Chapter 192: A pure

"We need to talk," she said.

"Are you sure?"

"Sit down before you fall down. You look like a ghost." She pointed at the chair she had righted, and he went to it slowly and sat.

His legs were shaking a little, something which he hadn’t noticed. "

"Not there. The other one. The one that does not wobble."

He moved to the other chair.

She stayed by the wall for a moment, with her arms crossed, looking at him. The anger had gone out of her face, and what was left behind was something older and more tired. When she spoke again, her voice was low.

"I should tell you what I am," she said. "Before you start imagining the worst."

"You do not have to."

"I do. You told me your secret. It is only fair." She took a breath. "And you are going to ask, and I would rather say it than have you guess."

Leon waited.

"I am not a player," said Iris. "I never was. I have no system, and I have never opened one, and I have never seen a number over my own head."

"Then what are you?"

She looked at the place on the table where the bow had been, and her voice, when it came, was very soft.

"I am an awakener."

"An awakener?" Leon repeated, a bit confused about what she said.

Awakeners were known by everyone, since it was basically the same thing as players.

To become a player, one had to first awaken a talent, then they would be integrated into the system, becoming a player.

However, Iris said she didn’t have the system and was only an awakener.

"Yes, a pure awakener."

"What does pure awakener mean?"

"It is not a word that most people know. It is not a word that most people are allowed to know." Iris pushed herself off the wall and went to the stove.

She picked up the kettle and found that it was empty, and she stood holding it for a moment as if she had forgotten what a kettle was for.

Then she filled it at the sink, set it on the flame, and stood with her back to him while the water began to tick.

Leon let her do it. He had a feeling that she needed something to do with her hands.

"Everyone knows how it works," she said, without turning.

"You turn sixteen. You go to the hall, and you put your palm on the awakening crystal. It looks at you for a moment, and then it awakens your talent and you get the stupid system."

"After that... you are a player, and you belong to the Association whether you like it or not."

"I know how it works."

"I know that you know. I am saying it so that you understand what I am about to say." She turned around. "I never put my hand on the crystal."

"Never?"

"Never. And neither did my parents, or my grandparents, or anyone in my family for as long as anyone could remember." She took two cups down from the shelf. "They did not trust it."

Leon frowned. "The crystal?"

"The system." She said the word as though it tasted bad. "I told you before... it’s evil."

"Oh... I never thought you were serious," he said with a wry smile.

He had simply seen it as the rambling of someone who failed to awaken a talent, so he had simply brushed her words about the system to the back of his mind.

"Hmph, I meant every word."

"I thought that you were only being dramatic."

"I know that you did. It was very rude of you." She put the cups down on the table with a click.

"My family... they called us The Pure, they believed that a system that helps you level up takes something from you in return."

"They did not know what, but they were sure of it... and it has always been like that, from my grandparents and even my great grandparents."

"We lived at the edge of a small town, and we kept to ourselves, and we taught our children not to look at the crystal when we passed the hall."

"And you still have a power."

"Yes."

"How?"

"I am not going to tell you that."

He raised an eyebrow, and she raised one back.

"I told you what I am," Iris said. "I did not say that I would tell you everything. You will have to be satisfied with a little, and I will have to be satisfied with a little of you."

She reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. It was a nervous movement, and he thought that she did not know she had made it.

"We are not friends tonight, Leon. We are two people who have found out something awful about each other. I am not going to pretend otherwise."

"That is fair."

"You keep saying that."

"It keeps being true."

The kettle began to whistle. She took it off the flame, poured the water into the pot, and stood watching the leaves unfurl.

Leon watched her do it. He noticed that her hands were steadier than they had been ten minutes ago, and that she was breathing more slowly.

"The Association found out," she said.

He had been waiting for that.

"I do not know how. Someone told them, I think. Or someone saw something that they should not have seen." She poured tea into one cup and then the other.

"It does not matter. They came to the house on a night in autumn, with a letter and a dozen hunters, and they said that my family was an illegal gathering of players."

"They said that we had been using powers without registration. That is what they called us. Illegal players."

"But you were not players."

"No." The smile she gave him was thin and bitter. "That did not seem to make any difference. A person who has power and no registration is a danger to the Association, and the Association does not wait to find out what kind of danger."

"They tagged us. They put our names on a list, and they sent the players to every town where we might have gone."

"Iris..."

"Do not say that you are sorry." She slid one of the cups across the table to him. "I have heard every kind of sorry. It does not help."

He took the cup. It was warm against his palms, and he wished that he could have thought of something to say that was better than what she had just forbidden.

"How many of you were there?" he asked instead.

"Enough." She sat down across from him, and for the first time since the bow had appeared, she looked at the table and not at him. "Now there is one."

The kitchen was very quiet for a while, until Iris broke the silence again.

"I have not told anyone this," Iris said. "Not in years. I want you to understand that. It is not the kind of thing that I say to people I like, and it is certainly not the kind of thing that I say to people who are on the news."

"I will not repeat it."

"I know that you will not. If you did, you would be signing my death warrant, and I think that even you have more sense than that."

"Even me?"

"Even you."

He did not argue with that.

They sat for a while with the tea cooling between them. The yellow lamp hummed above the table. Outside, a night bird called twice from the roof of the next house and then fell silent.

"What was it?" Leon asked at last.

He had told himself not to. He had told himself, in fact, three times in the last five minutes. But the cold had not gone from the back of his neck, and the question had been sitting in his mouth for so long that it came out before he could stop it.

"The bow," he said. "The arrow. What is it?"

Her face closed like a shutter.

It was so quick that he almost missed it. One moment she was a tired woman holding a cup of tea. The next she had the look of someone who had come to the edge of a locked door, and had set her palm flat against it.

"It’s... my talent."" she said.

"I’ve never heard of such a talent before, what kind is it... if I may ask?"

"No, Leon. I told you that you would have to be satisfied with a little."

"I am only asking because I felt something when I looked at it. It was not a normal weapon. I’ve had my fair deal of fights, and I have never felt that." He hesitated. "I am not asking to take it from you. I would just like to know why I was afraid."