Chapter 41 Boyfriend Material

Yes, Jin typed.

He deleted it.

Typed it again.

Added: I'd like that.

Yu-ra's reply arrived while he was still staring at his own words.

Good. So would I.

He missed the curb.

A passing delivery rider shouted something about where his eyes belonged. Jin apologized to the rider, the bicycle and, unnecessarily, the curb.

His phone buzzed once more.

She's asking what you eat.

Food. Nearly all of it.

I'll warn her.

Jin put the phone in his pocket before he could propose marriage by accident.

At home, Mira took one look at him and called Theo.

“It's happened.”

Theo came out with the last dumpling between his chopsticks.

“Brain damage?”

“Worse. He's smiling with his whole head.”

Jin took the dumpling.

“She asked if she could call me her boyfriend.”

Theo's chopsticks remained suspended.

Mira sat down.

“What did you say?”

“Yes.”

Both of them exhaled.

“How little confidence do you have in me?”

“You once answered a compliment with your bus route,” Theo said.

“I thought she wanted directions.”

Mira covered her face.

Jin ate the dumpling. It tasted extraordinarily good for something stolen from a man who'd already stolen it from him.

They made him tell them about the raid over dinner. He gave them Jun, the armor, the shell. When he reached the educational talk, Theo had to put his bowl down.

“Please tell me there's footage.”

“Private team recording.”

“Then we shall become a team.”

Jin showed them. Mira laughed until she hiccupped; Theo replayed the part where Jin's legs were pointing in different directions.

Then the clip reached the sunlit cut.

Theo stopped replaying it.

“Oh,” he said.

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Jin nodded.

That part still made his hands feel small.

He told them the new Level too.

“Thirty-six.”

Theo looked from the paused shell to Jin's face.

“I want to see that sky for myself.”

“I know.”

“Not from your phone.”

“I know.”

Theo reached for his sling, then let his hand fall.

“Make sure that's still a request when you can do it. Don't decide I'm better off here.”

Jin swallowed his mouthful.

“All right.”

Mira pushed the remaining rice toward Theo. Neither of them made a joke of it.

After dinner, Jin left the phone on the table and crossed to Calder's backroom empty-handed. He fastened the tongue-pin from the shelf, buckled on his knife, picked up his purse and went into the shop.

Dessa was standing on a chair.

Kessa stood on another.

Between them, Jory was trying to measure a strip of red cloth without being stepped on.

“Absolutely not,” Dessa said.

“You said matching colors,” Kessa replied.

“I said red. Not that.”

The cloth had little painted bowls dancing along its edge.

Jin leaned against the door.

“I see the army has developed a uniform.”

Dessa pointed at him.

“Third man. Get up here.”

He looked at the third chair.

“No.”

“There are twenty gold in it.”

Jin climbed onto the chair.

Calder laughed behind the counter.

The Three-Pit Trial, Dessa explained, began tomorrow. Three hunters to a team. Wild quarry, a duel on raised walks, then a bounty beast if the first two points split. Twenty gold for first place.

Jory had made the ribbons because the other teams already had colors.

“Twenty gold,” Jin repeated.

“New kiln,” Dessa said immediately.

Jory looked up from the cloth.

“You said you hated the thing.”

“I hate carrying your bowls past it while you tell it to stay alive.”

He went quiet. Dessa bent to straighten his collar, badly, and he let her.

Kessa rubbed her thumb along the bow at her shoulder.

“I'd like to stop wondering whether the next thing will be too thick for this.”

Jin looked from one to the other.

For a moment the prize acquired more weight than the coins he'd been imagining.

“What's ours called?” Jin asked.

Kessa looked at Dessa.

Dessa looked at the bowls.

“No,” they said together.

Jory lowered the cloth, wounded.

“People remember a bowl.”

“They remember falling into one,” Jin said. “Leave it with me.”

He paid two silver for their team's entry, leaving eight in his purse. Dessa collected the three wooden entrant tags and took them to the practice ring behind the guild.

Jin expected a sand circle and a few bored spectators.

He found a circle packed three rows deep.

A huge bare-armed man stood inside it, rolling his neck. A narrow-faced swordsman watched from a bench with his boots on the rail.

The swordsman's gaze caught on Jin's knife.

“Does that go around corners?”

“Only after an emergency.”

“Get a better one before the pits.”

The big man turned.

“So this is the fish barber.”

Dessa stopped smiling.

“Dorn.”

“Dessa.” His grin widened. “You found someone who can trim the champion's hair after he loses.”

Kessa took Jin's bent knife and purse before he could answer.

Jin looked at her.

“Empty hands,” she said. “Out of the circle loses. Try not to eat sand.”

Dorn rolled one shoulder.

“Or you can watch with the children.”

Jin stepped between the ropes.

A window opened.

Jin looked at Dorn's enormous fists.

Then at the narrow-faced swordsman, who was sitting up to watch.

His stomach growled.

Dorn heard it.

Jin raised both hands.

“Excellent,” he said. “We have a menu.”