Chapter 60 The Strongest Person at the Table

By the time they escaped the pastry seller, Jin had been promoted to an expert in predatory commerce.

Yu-ra insisted on walking slowly.

“You'll miss the full explanation,” she said whenever he pulled ahead.

“I was there.”

“That's what makes your silence suspicious.”

They passed beneath a row of hanging lamps. She stopped at a shuttered shop window and looked at her reflection.

Jin waited beside her.

“I thought something would look different,” she said.

“You have ash on your nose.”

She elbowed him, lightly enough that he only deserved part of it.

“The first time,” she said. “Did you think it would last?”

He remembered the tiny creature disappearing. The impossible number. His fear that the next breath might take it all away.

“No.”

Yu-ra watched her own face in the dark glass.

“Twenty-five.”

“You don't have to spend them immediately.”

“I want to.”

She lifted her left hand and flexed it.

“Three Strength. Twelve Agility. Ten Endurance.”

Her breath caught. The hand braced against the windowsill, then eased before her fingers damaged the wood.

Jin stayed close without touching her.

She shifted her weight. Her heel rose too quickly; she caught herself and laughed under her breath.

“A little faster.”

“Try not to learn it by running through a house.”

She made a small sidestep, stopped and tried it again.

This time the stop landed where she'd intended.

“Level Six,” she said. “Nine out of fifteen left.”

Jin nodded.

She turned from the window and put both arms around him.

He held her carefully, then stopped being careful when she pulled him closer.

“Thank you for bringing me.”

“You asked.”

“I'm thanking you anyway.”

She drew back just far enough to look at him.

“Everyone keeps asking what I'll do next. Bigger raid. Better record. Another advertisement.”

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“Better coffee?”

“Not difficult.”

She rubbed her thumb along the seam of his sleeve.

“I wanted something I didn't already know how to do.”

He thought of Selene's empty left hand, the way Yu-ra had laughed when she fell for it.

“You found that.”

“Two things,” she said.

He waited, then understood from her expression and felt his ears getting hot.

“I'm learning too.”

“I noticed.”

She kissed him before he could make that worse.

Her forehead rested against his for a moment. He could smell butter in her hair.

She caught him smiling.

“What?”

“Strongest woman I've ever bought a pastry.”

“You ate half of mine.”

“You offered the bigger piece.”

“Poor judgment. I'm working on it.”

Back at the inn, Jin left his purse in the chest, now thirty-eight silver and ninety-seven copper. He cleaned the little scrape at the room's washstand and put a narrow strip of cloth over it.

Yu-ra watched him put their pins and phones into the zipped shopping bag. Her handbag and necklace were still inside, untouched since the crossing.

They returned to his kitchen together.

The clock said six twelve.

Theo was at the table, eating an apple over a plate.

“Well?”

Yu-ra handed back his pin.

“I met the Hero.”

“Nice?”

“Very. She won.”

Theo looked at Jin.

“You took her on a date to lose a sword fight?”

“There were pastries.”

“And a business meeting,” Yu-ra added.

Jin pointed at her.

“That story stays in the country where it happened.”

Her smile widened.

Theo drew out the chair opposite him with his foot. Jin sat, defeated by the hospitality.

Theo put his apple down.

“I'll make tea.”

By the time Mira and Min-jae returned, the shopping bag was empty and the pin was back in Theo's coat. Yu-ra had messaged her mother that she'd be eating at Jin's.

Eun-ji replied with instructions for reheating the food.

Mira read them over Yu-ra's shoulder.

“Finally. An adult.”

“I own a pan,” Jin protested.

“You own the black outline of a pan.”

Min-jae offered to wash it. Mira caught his wrist before he could walk toward the sink.

“Don't reward him.”

At dinner, Yu-ra sat beside Jin. Her knee found his under the table, quite deliberately this time.

Theo watched them pass a bowl back and forth without either eating from it.

“You can let go,” he told Jin. “She knows where you live.”

Mira choked on her rice.

Yu-ra took the bowl, cheeks pink, and served herself.

Jin decided to die quietly after dessert.

Min-jae rescued him by asking about the charity exhibition.

“Is it all demonstrations?”

“Mostly,” Yu-ra said. “There's a junior class, a few team games, then matches. Three o'clock start.”

“Are you fighting?”

“At the end. A sword demonstration with another S-rank.”

Jin glanced at her.

She squeezed his knee once, then continued eating.

“I'll want the practice room early,” she murmured to him. “Before anyone starts asking for pictures.”

Her phone rang while they were clearing the table.

Kwon again.

She listened, held out the phone and asked Jin, “Do you want to take part tomorrow? You can say no.”

“What part?”

“A ribbon match. Hwang Dae-seong offered to put up the donation.”

Theo stopped drying a plate.

“The B-rank from the stadium posters?”

Yu-ra nodded.

“He won't use his class attacks. You're both trying to take a ribbon from the other's belt. Forty seconds.”

Jin considered it.

“Does he know I'm D?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know I cheat?”

She put the phone back to her ear.

“Jin would like the full rules.”

The answer made her laugh.

“Dae-seong says he watched the coffee video. He's already bought waterproof trousers.”