Chapter 104: Pressed Against the Glass to Adjust Her Timing

Chapter 104: Chapter 104: Pressed Against the Glass to Adjust Her Timing

Rei Lawless hadn’t truly relaxed since the simulation.

She returned to an empty wing of the Lawless residence that night, which was ordinary.

Her mother was elsewhere, almost certainly still occupied with Cillian, the S-rank support who functioned as husband, battery, and political fixture in equal measure.

Rei had never been close to Cecilia, and the assortment of half-siblings produced by the household’s wider arrangements barely registered as more than names on a roster.

She didn’t miss any of them.

The silence of her own rooms was preferable to performance.

What she did miss, with an intensity that irritated her, was the precise moment in the cavern when Revien’s output had rewritten something structural inside her blood core and left her stronger than the logs should have permitted.

She stood in front of the mirror that first night and watched shallow cuts seal themselves faster than her regeneration had ever managed before.

The ability had always existed. The speed was new. Every accelerated closure sent the same thought through her head with the reliability of a pulse: again.

She researched until dawn.

Historical supports with foundational influence.

Rare cases of permanent core changing.

Most of the documented names had burned out, been contained, or settled into carefully managed multi-partner networks under heavy oversight.

None of the descriptions matched the clean, invasive precision of what he had done to her in a single crisis contact.

They were approximations.

He was the actual event.

Her status window still carried the mutation flag when she checked it that morning.

Name: Rei Lawless

Class: Blood Manipulation

Rank: A

Level: 70

[Blood-Forge Core - Foreign expansion signature present.]

[Regeneration latency reduced.]

[Further exposure projected to deepen pathway stability.]

She didn’t tell Cecilia.

When Jenna Everheart finally approved joint training, Rei did not waste the opening.

She arrived early, stayed late, and made contact a deliberate part of every exchange: wrist, shoulder, the brief drag of fingers along his forearm when resetting position.

She kissed him when the data justified it and sometimes when it did not.

He rarely initiated.

She didn’t require him to.

The point was to make his body file her under familiar before his caution could rebuild its walls.

Dinner on the third night of the new arrangement was an exception: Cecilia attended.

Her mother sat opposite her with the same cold posture she brought to guild reviews, long dark hair immaculate, eyes the pale, evaluating shade Rei had inherited only half of.

For five minutes they ate in silence.

The household staff had already learned not to fill it.

"How’s your training?" Cecilia asked at last.

"It’s going well, Mother."

"Any measurable improvement? Will you be ready for the entrance?"

"I will be."

"Why not conduct the preparation inside our own facilities? I can have Cillian arrange suitable support. Someone proven."

"Jenna’s guild has better instrumentation for the specific drills I’m running."

"Mm."

Cecilia set her utensil down with soft precision.

"Or you are reluctant to leave because Jenna Everheart acquired a new investment and you have decided to attach yourself to it."

Rei’s hand paused only long enough to be noted by someone who had raised her.

She resumed cutting her food.

Of course Cecilia knew.

Cecilia always knew the outlines.

What she lacked was the proof that turned outline into leverage, and Cecilia didn’t spend political capital on unproven curiosities.

"I will deliver results," Rei said. "I have no intention of costing you face."

Cecilia held her gaze for another second, then stood.

"See that you don’t."

She left.

Rei allowed herself a thin smile at the empty chair.

Her mother’s concern was a rare resource. Hoarding it, even in the form of suspicion, felt like winning a small private game.

Now, in the training hall, the game had changed shape again.

Revien stood in front of her after the first decisive exchange of the morning, chains still fading from her wrists, after-images of his new movement skill dissolving in the air.

He was different.

Not merely stronger.

The contested static she had grown used to reading in his presence was gone.

The sadness that had sat on him like a second shirt the day before was absent.

What replaced it was cleaner, heavier, and significantly more irritating to fight.

He was also more charming now, which made her hate him even more.

Rei had assumed, when she closed the last of the distance and kissed him, that the contact would buy her the same stumble it had bought before.

How will you react now?

A redirected breath.

A delayed bind.

A crack in the rhythm he was using to dismantle her angles one after another.

She was wrong.

His hand came up, firm at the back of her neck, and instead of letting the kiss remain a distraction she had chosen, he pulled her in and deepened it.

Not hesitant or startled into reciprocity.

A deliberate answer that turned her tactic into a conversation she had not scheduled.

Rei’s back met the mirrored wall for the second time that session.

The chains were gone. His forearm and the new weight of his frame did the work instead.

He kissed her like someone who had decided that proximity was no longer a threat to be minimized.

Huh?

When he finally drew back, her breath was not as steady as she preferred.

"That," she managed, "was not the reaction I aimed for."

"You kissed me to break my timing."

His voice was even.

The yellow of his eyes sat singular and clear, no longer suggesting a second occupant behind them.

"I adjusted the timing."

Rei licked the taste of the contact from her lower lip and felt her blood core respond with the same eager, expanded readiness it had shown since the simulation. ℴℴ𝘮

The mutation signature liked him.

Her pride liked him less in this exact moment.

"You’re still holding the bracelet’s ceiling," she said.

"I can feel the restriction hardware limiting the upper edge. If you fought me without it—"

"I’m not removing it for a training session."

"Coward."

"Strategist."

Despite herself, the corner of her mouth moved.

She pushed off the wall, forcing him to give half a step, and rolled her wrists where the chains had left faint pressure marks.

"Again," she said.

"And if you kiss me first next time, I will take it as a formal invitation to stop treating this as an exchange of data."