Chapter 146: The Last Ordinary Hour

Chapter 146: Chapter 146: The Last Ordinary Hour

We sat at the small table once the food was done.

Gianna and I served Rei first without making a production of it, then took the remaining seats.

The plates were simple: root vegetables cut the way Gianna had ordered, protein seared clean, herbs that still carried the faint green of the hydroponic levels.

Nothing ceremonial.

Just calories that weren’t enough to hurt feelings.

Rei stared at her portion for a second longer than necessary, then picked up her utensils.

"You’re both staring," she said.

"We’re supervising," I answered.

"Making sure you don’t invent a reason to leave before the first bite."

Gianna shot me a look.

"Eat. If either of you starts a speech, I’m confiscating the forks."

We began at the same time.

For a few minutes the only sounds were ordinary ones: chopsticks, the soft scrape of a plate, the distant city hum through the insulated glass.

Then the conversation drifted, as it always did, when three people who spent too much time on mats tried to talk about anything else.

"So," I said, "stupid question inventory. Who here has ever lost a spar because they were thinking about food?"

Rei didn’t look up.

"You. Yesterday. You telegraphed a step because you were arguing with Gianna about sauce."

"That was tactical debate."

"That was hunger," Gianna said.

"You fought like someone counting the minutes until dinner."

"I fight like an artist."

"You fight like a man who once tried to flash-cut vegetables and nearly lost a fingertip."

Rei made a small sound that might have been a laugh if she had allowed it full volume.

"I still can’t believe you let him near a knife."

"I don’t," Gianna said.

"I let him near a sink. There’s a difference."

I pointed my chopsticks at both of them.

"This is abuse. I’m reporting it to Mira."

"Mira will side with us," Rei said.

"She has eyes."

The easy back-and-forth held for a while longer, complaints about public-hall cadets who stared too long, a brief argument about whether Zenith counted as a skill or a crime against recovery schedules, Gianna threatening to ban the word "hubby" from the apartment by force of law.

Nothing that would score on a board. ℯℯ𝑙.

Everything that made the room feel less like a staging area for hooks.

Eventually I set my utensils down and looked at them properly.

"Any idea how many people will participate in the test?"

Gianna shook her head.

"No one knows exact numbers. Every year it’s increasing. More dual filings, more house pressure, more observation seats sold under polite names."

"Anyone can join?" I asked.

"Like... anyone?"

Rei’s eyes lifted.

"Who are you thinking?"

"I heard Jenna say it once. About wasteland people and such. What do you two know about them?"

Rei was quiet for a beat, as if weighing how much Lawless dinner talk was safe to export.

"Well..." she started.

"I did hear my mom call them some of the strongest support. That’s why they don’t bend by the rules. They live outside the sector grids, outside the Empress charters. When they cross in, it’s never as students. It’s as problems the board pretends it planned for."

"Even stronger than Empresses?"

Rei shrugged one shoulder.

"No one knows, Revien. Not really. Because if the strongest support and an Empress fought clean, one of them would definitely die. That’s how the past always has been. The histories don’t record draws. They record funerals and rewritten maps."

"That’s depressing."

"You fucking started it," Gianna said.

"Yeah," I admitted.

"I was hoping for some badass story, not death and redemption."

Rei’s mouth flattened.

"There’s no redemption in those stories. Only who walked away with the core still intact."

"Whatever." I picked up my chopsticks again.

"I’m filing that under ’do not romanticize before 0600.’"

We finished the meal without returning to Empresses or wastelands.

When the plates were empty, Rei stood with the awkward precision of someone who had run out of script.

Her chair scraped softly.

She looked toward the door, then toward the short hallway that led to the spare room Gianna kept for exactly the nights when plans went sideways.

Gianna spoke before Rei could invent an exit.

"Let’s sleep. It’ll be easier to move together to the gate tomorrow."

Rei simply nodded.

No argument or joke about how her mother will search for her.

She collected her bag, stepped into the spare room, and closed the door with a click that still somehow sounded final.

I leaned against the counter beside Gianna, close enough that the heat of cooking and the closer heat of her presence mixed.

"How about a passionate night with your hubby?"

Gianna turned toward me.

For a moment her gaze shifted, seductive in a way that had nothing to do with training halls or dual-filing language.

My heart skipped hard enough that I felt it in my throat.

She leaned in until her mouth was near my ear.

"Once the test ends...," she murmured, "we will see. The same bed as last time."

I nodded too quickly, already realizing a sleepless night was coming whether I admitted it or not.

From the spare room, Rei lay on her back staring at the ceiling while our quieter giggles carried through the thin interior wall.

She closed her eyes eventually, jaw still faintly marked by a hand that wasn’t in this apartment, and forced her breathing into something that could pass for rest.

Morning.

[04:00:00]

The city was still mostly dark when we left Gianna’s building.

We reached the guild’s topmost roof as the first thin line of light touched the far towers.

Jenna was already there.

She watched us approach, Gianna with her hair tied for work, Rei with her braid severe and clean, me with the heavier bracelet cold against my wrist and Fracture Step sitting ready in my legs like a held breath.

"You three good?" Jenna asked.

"Not really," I said.

Gianna’s mouth twitched.

Rei didn’t bother lying either.

Jenna smiled, small and tired and sharp all at once, and pressed a button on the control plate built into the roof’s edge.

BOOM!

Reality warped in an instant.

A portal began to form in the open air above the platform, edges tearing quietly as it drank ambient energy and light.

[Destination Sector: Sector 1 Central Academy Arena Gates]

The pull was clean, professional, the kind of gate work that belonged to Sector logistics rather than dungeon accidents.

Wind lifted around our boots.

"Holy shit!"

The city’s neon bent toward the opening like it wanted to follow.

"Sector 1," Jenna said.

She looked at each of us in turn, primary, secondary, the axle between them, and the expression she wore was not the guildmaster’s public face.

It was closer to the woman who had once lifted an unconscious support off a sofa and decided, against better arithmetic, to keep him.

"Good luck."

The portal widened.

I glanced once at Gianna.

Once at Rei.

Then the three of us stepped forward together as the portal took the morning and the city and the last ordinary hour before the test began.