A day later, the small demonstration room at the end of the corridor was open again.
When the door was pushed open, there was no real fire inside—only a cleaned-up brazier, wet cloths, buckets of water, and the familiar white line on the floor. But the moment Che stopped at the doorway, something in his heart tightened faintly. Not because he was afraid, but because this room had become tangled up with too many things. The smell of fire, that half-step, Keisuke grabbing him, and that "Uchiha" by the wall, weighted with the clan's burden—all of them seemed to be waiting at the threshold.
Takuya stood farther back than last time. He held no fire tongs today, only a thin wooden stick. He lightly tapped the ground behind the white line a few times, signaling for the children to stand steady.
"Today, we won't be looking at fire," he said. "We'll look at how your bodies start to panic before the fire even rises."
The children in the room were all a little confused at that. Kiyo muttered softly, "The fire hasn't even come yet. How can we panic first?"
Morita Yu replied, "You panic even when there's no fire."
Takuya ignored their bickering and held the stick upright before him. "The moment many people smell something burning, see a flash of light, or hear someone shout, they think they're responding to danger. But most of the time, they're responding to their own urge to jump first. Their eyes jump first, their feet jump first, and even their breathing jumps first."
As Che listened, the weight in his chest slowly settled.
He knew very well why he was especially sensitive to this lesson. Nothing had seemed to happen by the wall the day before yesterday, but it had left behind