Chapter 471 | An Act of Grace, Performed the Rina Way

Chapter 471: 471 | An Act of Grace, Performed the Rina Way

"Percy didn’t have to corrupt me. I came pre-installed with the software." She pulled me toward the starting line where Steele would appear in approximately four minutes with her tablet and coffee and the expression of a woman who had slept eight hours and intended to make everyone who hadn’t regret their choices. "I just usually apply it to fashion and social dynamics rather than your flexor tendons."

Rina appeared at the field’s edge with her sheep mug in both hands and her white hair catching the first light that penetrated the fog. Her horns cast opalescent reflections across the wet grass and her tail moved in the slow rhythm that indicated she hadn’t fully decided whether being awake was something she consented to. She saw me across the field and her purple eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second with the focused attention of someone whose entire Aspect centered on reading the emotional temperature of other living things.

She walked over. She didn’t say anything. She held out the sheep mug.

"Is this for me?"

"You look like you need it more than I do today."

The mug was warm and the chamomile inside smelled like the specific variety of kindness that Rina deployed without strategy or expectation, the kind that arrived because someone noticed you were struggling and decided to do something about it rather than cataloging the observation for later analysis.

I took a sip and the warmth spread through my chest and the Devotion’s Echo connection to Sloane pulsed once with something that felt like approval from across campus, as though Sloane could sense through our bond that someone was taking care of me in her absence and found this acceptable.

"Thank you, Rina."

Her tail lifted once and settled. She retrieved her mug after I’d taken three sips and retreated to her position near the bleachers without additional commentary, which was the most Rina way to perform an act of grace. No explanation needed. No follow-up required. Just a warm mug offered to someone whose hands were cold and a silent departure that communicated everything her voice couldn’t.

Steele arrived at six on the dot. Her pink eyes swept across the gathered students with the clinical assessment of someone who had already decided how much suffering to allocate and was merely confirming the logistics. When her gaze reached me, it paused for one point two seconds. One point two seconds was longer than she’d spent on anyone else. One point two seconds was the duration of an observation being filed for future reference by a retired A-rank Hero whose entire professional career centered on identifying weakness in the systems people presented to the world.

She saw the debuff. She didn’t know what she was seeing, couldn’t possibly categorize the specific nature of systemic suppression imposed by a parasitic gacha interface, but she saw the output. The drag in my posture. The fraction of a second delay in how my eyes tracked her movement. The way my weight sat slightly further back on my heels than my established baseline, a compensation pattern my body had adopted without conscious instruction because reduced reaction time made forward-weighted stances less defensible.

Steele said nothing. She noted something on her tablet with a single tap and moved on.

"Class 1-B." Her voice carried across the field without effort, the projection of someone who had spent decades commanding attention in spaces designed to make sound disappear. "Five miles. No Aspects. Thirty-five minute cutoff. Same rules as every morning except today I’m watching your faces at mile three because mile three is where the people who partied last night start dying and the people who trained yesterday start pulling ahead, and I want to know which category each of you falls into."

She looked at me again. Half a second this time.

"Go."

The pack surged forward and I settled into my usual position, middle of the group, fast enough to avoid attention and slow enough to maintain the fiction that I was a mid-tier Channeler rather than someone whose base stats exceeded the documented ceiling of most active professionals. Except today the fiction required less effort than usual because the twelve percent suppression made middle-of-the-pack feel like where I actually belonged rather than where I was performing.

Camille passed me on the left at the four hundred meter mark. Her ponytail streamed behind her and her breathing was controlled and efficient and her brown eyes found mine for half a stride.

"You’re slow today," she said without breaking rhythm.

"Gaming last night."

"I was in your room last night, Belmont. There was no gaming."

She accelerated ahead before I could respond, and the orange glow at her fingertips flickered once in the morning fog before she vanished into the leading pack.

I ran. My legs felt heavy and my lungs worked harder than they should have for a pace well below my actual ceiling and the world moved past me at a speed that felt correct for eighty-eight percent of what I was accustomed to, which meant it felt wrong in the precise way that a room feels wrong when someone has moved one piece of furniture two inches to the left. Everything was where it should be except the proportions had shifted and my body kept reaching for a rhythm that the debuff wouldn’t let me find.

Percy ran beside me. His blue hair was dark with sweat by the second lap and his breathing came in the measured cadence of someone who had calculated optimal oxygen intake for his body mass and stride length. He glanced at me once without turning his head.

"Your pace is three point four percent slower than your Monday baseline and your stride length has contracted by approximately one and a half inches."

"I know, Percy."

"I am noting this for documentation purposes and because the data arrives whether I request it or not, as I have previously established."

"I appreciate the thoroughness."