Block 3's night market ran along a covered street that had been a commercial zone before Integration and had become, afterward, something better — a community that had decided that the end of the world as they knew it was no reason to stop having good food.
Stalls crowded both sides: grilled skewers, soup dumplings that steamed in the cool night air, a woman selling handmade jewelry who also, according to the sign, had a Level 54 Combat Summoner class and was not to be trifled with.
Su Xuan arrived first. He did not mill around or browse. He found a position that had a clear sightline to both ends of the street, noted the four other Players in the vicinity and assessed them as non-threatening, and then looked toward the north end of the street because that was the direction she would come from.
She appeared on time. Exactly on time, the kind of punctuality that is deliberate, that says: I was ready when I said I would be ready and I do not make people wait.
She was dressed differently than he had seen her — still dark clothing, still practical, but the jacket was softer, and her hair was loose in a way it usually wasn't. She moved through the market crowd the same way she always moved, and people parted for her the way they parted for him, by some instinct they couldn't name.
She saw him.
She walked toward him.
They stood facing each other for a moment in the warm light of a dozen food stalls, with the noise of the market around them and the smell of grilled meat in the air, and Su Xuan thought:
This is the most normal thing I have done since I woke up in this world.
"You came," he said.
"I said I would," she said.
"You could have changed your mind."
"I don't," she said. "Change my mind. When I decide something."
He looked at her.
"Good," he said.
They walked.
He had not planned a route or an agenda. They walked and stopped at things and didn't stop at other things and spoke when there was something to say, which was more often than he expected and less often than a person who needed constant noise would have found comfortable.
She ate a soup dumpling from a folded paper container and looked at the jewelry stall with an expression of mild assessment. He watched her look at it.
"Do you like any of it?" he asked.
"The second from the left," she said, and walked on.
He looked at the second from the left — a simple dark chain with a single pale stone, understated and clean. Then he walked on too, and caught up with her in two steps.
At the midpoint of the market, where a small square opened up with benches and a tree that someone had strung with lights, they stopped by unspoken agreement and sat.
For a while, they were quiet. This was not unusual.
Then Ling Xue said: "You removed the Iron Vanguard's leadership."
"Zhao Wei made choices," Su Xuan said. "He was given the option to accept the consequences quietly."
"You protected Su Ming."
"I protect what's mine," he said. Then, hearing how that might land: "The people I care about."
She was quiet.
"You include me in that," she said. Not a question.
He looked at her. "Yes."
She was still for a moment. Then she turned slightly — not all the way, not facing him, just the smallest degrees toward him, the kind of movement that has to be chosen even though it looks effortless.
"You should know," she said, "that I'm not good at this."
"At what?"
"Letting people—" She stopped. Tried again. "I'm used to operating alone. I'm used to being careful. To people either wanting things from me or being afraid of me or both." A pause. "You don't seem to want anything from me."
"I want to know you," he said simply. "That's different from wanting things from you."
Ling Xue looked at the tree lights. Something moved through her expression — there and then carefully set aside, the way you set aside something you need both hands free to deal with.
"You're very direct," she said.
"It saves time."
"And if I told you I wasn't ready for direct."
He looked at her. "Then I'd wait," he said. "I'm in no hurry."
She looked at him. Her eyes were very grey in the warm light, and he could see the thing in them that she was holding at arm's length and was not ready to name, and he could see that she was aware he could see it, and neither of them said anything about it.
"I have a question," she said.
"Ask."
"What do you actually want? Not from me — in general. In this world." She looked at him steadily. "Most people want to be the strongest. Or to be famous. Or to build something. What do you want?"
He thought about it honestly, which was the only way he was capable of thinking about things.
"I want my brother to get where he's going safely," he said. "And I want—" He paused. "I want to build something that lasts. An army that can hold when the world gets harder. A foundation that doesn't need the approval of other people to stand."
"And personally?" she asked.
He looked at her.
"Personally," he said, "I'm looking at it."
The quiet after that was the kind that has weight and warmth and something that neither of them was naming yet because the name makes it real and real things are the ones that can be lost.
She looked at the tree lights again.
"I'm not running away," she said. Quiet.
"I know," he said.
"I'm just slow."
"I know that too."
She nodded once, in the way she nodded when she had decided something.
Then she stood and he stood with her and they walked back through the market, their shoulders not quite touching, and at the point where the market ended she stopped at the jewelry stall for exactly thirty seconds and then kept walking.
He bought the second from the left.
He didn't tell her. He put it in his pocket and walked beside her to the transit stop and said: "Same time Friday. There's a gate in the east district I want to look at."
"A-rank?" she said.
"S."
She looked at him. "S-rank gates don't open for months."
"This one will," he said.
She looked at him for a long moment. Then: "Friday," she said. She stepped onto the transit car.
The doors closed.
He stood at the stop, turned the small piece of jewelry over in his fingers once, and looked at the city that had become his world.
Level 127, Void Sovereign, heir to something older than the System.
And standing at a transit stop after buying a piece of jewelry like an ordinary person.
He started walking home.
He felt, absurdly and precisely, like himself.