Garou raised his head and looked at the sky through the canopy.
Blue. Clear. The sun had climbed to a position that suggested he'd been out here considerably longer than he'd registered.
Strange. He turned the situation over. No weather change. Temperature hadn't shifted. The sneeze had been random—unless it wasn't, which was a thought he didn't pursue.
More likely: he'd been going since before midnight, and the body was reminding him that even extraordinary focus has administrative costs.
The first sign had been the dryness in his throat. The second was the hollow, twisting insistence of his stomach, which had been waiting patiently through meditation and would now no longer be ignored.
He hadn't eaten since last night's hot pot. He hadn't slept. Martial arts training at his intensity was metabolically expensive, and he'd pushed through the point where the body sends polite requests and arrived at the point where it stops asking.
Garou pulled his training clothes off the branch where he'd hung them, assessed their current state, decided they weren't going on his body in this condition, and draped them over his shoulder instead. Upper body bare, damp with exertion, the defined muscle of someone who has never once treated training as optional—he started back toward the dojo.
Kitchen first. Then back out.
The logistics trainees didn't give him trouble about off-schedule meals. They'd learned not to. He'd eaten between sessions countless times without anyone raising an objection worth mentioning.
He walked through the morning forest with the straightforward focus of someone whose current problem is food and whose next problem is the workout he'd planned for the afternoon, and gave no thought to the possibility that today was going to develop differently.
Fubuki came down the corridor in her pajamas, still yawning, working through the morning with the gradual momentum of someone who had slept very well and was not in any particular hurry.
Floating beside her, not quite at her usual altitude, was Tatsumaki.
The green light around her was present but subdued. Her hand was at her temple. Her eyes had the particular quality of someone whose relationship with full consciousness was still under negotiation.
Fubuki studied her.
"Sister." She kept her voice at the register appropriate for someone who might be sensitive to volume. "Where did that man take you last night? You look like you watched the sun come up."
Tatsumaki's eyes moved to her sister with the slow tracking of something running on reduced processing power.
She doesn't know anything. She can't know anything.
"What happened?" Fubuki leaned in slightly, lowering her voice to something conspiratorial. "You two weren't—you didn't actually—fight again, did you?"
Tatsumaki stared at her.
Then she exhaled—quietly, privately—and raised one small hand to push Fubuki's face back to a socially appropriate distance.
"Mind your own business."
"You are my business, you're my—"
"No."
Fubuki retreated with the practiced acceptance of someone who has been receiving this answer since childhood. She pouted at the middle distance. When Tatsumaki decided not to tell you something, the decision was structural.
Fine. I'll figure it out some other way.
The corridor opened into the main passage, and they nearly walked into Bang and Jordan coming the other direction.
"Good morning!" Fubuki brought her smile up immediately, the genuine warmth of someone who'd actually had a good night's sleep and meant it.
Bang returned the greeting with the unhurried courtesy of a man who has been up for hours and is at peace with the morning. "Good morning, Miss Fubuki. Miss Tatsumaki."
Jordan's attention went directly to Tatsumaki. He took in the temple-rubbing, the altitude, the quality of the green light.
"What's wrong? You're not feeling well?"
Tatsumaki registered that Fubuki was watching this exchange with the sharp, bright attention of someone who has just noticed something worth watching. She made a rapid calculation.
"I woke up with a headache," she said, with the flatness of someone providing a factual report rather than an invitation to discuss further. "Don't know why."
"That's a hangover."
Jordan said it with the mild irritation of someone who had observed a predictable consequence and feels entitled to note it.
"I told you not to drink so much."
Tatsumaki made a faint sound that was not quite agreement and not quite denial, and rubbed her temple again.
Bang's beard moved. His gaze traveled from Tatsumaki to Jordan and back with the barely-perceptible movement of a man cataloguing information.
Hangover. From last night. He hadn't heard either of them come back. Together. This is a young person's business and none of mine.
Hehehe.
The old man's thoughts were entirely private and he kept them that way, but the slight deepening of the existing lines around his eyes was visible to anyone paying attention.
Fubuki was paying attention.
Hangover. He told her not to drink so much, which means he was there while she was drinking, which means he knew she was drinking, which means—last night—she was gone—they were together—
The logical chain assembled itself with uncomfortable completeness.
Fubuki's mind went briefly white.
My sister. My extremely powerful, extremely unapproachable, nobody-touches-me, I-don't-need-anyone older sister.
Is in love.
She opened her mouth. Closed it.
Bang coughed. A specific cough—the kind that is doing something other than clearing a throat.
"I believe I may have heard a certain disciple's footsteps," he said pleasantly. "If you'll excuse me."
Fubuki blinked. "I didn't hear anything. And what disciple—"
"A small matter." Bang's smile was the most serene smile anyone in this corridor had ever produced. "Pay it no mind."
Jordan, who could feel the precise tension of Bang's fist through the general ambient electromagnetic field of the area, confirmed this immediately. "Please go ahead, Master. Take your time."
"You young people enjoy your morning." Bang stepped away with the unhurried gait of a man who has exactly one destination and is not in any rush because the destination will still be there.
The three of them stood in the corridor.
Jordan looked at Tatsumaki. "Come to the kitchen. Genos ordered pears yesterday—fresh juice with honey cuts through a hangover properly."
He said it conversationally, and he took her hand.
Just like that. Without prelude or announcement.
Tatsumaki, under the direct and comprehensive observation of her younger sister, did not pull away. She also moved slightly closer, which might have been the corridor being narrow or might have been something else entirely.
"Fine," she said. "If you say so."
Fubuki stood where she was.
The two of them walked down the corridor.
Fubuki watched them go—the height difference, the easy proximity, the complete absence of the elaborate defensive architecture her sister maintained around literally everyone else—and felt something in her chest do something she didn't have immediate vocabulary for.
They couldn't even be bothered to act like this isn't a thing.
She stood in the corridor for a full three seconds.
My sister is in love.
The kitchen window was three meters off the ground, accessible via a ledge that created a useful shortcut for anyone who knew about it, which Garou did because he'd used it approximately forty times to retrieve food during off-schedule training sessions.
He approached from the forest side, assessed the window, and swung up onto the ledge in one motion.
Voices from inside. Low, conversation-level. He paused—someone's in there already?—and in that moment of distraction, a voice arrived from directly behind him.
"Garou."
Bang's voice.
The particular quality of it—not loud, not threatening, simply present—went through Garou like a current and planted his feet. He let go of the ledge and dropped, landing solidly on the ground. The impact sent a flare of protest through his empty stomach.
Bang stood three meters away, hands clasped behind his back. He looked at his disciple—the bare torso, the training clothes over the shoulder, the unmistakable state of someone who has pushed through a meal and a sleep without noticing.
He said nothing about any of this.
"I need to speak with you," he said instead. "Walk with me."
Garou pressed his jaw together. His stomach informed him, again, that it had priorities.
Bang's expression didn't change.
Garou went.
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