Master Ren muttered behind me, "I didn't tell you about it, you overheard it."
Elisa stuck her tongue out at him. Seventeen years old, she was still at the fourth step of the first stage of Chi — the attack step. Short, around 160, she was a lovely girl with smooth white skin, jet-black hair, and lively blue eyes. As for me, at 180 tall, also with jet-black hair and black eyes, I stayed quite tall next to her.
We never knew our real family. When I was six and Elisa five, they disappeared in an Anomaly leak in the 4th District — the kind that was still rarely seen at that time. The official records said "missing," but everyone knew they were "dead." I think we had entered the unluckiest one percent of the city's population in that regard. Master Ren was in the 4th District that night; in the official records he was listed as a former guard, and he never told us why he was there that night. He was the one who pulled us out of the wreckage, and then took us in out of a sense of responsibility whose origin was unclear. We never heard it clearly from him; we always learned it in pieces, indirectly.
"Anyway," said Elisa, changing the subject, "are we going to practice this evening?"
"After dinner," I said.
While Master Ren prepared the evening meal I took out my textbooks and spread out on the table. The first assignment for Modern History was in front of me: "Compare the social structure before and after the System." I had found it boring at first, but at the same time it had stirred a strange curiosity in me — perhaps because of that "a new cage" remark of Ms. Laura's.
"Master," I said, spinning my pen. "Do you know about the times before the System was established?"
His hands paused for a moment above the pot, a faint air of panic settling around him. Whenever I asked this kind of question he would either turn serious or brush it off. "Why are you asking?" he said.
"We had a class at school. Before the System, power depended entirely on coincidence; the only way to know who was how strong was to fight, and so on and so forth." Master Ren laughed, but there was something in his laugh — something I couldn't quite work out. "Is that what your teachers are teaching you?"
"Is it wrong?"
"It isn't wrong," he said, turning to look at me. There was the usual tiredness in his eyes, but also a strange seriousness. "But it's incomplete. In the depths of the System there is a secret I haven't unraveled either, and I don't think that secret is a good thing. They're exploiting people, they only appear to be helping them." He paused a moment, as though his mind had gone to memories. Then he added: "At least, that's what he told me."
"He told me so? I guess he's talking again about that teacher of his he loves so much but whose memories he never tells us about," I thought.
He was silent for a while, then turned back to the pot. "Kai, there's a lot you don't know. I'm sure you look at me the way other people do: an old, senile dreamer."
"No, I don't look at you that way," I said. "It's just that you always criticize the system but never show any evidence in hand. To this day I haven't seen anyone who ran into any harm from it, or even anyone who didn't want to use it, or who was uncomfortable with it."
Master Ren looked at me for a long while but didn't answer. I was used to conversations like this from Master Ren, but this time there was something different in his voice — as if he wanted to say something and was avoiding saying it.
The food was ready shortly after; I called Elisa. When we sat down at the table Master Ren kept his usual cold silence for a while, then suddenly said, "I'm going somewhere this weekend, probably early Sunday morning."
"Where?" Elisa asked, her mouth full.
"Outside the city. To visit an old friend."
This had happened a few times before — Master Ren would sometimes vanish in the middle of the evening and come back the next morning tired and silent. Whenever I asked he always brushed it off. This time I didn't press either; I only said, "When will you be back?"
"By Sunday evening. Keep an eye on Elisa."
"Like always," I said.
After dinner Elisa and I moved into the living room. We took the wooden knives; since we weren't very rich anyway and didn't want to hurt each other, we didn't practice with real weapons.
"Come on then," I said, putting my hands in my pockets. "When you're channeling your Chi into the knife, don't forget to fix your foot. At the same time, focus on your upper body too and strengthen it." Elisa threw herself at me with fierce ambition. She was trying to focus her Chi into the weapon in her hand, but since her energy was at the fourth step it was still irregular. She swung the knife toward me fast. I caught her wrist and turned her momentum against her, then let go.
"You have to save your energy only for the moment you strike," I said, keeping her from falling while pushing her lightly backward. "If you burn Chi along the way, by the time your blow lands you'll have nothing left in your hands."
"I know, I know," she said, out of breath. "But you're far more experienced than me, it's an unfair comparison."
"Life itself is an unfair comparison," I said, shrugging. "What matters is using what you have in the best way."
"Says the man who never uses what he has," she said, with a mocking smile.
I couldn't answer. We practiced a while longer; Elisa's moves were becoming a little more controlled, a little more conscious each time. The fourth step of Chi — attack — taught a person to channel the energy in their own body into an object or into another body. Elisa still couldn't fully control this transfer, but her progress was too fast to be ignored.
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"Maybe one day you'll pass me," I said, sitting down and catching my breath.
"Really?" she said, her eyes shining. "Do you really think so?"
"I don't know your potential yet, the panel hasn't opened for you..."
She was quiet for a moment, then walked over and sat down beside me. "Why don't you ever make an effort, brother? I really wonder. Everyone thinks you're lazy, but I know you're not stupid. Is working, getting stronger, quickly building a life so unreasonable?"
I looked at Elisa. "People spend their whole lives on ambition until they graduate. They work at school, they work at their jobs, they always spend their lives on getting stronger. The result is that they reach their potential when they turn fifty. They reach the highest place they can reach. Maybe someone who works very hard can get to this level at forty too, but for me it's different; if we're going to the same point, why should I spend my life in agony just to get there five or ten years earlier? In the end the place we arrive at is the same," I said.
