My Class is Null, But I Always Get the Best Outcome

Chapter 156: The Things Worth Protecting

Kai woke up with nothing scheduled.

He checked his phone twice to confirm this. No gate assignments. No briefing requests. No coordination messages from Lily or the guild coordination office. The system notification from the previous night was gone, replaced by the ordinary absence of anything urgent.

He was still looking at the blank calendar when the message arrived.

Kei: everyone’s coming over

Kei: food

Kei: don’t be late

Kai looked at this for a moment. Then he got up.

Kei’s apartment smelled like someone had started cooking without knowing what they were doing.

That was rarely a good sign.

Kei was at the stove. Lina was standing beside him with the expression of someone who had identified a situation and was deciding at what point intervention became necessary. Rin was near the window. Dorn was on the floor surrounded by grocery bags, the quantity of which was not explained by anything visible about the plan for the day.

Kei turned when Kai came in.

"There he is," he said, with the energy of someone who had been waiting for an audience. "Our city’s greatest disappointment."

Kai looked at him. "What."

"You were supposed to bring dessert."

"Nobody told me that."

"You should have known."

"How would I have known."

Kei pointed at him. "Intuition."

Lina said, "I told him to stop saying that." She was already moving toward the stove in the specific way of someone who had made a decision. "He didn’t."

"I was managing fine," Kei said.

Lina walked over to the stove and one look at the pan was enough. Kei stepped aside with the composure of someone who had chosen to frame this as generosity rather than displacement.

Dorn looked up from the grocery bags. "I brought extras."

"Nobody asked," Rin said.

"I know," Dorn said.

Kei looked at the bags. Then at Dorn. Then at the bags. "I’ve stopped trying to understand you," he said.

"Good," Dorn said, and went back to organizing things.

The apartment found its rhythm after that.

The apartment settled into its usual rhythm.

Lina cooked.

Kei talked.

Rin quietly checked everything around her. Dorn organized the groceries. Kai sat at the table and watched all of it.

At some point Rin stopped beside him. "How are your ribs," she said.

"I don’t have an issue with my body," he said.

"You said that last time."

"Last time was different."

"You had three broken ribs."

He opened his mouth.

"You didn’t tell anyone," she said.

"They healed."

"That is not the point," Rin said. She produced a small assessment tool from somewhere and Kai submitted to a brief check because arguing with Rin never worked.

"Fine," she said, and moved on.

Kei watched this from across the room. "She does that to everyone," he said. "But with how you moved, it’s becoming something expected."

"That’s sounds annoying coming from you."

"But true~ At this point, Rin might become the best doctor with you as her test dummy."

"One, he isn’t my test dummy. And two, I do it to you more," Rin said, without turning.

"You used to but now it’s Kai."

She didn’t dignify that with a response.

Lunch happened in stages.

Lina’s cooking arrived in portions as she finished each thing, distributed across the table without ceremony. Dorn was eating with the focused application of someone for whom food was a serious matter.

Kei at some point said, "What would you do if the gates just stopped."

The table went quiet for a moment.

"Sleep," Kei said, answering his own question immediately.

Lina looked at the ceiling briefly. "Travel," she said. "Somewhere without a gate."

Rin said, "Study medicine properly. Not field application. Actual medicine."

Everyone looked at Dorn.

He was eating.

He noticed the attention.

"Fish," he said.

Silence.

Kei put down his fork.

"You fish," he said.

"I used to," Dorn said. He looked at his plate. "Before everything." A pause. "I miss it."

Nobody made a joke.

The moment did not require anything added to it.

Kei picked his fork back up. "Okay," he said. Quietly. Not dismissive. Just accepting the information.

Kai was watching all of them.

Kei complained about the food he had tried and failed to make. Lina ate with the same focused efficiency she brought to everything.

Rin monitoring the table with the specific attention of someone who was professionally incapable of not noticing things. Dorn thinking about fishing.

Kai thought about the Candidate.

The photograph.

The cracked cup.

The notebooks.

He remembered the people the man had talked about.

The friend who cheated at cards.

The one who was always late.

The child who stole fruit just because she enjoyed it.

Small things.

Ordinary things.

Because those were the things that had actually been worth keeping. Everyone cleaned up without talking about it. They already knew who usually did what.

Dorn handled the volume because he had brought most of the volume. Lina organized. Rin managed the details. Kei provided observations about how things could theoretically be done more efficiently, which nobody implemented.

Kei was stacking something and stopped and said, without particular weight to it, "You know."

He did not immediately continue.

The room was quiet in the way of four people who had learned when Kei was being genuine versus when he was being Kei.

"I’m glad we’re all still alive," he said.

Nobody responded for a moment. Not because it was awkward. Because it did not need immediate response.

Lina nodded once. "Me too," she said. Matter of fact.

Rin was looking at the window. The small expression she had when something had reached her.

Dorn set down what he was holding.

"So am I," he said.

One small nod.

That was all.

Nobody made a speech. Nobody turned it into a moment larger than what it was. Kei went back to stacking things. The apartment finished cleaning itself.

Kai left when the light had moved into the late afternoon.

The city felt peaceful. People on the sidewalks moving at the unhurried pace of a city not currently in a crisis.

A family visible through a restaurant window. Children ran through the plaza, shouting as they played.

He thought about the city he had imagined beneath the Archive. Then he thought about Kei laughing over burned food.Dorn missing fishing. Rin checking his ribs .Lina quietly taking over the kitchen.

This was why Kai wanted to protect the city. So moments like these could keep happening.

Then a massive screen appeared in the sky.

A mechanical tone echoed across the city. The street had already slowed before the words appeared.

[System Notice.]

The blue was everywhere. Above the city, in the screens, on every surface that could carry it. The voice was the same voice as the first day.

[Greetings, City of Mythal.]

Kai had stopped walking.

He was looking up.

The street around him had gone completely still. Every person on it. Every conversation ended mid-sentence and even the children stopped.