Chapter 301

Chapter 301: Chapter 301

After dinner, the table cleared gradually rather than all at once.

The Gulliver brothers left first because they had duties elsewhere in Folkvangr, and Allen stayed only long enough to finish eating before standing.

He paused near Rayleigh on his way out, no longer openly hostile but clearly unwilling to leave one old matter alone.

"One day, I want another fight."

Rayleigh looked up at him.

Allen’s expression had lost the irritation from the entrance.

What remained was the pride of an adventurer who remembered being completely unable to understand how he had lost control of a fight against someone who should have been much weaker than him.

"I’ve had years to think about that sword. I know what it does now, and I’m faster than I was then. I want to know whether knowing the trick actually matters."

That request made considerably more sense than a random challenge over Freya.

Rayleigh considered it before answering. "A controlled match. No killing techniques, no damage to the city, and we choose somewhere large enough that neither of us has to worry about civilians."

Allen nodded immediately. "That’s all I wanted."

"Then we’ll do it another day."

There was no taunting or unnecessary promise about who would win.

Allen had asked for a rematch, Rayleigh had accepted under reasonable conditions, and the matter was settled.

The catman left in a noticeably better mood than when Rayleigh arrived.

Freya waited until the door closed before looking at Rayleigh. "That went better than I expected."

"You expected a fight during dinner?"

"I know Allen."

"That answers the question."

Freya smiled and let the joke end.

Ottar remained seated for a while longer, one hand still resting on Tenken.

He had been quieter since the discussion, and Rayleigh suspected he was already considering the Jinzen session he planned to attempt later that night.

"Don’t force it," Rayleigh reminded him. "You aren’t trying to order Tenken to hand over Bankai. Sit with the sword and listen. If nothing happens tonight, do it again tomorrow."

Ottar nodded. "And if I reach its inner world?"

"Talk before you fight anything. People hear ’subjugate the Zanpakutō spirit’ and immediately assume beating it into submission is the only answer. Recognition matters more than winning a duel."

That advice seemed particularly relevant for Ottar, whose solution to most difficult things in life involved becoming strong enough to crush them.

Freya understood the implication too.

"I would prefer if he didn’t attempt to defeat his own soul with brute force."

Ottar looked at her with such complete seriousness that Rayleigh became slightly concerned the idea had actually occurred to him.

"Definitely talk first," Rayleigh added.

Freya laughed while Ottar accepted the correction without defending himself.

...

Once Ottar left to begin his training, Rayleigh and Freya were alone in the dining room.

The situation felt different from the Hostess.

As Syr, Freya had always occupied a smaller space.

She brought food, sat across from him at ordinary tables, walked through markets, and deliberately allowed herself to exist without the weight attached to her divine name.

Here, everything around them belonged to Freya.

The building, the Familia, the strongest adventurers in Orario and the people who would throw themselves into danger if she asked were all part of the life behind the waitress.

Rayleigh understood her better after seeing both.

Freya noticed him looking around. "Does Folkvangr disappoint you?"

"Actually, the opposite. I expected more gold."

She laughed softly. "I have Babel when I want extravagance. This is my children’s home, so I prefer it to feel like one."

Rayleigh nodded.

That answer sounded more like Syr than the Freya he had imagined years ago, which was probably the point he needed to understand.

The two were never separate people.

Freya had simply allowed different parts of herself to breathe in different places.

She rested her arms lightly on the table and became more serious.

"Thank you for what you did with Ottar today. He has spent so much of his life chasing strength that sometimes even I forget how young he was when that path began.

I would never ask him to abandon his devotion, because I know exactly how much it means to him, but I don’t want it to consume everything else he might become."

Rayleigh thought back to the quarry, particularly the concentration Ottar had shown while trying not to crush an ordinary stone.

"Tenken will help with that. Zanpakutō have an annoying habit of forcing people to deal with parts of themselves they’d rather ignore."

"You say that as though you aren’t the person who keeps making them."

"Knowing a bad habit exists has never stopped a blacksmith from producing more work."

Freya smiled, but Rayleigh moved the conversation forward before it turned into another exchange of jokes.

"Ottar doesn’t need me hovering over him every day. Give him time with Jinzen. I’ll check Tenken again after a few sessions, and if the connection changes enough, we can test him outside the city."

"You believe Bankai is genuinely within reach?"

"Yes. I don’t know whether that means days, weeks, or months, but Tenken is already pushing toward it. The rest depends on Ottar."

Freya’s gaze moved briefly toward the door through which her captain had left.

The possibility clearly pleased her, but there was no greed in the reaction. She was proud of him.

Rayleigh stood once the conversation reached a natural end.

"I should head home."

Freya did not ask him to stay longer.

That, more than anything else tonight, showed she had understood the boundary he gave her.

"I’ll walk you to the entrance."

They crossed Folkvangr together, attracting fewer stares on the way out because word had already spread that Yōtōsai was simply Freya’s invited guest rather than a new recruit.

Near the main doors, Freya stopped.

"Come to the Hostess whenever you want. I won’t treat every visit as some declaration of intent."

"That makes it much more likely I’ll actually visit."

"I assumed so."

Rayleigh opened the door, then paused when Freya added something in a quieter voice.

"And Rayleigh, I meant what I said yesterday. I won’t search for the person connected to you."

He looked back.

There was no playful Syr expression this time, nor the overwhelming certainty of the Goddess of Beauty.

She was simply making sure he understood that the promise had survived the transition between the two faces.

Rayleigh believed her enough to answer plainly.

"Thank you. That’s important to me."

Freya nodded and let him leave.

...

Rayleigh returned home later than usual, although nowhere near late enough to worry Alfia.

He checked the street before entering as always, locked the door behind him, and found her downstairs with the medical book he had bought at the market open beside her.

She looked up once.

"You had dinner with Freya."

The soul thread had apparently made hiding the general mood of the evening pointless.

"Yes. At Folkvangr."

Alfia closed the book around one finger to hold her place.

She knew enough about the Freya Familia to understand that accepting an invitation into their headquarters was different from eating at the Hostess, but she did not immediately criticize him.

Instead, she watched him remove Shinsō and Benihime before asking the question that actually mattered.

"Did she respect what you told her?"

"She did. She also repeated that nobody from her Familia will investigate you or follow me here."

Alfia’s expression remained guarded, but some of the tension disappeared from the Reiraku connecting them.

Rayleigh sat across from her and briefly explained the rest of the evening, including Ottar’s training and the possibility that Tenken was approaching Bankai.

He left out nothing that affected their safety and had no reason to burden her with every detail of dinner.

When he finished, Alfia considered Ottar’s problem for a moment.

"Teaching the Warlord that overwhelming force cannot solve everything must have been difficult."

"I made him catch rocks."

Alfia stared at him.

Rayleigh explained what had happened at the quarry, and by the time he reached the part where Ottar had repeatedly crushed the stones instead of catching them, the corner of her mouth had begun to move despite her best effort to remain composed.

"He pulverized six?"

"Five. He caught the sixth."

"That is somehow worse."

Rayleigh laughed and reached for the teapot.

The conversation drifted away from Freya after that, which suited him perfectly.

Freya had respected his boundaries, Ottar had begun moving toward Bankai, Allen had asked for a proper rematch instead of starting one in the hallway, and Rayleigh had returned home without anyone following him.

For one evening, that was enough progress.