The bolts make it home alive.
I hand them to Haim, he tests one, listens to the sound, grunts in that way that means "acceptable" instead of "trash."
"Did he overcharge you?" Haim asks.
"Probably," I say. "But you said he would, so it cancels out."
"He say anything smart?" Haim asks.
"He insulted you," I say.
"That's his way of flirting with reality," Haim mutters. "As long as the metal's good."
He moves on. For him, the old man is a supplier with a bad attitude.
For me, he's a door I'm not allowed to open yet.
Kain hears about it that evening, in the alley.
I don't even get to start stretching. I walk in, drop the bag, and he's already watching me with that "spit it out" expression.
"You went to the shop," he says.
"Hello to you too," I say. "Yes. Haim needed bolts."
"He talk to you?" Kain asks.
"He talked to the air and I happened to be in it," I say. "But yes."
"What'd he say?" Bruk asks from the wall. "Exactly."
I run it back in my head.
"He checked the bolt, insulted it," I say. "Looked at my hands. Made me walk. Asked who trained me. Told me your front foot is still too heavy."
Bruk snorts.
Kain's jaw tightens for a second.
"Anything else?" he asks.
"Said I was early," I say. "Told me to come back in a year if I'm still alive and walking straight."
Silence, for one slow breath.
"And if you go back before that?" Kain asks.
"He'll sell me things," I say. "And tell me to leave."
Kain huffs, almost a laugh.
"Yeah," he says. "That sounds like him."
"You two going to explain," I ask, "or keep doing the mysterious adult thing?"
Kain POV:
He's not impressed easily anymore. That bothers me, a little. But the fact he's unsettled by the old man? That's good. Means he isn't blind.
Old bastard watched him walk, listened to his steps, felt his hand, then didn't say "forget it."
"Come back in a year" from him isn't casual. That's as close as he gets to saying "you might be worth my time later."
Most kids, he doesn't even look at twice.
I was older than Ryu when I first stepped in there. He took one look, handed me my purchase, and didn't ask about my stance.
The kid jumped the queue.
Ryu POV:
"So," I say, "on a scale from 'normal grump' to 'do not poke with a stick,' where does he land?"
"Don't poke him with a stick," Bruk says.
Kain leans against a crate, watching me.
"You felt it," he says. "Didn't you?"
"Felt what?" I ask, though I already know.
"The way he moves without moving," Kain says. "The way the room kind of… folds around him."
I remember the way the shop felt. How he walked from the counter to the shelves without any extra motion, like every step was already decided. How his hand on mine felt completely relaxed and completely solid at the same time.
"Yeah," I say quietly. "He's wrong."
"In a good way," Kain says. "For his enemies, in a very bad way."
"So that's the guy you meant," I say. "The 'architecture' one."
"One of them," he says. "But the only one I know personally who isn't dead, broken, or chained to someone rich and stupid."
Nice thought.
"You going to throw me at him in a year," I ask, "or just hope we run into each other again by accident?"
"We're not throwing you anywhere," he says. "We're giving you the option. Big difference."
"Feels like semantics from down here," I say.
He ignores that.
"From now until then," he says, "we train with a different assumption."
"Which is?" I ask.
"That you're not just trying to survive," he says. "You're being prepared to be "read" by someone like him and not get thrown out on sight."
"So less sloppy," I say.
"Less everything you can't control," he says. "Less ego, less waste, less noise. More discipline. More structure."
"Fantastic," I say. "I love the sound of more suffering."
We stretch. Then we work.
Nothing new. That's the part that messes with my head.
No secret techniques, no sudden jump in difficulty. Just… refinement.
Footwork patterns I already know, but with Kain biting at every mistake.
"You're dropping your heel," he says. "Again. You keep doing that, someone faster than that seventeen-year-old steps on it and you fall."
We run angles on imaginary opponents, then on Bruk's lazy jabs. Half-speed. Focused.
"Don't just move away," Kain says. "Move toward where you're dangerous and he isn't."
Clinch drills.
My least favorite kind, now ironically becoming calming. Everything close, tight, horrible.
"Your frame is decent," he says, nudging my arm with a knuckle. "But your head position wanders. You let him win the neck, you lose the rest."
We drill breaking grips without panicking. Peeling hands off collars, wrists, hair. Always the same message:
No flailing. No wasted panic. Just decisions.
By the time we're done, my lungs burn, my shoulders feel like they've been filled with gravel, and my legs tremble.
Normal.
What's not normal is that they don't let me go yet.
"Sit," Kain says again.
I drop onto the crate, sweat sticking my shirt to my spine.
"You're what, now," he asks. "Nine and…?"
"Eleven months," I say. "Why, planning a party?"
"Planning a timeline," he says. "In a month, you hit ten. In a year, if nothing stupid kills you, you walk back into that shop."
"Nice optimistic 'if'," I say.
"Realistic," he says. "We can't control who notices you. We can only control how ready you are when they do."
He pauses.
"Until you're ten," he says, "you stay away from anything that smells like gangs, rings, or hired muscle."
"I already do," I say. "I don't go shopping for scars."
"You also have a hero complex with terrible taste," Bruk says. "That kid you saved? Good. But you can't play saint on every corner."
"I know," I say. "If it's bad odds, I stay out of it. If it's good odds and someone smaller's being cornered, I might step in."
"That's the problem," Kain says. "You're good at making odds better. Which means situations that should be 'stay away' will feel like 'I can probably win.' That's how you end up on lists kept by people with guns."
"I'll try to be picky," I say.
"Do more than try," he says. "Think long-term."
He looks at my hands again, at the fresh skin over old scrapes.
"You're going to be dangerous," he says, like a diagnosis. "With or without us. We just decide whether you're dangerous with control or without it."
I let that sink in.
Dangerous with control.
That's the goal, isn't it? Not to stop being sharp. Just to be sharp on purpose.
Time doesn't skip cleanly. It never does.
You expect a training montage. Instead, you get:
Mornings where your knees ache for no reason.
Days at the workshop where your hands shake because you clinched too hard the night before.
Evenings where your brain is so tired from thinking about angles that you almost trip over cats.
I keep going back to the shop.
Not inside. Just near.
Sometimes I take a longer route "by accident" when running a delivery. I glance at the door.
It stays closed. When it opens, it's for men older than me, faces lined, hands heavy, shoulders slumped from work.
I don't step in again.
He said a year. I heard the word "test" under it.
So I treat it like one.
Somewhere in that mess of days, I turn ten.
No cake. No formal anything.
I wake up, count the days on the little scratch calendar I made on the wall, and realize:
Ten.
Double digits in this life.
"Happy birthday to me," I tell the ceiling stain. "You're still ugly."
At Haim's, nothing changes.
He hands me a heavier part and says, "You're not as useless as you used to be. Don't drop that."
At the alley, Kain makes me run more rounds of shadow sparring.
"You're older," he says. "You should suffer more."
"Finally," I say. "Recognition."
They don't do speeches. They don't say "we're proud of you," or "you've come far."
They just push a little harder. Demand a little more precision. Correct my stance with smaller adjustments, like the margin for error is shrinking because it is.
I write a line in my notebook that night:
Ten.Stage one: still alive.Stage two: waiting behind a counter with clear eyes and bad customer service.
It's not dramatic. It's not some huge turning point.
It's just another weight added to the bar.
A year from now, I'm supposed to walk back into that shop.
If I'm still standing.
If I've proved, to him and to me, that I'm something worth spending time on.
If nothing bigger and uglier eats me first.
I close the notebook.
My knuckles ache dully when I flex my hand.
"Fine," I tell the dark. "Let's see how far we can push stage one before we graduate."