Sorry for the slow updates. I ended up breaking three of my fingers and can barely type right now.
On top of that, the medical bills have been pretty overwhelming. If you're able to support me, I'd really appreciate it. My Patreon is $10/month, and you'll get access to 20 chapters ahead.
https://www.patreon.com/cw/Thanarit
Ren sat at the reception desk and turned the eyeball over in his hand.
It caught the clinic light from different angles, each rotation producing something slightly off, the iris never quite settling into any color it should have been.
What to do with this, he thought.
He had options. Grafting it into his own eye was the most direct. The knowledge access alone would be significant. He turned it over again and thought about Tara, who had activated the Eye of the Walking Chaos by accident and immediately seen the figure standing behind him and had needed to be scraped off the floor.
No, he decided. Seeing too much is its own problem. Mortals are supposed to be ignorant. That's not a design flaw, it's load-bearing architecture. Remove it and the whole structure starts to shift.
He set the eye on the desk and reached for his phone instead.
Ding.
Misterrrrr I'm boreeeee what are you doing nowwww
Rhea.
He looked at the eye on the desk. He looked at the message.
I'm playing with the eye of a great old one, he typed. Deciding what to do with it.
Sent.
lmaooo mister you always know how to joke about this stuff lol
It's not a joke. My medical skill is so advanced I can cure the gods themselves.
yeah yeahhh so coolll mister I totally believe you never never never never doubt you for a single second
Disrespect your elder, little girl.
Booo
He set the phone in his pocket and looked at the eye.
Then his phone rang. Different tone. An actual call.
He picked up.
"Hello?"
"Hello, excuse me, sir. Are you the father of Lily Dorn and Martinez Dorn?"
Ren went quiet for a half second.
Brother Lu took them to change their surnames, he thought. I didn't expect him to use mine. The previous owner of this body had left a name behind, and apparently Lu Changcheng had decided it was as good as any other.
"Yes," Ren said. "I'm their father."
"Are you able to come to the school? Martinez and Lily were involved in an altercation. It's inconvenient to discuss the full situation over the phone."
"I'll come now."
He put the phone down. He took his jacket from the hook, put it on, and walked out.
He paused at Chu Xinghe's office door.
Insurance, he thought.
He pushed the door open.
Chu Xinghe was at his desk with his tea. He inhaled it at the sudden noise and began coughing, one hand pressed to his chest.
"Brother Chu, are you free?"
"Cough — sort of, my work today is — cough — essentially done—"
Ren's tentacles emerged, wrapped around Chu Xinghe with efficient care, and carried him toward the door.
"WAIT, WAIT, LET ME PREPARE — SLOW DOWN — I HAVEN'T GOT MY JACKET — NOOOO—"
. . .
The principal's office at Qintara National School was large and quiet, institutional furniture, a tall window behind the desk looking out onto the main courtyard. Ren and Chu Xinghe were shown in by a staff member who did not comment on anything she had seen in the corridor.
Martinez and Lily were sitting together on the chairs along the left wall.
Martinez had a black eye. Lily had been crying and had not entirely stopped.
The principal and whoever had been fighting with them had not arrived yet.
Ren walked to them and crouched down.
"Martinez. Who hurt you?"
Martinez stood immediately, looked at Chu Xinghe, and bowed.
"Vice Guildmaster, I'm deeply sorry for the trouble. Please punish me if punishment is needed but please keep Lily out of it. She didn't do anything."
"It's my fault." Lily stood too, eyes still wet, and bowed as well. "Martinez got hurt because of me. I said something I shouldn't have."
Chu Xinghe's brow creased.
"Sit down," Ren said. "Both of you. Nobody's being punished right now. Tell me what happened."
Martinez sat. He looked at his hands for a moment and then started from the beginning.
The other student was a boy from the class. His father was a close associate of Emperor Qin Huanglong, which put the family in a specific tier of Qintara society that made problems with them structurally inconvenient. He had come to probe Martinez and Lily about their background, which was the kind of thing that certain families did when new students arrived with connections to powerful guilds but no legible lineage.
Martinez and Lily had said they couldn't discuss their background.
Then Lily, trying to establish some credibility, had mentioned that she knew Viktor Qin. That Viktor was close to their family, practically like an older brother.
The boy, whose father was an associate of the Emperor and who therefore had an opinion about Viktor Qin's social positioning, had not appreciated a new student from nowhere claiming familiarity with the imperial family.
"So he called your father names," Ren said.
"He spread a rumor. That our father was a—" Martinez stopped. "It was disrespectful."
"And you fought him."
"Yes."
Chu Xinghe's brow twitched. He was thinking, Ren could tell, that claiming close familiarity with the Emperor's younger brother was exactly the kind of thing that invited scrutiny, and that the reaction from an imperial associate's son had been entirely predictable.
"Stop calling me brother at school," Ren said. "If anyone asks, I'm your father. Call me father."
Both children went still for a moment. Then the stillness shifted into something warmer.
"Yes, Father," Martinez said.
"Yes, Father," Lily said quietly.
The office door opened. The principal entered first, a woman in her sixties, upright and unhurried, the kind of presence built over decades of managing difficult rooms. She greeted them with measured courtesy, introduced herself as Principal Margaret, and apologized for the situation without elaborating until all parties were present.
Then the other door opened.
"Who the FUCK dared to hurt my son—"
Viktor Qin stopped in the doorway.
His eyes found Ren. His face went the color of fresh paper.
He stood there for a full second, taking in the scene: Ren sitting in a school principal's office without a mask, Chu Xinghe beside him, two children across the room, and the general implication that Ren was here as a parent.
Viktor's mouth opened slightly. He closed it.
The principal stared at him.
Chu Xinghe looked at Ren with an expression that was asking several questions simultaneously.
Beside Viktor stood a tall boy. He had clearly been handsome before today. Currently he had two eyes swollen mostly shut, both arms in casts, and the face of someone who had significantly miscalculated.
Ren looked at the boy.
He looked at him for a while.
Martinez did that, he thought. Martinez, who is thirteen, did that to a boy twice his size. Both arms. Both eyes.
He looked at Martinez, who had one black eye and was sitting straight-backed with the composed expression of a child who had done exactly what he intended to do.
Did you hit him with a baseball bat, Ren thought. What did you hit him with.