Chapter 48: Help

I couldn’t process what I was seeing.

"... Did you hear me?" Cassian asked after I spent a solid ten seconds just looking at him.

I couldn’t help it! Mr. Trench Coat himself was here, asking, presumably, to help train me. I had only one thing on my mind:

"Why?"

He gestured at the hall with his chin. I walked out with him.

We took the long way around the dormitory block, past the noticeboards, out into the walkways where the lamps were being lit. Cassian didn’t say anything for the first minute, which I assumed was part of the whole trench coat thing.

"You’re going to lose," he said eventually.

"Wow. Thanks."

"I’m serious. I want that established before anything else, because if you go into this thinking you can win it, you’ll die in the ring and I’ll have wasted a week." He had his hands in his pockets and he wasn’t looking at me. "You’re Rank C. He was Rank A at fourteen. His house technique is four hundred years old and there are maybe six people alive who can actually take him in an all-out fight."

"Uh huh."

"You..." He finally glanced at me," have a weasel."

[Everyone in this academy is going to hear about the weasel’s résumé eventually. I’ll make a pamphlet.]

We passed the fountain. Two Noble Course girls looked at us, then looked at each other, and I made a mental note that by tomorrow morning I’d be engaged to him in at least three separate rumors. Lovely.

"So what I’m hearing," I said, "is that you came to my door at night to tell me I’m going to lose. Which, honestly, I already had covered. I’ve got professionals telling me that for free."

"I’m not finished. Luckily, the rules don’t need you to win. They need you to push him over the fucking line."

"... Which is technically winning."

"You know what I mean," he replied. "You don’t have to actually beat him, you just need him to lose. And that is a far more reasonable goal. And I can help you get there."

I crossed my arms.

I may have not recalled many plot details from the original story, sure. But, I DID remember the characters, since that was, in all honesty, the part I cared about the most in my writing. I enjoyed crafting interesting people. So, I remembered what I wrote about most of them. Cassian didn’t do shit like this. He didn’t do charity. Part of his whole appeal was that if you slipped and fell in front of him, he wouldn’t help you up, he’d go "pathetic" and keep walking.

So I asked...

"Why are you doing this?"

He kept walking for a few steps before he answered.

"Because I want to teach Aldric a lesson."

"...That’s it?"

"That’s it."

"That’s the whole reason. Just, you woke up and thought, today’s the day I teach the crown prince a lesson, and the vehicle for that lesson is going to be a C-rank foxgirl in the Duel Festival?"

"Yes."

"And you’re not going to elaborate on that at all."

"No," Cassian said.

We’d reached the end of the walkway by then, where the lamps stop and the path goes down toward the training yards. I stood there and gave it a proper think, for a full four or five seconds.

There was obviously more to it. Something was going on between him and Aldric, or him and someone adjacent to Aldric, and whatever it was hadn’t come out of my manuscript, because I never wrote it. It was new. Which meant it was a problem with no reference material and no page number.

But, I had four days.

Beggars could not be choosers.

"Okay," I said.

He blinked.

"Okay?"

"Yeah. Okay. When do we start?"

"You’re not going to ask me anything else?"

"All I care about is how you can help me," I said. "And, if I’m reading you right, me winning is helping you somehow too. So, fuck it. We help each other, we don’t talk about it. We just do it, shake hands, and part ways. I’m down."

He nodded slowly.

"Well, alright then. Come on."

"... What?"

"Hm?" He turned. "We’re starting now. Haven’t you seen him? He trains all day every day. Do you think you’re landing even a scratch on him without doing the same?"

[... Right.]

Groaning, I went with him.

---

{Lily}

I had decided to read a little.

Kohaku had left a copy of the Stellaris Herald on her desk about four days ago and hadn’t touched it since, so I took it to bed with me and started at the front.

The lead story was the pigeons. The Magus Association had run an experiment on carrier pigeons in the second district to make them faster, and it had worked, and now the pigeons were so fast that they were going through windows. Twenty-two windows since Tuesday. The Association’s statement said the pigeons were performing above expectations and that the city should consider glass an outdated material.

Then there was the bread thing. Somebody in the commoner quarter had baked a loaf with a face in it and about four hundred people had come to look at it, and the Church of Lux had sent two priests to determine whether it was a miracle, and they had determined that it was not a miracle, and then somebody had eaten it. The baker was quoted saying she thought it looked like her brother.

I turned the page.

The Ministry of Roads had lost a road. Literally, it was just... gone. It was there in the survey from spring and it was not there now, and the Ministry was asking anyone with information to come forward.

[Wow. People are so busy in the city.]

The door banged open.

"Lilyyyyyy."

"Welcome ba-"

Kohaku got maybe three steps in and then dropped on top of me. All of her, at once, straight across my chest and stomach, and she was soaking wet.

"You’re wet! You’re- Kohaku, the paper! You’re getting the paper wet!"

"Shower," she said into my collarbone. "I showered. I’ve been training since six in the morning. Do you know what that’s like? Six in the morning, Lily." She rolled slightly, which put more of her on me instead of less, and her tail flopped over my legs. "I can’t feel my body. Genuinely. From about here down," she patted somewhere around her own ribs, "nothing. It’s all decorative now. If you cut my leg off I’d find out about it tomorrow."

"That’s not- can you at least get under the blanket, you’re freezing."

"Oh, am I?" She lifted her head. "Am I cold, Lily?"

"Yes, that’s what I just-"

And then she started rubbing her cheek against mine, back and forth, wet hair and all, and she said "warm me up then" in the most ridiculous voice. I told her to stop. She did not stop, and I got my hand on her shoulder to push her off and she just leaned into it and kept going until I was laughing too hard to push properly.

"Stop! Stop it! You’re impossible!"

"You’re smiling, that’s a legally binding endorsement, you know?"

She settled after that, more or less, with her chin on my shoulder and one arm across me like I was a pillow she’d been assigned. I got the paper out from underneath her before it was completely ruined. It was already completely ruined.

"So who’s been training you?" I asked. "Professor Corvaine said she didn’t have anything for you."

"Mm. Cassian."

"...Who?"

"Cassian Holloway." She waved a hand. "Trench coat guy. Black hair, red streak, brooding at the back of every room like he’s waiting for someone to ask what’s wrong."

"Oh. Him."

I vaguely remembered him. It was that boy she’d asked me to talk to before.

And she just spent the whole day with him... Alone?

[Wait, is she- No. No, no, no. Lily, she is not dating every single person she speaks to. That is not a thing that is happening. That’s your brain doing that, that’s not real, and you have to get a grip. She is allowed to have a training partner. People have training partners. That is a completely normal thing that friends and other people have.]

I looked at the top of her head, which was all I could see of her from this angle.

She hadn’t asked me, though.

"Lily?"

"Hm?"

"Your heart’s going really fast."

"It’s the pigeons," I said. "There’s an article about pigeons."

"Mmm..." Kohaku got very comfortable now. I could tell because her tail started swinging on its own. She still had her eyes closed as she said, "Oh, I read about that. I never made them do that, though."

"What?"

"Nothing."

In the end, I decided not to press the issue. Yeah, I’d like it if she consulted me the way I consult her, and yeah, it annoys me that she’s gonna be spending all day with that guy...

... But it was fine. Surely.