Chapter 55: Food
The knock ca at the door and Kaede called out for them to enter without looking up from her chair, where she sat with her legs crossed and an expression of complete composure, as though she had spent the last several minutes doing nothing more strenuous than thinking pleasant thoughts.
The guard pushed the door open. He took in the room.
Kaede, sitting comfortably, faint smirk at the corner of her mouth. Aya and Rei at the edge of the bed, both smiling with the particular warmth of people who had recently found sothing very funny. And Renji, at the other edge, rubbing slow circles into his lower back with one hand and wearing the expression of a man who had endured sothing and was still processing it.
The guard’s face cycled through several things.
He chose to say nothing.
He stepped inside carrying a tray, and behind him ca a servant girl with a second, the both of them moving to set the food down with quiet efficiency. Simple fare — bread, broth, sliced at, sothing that looked like roasted root vegetables — but hot, and real, and the sll of it hit the room like a verdict.
"Thank you," Aya said genuinely, already reaching for a bowl.
Rei murmured the sa, sitting up straight.
Renji looked at the tray in front of him and said nothing because he was already eating. Not quickly in the way of soone enjoying a al — quickly in the way of soone repaying a debt to their own body, thodical and focused, each bite following the last without ceremony or pause. The bread went first. Then the at. Then the broth lifted and mostly drunk rather than spooned. He worked through it with the single-minded attention of soone who had spent too many recent hours not doing this.
The guard watched from the doorway for a mont, reassessed whatever he thought he understood about the situation, and left.
The servant girl followed, casting one brief glance back at Renji, and then she was gone too and the door clicked shut.
Renji set the empty bowl down and exhaled.
He looked at the trays in front of the girls.
"How hungry are you?" he said.
"No," Kaede said, without looking up.
"I haven’t asked anything yet."
"You were about to."
He looked at Aya.
Aya pulled her tray slightly closer with both hands and a gentle, apologetic smile.
He looked at Rei.
Rei looked down at her food. Then at him. Then at her food again, with the expression of soone in the middle of a moral negotiation.
"Rei," he said. "You’ve barely touched the bread."
"I was going to eat it."
"You’re a small person. You don’t need all of it."
"That’s not—" She stopped. "You can have a little."
He had the bread before she finished the sentence.
He looked back at Aya, who was now watching him over her bowl with a look of warm, affectionate resignation.
"Just a little," she said, and pushed part of her portion toward him.
He looked at Kaede.
Kaede looked back at him with the flat, unhurried expression of soone who had already decided.
"Kaede."
"No."
"I’m recovering. I’m injured."
"You’re annoying."
"Those aren’t mutually exclusive." He held her gaze. "A little. Just the vegetables, even."
A long pause.
"The vegetables," she said.
"That’s all."
She slid them over with the air of soone making a significant concession that they would not be acknowledging as such. Renji ate them imdiately.
"Thank you," he said.
"Don’t push it," she said.
Later, the lanterns burned low and the village outside the window had gone quiet. The kind of quiet that settled in after the last doors closed and the last boots left the cobblestones — not empty, just still.
Renji sat in the chair.
The girls had migrated to the bed at so point in the way that groups of tired people do, without discussion or coordination, simply drifting toward warmth and horizontal surfaces. Aya was curled on her side, her dark hair loose across the pillow, one hand tucked beneath her cheek. Rei lay beside her, already deeply asleep, her face slack and young and peaceful in a way she rarely managed when awake. Kaede was on her back at the far edge, arms folded across her middle, still sohow composed even unconscious.
Renji watched them for a mont.
Tantalizing was the word that arrived without permission and he acknowledged it briefly and set it aside, because underneath it was sothing more imdiate and considerably less pleasant — the mory of an old man’s voice, unhurried and certain.
If you fail, you will be executed.
He stood up and started pacing. Quiet, asured, heel to toe across the floorboards.
He opened his system.
The panel materialized in the familiar way, clean lines against the dark of the room, casting no light.
Na: Renji
Strength: 45
Agility: 43
Endurance: 44
Intelligence: 12
Charm: 20
Unique Skill: Triple Sword Slash
Shop Points: 1900
He stared at it.
The numbers were better than they’d been. aningfully better, even. He could feel the difference in the way his body moved now compared to just a while ago — the way his reactions arrived slightly ahead of his thinking, the way his endurance stretched past where it used to break. He was getting stronger.
The question was whether he was getting stronger fast enough.
He didn’t know what was in that forest. He didn’t know its speed, its size, what it was resistant to, how it hunted. He had three girls who trusted him, a deadline, and numbers that were improving at whatever pace they chose to improve at, indifferent to urgency.
He opened the shop.
Scrolled.
Bought two vitality potions without overthinking it — he had the points, and there was no version of tomorrow where they’d regret being slightly less depleted. He held one small vial up briefly in the low light, then unstoppered it and drank half, a slow and asured half, and stopped. Set the remainder and the second vial on the table beside the bed where the girls would see them in the morning.
The warmth worked through him in the quiet way it always did, not dramatic, just a settling, like a knot coming loose sowhere deep.
He sat back down.
Looked at the three of them once more.
Nothing’s happening to us while I’m here.
He’d said it to Kaede to stop her worrying, which was true. He’d also ant it, which was the part he didn’t say out loud because it would have sounded like sothing from a story.
He closed his eyes.
Sleep arrived before he could second-guess it.????????????????????????????????
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