Chapter 34 Salary Expectations

Mira had forbidden flowers, cheering and anything Jin described as “a little entrance.”

So he sat in the back row with Theo and held a single thumb up below shoulder height.

She saw it. Her mouth twitched.

Then her first slide appeared.

A cartoon monster in a waistcoat occupied most of the screen.

Jin leaned toward Theo. “I've met her.”

“Stop helping.”

Eight hours of sleep and two bowls of breakfast had restored Jin's ability to sit still. They had done nothing for his sister's nerves. Her clicker shook when the first music clip refused to play.

A boy in the second row snickered.

Mira clicked again.

Nothing.

Jin started to rise. Theo caught the back of his shirt.

At the side wall, Min-jae lifted two fingers, then lowered them slowly. Breathe. The small gesture she'd practiced with him yesterday.

Mira put the clicker down.

“Fine,” she said into the microphone. “You get the expensive version.”

She sang the opening line herself.

Her voice cracked on the highest note. Someone laughed. Mira pointed at her own slide.

“See? You remember the villain already.”

This time the room laughed with her.

Jin sat back down.

She finished without the clip, took two questions and came straight down the aisle afterward.

“Don't,” she told him.

He held up both empty hands.

“You're doing the face.”

“I have a face.”

“The proud one. It's horrible.”

She hugged him anyway, quickly, then squeezed Theo's good hand before turning toward Min-jae.

“Coffee?”

Min-jae blinked.

“I thought you didn't like—”

“I can order something else.”

“Oh. Right. Yes.”

Jin opened his mouth. Theo pushed him toward the door.

“We are leaving before you become an uncle by accident.”

This chapter appears on the NovelPhoenix site under the author's publication, but it was copied here without approval.

“I wasn't going to say anything!”

“You inhaled like a speech.”

Outside, Jin's phone showed the afternoon address Yu-ra had sent. Under it was a message from Instructor Bae.

Bring the friends you said you train with. I need to see how you behave around weaker people.

Theo read it over his shoulder.

“How rude. I'm at least your intellectual equal.”

“Come and prove it.”

“Can I wear the mitt?”

“No.”

At two, they found Bae standing in a training ring with a padded staff under one arm. His D badge had lost most of its enamel. Behind him, nine E-rank applicants watched a suspended rescue dummy sway over a sand pit.

Min-jae arrived carrying two coffees and looking dazed.

Jin relieved him of one.

“Good?”

“She asked for next Saturday too.”

“Then why do you look concussed?”

“I don't know what happened between those two things.”

Bae rapped his staff against the ring.

“Phones away. Both of you.”

Yu-ra was sitting on the lower bench, pulling her hair through a tie. She looked up at Jin.

“You came.”

“You said paid.”

“I'll try not to be hurt.”

“You were the other reason.”

Her fingers stopped at the tie.

Theo took the coffee out of Jin's hand before he dropped it.

Bae cleared his throat with considerable violence.

“The job is rear extraction. You don't fight what she fights. You get people clear when she needs the space.”

Jin looked at the dummy.

“What does passing look like?”

“Get him over that blue line. Take the red strip from my belt. Three minutes. Your friends may help. The F-rank boy gets the same padding as everyone else.”

One of the applicants laughed at the sling.

Theo looked over. “If I do better than you with one arm, you can borrow it afterward.”

The laugh stopped. Bae let the silence sit.

Min-jae set his coffee down.

“I'm here.”

Bae glanced at him, then nodded.

“All right. Min-jae.”

Theo stepped into the ring and tucked his sling close. Bae moved the dummy's release handle to the right side for him.

Jin walked the strip between the blue line and the hanging man. Five strides. Good footing; one loose patch of sand he pushed aside with his heel. He practiced the arrival, bent his knees and recorded it.

Bae watched without comment, then tossed him a short padded baton. Jin caught it in both hands.

A window opened.

Jin closed his eyes.

“No,” Theo said immediately.

“I haven't done anything.”

“You look employed.”

Bae stepped over the line.

“Ready?”

Jin eyed the staff. Then the red strip. Then the nine applicants who had put away their phones and were now regretting it.

“Instructor, before we begin. What are your salary expectations?”

Bae stared at him.

Yu-ra covered her mouth.

“This isn't a joke,” Bae said.

“Neither is recruitment. Why should I hire you?”

The staff blurred.

Jin ducked. Padding hissed over his hair and struck the upright behind him with a wooden crack.

Bae reversed his grip without bringing the weapon back.

“I've trained seven C-ranks,” he said, “and I'm about to improve your manners.”

He put two into Strength, two into Agility and one into Endurance.

Heat punched through Jin's legs.

Bae saw the sudden change in his stance.

For the first time, the instructor grinned.

“Oh,” he said. “You've been holding back.”

His next strike came straight for Jin's knees.