Perhaps the protagonists of every story attract an unusual number of unexpected events.
John Leighton was no exception.
Just as he had settled into a quiet routine of daily cultivation, something happened.
February 14th.
A perfectly good holiday that Zach and John Leighton had absolutely no one to spend with, being as they were two thoroughly unattached individuals.
They decided to go see a movie.
They went to the cinema, sat through a romance film that left both of them baffled, and came out unable to remember the title.
Not every Hollywood production is worth the ticket price.
Zach drove them home in his old pickup truck, the engine producing its usual accompaniment of rattles and groans, slowly making its way back toward the apartment district.
“Screech…”
“Bang!”
“Oh my God, Zach, did you hit someone?”
“Damn it!”
After the emergency braking and the collision, and after the brief exchange between the two of them, they climbed out without another word.
About a meter in front of the truck, a figure was lying on the ground.
The car had not been moving fast, and Zach had braked early.
Otherwise what they would have been looking at might have been considerably worse.
…
They walked quickly to the figure and crouched down.
The person was still conscious.
The moment they got close, a hand shot out and grabbed them.
“Don’t take me to the hospital.
Don’t call the police.”
Then the hand went slack and the person fainted.
John Leighton had assumed for a half second that they had run into a scammer.
“What do we do, Zach?” He said it quietly, though the frustration in his voice was clear.
The person on the ground was unconscious, with a blood stained white bandage wrapped around their waist and braided hair.
The look of them, combined with the location and the recent frequency of gunshots in the neighborhood, made the situation fairly easy to read.
Gang member.
The two looked at each other.
“What do we do?
How would I know?
We take him back.
That’s what we do.”
“Are you sure?
If we bring a gang member into the apartment it could mean serious trouble down the road.”
“Then what do you suggest?
Leave him here?” Zach said, already moving to get a grip on the unconscious man.
Both of them were large enough that lifting him between them was manageable.
They got him into the truck, drove to the apartment building, and carried him inside.
When the woman at the front desk asked, they told her their friend had had too much to drink.
She accepted it without further questions.
…
They settled him in Zach’s room.
Before doing anything else, they went through the room and moved anything that could be used as a weapon over to John Leighton’s apartment.
While Zach was busy clearing the room, John Leighton took the opportunity to quietly cast a Water Element Healing spell on the injured man.
He was not yet a full magician, so the effect would not be immediate or dramatic.
John Leighton had been tested as a five element magician through the memories passed down from the Magic God.
In terms of healing, light based magic was by far the most effective, but he had no ability to cast it at his current level.
What he could do with water element magic was accelerate the body’s natural healing process, making wounds close and recover several times faster than they otherwise would.
There were three reasons he bothered.
First, the sooner the man recovered, the sooner he would leave.
Second, he had never actually used magic in a practical situation since beginning his cultivation, and this was a useful chance to see how it performed.
Third, he had no interest in dealing with a corpse in Zach’s room in a few days’ time.
As expected, casting the spell left John Leighton with sweat on his forehead.
Even that much had taken real effort for an apprentice magician.
But the man on the bed looked noticeably better.
He would pull through.
They left a note on the bedside table explaining the situation, then John Leighton took Zach back to his own apartment.
“Quite an evening, Zach.
Good night.”
Zach watched the door close and stood in his own living room, taking stock of his situation.
His bedroom was occupied by a wounded gang member.
He was sleeping on the sofa.
He stared at the sofa for a moment, then went to find a blanket.
…
The next morning, John Leighton came out of his room after washing up to find Zach nearly finished making breakfast.
“How did you sleep?”
“Honestly?
Barely at all.
Do I have dark circles?”
“Zach, your complexion is dark enough that nobody would be able to tell either way.”
“Excuse me?
Are you saying I’m too dark?
This is a healthy bronze.
Chocolate tones.
Can you not see that?”
Whenever the subject of skin color came up, Zach always landed on bronze or chocolate.
In truth, Zach was not as dark as those with purely West African ancestry, though he was also a fair distance from bronze.
John Leighton had long since decided this was a battle not worth having.
…
“Let’s move on.
Has the man in your room woken up yet?”
“Who knows.
I was afraid to go in alone.
He’s a gang member, John.
What if I get shot trying to check on someone I carried home out of the goodness of my heart?”
John Leighton nearly choked on his juice.
I didn’t sleep partly because I was nervous about going in there.” Zach said it with the dignity of a man making a full confession, then went back to eating his breakfast.
“After we finish eating, we both go in together.
We can’t leave things like this indefinitely.
And what if he’s already gone by the time we check?” John Leighton said, smiling.
“I genuinely hope so.” Zach made a brief gesture skyward, which made John Leighton laugh.
In truth, John Leighton was not particularly worried about whoever was in that room.
The man had been severely injured.
Zach had a gun.
And beyond all of that, John Leighton was a magician.
His magic was not yet reliable enough to be his primary weapon, but his physical conditioning alone put him well beyond the level of a trained special forces soldier.
Beyond the physical side, he carried the combat knowledge embedded in the Magic God’s memories.
Any fighter on Earth who learned the depth of that experience would have been stunned.
John Leighton had not fully absorbed all of it, but even three or four layers of it was more than enough.
He was not worried.
…
After breakfast, Zach picked up his rifle, checked that it was loaded, and insisted on walking in front.
Seeing the seriousness on Zach’s face, John Leighton felt equal parts amused and genuinely moved.
As the two stepped out into the corridor, John Leighton was already using his mental perception to scan the room ahead.
This required a brief explanation.
Magicians cultivate mental power as a core part of their practice, and as a result their perceptive range and sensitivity far exceed that of ordinary people.
Using mental power to scan the surrounding environment is among the most basic abilities any magician develops.
Within John Leighton’s detection range, there was almost nowhere for an ordinary person to hide.
From about ten meters away, he could already pick up the breathing coming from inside Zach’s room.
It was slow and steady, longer than the rhythm of someone awake.
The injured man was still unconscious.
Zach knocked on the door anyway, called out a brief greeting, and pushed it open.
The man was exactly where they had left him, lying on the bed, chest rising and falling in slow rhythm.
As they stepped into the room, John Leighton felt the breathing pattern shift.
The man was either on the edge of waking or already awake and choosing to stay still.
…
“Zach, he’s still out.
Go get some food for him and we’ll wake him up properly when you’re back.
Then we can figure out what to do.”
Zach set his rifle down and left the room.
John Leighton turned to the figure on the bed.
“Alright.
I think you’re awake.
We’re the ones who brought you in last night, which means we’re owed at least a conversation.
So.
Are you planning to keep lying there, or are you ready to talk?
Because Zach didn’t sleep at all last night on your account.”
The man on the bed opened his eyes, pushed himself upright, and sat there holding the blood stained bandage at his waist.