After the silver light in the training ground faded completely, Jin'en sat in the corner for a long while longer.
He tried moving his right hand, spreading his fingers and closing them again seven or eight times.
The thin layer of silver markings beneath his skin hadn't vanished completely, but at least it had stopped glowing.
The faint hum in the air had stopped too, leaving only the occasional electrical buzz from the training ground's fluorescent lights in his ears.
"All right." He stood and brushed the iron sand off his trousers.
The iron sand clung to the fabric. He couldn't brush it clean and only ended up rubbing his palm raw.
He put his hands in his pockets and headed for the stairs.
As he climbed, the same question kept running through his mind: why had Daffodil said that?
She was clearly talking about me, so why did she sound like she was talking about herself?
A narrow corridor lay at the top of the stairs, with the main building just around the corner.
Jin'en followed his memory back to his room. His luck was good this time, and he took no wrong turns.
The corridor was quiet. Voices and footsteps occasionally drifted over, but they were all far away.
Back in his room, he locked the door behind him and sat on the edge of the bed.
The sunlight outside was already slanting, casting long tree shadows across the mountainside.
Looking toward Hethereau City, he could see the distant Bridge District, its buildings of varying heights crammed together. It hardly looked like the same city as this seaside area.
Jin'en stared in that direction for a few seconds, then looked away and rolled up his right sleeve.
The crack lay quietly against the inside of his wrist.
The silver markings were much fainter than last night, but clearer than they had been before breakfast.
That meant Inanna's "suppression" from last night was weakening.
Sooner or later, the crack would become active again.
As he was thinking, a flurry of footsteps and shouting came from downstairs.
Jin'en went to the window and looked down.
In the garden, Unica was dragging Flora toward the mansion by the arm.
Flora kept looking back as she walked, waving a branch in her other hand as though imitating something.
Farther away on the lawn, two girls he didn't recognize were doing some kind of physical training, one stretching her legs and the other holding a handstand.
Their form was precise, too precise for them to be playing around.
Both wore bandages.
The girl doing the handstand had white bandages around her forearm, while the one stretching had a thick support wrap around her ankle.
They were all old, with faint yellowing along the bandages' edges.
Jin'en watched for a while, then closed the curtains.
He slept neither particularly well nor particularly badly that night.
He woke twice, once because he dreamed the corridor was cracking again, and once simply because he was hungry.
The little he'd eaten at breakfast had long since been used up, and his stomach felt unsettlingly empty, but the Scarlet Letter Mansion clearly had no provision for "midnight snacks."
After dawn, he found the dining room from memory.
Breakfast was quieter today than yesterday.
Daffodil sat in her usual place, dressed in black, with blue streaks in her hair and her bangs covering her right eye.
Broken Rainbow wasn't there.
Jin'en sat across from Daffodil, one seat over, and picked up his bowl of congee.
Daffodil didn't look up.
Before her sat exactly the same breakfast as yesterday: milk, oatmeal, and a slice of toast.
She ate the same way too, one bite at a time, neither hurried nor slow.
"Where's Broken Rainbow?" Jin'en asked.
"She left her in the training room," Daffodil said.
"Who left who?"
"Who do you think?"
Jin'en thought about Broken Rainbow's habit of hanging off other people, then looked at Daffodil's expressionless face.
"She left you."
Daffodil paused for a moment in the middle of biting her toast.
"Mm."
That ended the conversation.
The two finished their breakfasts in silence.
By the time Jin'en set down his bowl, Daffodil had already stood up.
She folded her napkin and turned to leave, pausing as she passed him.
"Training ground in ten minutes."
"Okay."
Daffodil left.
Jin'en sat for another two minutes before getting up.
Daffodil was already there when he reached the training ground.
She wasn't swinging her blade. Instead, she was crouched at the edge of the ground, pulling things out of a cloth bag.
An iron ring, two short rods, several stone shards of different sizes, and a length of rusty chain.
"What are these?" Jin'en walked over.
"Targets." Daffodil set a stone shard on the ground, stood, and stepped back twice.
"You use stone shards as targets?"
"You do." Daffodil glanced at him. "I cut wooden posts. You practice your thing."
Jin'en didn't understand what she meant, but he didn't ask.
Daffodil walked up to the row of wooden posts in the center of the ground and drew the blade from behind her waist.
The blade shone a cold silver in the morning light, not dazzling, but with a strong presence.
When her first slash fell, Jin'en was still looking at the stone shards on the ground.
Swish-
The sound was as clean as snipping a single hair.
