Gilded Ashes-Chapter 303: Almost Had Me
Something pulled Raizen out of sleep.
Not a sound. Not a touch. Just a feeling - the kind that lives in the back of your skull and whispers "someone is watching you" before your eyes are even open. The kind that doesn’t go away when you try to ignore it.
Raizen opened his eyes.
The room was dark. Grey light pushed weakly through the window - not dawn yet, but close. The kind of light that existed between night and morning, where nothing had color and everything looked like a photograph left in the rain.
His clothes were still damp. The mattress beneath him was cold where the rainwater had soaked through, and his joints ached in the slow, deep way that came from sleeping in wet fabric on a hard surface. His fingers were stiff. His back felt like someone had taken a hammer to it.
He blinked, trying to focus.
Saffi was on her mattress beside him. Asleep. Actually asleep this time - not the drug-induced collapse from earlier, but real, earned rest. At some point during the few hours they’d had, she’d changed her clothes and swapped her mattress cover for a dry one. Raizen didn’t know when, and he didn’t remember hearing her move. She lay on her side, arms tucked close, her chest rising slowly.
He almost closed his eyes again.
Then he saw the shape by his bed.
It was standing. Still. Close enough to touch. A figure in the dark, tall, arms at its sides, watching him with the patience of someone who had been there for a while and was prepared to be there for a while longer.
Raizen’s heart lurched. His hand twitched toward - toward nothing, actually. He didn’t have a weapon. He didn’t have Eon swords ready. He was lying on a wet mattress in heavy clothes with numb fingers and a body that felt like it had been wrung out and hung to dry.
The figure raised a hand.
Not a threat. A gesture. Simple, unhurried. A wave that meant "follow me". Then the figure turned and moved toward the door, footsteps soundless on the wood.
Raizen’s eyes adjusted.
Eiden.
...Of course it was Eiden.
The professor didn’t look back. Didn’t wait to see if Raizen would follow. He simply walked out of the room without waiting for anyting else.
Raizen lay there for three seconds. His brain - still foggy, still half-asleep, still running on whatever dregs of energy Enya’s weird fruit had left him - tried to process the situation. Eiden. Standing over his bed. At - he glanced at the small clock on the shelf near the door - 4:53 in the morning. Watching him sleep.
Then waving him forward like a teacher summoning a student after class.
He got up.
His body protested every part of it. His knees cracked. His ankle - the one he landed on - flared hot when he put weight on it. He straightened slowly, swaying once, and looked at Saffi. Still asleep. Her breathing hadn’t changed.
He followed Eiden outside, footsteps small and careful on the wooden floor. Eiden’s were invisible - the man moved like he knew exactly which boards creaked and had been stepping around them for as long as he can remember.
The porch was cold. Really cold.
Raizen stepped outside and the air hit him like a wall. The rain never stopped, but the roof above at least provided some cover. The temperature had dropped a lot.
Raizen’s cheeks turned red from the cold, and his nose tingled. He felt the sneeze building - a massive, full-body sneeze that would echo off every platform in a two-block radius and wake everyone who’d managed to stay asleep through the night.
He clamped his hand over his face. Pinched his nose. Held his breath.
The sneeze fought him. It surged, retreated, surged again. His eyes watered. His shoulders hunched. For two agonizing seconds, it was the only battle that mattered.
It passed. Barely.
He lowered his hand. Blinked the tears away. Breathed in relief.
Eiden was standing next to the thin wooden railing, facing out over the street. His back was to Raizen. His posture was relaxed - hands resting on the wet wood, weight comfortably distributed, shoulders loose. He wore the same clothes he’d been wearing at dinner. No coat. No sign of cold.
He didn’t speak immediately. Let the silence do its job. The grey light was shifting slowly - brightening by fractions, turning the shapes of Ukai’s canopy from black silhouettes into something with a bit of texture. Somewhere in the distance, a bird made a sound that wasn’t quite a song. Testing the morning, seeing if it was safe.
Raizen stood behind Eiden, shivering, wet, exhausted, and completely unsure of what was about to happen. His mind cycled through possibilities - anger, interrogation, punishment, expulsion. The image of Eiden’s dried shoes flashed through his head. The mud line at the edges. The "Clear the lower branches."
Eiden turned.
His face wasn’t what Raizen expected.
It wasn’t angry. There was no tension in his jaw, no hardness in his eyes, no tightness around the mouth that signaled someone holding back fury. And it wasn’t confused - there was no searching look, no furrowed brow, no attempt to figure something out.
It was something else. Something Raizen had only seen a handful of times in his life, and never directed at him.
It was the face of a chess master looking at the board after a devastating win - or almost a draw. The kind of expression that just appreciated his opponent’s struggle. A faint, almost invisible shift behind the eyes. Not quite admiration. Not quite pride.
But close.
Like a man who had expected no obstacles and received something worth noticing.
"Well, Raizen..."
His voice was quiet. The same voice he used for everything - lectures, orders, comments that sometimes sounded like threats. But there was something underneath it now. Something Raizen couldn’t name.
"I have to admit."
A pause. The grey light caught the edge of Eiden’s face.
"You almost had me there."
