Chapter 12: Good Enough*

"Ooh, good try! Give it another go."

Lily reset her feet, raised her practice sword, and ran through the guard sequence I’d shown her. Step, pivot, cut, recover. It was afternoon, the sun was out, and the yard was mostly empty except for us and a couple of Knight Course boys pretending not to watch.

The cut came out crooked again. Her back foot kept drifting back.

"No, not like that. Like this."

I stepped in behind her, put my hands over her hands on the grip, and pressed my foot against the inside of hers to pin it in place. Her ears slowly turned red.

"Feel that? The weight stays here. This foot doesn’t move until the cut’s finished. Your arms aren’t the sword, sugar, your legs are the sword. Your arms just deliver it."

I think I sounded convincing enough. I was mostly just making shit up, though.

"R-Right." Her voice came out half an octave higher.

I let go and stepped back. She breathed, reset, and did the sequence again.

This time it came out perfect: clean pivot, foot planted, the cut snapping out straight as a ruler.

"THERE it is!" I clapped like a proud mom at a recital. "One more time, exactly like that."

She smiled brightly back at me, nodded, and went to try another.

She did it again. Then a third time, grinning now, the practice sword whistling.

[Whoa. As expected of the heroine. Show her once and she’s got it. Show her twice and she’s better than you. If I gave this girl a week she’d be correcting MY stance.]

Lily lowered the sword and wiped her forehead with her sleeve.

"Wow. This is really different from what the instructors showed us in the practical. Did Professor Sabine teach you this? Already?"

"This morning. Private lessons started early."

"Oh. What else did she show you?"

I blinked.

---

{That morning}

The professor’s office had a couch, a desk, seventeen framed certificates, and, as of six in the morning, a professor on her back on the couch with her knees pressed up beside her own ears while I railed her into the upholstery.

"The footwork, mmh, the footwork is the foundation of—" She grabbed my face and kissed me, then broke off to keep lecturing while I kept pounding her. "—of all combat casting, the hips generate, gods, generate the rotation—"

"Uh-huh," I panted, folding her further. "Hips. Rotation. Got it."

"Faster. That’s the spirit, take notes—"

---

{Now}

"We..." I said. "Worked on a lot."

"She sounds like such a dedicated teacher."

"Oh, she’s very hands-on."

"I’m a little jealous, honestly." Lily hugged the practice sword to her chest. "But this way I get the lessons anyway, so it works out! You’re a really good teacher too, you know."

"I’m aware," I said, and flipped my hair, and she laughed.

Speaking of things working out, here’s what happened last night:

After the professor and I finished round two and I limped back to the dorm on legs made of wet paper, I’d spent half the night lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, working the Manuscript problem while Lily slept eight feet away.

Fact one: In the original novel, Professor Sabine takes Lily as her private student.

That’s an extremely important plot beat. Sabine’s training is how Lily survives the Spirit Forest Exam, wins the Duel Festival, and, lots of other stuff later, eventually goes twelve rounds with her own mother without dying in the first exchange.

Fact two: in THIS timeline, Sabine turned Lily down flat, and then I dicked her down so well she accepted me as her student instead.

Fact three: I am now taking Sabine’s lessons every morning and handing them directly to Lily every afternoon.

Which meant, from the story’s point of view, squinting hard, from a distance, in bad lighting...

Lily was being trained by Professor Sabine.

Well. With one extra foxgirl-shaped step in the delivery chain. Still, the plot beat happened! Technically.

And the Manuscript looked at that, went "eh, close enough," shrugged, and paid me.

[THAT’S the mechanic. That’s how I gain MP. Every canonical plot point I make happen, however I make it happen, pays out points. And points buy me pages of the original novel. Which tell me what the next plot points are.]

I nodded to myself as Lily did these cute little swings in front of me.

[It’s a loop. Fix the story, get paid, read ahead, fix the story.]

And suddenly, I knew what was being asked of me, and how to do it.

---

The rest of the week, the academy did its best to remind me that teenage me had designed a curriculum the way a raccoon designs a nest.

Monday was Mana Theory, where Archmage Lucen spent forty minutes explaining affinity resonance, a system I personally invented, to a room of nodding students.

Tuesday was Practical Enchanting, which was fine. For our first lessons, we mostly just made rocks light up. Then, there was Etiquette, where an instructor made Lily balance a book on her head.

Wednesday was pottery.

I don’t remember writing a pottery class. I have no memory of it. But apparently, teenage me decided a combat academy for the continent’s elite needed an elective where future war heroes make bowls.

The instructor told us to "let the clay speak." Lily’s clay spoke eloquently. Within twenty minutes, she’d thrown together a vase so symmetrical the instructor got misty-eyed and made the whole class come look at it.

My clay also spoke, but mine had the dialect of a sailor. It was trash.

Two stations down, a girl laughed so hard when she saw my attempt, she collapsed her own vase.

I sighed.

[Taking these classes for years might suck. If there’s a way I can speed the plot up, I’d absolutely do it.]

---

By Friday evening we were done, alive, and lying on our backs on the grass behind the dormitory, watching clouds while the sun packed up its things.

"That one’s a bunny," Lily said, pointing.

"Come on. That’s clearly a wolf."

"It has bunny ears!"

"Those are wolf ears. I’m a beastkin, I have professional certification in animal ears."

"Fine." She pointed at another one. "That one?"

I studied it. Big, round on one end, tapered on the other, a distinct ridge partway down.

"Looks like a lighthouse," I said.

"It kind of looks like your pottery project."

"... That was uncalled for, but okay."

She giggled, hands folded on her stomach, eyes half-closed.

For a moment, I just appreciated the view, and I don’t mean the clouds. God, she was gorgeous. The evening light made her look like the main heroine she was. I had to physically tear my eyes away.

[One week in,] I thought. [Lily’s training is on track, the professor situation is... managed. Honestly? Situation stable. Wife me up, countryside, here I come, maybe six months out.]

And since I was feeling stable, I figured I’d invest. Five points, one scene of the original novel, a peek at what canon expected to happen next. Read ahead, prep the beat, collect the bag. The loop demanded it.

[MANUSCRIPT — Lv.1]

[View next scene? 5 MP]

[Show me what’s next, past me.]

The page unrolled behind my eyes in my own cringe-soaked prose. I skimmed the header. Then I read it again, slower, because the first pass couldn’t be right.

Then I sat straight up in the grass.

"Kohaku?" Lily propped herself on her elbows. "What’s wrong?"

[Oh, THAT’S coming up?]