Chapter 63 The Part They Didn't Put on the Poster

The ticket sold for eighty thousand won.

Dae-seong insisted on signing it first.

Jin watched the buyer carry it away and wondered how much he could have charged for the chair.

“No,” Kwon said beside him.

“I haven't spoken.”

“You've been looking at the furniture.”

Across the hall, Theo was showing two children how to turn without pulling each other's arms out. One copied the glide. The other fell over laughing and tried again.

Mira filmed from the empty front row. Min-jae held the children's discarded jackets.

Jin gave him a sympathetic nod.

Min-jae raised the jackets in reply.

Near the ring, someone asked whether Theo was the pretty boyfriend from the coffee comments.

“I'm the expensive friend,” Theo answered without stopping the lesson. “She got the bargain.”

He nodded toward Yu-ra.

Yu-ra, waiting at the ring steps, caught Jin staring and crooked a finger.

He went.

“My turn,” she said, handing him her jacket.

“I've been promoted twice this weekend.”

“Try not to sell it.”

Her demonstration partner was a spear fighter named Chae Hyeon, who looked at the red ribbon around Jin's wrist and laughed.

“He really brought the chair?”

“He really brought it,” Yu-ra said.

Then she stepped into the ring and her expression changed.

Jin leaned forward.

Their weapons were blunted, their light kept close to the edges. Hyeon's first thrust brushed past Yu-ra's sleeve. The return swept low, forcing her back.

Her heel lifted.

She checked it and changed direction a fraction later than she'd wanted.

The spear tapped her shoulder.

“New trick?” Hyeon asked.

“Not ready yet.”

“Use the old one, then.”

Yu-ra smiled.

The next exchange sent light running along the ropes. She moved inside a short thrust, caught the shaft with her blade and turned Hyeon through the space she'd just left.

A source trail leads to the NovelPhoenix site, where the author posts this chapter; this copy was taken without permission.

The crowd clapped at the clean break.

Hyeon changed her grip. On the next approach, the spear butt came around where Yu-ra had expected the point.

Yu-ra checked it against her guard. Her free hand lifted out of habit, the little empty-handed threat Selene had used against her yesterday.

Hyeon didn't look.

The spear pushed her blade aside and stopped against her chest.

Yu-ra laughed, shaking her head.

“That usually works,” Hyeon said.

“I'm beginning to think I need a different face for it.”

“Try mine.”

The audience laughed with them. They reset, and Yu-ra stopped advertising the empty hand.

Jin found himself grinning at both of them.

The extra points hadn't turned her into someone else. He could see her learning how much room they gave her, one choice at a time.

Afterward, she came down the steps breathing hard and smiling.

“Too greedy with the heel,” she told him.

“I wouldn't know.”

“You saw.”

He nodded.

“I also saw the next one.”

She took her jacket from him, then caught his wrist before he could step away.

“That was the one I wanted you to see.”

They found a quiet place beside the empty warm-up room. Through the wall, the announcer was thanking the last donors.

“I've a hunt tonight,” Jin said. “With Kessa and Lark. A native creature in a quarry.”

Her fingers moved over the red ribbon.

“Do they know it?”

“Lark's looked at the ground. We meet the hunting crews before it starts. I'll look too.”

“All right.”

He waited for more.

She gave him a look.

“I fight monsters for a living, Jin.”

“I know.”

“Tell me when you get back.”

“I will.”

She kissed him, quick and firm, then held him there for a second one.

“That one was for the chair.”

He left his phone charging at home, returned to Aster empty-handed and collected his pin and knife from the room. His purse stayed in the chest.

By seven, he was standing above the west quarry with his steel knife at his hip. His pin was warm against his skin. Kessa had brought the new bow and a quiver of twelve arrows. Lark carried his wooden sword.

Down in the pit, something breathed behind an iron gate.

Rusk, the quarry's lead hunter, showed them a broken stone shield.

“First clap knocks you down. Second cracks the cover. Third comes through whatever's left. Don't stay for all three.”

The quarry owner had trapped the creature below yesterday's rockslide. Tomorrow his workers needed the lower road back. Twelve gold was cheaper than losing the pit.

Rusk pointed out the escape stairs cut into the near wall, then the upper ramp. Four hunters would hold that ramp while the lighter crews worked the sides.

“No spectators down here. Nobody gets a prize for being first.”

Jin looked over the ground. Broken white stone, two old ore tubs, a square cutting block near the middle. No mud. Plenty of loose grit.

He walked from the block to the left-hand tub, then back and toward a low shelf on the right. Four strides each. One shared start.

The ring routes were gone.

Beyond the gate, enormous fingers curled around a bar.

The bell-eater pulled its face into view.

It had no lips. Yellow teeth sat bare beneath a blunt nose. Round ridges of bone rose along its throat and chest, hollow enough that its breathing hummed through them.

A dark band pressed the fur flat around the base of its neck. Jin couldn't make out the fastening through the bars.

Rusk struck the gate frame twice with his shield.

The creature stood upright.

It struck its huge hands together.

Sound hit the iron like a battering ram.

Jin felt it in his teeth from the upper terrace.

The gate bowed.

Rusk stepped away.

“That's the small one.”