Chapter 50: Multitasking

{Kohaku}

To be honest, I don’t know how I got into this situation.

Suddenly, I had two teachers working my body out for all its worth.

In the morning, now, Cassian had me meditate for some reason. I sat in front of him with my legs crossed and eyes closed, trying not to think too hard about why I was sitting here doing nothing instead of, I dunno, bench-pressing something.

"..."

"Stop thinking, keep going."

[Goddammit.]

---

In the evening, Lily was sparring with me. I swear, a little bit of her endgame strength was beginning to show... maybe because it was incredibly obvious she was trying to impress me. I didn’t know why, but she was.

"Ooh, bet you, uh, didn’t see that one coming, huh?" Lily asked.

[Of course I didn’t. When you try, you’re literally designed to be the most talented human being to ever grace this world.]

And we kept going.

---

Then, with just one day left to go before it was time for Aldric to turn me into a stain on the floor, Cassian had me run laps again.

So, I did as he asked. To be fair, my cardio was improving. The weasel was running beside me, adorably, trying to keep up and inspire me or something.

But, by the end of the fourth lap, I had to ask:

"Why am I doing this?"

He blinked slowly.

"To beat Aldric."

"Ye- no, I know that, I mean, why am I running around and all this stuff? Is this really gonna help me push that guy out of the arena?"

With crossed arms, he tapped his index finger against his bicep. Then, he finally answered:

"I’ll show you. Come with me."

We walked away from the track and down into the academy. Past the halls and random rich students and into some dark room that I wasn’t too sure existed for any purpose other than dramatic reveals, like the one I was about to get.

He inhaled slowly.

"The reason I’ve been having you do all this is to hone your body enough for this."

He pointed to a training dummy that had already been placed at the back of the room. Then, he put his palms together, fingertips separated.

"Hah..." he pulled his hands back. "Rah..." He pushed his hands forward. "Meh!"

A purple and black beam of energy shot out from his hands and decimated the training dummy.

I froze.

The beam kept going for a second or two and then subsided. He inhaled, shuddering, like this took a lot out of him.

"This is what I’m going to teach you now. And if you hadn’t done the work to hone your body, it would have destroyed you."

"..."

He raised a brow.

"I expected more excitement, to be honest. Do you have nothing to say?"

Not really.

But, it wasn’t that the move had been so amazing that I’d been rendered speechless. No, it was because as soon as I saw it, I realized:

[I know that move!]

Of course. It was the same final blast I’d given to Cassian’s character that made up his signature move throughout almost every volume. Every time the odds were stacked against them and it looked like Lily was finally going to lose a fight, he would pull this out of his ass and win.

And this was what he was prepping me for. It was because I’d written it that doing this required "peak physical conditioning" or something like that (you know, to make Cassian’s use of it cooler or whatever).

The thing was...

"Aldric knows the move," Cassian said, beating me to it. "But, he won’t know you can use it. That’s how you’re gonna get him."

---

Turns out learning the move was not as fun as writing it.

I stood where the dummy had been, put my palms together with my fingertips apart the way he showed me, and pushed. Nothing came out. I did it again. Nothing came out again. On the fourth try something came out, in the sense that a small amount of light left my hands and fell on the floor about two feet in front of me.

"Again," Cassian said.

"That one was better than the third one."

"It was. Again."

He didn’t correct me much. He’d watch, he’d say "your left hand’s early," or "you’re pushing from your arms, push from your gut," and then he’d say again, and I’d do it again. Somewhere around the twentieth attempt I got a beam.

An actual beam. It was about the width of my thumb and it traveled maybe six feet before it gave up, but I screamed anyway and Cassian said "again" before I’d even finished screaming.

By the fortieth I could hit the wall.

By the sixtieth I could put a mark on it.

By the eightieth my arms had stopped being arms and had become two long complaints attached to my shoulders. I was pushing the mana out from somewhere below my ribs the way he’d been telling me to for three hours. Finally, the beam came out purple and black and hit the back wall hard enough that dust came down off the ceiling.

"There," Cassian said.

"Was that it? Was that the thing?"

"That was about a third of the thing. Again."

I put everything I had into the next one.

Really, everything.

The beam took a chunk out of the wall.

Then I sat down, because my legs had made an executive decision not to listen anymore.

"Okay," I said, to the floor. "I need a minute. Or twelve. I need twelve minutes."

The weasel climbed out of my collar, walked down my arm, and put its front paws on my wrist and healed.

"You’re the best thing in my life," I told him.

He gave me a thumbs up and kept going.

Cassian watched this with an expression I couldn’t read, then sat down against the wall a few feet away with his forearms on his knees.

We stayed like that for a while. I got my breathing back. He didn’t say anything, which was just his default state and not a mood.

"Hey," I said eventually. "You wanna tell me why you’re doing this yet?"

"No."

"Cool, cool." I flexed my hand and watched the fingers work. "I just figured, four days in, blowing holes in academy property together, we’re basically colleagues now."

"We’re not colleagues."

"We’re something. There’s a word for what we are."

"There isn’t."

I let it sit for a second, and then, because I am who I am and I’d just been healed enough to be stupid again, I threw a dart at the board without aiming.

"Does this have anything to do with Serena or something?"

Cassian’s head came around so fast I worried his neck would snap.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to, because his whole face did it for him, glaring as hard at me as he possibly could, and it did it for a solid two seconds before he got it back under control and looked at the wall again.

[Oh, fuck.]

In the original novel, Cassian and Aldric hated each other. That was the whole engine of the male lead dynamic. Rival love interests, both circling Lily, both convinced the other one was wrong for her, and the entire reason Cassian ever did anything heroic was to be more impressive than the prince in front of the girl they both wanted.

Except in this continuity, Lily never happened for either of them. I tried to make sure it did, but it didn’t. So, the rivalry latched onto someone els.e

And the highest-value girl on the board that both of them are orbiting right now, the one every noble in this school is watching, the one who’s been rigged into the other half of the bracket for a storybook final against the crown prince, is Serena Frostfall.

[I see. He’s only training me so Aldric loses, publically, in front of four thousand people and her.]

"Wow," I said.

"Don’t. I’m done for today." He stood up and dusted off the back of his coat. "Same time tomorrow. Morning only, you’re not doing this the night before a match, you’ll be useless."

"Cassian."

He stopped at the door.

"For what it’s worth," I said, "I’m not gonna hold it against you. I don’t care why you’re doing it. I need to win and you’re getting me closer to winning than anybody else has managed, so as far as I’m concerned, we’re good."

[Besides... If anything, I’M the best one for Serena, not either of you two.]

I, of course, didn’t say that part out loud.

He didn’t turn around.

"Get some sleep," he said, and left.

I sat there in a room with two holes in the wall and a weasel asleep on my knee.

[So both my remaining problems are now standing on the same side of the bracket, and my supposed final boss is being courted by a man who is currently my coach. God, I wrote a messy story.]