A white mark appeared on the metal-clad wooden post, about half an inch deep, with edges so even they looked measured with a ruler.
Only then did Jin'en notice that Daffodil wasn't wearing gloves today.
Her left hand had still been bandaged when she swung her blade yesterday. Today, the bandages were off, revealing a pale old scar across the back of her hand.
The scar ran from her wrist bone to the web between her thumb and forefinger, long, thin, and very faint, but distinctly separate from the healthy skin around it.
"Seen enough?" Daffodil didn't turn around.
Jin'en looked away and crouched to examine the stone shards. The largest was as big as his spread hand, while the smallest was only the size of his thumbnail.
Their surfaces were rough, their edges cracked.
He picked up the smallest and placed it in his right palm.
"What do I do?"
"Can't you tear space open?" Daffodil delivered another slash, her voice mingling with the rush of her blade. "Show me."
Jin'en: "..."
"That switch of yours lit up once in the middle of the night yesterday."
Jin'en's head snapped up. "How do you know?"
"Under your window." Daffodil didn't stop moving. "I was practicing."
Jin'en thought back. The training ground was underground on the east side of the building.
But his room was on the second floor, with its window facing the garden. The training ground couldn't be seen from beneath his window.
He fell silent for two seconds.
"You practiced in the garden?"
"From four to six in the morning." Daffodil delivered her fourth slash, slightly heavier than the first three, sending a few sparks flying from the metal cladding. "No one takes up space then."
Four in the morning.
The garden.
An image flashed through Jin'en's mind: before dawn, with only streetlights lighting the garden, a girl in black stood on the lawn swinging her blade. The edge sliced through the cold, damp air, and everything around her was silent, without even the chirping of insects.
"You get up at four every day?"
"Three thirty."
"..."
Jin'en decided not to pursue the subject.
He looked down at the stone shard in his palm and took a deep breath.
Tearing.
According to Inanna, his spatial ability had three operations: folding, tearing, and stitching.
Of those, he could occasionally manage folding. Once, while wandering the streets, he had "jumped" from one end of an alley to the other, probably a dozen meters or so, at the cost of two fingers on his left hand going numb for two days.
Tearing was a little simpler, because it essentially didn't require him to "do" anything. He just had to stop "holding it down."
It was like holding down a spring. Once he let go, it would spring out by itself.
The problem was that he couldn't control how far it sprang or in which direction.
Jin'en placed the stone shard in his right palm and stared at it for a few seconds.
He was very familiar with the "feel" of space distorting.
It felt as if something were swelling beneath his skin, as if his blood were flowing backward, as if a mass of air that didn't belong to him had been stuffed between his bones, hot and swollen, ready to burst through his flesh at any moment.
He slowly eased the force "pressing" it down.
The stone shard trembled slightly.
"Hm?" Daffodil stopped swinging and half turned her face toward him.
In Jin'en's palm, a spatial rift as fine as a hair was opening a few centimeters above the stone shard.
The rift was tiny, almost invisible, but the light in the air bent slightly around it. The stone's surface seemed to refract through water, its edges blurring.
The stone split.
It split straight down the middle into two halves, with cut surfaces as smooth as polished mirrors.
Jin'en exhaled, a fine sheen of sweat forming at his temples.
The rift closed rapidly after he relaxed, and the two halves of the stone dropped onto the iron-sand floor with two faint sounds.
"Not enough," Daffodil said.
Jin'en looked up at her.
Daffodil sheathed her blade, walked over, and crouched in front of him.
Her gray eyes fixed on his right wrist, her gaze neither cold nor warm, as though she were examining a ruler that needed calibrating.
"This little trick isn't what Mother told you to practice," she said.
"Then what is?"
"She told you to practice 'closing.'" Daffodil stood. "Opening and closing. You just opened it once and let go. You might as well have practiced nothing."
The corner of Jin'en's mouth twitched.
"Easy for you to say."
"It's not easy." Daffodil turned back toward the wooden posts and drew her blade again. "That's why I said I'd practice with you."
She slashed once.
Then again.
Jin'en crouched on the ground, holding the fragments of stone. Only after a dozen seconds or so did he open his palm again.
This time, the instant the rift opened, he tried to "press" it.
The black rift stretched into an opening about two inches wide above his palm, its edges curling with a faint silver glow. A low hum began to fill the air.
Gritting his teeth, Jin'en focused on the edges of the rift, as though trying to pinch a flailing loose thread between his fingers: find it, catch it, pull it back.
The rift shuddered.
