6. Torin
SIX
TORIN
Girls’ night lets out later than I expected.
I know because I’m still on patrol when Leire peels off toward Duskfall, and a few minutes later Sakura’s door clicks shut across the square, lamp light blooming gold behind her curtains before it dims to nothing.
I don’t go to her. That’s not what tonight is.
Tonight is walking the perimeter twice more than the assignment requires, listening to the mist settle over rooftops, thinking about the way she said maybe I am too like she didn’t know I’d catch it through the open window.
I did.
My cabin is quiet when I finally get back to it. I pour myself two fingers of nothing in particular and sit with the journal open on my knee, pen uncapped, and write down the things I noticed today because that’s what I do with things that matter. Document them. Make them real by writing them down.
She laughed twice today. Once on purpose, once by accident. The accidental one was better.
She still doesn’t trust the shelving I built her. Checks it every morning like it might have changed its mind overnight.
She said maybe I am too.
I underline that last one. Twice. My bear, unbothered by subtlety, wants me to underline it a third time and then go stand outside her window until morning. I don’t do that. I have some restraint left.
Some.
I think about Caius’s reports. Threat patterns, containment protocols, the careful language of a man who assigns bodyguards and calls it duty. None of that language fits what’s actually happening here.
What’s actually happening is I found someone worth the wait, and now I have to be patient enough to earn her instead of just wanting her, which is a different kind of work than anything the Network trains for.
I bank the fire. Close the journal.
Tomorrow I’ll bring coffee, same as always, and pretend the ordinary hour before her shop opens isn’t the best part of my day.
I sleep better than I have in weeks.