Chapter 112: I’m Not Scoring Self-Harm

Chapter 112: Chapter 112: I’m Not Scoring Self-Harm

Jenna arrived later that night.

I was on the bed, shirtless, a single blue chain looped loosely between my hands like a habit I hadn’t put down.

Not bound to anything.

Just tension and release, formation and dismissal, the Lv. 2 responsiveness answering as fast as I could think it.

The room was dim, and the bracelet sat quiet green on my wrist.

She paused in the doorway, face mostly indifferent, eyes moving from the chain to my chest and back.

"I didn’t take you for a boy who enjoys this."

I huffed a short laugh and let the link dissolve into light.

"Trying to keep it under control."

"You’re using it as a weapon?"

She stepped inside, already working the buttons of her work shirt loose as she headed toward the bath.

Practical, not a performance.

"I have to. It has multiple properties. Bind, track, pull, restrain. If I only ever practice when someone’s bleeding on a mat, I’ll be slow when it matters."

"That’s good."

Fabric shifted. She didn’t look back.

"How’s training with Rei?"

"Well enough, I guess. She’s not that pushy today. Or she won’t be, if the terms hold."

Jenna didn’t ask about Gianna.

She didn’t ask whether anyone had been in the apartment before her.

The omission was deliberate enough that I filed it and didn’t fill the silence with a confession she hadn’t requested.

We ate and slept without much discussion.

Morning came without drama, and the guild schedule pulled us forward before either of us could turn the night into a longer evaluation.

Rei was already in the private hall when I arrived.

Hair in a ponytail for once, higher, cleaner, no loose dark curtain to hide the line of her neck.

Her eyes looked different under the white training lights. Sharper. Less theatrical hunger, more focused measurement.

She watched me walk in, shrug off the coat, and stand there in a plain white tank top that left my arms and the line of my shoulders bare on purpose.

"Seducing this early in the morning?" she scoffed.

"No."

I met her gaze and let her look.

Yesterday she had spent too much of the round opening her own veins for advantage.

Effective. Wasteful.

Today I wanted her attention on reach, angle, and the body she kept trying to read through contact, not on how much of herself she was willing to spend to win a training exchange.

"New rules for this block," I said.

"You don’t cut unless I force a situation where blood is the only answer. You want progress, you take it from contact, pressure, and whatever you can steal cleanly. I’m not scoring self-harm."

Rei’s mouth tilted.

"Stealing from an opponent is easier anyway."

"Then do that."

[Session parameters acknowledged]

[Target: Rei Lawless — Favorability 24 / 100]

[Host regulation: Stable]

She moved first.

No wide blood edge.

A short feint toward my lead shoulder, then a cut of her body inward, fingers aiming for the inside of my elbow where a grab could spoil chain formation.

I let Fracture Step shave a half-step laterally, short vector, no full five-meter burn, and a chain snapped around her reaching wrist before her grip closed.

She rotated with the pull instead of fighting it, used the momentum to come across my front, and raked her nails down the bare skin of my upper arm hard enough to raise lines.

Not a construct.

Just her.

The sting landed clean.

I didn’t give her the satisfaction of a flinch big enough to use.

Second chain formed toward her ankle.

She stepped over it, closed distance, and tried to get a palm on my sternum through the tank fabric. Heat flared where she touched, her core tasting output through fabric and skin.

[Minor exchange detected]

[Target regeneration signature responding]

[Host control markers: within range]

"You’re quieter today," I said, binding her palm line and pivoting to put her back toward the open mat.

"You’re louder without speaking."

She broke the wrist link with a concentrated burst along her own skin, minimal blood, just enough to disrupt the ethereal tension, and the spray never became a blade.

"White shirt, open arms, walking in like the room should look at you. Don’t insult me by calling it nothing."

"It’s so you stop opening your hands every time you need an angle."

I cracked a chain toward her hip.

She slapped it aside with a reinforced forearm, closed again, and this time her nails caught the side of my neck in a shallow scrape as she tried to lever past my guard.

Close enough that the ponytail brushed my jaw.

Close enough that Pheromone Trace and her mutated hunger had nowhere to go but into the same breath.

I headlined a short Fracture Step behind her, reappeared on her blind arc, and dropped a binding loop around both upper arms before she could turn fully.

Rei snarled, dropped her weight, and forced a thin blood thread from the scrape on my neck she’d left, stealing a fraction of contact to harden a needle-thin spur toward my ribs.

Clever and ugly.

Exact to her style when she wasn’t allowed to flood the floor with her own veins.

I angled off, let the spur tear cloth instead of skin, and yanked the arm-bind sideways hard enough to put her knee down on the mat.

A third chain hovered near her throat without touching.

"Yield the exchange," I said.

"Make the next one cost you more than scratches."

She detonated the arm links with a controlled micro-burst, rolled, and came up smiling with teeth.

We reset without a full break.

The next sequence was faster, chain sweeps answered by stolen edges, her hands always hunting bare skin, my steps cutting her rhythm before she could turn scratches into a resource economy.

She landed another rake across my forearm.

I landed a full hip-lock that put her back on the wall hard enough to thud.

[Favorability: 24 → 26]

"You’re still holding the bracelet, ceiling," Rei said against the thin space between us, breath hot, ponytail coming slightly loose.

"Yes."

"Night terms still yours?"

"Yes."

"Annoying."

"I know."