Then I looked out the window at the dim lights of the barricades and didn't add anything, because there was nothing to add.
"And if you don't?" said Elisa, her voice serious this time. "What if something happens halfway along the road, before you ever reach your ceiling?" That question stopped me for a moment. I didn't answer, I just shrugged and changed the subject, because that night my head had genuinely started to ache from all the thinking and I wanted to set it aside.
On Saturday, while Master Ren was still at home, we both got up late in the morning. In the afternoon Elisa and I went down to the garden.
The stone in the garden was old. Master Ren had gotten it during his training years; it had been developed specifically for training. Around it were the marks of years of work — some of them mine, some larger cracks left over from Master Ren's youth.
"Channeling Chi into a different target requires a different skill," I said, folding my arms. "When you hit a person, that person also responds using their Chi, and a balance is established. But when you hit an inanimate object, you're the one who has to control where all that Chi goes and how it disperses."
Elisa gripped her wooden knife tightly, closed her eyes and stood still a moment, then directed her Chi into the knife. She ran toward the stone and struck her blow — when the knife hit the stone there was a faint vibration, a thin cloud of dust rose, but no distinct mark was left on the body of it.
"Your energy is dispersing," I said, going closer. "At the moment you strike, your Chi has to be concentrated only at the tip of the knife, not in the whole knife. Try again, this time focus only on the tip."
She made a few more attempts, a little better each time. On her fifth attempt, the tip of the knife left a real notch in the stone — a small but clear mark.
"Did you see!" she said, turning to me excitedly, her face covered in sweat but her eyes shining. "I did it!"
"You did," I said, smiling. I felt a strange pride inside me, a pride stronger than the one from my own achievements — perhaps this was the very same feeling Master Ren had felt for her in the old days. In the past they too had probably worked here for hours together.
When evening came, Elisa withdrew to sleep, tired but happy. As for me, I was left alone in the living room, thinking about that old book with the symbol on Master Ren's desk. For a moment I considered going and looking at it, but then I gave up — I had to respect the Master's privacy, at least for now.
On Sunday, Master Ren did indeed leave early in the morning; a light bag on his back, and over him a dark-colored cloak, different from his usual plain clothes. Before going out the door he looked at me and stood as if he were going to say something, then only said, "Take care of yourself," and left.
After Master Ren left, Elisa and I were alone at home. That morning while I was preparing breakfast, my sister was leaning against the kitchen table with her eyes fixed on me.
"Brother," she said suddenly. "Do you think the Master is really going to visit a friend? Or..." "Or what?" I asked, while slicing bread.
"I don't know," she said, her voice a little uneasy. "Sometimes late at night, when you're at school, he goes out the door and doesn't come back for hours. One time I tried to follow him but he noticed me, he got very angry. 'Never come after me again,' he said, in such a voice — until then I had never heard the Master speak that harshly."
This detail surprised me. "You never told me that."
"It didn't seem like something worth telling, at least at the time," Elisa said, shrugging. "But thinking about it now... isn't it strange? The Master always advises us to be honest and to be open with him, but he himself is so closed off toward us. Sometimes I can't feel like he's my own family; we're not a real family anyway, but you know how it is — sometimes I feel as if he's my real father, and then moments like this suddenly make my heart ache."
After that we didn't talk for a while, we just had our breakfast. In the afternoon Elisa went to meet her friends from school, and I was left alone at home.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, unable to overcome my curiosity, I went into Master Ren's room — something I would never normally do. The room was plain, almost empty; there was only a bed, a small wardrobe, and a few shelves full of books. On his desk, that book with the symbol I had seen on Friday wasn't there; he had probably taken it with him.
I opened the wardrobe; inside were ordinary clothes and a few old weapon parts. But in the bottom drawer, a dusty box caught my attention. When I opened it I found old photographs inside — yellowed papers with curled edges. In one of them, a much younger Master Ren stood together with several other people, wearing a kind of uniform I had never seen before. They had been photographed in the background in front of a building I didn't recognize, and on it was that three-line symbol: three vertical lines standing side by side.
I turned the photograph over; a date and a few names were written in handwriting — I didn't recognize any of them, only a name beginning with the letter "R." which could have been Master Ren's name. In another photograph, the same group posed in a different place this time, holding strangely shaped weapons in their hands.
At the bottom of the box, beneath the photographs, there was one more folded thin piece of paper. I opened it; on it were only nine lines, and at the beginning of each line was a single letter. Two of the lines had been struck through with thick strokes. One of the remaining seven lines began with "R." I folded the paper again and put it back, because even wondering who the other names on those lines were was too much for me.
A feeling of guilt inside me, for having intruded so far into the Master's privacy, pushed me to put the photographs back. I left the box exactly where it had been, closed the wardrobe, and left the room — trying to act as if I had never gone in.
Master Ren came back on Sunday evening, as he had said; he was tired and silent, and told us nothing. But that night, before I went to sleep, the face of the young Master Ren in that photograph wouldn't leave my mind's eye. I had felt that the Master's life had a past far more complicated, far more mysterious than what I knew. Who were those people beside him? He always told us that he moved alone, or with one or two people.
With these thoughts I slowly drifted off to sleep. The next day was Monday, and that day was going to be the day this story truly began.