When Vik listened to the message and lifted his head, he looked at Toma and Grimshov, and both of them noticed the change in his gaze — where a moment ago two friends had been laughing, now, with information coming from the person he loved most, he was looking at them with fear and caution. He moved his hand reflexively to his weapon, and seeing this, the bodyguards moved to theirs; and Grimshov, taking these movements to be a joint move by the two of them, gave the signal to his men.
After that the place turned into a lake of blood, everyone started firing at everyone, but...
I paused a moment, then added: "The only thing I want from you is for you to account to my class teacher for my absence in those two classes. She called me; you'll make something up — that I was very ill, something like that."
Master Ren couldn't speak for a long while. There was a deep and frightening fear on his face.
He took a deep breath, thought, thought for a long while, and looked at me again with a forced manner.
"Still, you were a day late. That can be counted as a failure; but never mind..." For a moment he sank into thought again, and in his eyes a little worry and a faint fear of me appeared.
Afterwards all he could say was, "You didn't need to kill them."
I didn't answer. Because at that moment there was neither discomfort nor satisfaction inside me; only that flat, cold silence that shows an account has been closed. And it was in that silence that I understood for the first time exactly what Master Ren had meant when he said, "pay attention to your own state too."
After the Grimshov gang incident, Master Ren began giving me more tasks; small, carefully chosen tasks. Bringing down a forged-document network, disrupting a smuggling route, isolating an information source. In none of them did I use direct violence; every time, I used the same method — observe, find the weak point, make a small move, pull back and watch. Over time this began to feel almost like a natural rhythm to me, it became a part of my daily life.
By day I was still the old Kai; the indifferent student who leaned against the column, dozed in class, and said the same six words to anyone who asked why. Elena was still trying to force me into training, Peter still looked at me coldly (though not as much as before), and Dex still let me feel those curious looks of his now and then, as if he were trying to solve me like a puzzle.
But at night I became a completely different person. I bent over Master Ren's files, examined names, relationships, hidden connections, planned my moves; I jotted small notes on paper with the tip of my pen, weighing every possibility. The difference between these two lives was so great that sometimes, seeing myself in the mirror, I was surprised — which one was the real Kai?
One weekend when I came home, Master Ren asked me, while sipping the tea in his hand: "Don't you get tired? Living two different lives?"
I thought about it, really thought about that question, scratching my eyebrow. "No," I said finally. "Actually... for the first time, both of them feel real. The lazy Kai at school is me, and the Kai who makes moves at night is me too. Maybe the two are the same person, just different faces."
Master Ren smiled, and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened. "That's the first step toward wisdom, Kai. Most people imprison themselves in a single identity. But in reality, all of us are different people in different contexts." He paused a moment. "There is no person who doesn't lose himself a little when he enters an environment."
These words left a deep mark on me. Maybe my whole life I had imprisoned myself in the identity of "lazy, indifferent Kai," because it was the option that required the least effort and was the safest — when nothing is expected of you, you can't be disappointed in anything or defeated at anything. But now, bending over files at midnight, a different Kai was emerging — one who pushed himself, who thought, and who sought justice.
This duality sometimes created difficulties too. One morning, on the way to school, because I hadn't slept all night there were dark rings under my eyes. Elena noticed it immediately. "Kai, are you alright? Are you sick?" she asked, putting her hand on my forehead.
"I'm fine, I just slept badly," I said, telling half the truth. Peter too, once, during training, had said, "Your reactions have been slower lately, do you know that?" in a curious tone. "You used to block this move easily."
Moments like this worried me; if even my friends at school were noticing that something had changed, maybe I needed to be more careful. But at the same time, the difficulty of balancing these two lives also gave me a strange satisfaction; as if I were constantly testing myself, pushing my limits.
One day, Ms. Vinter lifted her eyes from the tablet in her hand and looked at me. "Kai," she said in a professional tone. "The class's routine monthly health and Chi efficiency scan reports have come in. In this month's scan the System found a strange sleep irregularity in you... a worrying situation for you. What is the reason for this decline between the two scans?"
That remark made me uneasy — so the System could access my average health data, at least indirectly, through my sleep pattern and energy level. "I'm fine," I said, trying to keep my voice calm. "I'm just working on some personal projects, at night."
Ms. Vinter looked at me for a long time, as if she wanted to ask more, but in the end she nodded. "Take care of yourself," she said. "You know, however important a power is, a person shouldn't push himself; and as far as I know you, you've never been someone who pushed himself this much. What is this project?"
I brushed it off by saying I was anxious about the exams of the coming period. Our year was divided into six periods, each period lasted two months, and the last period of the year was devoted entirely to the tournament; that is, whenever you said "I'm going to take a breath," a date had already been set in front of you.
Elisa was the first person to notice this change; as expected, she knew me better than anyone. One evening, while I was examining the file (Master Ren was out that night), she came into my room with quick steps, a glass of milk in her hand, and found me bent over the desk.
"Brother?" said Elisa, stopping without setting the milk glass on the table. Her voice was somewhere between curiosity and unease. "What's this? Why are you looking at district plans at an hour like midnight?"
My mind sped up suddenly, sifting through possible answers in a small fraction of a second. Lying was the easiest road, but lying to Elisa no longer came as easily to me as before; it always left a sting somewhere inside me. So I chose a middle road that was neither entirely a lie nor entirely the truth.
"Master Ren's old papers," I said, slowly closing the file, trying to keep my voice as ordinary as possible. "He asked for my help with something — something to do with an old friend of his. There are parts I don't understand, I have to ask him in the morning."
Elisa's eyes fixed on me, with that familiar look of hers that tries to solve everything. Even though she was seventeen, sometimes she saw people more sharply than I did. "You're always busy with things like this lately," she said, her voice dropping. "You sleep little at night, and during the day you're even more distracted." My heart tightened for a moment. So she had noticed. Actually I shouldn't have been surprised; she was the first to question Master Ren's nighttime disappearances too — nothing in this house escaped her eyes. But Master Ren's words still rang in my ears: Elisa is a strong girl, Kai, but she isn't ready yet, we mustn't put her in danger. I had to protect that boundary too, however hard it was.
"I'm fine," I said, trying to smile. "I'm just working on some personal projects, that's all. And there are the exams coming up, I think we're all a bit tense."
Elisa looked at me for a long while; she didn't seem convinced, but she didn't press either. Finally she sighed and pushed the milk glass into my hand. "Drink this, it'll help you sleep. But brother..." She stopped and bit her lip. "Even if you're not going to tell me anything, at least take care of yourself. I couldn't bear to lose you."
That sentence opened a place inside me, a place hard to describe. "I promise," I said, and at that moment, I really felt it. Elisa smiled — it was a somewhat forced smile, but a smile nonetheless — then walked toward her room. I gathered up the file on the desk, put it away in my hidden compartment, and sat for a long while in the dark thinking about what had just happened. The price of this double life was no longer only my own tiredness; the people around me were becoming a part of it too, whether I wanted it or not.