The night had settled deeper now.
The breeze is cooler and quieter.
Fainyx sat beneath the tree, notebook resting on his knee, and let his thoughts move.
'...It's seems he didn't notice.'
His eyes drifted briefly toward Yong.
Before he met them today, he kept trying to go in and out of the portal everyday while trying to see if they have any reaction. The tracking spell had paused the moment he stepped into his portal. Completely. As if it had never existed. And when he stepped back out it resumed without a single tremor, no gap, no signal, nothing to indicate anything had changed.
Yong hadn't reacted.
Not even slightly.
'So he didn't feel it.'
Fainyx filed that away quietly.
'Good.'
His portal the Aetherium, remained exactly what it was.
His secret he must kept for now.
He had no intention of changing that.
"You're quiet," Yong said from across him, tilting his head. "Well... Quieter than usual. Which is saying something."
Fainyx looked at him.
Then wrote.
[ I'm thinking. ]
"About what?"
[ Nothing important. ]
Yong accepted that easily, which Fainyx appreciated.
He didn't push.
A short silence passed between them, comfortable, oddly enough before Yong's gaze drifted downward.
Fainyx noticed immediately.
Yong was looking at him.
Not his face.
His frame.
His arms. His hands. The general smallness of him.
Fainyx kept his expression neutral.
'...Here it comes.'
"Hey," Yong said, carefully, "don't take this the wrong way but... you're really small."
Ruth closed his eyes briefly.
"You say that like it isn't obvious."
"I mean even for his age." Yong gestured loosely. "Three year old I've seen are... bigger."
He looked at Fainyx directly.
"Is something wrong with your body?"
Fainyx held his gaze for a moment.
Then wrote.
[ I was born with a weak constitution. My body doesn't develop the same way. ]
Yong read it.
His expression shifted, not pity exactly. Something more careful than that.
He leaned forward slightly, eyes moving over Fainyx with quiet focus. Taking in the thinness of his wrists. The pale cast of his skin. The way he held himself, upright and composed, but careful, like someone long accustomed to working around their own limits.
Ruth's voice came flatly from behind.
"...It's impolite to stare at him like that."
Yong blinked.
Then straightened.
"Right. Sorry."
He said it genuinely, which Fainyx noted.
Ruth moved then, not away, but closer. He lowered himself onto the grass beside Yong without ceremony, settling with the kind of unhurried ease that came from being the heaviest presence in any room regardless of what form he wore.
Yong followed suit, shifting until both of them sat properly on the ground, level with Fainyx rather than crouched above him.
It felt less like an interrogation now.
More like...
A conversation between people sitting together at night.
Fainyx said nothing about it.
But something in his shoulders settled very slightly.
"Has it always been like that?" Yong asked. "Since birth?"
[ Yes. ]
"Does it cause you pain?"
Fainyx paused.
Then wrote.
[ Not anymore. I'm used to it. ]
Yong looked at that answer for a moment longer than necessary.
Then moved on.
"Alright." He rested his arms loosely over his knees. "Different topic. The mana theory book."
Fainyx waited.
"You're reading theories at Three." Yong's tone was even, curious. "That means you've already gone past the basics."
He looked at Fainyx carefully.
"Can you use it?"
A brief pause.
Then Fainyx wrote.
[ A little. ]
Ruth's golden eyes shifted toward him.
"...How did you learn."
Not a question. A prompt.
Fainyx met his gaze.
Then wrote.
[ Books. The library here has many. I read them. ]
"Self taught?" Yong asked.
[ Mostly. ]
"No instructor? No guidance?"
[ No.]
Yong hummed thoughtfully.
Ruth said nothing but his expression carried something close to mild disbelief.
Yong leaned forward just slightly.
"And the practical side? How did you figure out how to actually move mana? Books can explain the theory but the application is different."
Fainyx kept his face completely calm.
'...Careful.'
He wrote slowly.
[ I read descriptions of how it should feel. Then I tried until it worked. ]
Which was true.
Partially.
He had read descriptions and theories.
