"And how has this work affected your life?" I asked, unable to suppress my curiosity. "I mean, were you ever able to live a normal life?" Master Ren smiled — it was a sorrowful smile. "A normal life," he said, repeating the words as if tasting them, "maybe I never lived one. But raising you and Elisa, giving you a home, a family — that was the closest thing to a normal life for me. And maybe that's what a normal life actually is, Kai; a person being able to look after the ones they love."
These words affected me deeply. Thinking about this heavy load Master Ren had carried all his life, living with it all these years without ever letting us feel it, the respect and love I felt for him grew by another degree.
"I want to join this organization," I said, with a certainty that surprised even me, without raising my voice but weighting it.
Real surprise appeared on Master Ren's face for the first time, his eyebrows rising slightly. "Kai, this isn't a joke. This means putting your life at risk. Not only yours, but Elisa's too. At the smallest mistake you put her life at risk as well."
"I know," I said. "But Master, you always criticized my philosophy of 'know your ceiling, you'll get there anyway,' didn't you? Maybe you were right. Maybe in this world it really isn't enough to live trusting only in numbers, in ceilings. Maybe you have to fight for something, for a purpose, not only for yourself. Even if I don't say in words today that it was right, after watching those people being killed there, a satisfaction formed in my heart; as if a delayed justice had been completed, as if the unpaid debts owed to those chained people beside us for their happiness had been settled."
Master Ren looked at me for a long while; something was gleaming in his eyes — pride, worry, or both, I couldn't tell — but I felt that something had changed between us.
"I'll think about it," he said finally. "But I promise you one thing: if you're going to take this road, you will learn exactly what I do, who I'm dealing with. In this world, the things you don't know can't protect you."
"I want to ask one more thing," I said, before Master Ren got up and left. "That night beneath the academy, who was the woman talking to you?"
Master Ren stopped a moment, his back turned to me. "Her name isn't important for now," he said. "But there's something you should know — she's one of the oldest members of our team, she's been in this work almost as long as I have. You can trust her, when you meet her one day."
"And Elisa?" I asked, voicing my real worry. "Can we keep her out of this?"
Master Ren's face turned serious. "Elisa is a strong girl, Kai. But you're right — she isn't ready yet, we mustn't put her in danger, at least for now."
That relieved me a little. "Thank you, for always thinking of us," I said. "One more thing," said Master Ren, sitting down again, his voice now taking on an even more serious tone. "If you take this road, your life at school will change too. You'll have to be more careful; about who you trust, about how much you share with whom. Alex, Elena, Peter, Dex — they may all be good people, but none of them knows this world. And some of them, because of their families' connections, may be part of things you wouldn't want to know about."
That last sentence made me think. "What do you mean?" I asked.
"Nothing for now," said Master Ren, shaking his head. "I only mean, be careful. In time you'll learn for yourself who's trustworthy and who isn't. That was the greatest and most useful advice my master ever gave me."
"Then this is my last question," I said, growing serious and looking at Master Ren. "Why did you leave us that night?"
Master Ren didn't answer.
"You took that hammer," I said. "I watched you break a man's jaw without turning around, and twenty seconds earlier you let a man with a hammer walk up behind you. I've been trying for three days to make those two things fit in the same body and they don't."
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"I'm sorry," he said.
"That isn't an answer."
"No," he said. "But I can't."
I waited. He didn't fill the silence, and he was better at silence than I was, so in the end I was the one who got up from the table.
Master Ren never brought the subject up again after that night. He didn't speak of the organization, or of "the things I wouldn't want to know about," or of that vague future he had hinted at to me. For a whole week everything at home was as before — a man buried in his book, the smell of dinner, that loud "Brother!" Elisa let out as she came through the door. She had pulled herself together well during that time too; the nightmares she'd been under were lessening.
And I didn't ask. I felt something was coming, and I knew instinctively that waiting was wiser than hurrying, at least in this matter.
Life at school went on at its own rhythm too: classes, Elena's training offers that wouldn't leave me alone. Elena had pulled herself together too, and had accepted the merciless reality of this world. I suppose accepting only lightens the load. The only thing that had changed was actually me — I felt that something was waiting beneath every ordinary moment, like knowing there's a current under a lake that looks calm.
When I came home on Friday evening, Elisa wasn't there; she had said she'd be staying at a friend's. I understood the moment I opened the door that this wasn't a coincidence. Master Ren was sitting at the table, in front of him a closed, fairly thick file, his hands resting motionless on top of it. "Sit," he said. That usual faint mockery wasn't in his voice.
I dropped my bag in the corner and moved across from him. He said nothing for a while, as though weighing something inwardly one last time.
"I'm going to give you a job, Kai," he said finally. "But first know this: it isn't a punishment. I want to test you."
"Test me?" I raised an eyebrow. I thought I'd made a mistake — maybe something I'd taught Elisa, maybe a night I'd been outside at a late hour.
"There's a small group in the outskirts of the 4th District," he said, lifting his hand off the file and looking at me without opening the cover. "Someone called Grimshov runs it. On their own they're nothing — an ordinary extortion gang. But lately they've begun selling the information they gather to a larger structure. Who isn't home at what time, who is defenseless, which street is empty at which hour... I want you to stop this sale."
I tried to place the name somewhere in my mind and couldn't. "Aren't they Varga's men?"
Master Ren shook his head. "There's no such thing as Varga's gang anymore, Kai, you know that too. Besides, Varga worked in the 3rd District, these are in the 4th. The only thing they have in common is that they do the same work. In this city, when you destroy one gang, three take its place; without understanding why that's so, you can't advance in this business."
The first thing that came to mind was simple. "So should I go and defeat them?"
He laughed, but there was no joke in his eyes. "No. You aren't at a level where you can defeat them, Kai; maybe you'll reach that level in the future. But there's something I want you to gain, Kai — survival skill, forming strategy, making plans; at this stage those are the first abilities you need. And this road is the safest road."
It was a stranger task than I'd expected. I would have expected a punch, a threat, even a negotiation — but this opened a door I had never thought about before.
"Why this kind of road?" I asked; my curiosity was real.
"Because brute force has a ceiling, Kai," he said, pushing the file forward. "However strong you get, one day someone stronger than you appears — even the world's best fighter eventually meets someone better than himself. There's always a bigger fish. But thinking correctly has no ceiling. Someone who uses his intelligence correctly can bring down an enemy many times stronger than him without ever touching him."
That sentence echoed strangely in my ears — as if I were hearing someone say for the first time something I had always known but never heard from anyone's mouth. Reading people had always come easily to me; I had simply never named it as a power, perhaps out of a blindness my laziness gave me. "And if I fail?"
"Then you fail," he said, shrugging, without any judgment in his voice. "This world isn't a children's game, Kai. Unfortunately if it doesn't work out I can't take you into the group, at least for now. But I'm sure you'll succeed."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because I've been watching you for a long time," he said, with a warmth in his eyes. "From the first day I saw you, I knew you weren't an ordinary child."
He finally opened the file. Its contents were written on paper, not digital — as if it had been prepared by someone who knew digital traces could be tracked. There were names, habits, routes, and even small observation notes added in someone's handwriting.