It shrank half an inch.
Then it sprang open with a snap.
Jin'en's entire right arm abruptly went numb, as though he'd been shocked.
The bones from his shoulder to his fingertips felt as if someone had gripped them and twisted them halfway around.
He gave a muffled grunt and braced his left hand against the ground, almost losing his balance in his crouch.
The stone had shattered completely.
Into seven or eight pieces.
"Not bad," Daffodil's voice came from behind him.
Jin'en turned to look at her, panting.
She was still swinging her blade, her movements as steady as a machine that never tired, without even any sweat on her forehead.
"You call this not bad?"
"Better than the first time," Daffodil said. "The first time I practiced, my blade slipped out of my hand and flew into the wall."
Jin'en didn't know whether to believe her.
He shook out his right hand. Some of the numbness receded, but his fingertips still felt deadened.
Looking down, he saw that the cracks on his wrist had lit up again, the silver light pulsing bright and dim, producing some kind of "rebound" with the rift he'd just forcibly pressed back.
"Don't stop," Daffodil said.
"I know."
For the next half hour, Jin'en repeatedly tried to "close" the rift.
But each time, the effect lasted only an instant.
The rift was like a bent spring. The moment he let go, it snapped back, harder and harder each time.
Later, the rifts opened faster and faster, spreading from his palm to his wrist, then from his wrist to his forearm. Each new rift came with that low buzzing, like a swarm of invisible bees beating their wings.
"Do you still have any strength left?" Daffodil asked. She had already stopped and stood two meters away, her blade pointing down.
Jin'en sat on the ground, his right hand hanging beside his knee.
"Yes," he said.
"Your right hand is shaking."
"...Yes."
Daffodil watched him for two seconds.
"Rest for five minutes."
Jin'en didn't argue, because he really did need a rest.
His right hand was numb from wrist to fingertips. Everything he touched felt as though there were a layer of cloth in the way.
He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. About three minutes later, he heard soft footsteps.
He opened his eyes.
Daffodil crouched in front of him, holding a water flask in her left hand and something wrapped in waxed paper in her right.
She set the flask beside Jin'en and opened the paper wrapping. Inside was a neatly pressed square of chocolate.
Jin'en froze for a moment.
"The recipe Broken Rainbow gave you," Daffodil said. "She asked me to bring it to you. She also told me not to say it was from her."
"...Then why did you say it?"
"Because I'm not good at lying." Daffodil stood and went back to the wooden post.
Jin'en stared at the chocolate for two seconds. The paper hadn't been wrapped with much care, its corners curling up a little, and it still held the warmth of Daffodil's fingers.
He broke off a small piece and put it in his mouth.
It was very sweet.
Harder than the piece Broken Rainbow had given him yesterday, and sweeter, too. When he bit into it, it had a densely packed, grainy texture, like sand crumbling between his teeth and then melting away.
He chewed twice, swallowed, and picked up the flask for a sip.
The water was cool, with a faint iron tang, just like the water in the flask in the corner of the training grounds yesterday.
"Finished practicing slashes?" Jin'en asked.
"Not yet. I'm practicing thrusts now."
"How long are you practicing?"
"Until noon." Daffodil changed her grip, holding the blade in both hands with its tip pointing forward. "I'm going on a mission with Mother this afternoon. When I get back tonight, I'll keep practicing blocks."
Daffodil thrust, and a metallic shriek stretched through the air.
Jin'en sat on the ground, his right hand still hanging beside his knee, his fingers trembling slightly.
After staring at Daffodil's back for a few seconds, he said, "Don't you rest?"
"Why would I rest?" Daffodil drew back her blade, turned, adjusted her grip again, and struck once more.
Jin'en screwed the cap back onto the flask, thought for a moment, and tried a different question.
"When did you start practicing with a blade?"
Daffodil's hands didn't stop.
"I don't remember."
"You don't remember?"
"Mother said I started the day after I arrived." She thrust again, her voice a little indistinct amid the wind. "I can't remember what happened before that."
Jin'en watched her back as she swung her blade.
Black clothes, blue highlights. When she held the blade in her right hand, her left hung naturally at her side, its knuckles slightly curled, as though ready to catch something at any moment.
The posture conserved effort and was clearly habitual.
"Your left hand," Jin'en said.
"What about it?"
"Yesterday, you said you'd cracked three wrist bones. All three at once?"
"Yes."
"How?"
This time, Daffodil didn't answer immediately. She thrust twice more before speaking.
"I blocked a strike I shouldn't have." She stopped, her blade pointing down, and took a slight breath.
