Three days had passed since that match, and his shoulder wound still hurt whenever he moved his arm quickly. He didn’t ask for more direct training sessions with Kaiden after that, not because he was afraid, but because he realized he needed time alone to reorder what he had seen in those few moments of fighting.
He noticed something else in those days, something smaller but that bothered him more than he expected. Lucy no longer looked at him the same way. Nothing explicit, no direct question, just that look that lingered a little too long when she thought he wasn’t noticing, and her way of changing the subject whenever talk got close to that day in the forest. Once, as he was passing by the kitchen door, he heard her ask Kaiden in a low voice: "Don’t you find that he’s become different since that day?" He didn’t hear the answer, because he walked away before it looked like he was eavesdropping.
It didn’t worry him as much as it made him rethink things. Lucy wasn’t stupid, and amnesia was an acceptable excuse for a while, but it wasn’t an excuse that lasts forever in front of someone who watches carefully. He had to move before those cautious glances turned into questions he didn’t have convincing answers for.
On the morning of the fourth day, he went out early to the village’s small square, where some residents used to sit at dawn before their work began. He sat on a wooden bench next to an old man who was fixing an old fishing net, and a woman selling bread from a small cart.
"Good morning, Loki." The woman said without lifting her head from the bread. "I heard you had a match with Kaiden and lost badly."
"News travels fast here." Loki said with a small smile.
"The village is small." The old man replied, without stopping his hands from working. "Everything spreads here quickly. Good news and bad."
Loki sat with them for a while, listening more than talking, and that alone was enough to make the old man go on talking about simple things: the weather this season, the price of wheat, a young man from the neighboring village who he heard joined one of the mercenary factions. It wasn’t great information, but it was the first real picture Loki got of what normal life looked like in this world, away from systems and monsters and magic.
"Are you thinking of going with Kaiden to the Academy after all?" The woman finally asked him, wrapping a piece of bread in cloth for an incoming customer.
"No." Loki said quietly. "I’m not going to the Academy."
The old man raised an eyebrow. "Then you’ll stay here?"
"Not that either." Loki smiled, and looked at the horizon where the sun was just beginning to appear behind the hills. "I’m going to see the world. I don’t know much about it yet, and I think the best way to learn is to go myself, instead of waiting for someone to tell me."
Neither of them commented on the decision; perhaps this kind of talk was normal in a small village where every young man dreams of leaving the place one day. Loki returned to the orphanage after about an hour, having decided that the time had come.
He found Kaiden in the backyard, training alone on a new spell, threads of air forming and breaking around his hands with irregular hesitation, a sign that he was trying something he hadn’t mastered yet. He stopped when he saw Loki approach.
"Good morning." Kaiden said, wiping sweat from his forehead. "You have the face of someone who wants to say something important."
"I’m leaving." Loki said directly, without long introductions. "Not necessarily today, but soon. I want to see this world for myself."
Kaiden stopped moving completely. He didn’t seem angry, but he was thinking, as if weighing the words before replying. "To be honest, I expected that, since that day in the yard." He said finally. "You’re not someone who is content to stay in a place where he knows his limits completely."
Loki didn’t answer.
"Lucy won’t be happy." Kaiden added in a calmer tone.
"I know." Loki said. "But she won’t be happy with any other decision either. At least this is my decision."
Kaiden looked at him for a long moment, then extended his hand, in the same way he had extended it after the match days ago. Loki shook it, and felt there was something sincere in that handshake, despite all the calculations going on in his head.
"Then go." Kaiden said. "But take care of yourself, you’re still relatively weak, and this world doesn’t have mercy for those who don’t know their limits."
Loki smiled a different smile this time, closer to the one he had seen on Kaiden’s own face during the match. "Maybe now, yes." He said quietly. "But the next time we meet, I won’t be the same person who lost to you in that yard."
Kaiden didn’t understand the full meaning behind the sentence, and smiled as if it were just usual enthusiastic talk after a harsh defeat. "I look forward to that." He said, and patted Loki’s uninjured shoulder gently.
Loki didn’t correct his understanding. He let him think it was just a passing determination, while inside him it was something closer to a silent promise he directed at himself more than at his friend. He would not return to this place while still carrying the rank of "beginner," and still ignorant of the meaning of the numbers next to his name. He would return when he was able to stand in front of that blue aura without being pushed back like a paper in the wind.
At the village gate, after he had prepared a small bag with what he could gather of food and a little money, he found Lucy standing waiting for him, her arms folded, her face carrying an expression he couldn’t fully read.
"You’re really going." She said, not so much a question as a confirmation of something she already knew.
"Yes."
She was silent for a moment, her eyes examining him in the same way she had watched him since his return from the forest. "Loki, I know there’s something different about you since that day." She said finally, in a calm voice that carried no direct accusation. "I won’t ask you what it is, not now at least. But whatever it is, take care of yourself wherever you go."
Loki didn’t answer what she hadn’t asked directly, and settled for a small nod. "I will."
He walked away from the village as the sun finally rose fully above the hills, the bag on his shoulder, and a long dirt road stretching ahead of him with no specific destination except for one vague idea: to become something bigger than a secondary friend waiting for his turn in someone else’s story.