Chapter 127: What Am I to You?

Chapter 127: Chapter 127: What Am I to You?

Rei was silent for a long second, then exhaled through her nose.

"Acceptable. For now. If someone tries to erase me with a smile later, I’m coming back to this table."

"I’ll be at it," Jenna said.

Gianna read the revised packet again.

The room waited on her the way the mock had waited on marker integrity.

"I’m not signing because of a speech on a bench," she said, mostly to me, partly to the record.

"I’m signing because the stagger held, the markers extracted, and the alternative is leaving him on a slate where the only other name is someone who sends videos without captions."

Rei’s smile was thin.

"I’ll take that as professional respect."

"Take it as a warning."

Gianna picked up the stylus.

"Review after first assessment. No night-sharing language. If you turn dual filing into a weapon against me off the field, I will use the review trigger."

She signed.

The pane accepted the second signature.

Jenna’s sponsorship seal completed the packet with a sound too small for how final it felt.

[Provisional dual registration: SUBMITTED]

[Primary support link: Gianna Everheart — Recorded]

[Secondary support link: Rei Lawless — Recorded]

[Constraint: Post-assessment review enabled]

[Intimate-obligation clauses: Absent]

No one cheered.

Rei flexed her sealed palm.

"Rules for the actual exam?"

"Revealed at intake," Jenna said.

"Board is holding final format until the Empress line presence is confirmed on-site. Expect harder optics, not necessarily a different physics. You three will receive the sealed brief when the academy accepts the packet."

I looked at the two names on the screen, primary and secondary, binding without ownership theater, a dual path that was real on paper now.

"So that’s it?"

"That’s the filing," Jenna said.

"The work starts when the brief opens. Until then: no public incidents, no residual scandals, and no one—" her eyes touched Rei, then me, then Gianna— "tries to renegotiate this with a kiss in a corridor where board scouts can record it."

Gianna stood first.

"I’m going to wash sweat off and sleep."

Rei lingered long enough to tap the secondary line on the projection with one finger.

"Still on the form. Don’t forget what that cost in the blind corridor."

"I won’t," I said.

When they were both gone, Jenna locked the packet and finally let a fraction of exhaustion show.

"Celebration is nonexistent for a reason," she said.

"You didn’t win a tournament. You bought entry into a harder room."

"I know."

"Good."

She closed the display.

"Then go rest like someone who understands the difference."

I washed my face in the guild washroom until the heat of the mock and the annex table left my skin.

When I walked back toward the bay, Rei was already gone.

Gianna waited near the pillar by the private lift, jacket on, hair loosening from the training tie, expression set to something that was not indifference and not open invitation either.

Of course she waited.

Always saying one thing on the record and behaving another in the space after.

I walked close.

She fell into step without comment.

"Let’s not go straight home," I said.

Gianna nodded once.

"Fine."

We took her car up through Sector 7’s upper lanes and stopped at a high-rise restaurant bolted into the side of a glass tower.

The dining floor was mostly empty at this hour, a few tables of women in guild-casual, two men who didn’t read as supports so much as decorative attachments, soft-handed and careful, more ornament than battery.

One of them stroked the wrist of the woman beside him like the gesture was the whole job description.

We were seated along a long banquette by the window.

Neon from the lower commercial grid washed the glass in slow color.

A waiter arrived, offered the menu to Gianna first, then glanced at me and blushed hard enough that her ears went pink.

I did not look at her.

My eyes stayed on her.

She ordered for both of us without asking for the choice, returned the menus, and only then turned her gaze fully toward me.

"You know I won’t force myself on you," I started.

"I know."

"Then what was that about? On the mat. In the hall. The questions."

"That was reassurance."

"Reassurance kind of hurts when you already knew and still asked."

"I had to."

Gianna’s fingers rested against the base of her water glass.

"You change every day. Height. Output. The way you hold a room. I had to know if it was really you talking to me on that bench, or something wearing your voice because the class found a cleaner opening."

"And how do you know it now?"

"Because I can see it in your eyes."

She didn’t look away.

"I know you enough to read you now."

"You know me enough?"

"Yes."

I leaned against the table, put my face in my palm, and felt my tone shift into something drier and more tired than flirtation.

"It’s kind of funny," I said.

"Why am I the one always on thin ice with all of you?"

Gianna raised an eyebrow.

"Explain."

"Aren’t I the most important one? The one you need for the tests, for academy entry, for clearing dungeons and bringing back whatever is left of a cause worth finding?"

She analysed my expression.

"That’s true."

Her voice dropped, turned husky at the edges without becoming soft.

"But it only applies if you only behaved as a support."

The sentence hung.

"Are you only a support to me?" she asked.

My gaze landed on her neck, the line of her throat, the small motion of her swallowing under the restaurant light, blue-tipped hair free now and falling down her back instead of locked for combat.

Time felt slower than the graphs had any right to allow.

I stood and moved beside her on the long seat.

Even if it had been a narrow chair, I would have moved anyway.

I sat close enough that the anchor channel noticed and looked into her eyes from the distance of a shared breath.

"What am I to you?"