With her stamina, those few strikes shouldn't have left her short of breath. That breath was probably for something else. "I didn't know my limits then. Mother said if I didn't know my limits, I had to practice until I did."
Jin'en fell silent.
Broken Rainbow's words from yesterday-"Keep practicing once it's healed. No stopping"-circled through his mind, and he said nothing.
Daffodil began swinging her blade again.
"You should get back to practicing," she said.
Jin'en looked down at his right hand. The silver markings had dimmed for now, but the skin on the inside of his wrist still felt a little warm.
He picked up the smallest stone fragment from the ground and laid it in his palm.
He took a deep breath and relaxed.
The rift opened almost immediately, like a vertical eye suddenly opening. Tiny glints of light spilled from its silver edges, the air around it warped, and the stone fragment cracked in two.
But this time, the rift didn't close.
It kept expanding.
Jin'en abruptly clenched his fist, trying to press the opening back shut. A sharp pain shot through his right hand from wrist to fingertips, as though something beneath his flesh were pushing outward.
The rift extended across his palm, growing from two inches to nearly half a foot, and the silver markings crawled up his forearm from his wrist.
"Daff-" He couldn't finish.
A gust of wind that belonged nowhere surged out of the rift.
It wasn't quite cold, but it felt as though it could suck the warmth from the gaps between a person's bones.
Jin'en gritted his teeth and grabbed his right wrist with his left hand, trying to pull it back, but space had already begun to distort within half a meter of his right hand.
Several fine cracks appeared in the iron-sand floor, as though sliced by an invisible blade. The rusty chain he had been using as a target was caught at the edge of the rift and silently broke into three sections, the severed ends as smooth as laser cuts.
"Jin'en."
Daffodil's voice came from beside him. He had thought she'd backed away, but she hadn't.
She stood about a meter and a half to his right, her blade already put away, her gray eyes fixed on his right hand, her pupils slightly contracted.
"Don't come closer." Jin'en's voice had gone hoarse.
The rift widened another half inch.
"In your current state," Daffodil said, her voice flat and even, "roughly what's the radius?"
"Fifty centimeters," Jin'en forced out through his teeth. "Maybe more."
"Mm." Daffodil nodded, then did something Jin'en hadn't expected at all.
She took a step forward.
"Are you insane?" Jin'en jerked backward, his back hitting the corner of the wall, but he'd rather press himself against the wall than let that rift get even a fraction closer to her.
He knew all too well.
The thing on his wrist wasn't picky. Anyone who entered its range would become a pile of fragments, whoever they were.
"Daffodil, I said don't come closer-"
"I know." She took another step.
Now she was probably less than half a meter from the edge of the rift.
Jin'en could feel the wind inside the rift pulling toward her, making her blue-highlighted bangs sway gently.
But there was little expression on her face. She simply looked down at his right wrist, as though measuring a wound.
"It's the same as last night," Daffodil said. "A little bigger than when you were practicing just now."
"Would you please get away?" Jin'en was almost shouting. He shrank down against the wall, stretching his right hand as far away from Daffodil as possible, his left arm across his front as though trying to shield her with his body. "I can't control it! If you stand there, you'll get dragged-"
"Your left hand."
"What?"
"Your left hand is blocking it," Daffodil said, with a strange note in her voice, as though she had finally confirmed something. "Your right hand is going out of control, but your first reaction was to shield yourself with your left hand. You're not afraid something will happen to you. You're afraid something will happen to me."
Jin'en froze.
The rift jolted, its silver halo flickering.
"You called me 'Daff' just now," Daffodil added.
Jin'en opened his mouth. "That was-"
"It's all right." Daffodil crouched down to meet his eyes.
She was still less than a meter away, and the rift remained open just inches from her knee, but somehow, it stopped expanding.
Jin'en's heart pounded so fast it felt ready to leap out of his throat.
He could feel that tearing impulse still inside the rift, but something seemed to have snagged it, like a spring stretched to its limit and tethered by a thin thread, on the verge of snapping.
"Try..." Daffodil reached out and pointed toward his right hand. "Not 'pressing' it."
"What?"
"You've been pressing it back this whole time, right? That's why it keeps springing back harder." Daffodil withdrew her hand and rested it on her knee. "Try not pressing."
Jin'en panted, looking down at the rift.
Don't press.
Easy to say.
He tentatively released that force "pressing it back"-it was incredibly difficult, like asking someone to let go of a rope at the edge of a cliff, with a bottomless abyss below.