He had also followed a training method he remembered from the game, the same foundation the protagonists used but he also refined and adapted it quietly over years of solitary practice in his room and in Aetherium.
But that part he kept it himself.
Yong studied him.
Fainyx held his gaze without flinching.
After a moment Yong leaned back.
"...Hm."
He didn't look entirely convinced.
But he didn't push either.
Ruth spoke quietly.
"For someone self taught with a weak body and no guidance..." His golden eyes were unreadable. "You sense things you shouldn't be able to sense."
Fainyx wrote.
[ The books were very detailed. ]
Ruth looked at him.
"...Hm."
The same sound he made earlier.
Fainyx had already learned what it meant.
Acknowledged. But they are not entirely believing it.
He was fine with that.
The conversation continued like that, easy and unhurried, drifting from one question to another. What did he read. What interested him. Whether he had ever left the estate before the city trip.
Fainyx answered each one.
Carefully.
Honestly where he could.
Redirected where he couldn't.
He never lied outright.
He simply chose which truths to share.
And then---
Yong went quiet for a moment.
Fainyx noticed the shift immediately.
Something deliberate settling behind his expression.
'...He's about to say something he actually means.'
Yong looked at him directly.
"I have a question," he said. "And I want you to actually think about it before you answer."
Fainyx waited.
"Would you like me to teach you?"
The garden went very still.
Fainyx stared at him.
Yong continued, tone straightforward.
"Not formally. Not publicly. I want teach you what I know. No price nor conditions attached."
Ruth turned to look at Yong slowly.
"...Are you serious."
"Yes."
"You're asking a Three year old child you met twice?"
"I'm asking someone with potential who has no proper guidance." Yong's voice remained easy but there was something underneath it. He was certain. "That's different."
Ruth stared at him for a long moment.
Then exhaled.
Long.
Slow.
"...You're insane."
"Probably."
Fainyx looked between them.
Then back at Yong.
His expression stayed still.
But his thoughts moved quickly.
A tutor. It's also free without any conditions attached.
He was going to need guidance eventually. That much he had already accepted. His self teaching had taken him far but since he hid his abilities from his father and his siblings, he can't ask them on some guidance for his abilities to bloom and also he also knows he had reach a wall last week as he still had no progress in his physical body and also some things the books couldn't answer.
And here-
Completely unexpectedly was someone offering exactly that he wants right now.
'...It would be foolish to refuse.'
He was quiet for a few minutes.
Yong didn't rush him.
Ruth sat with his arms crossed, expression resigned, already looking like a man who had accepted something he couldn't stop.
Finally---
Fainyx nodded.
Once.
But clear.
Yong's expression shifted.
A real smile this time a warm unhurried, like something had gone quietly right.
"Good choice."
Ruth sighed.
The sound of someone releasing all remaining objections at once.
"...Don't blame me when this becomes complicated," he muttered.
"Noted," Yong said pleasantly.
Fainyx looked at Yong.
Then wrote.
[ You can't teach me openly. Someone will notice. ]
"Already thought of that." Yong glanced around the garden. The dark paths. The overgrown sections. The thick trees that hid this particular spot entirely from the main estate. "Does anyone come here?"
Fainyx wrote.
[ Not really. The servants avoid the deeper parts. The gardener stops at the main beds. ]
Yong nodded slowly.
"Then this place works."
He looked around once more with something like quiet satisfaction.
"Same time. Same spot." He glanced at Fainyx. "When the mansion is quiet and no one is watching."
Fainyx looked at the space around them.
His hidden corner of the garden.
The place he had claimed as his own long before any of this.
Now apparently their meeting place.
He wrote.
[ Understood. ]
Yong smiled again.
Ruth looked up at the sky.
"...It's late," he said for the second time that night.
This time, nobody argued.
The moonlight continued its quiet work above them.
And somewhere between the rustling of leaves and the distant sounds of a sleeping estate something had shifted.
Quietly.
Without ceremony.
Without anyone making a great deal of it.
The way the most important things usually did.