thumb.
"...tasty..."
She's definitely dreaming about cake. Or me. Or both.
She kissed my palm.
"...Kai... kiss... mine..."
I stared at the ceiling.
Weird cotton pink girl.
"...my Kai..."
"...don't stop..."
"...love..."
She kissed my hand.
"...you..."
I closed my eyes.
I'm never telling her about this.
"...forever..."
Never.
...
She's lucky she's cute.
I let her keep going. There was no point stopping her. She was asleep. She'd forget in the morning. Probably.
Definitely.
...
Elfie bit into my finger.
Definitely lucky she's cute.
I definitely deserve that for calling her weird.
I stayed still. I let her kiss and lick and mumble until her lips finally slowed, until the kisses became softer, until the words faded into quiet breaths against my skin.
Her grip on my fingers never loosened.
Do you dream about me too?
Finally...
She reached for my hand — carefully holding it, with the small frowning focus she gets when she's handling and pressed my palm flat against her chest. Over her heart. Held it there with both of hers.
Her body is growing naturally in the future she'll be a woman too. Bigger chest probably? I assume so.
Someone else would be flustered right now.
I've read about blushing. I can tell you the mechanism in detail — the vasodilation, the flustered pink response, the psychological response. I have no ability to simulate it voluntarily. Everything I've tried generates either nothing, or something people describe as "looking gay & fake." Unclear why.
At least she stopped kissing my hand.
She sighed. The mana spark under my palm was quiet and steady — a banked fire. Exactly where it needs to be.
I said I'd stay until she was asleep. She's asleep.
I'm not moving.
5 minutes later, something had clearly happened.
At some point in the interval, Elfina Lunaris — Rank Zero, Class A's resident natural disaster, the girl 3 nations would quietly pay serious money to study — had migrated entirely across the bed with the patience of a continent and annexed my body completely. Arm across my chest. Leg pinning both of mine. Face buried in my neck. Her hand still pressing my palm to her heart, grip somehow stronger in sleep than it had been awake.
I stared at the ceiling.
Happinesss Escape: left side, blocked. Foot of the bed, guarded by the knee. Floor, historically hers, so sentimental territory.
Wonderful.
I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her in properly.
If I'm being captured, I refuse to sleep with bad form.
I checked her breathing 1 more time. The same check I've done after every treatment since she was 8, the one I can't stop doing even when the gauge says she's fine.
10 a minute. Even. No catch.
Safe.
The lamp glowed blue-gold. Rocky made a small sound on the desk and settled back down. The rain kept going outside.
"...mine," Elfie breathed into my neck smiling, tightening her grip without waking. "...all mine..."
I looked at her.
Yeah.
You've always been mine too, princess. You just never needed to know that.
You're my priority.