Chapter 174: Different Priorities
Kai closed the apartment door behind him and Lily was already there.
Not at the door exactly. A few meters down the street, standing with her hands behind her back and the small composed expression she wore when she had already decided something and was waiting for the situation to catch up.
He was not surprised.
He smiled. "Already?"
She laughed. "Not yet." A pause. "Let’s walk first."
He nodded.
They walked.
Unlike the morning with Raze, nobody stopped to buy food. Unlike the walk with Mira, there was no destination being aimed for. They moved through the city at an ordinary pace and the city moved around them the way it moved around two people it had learned to recognize.
Some people whispered. A few waved. One child pointed and the parent with him redirected the pointing hand with the patient automaticity of someone who had been doing this since the gates appeared and the city had started producing recognizable names.
Neither Kai nor Lily said anything about it.
The path they took without discussing it ended at one of the elevated overlooks in the northern district, a walkway that had been added during the B-rank phase when the city needed more observation points.
Below it Mythal ran at its morning pace. Hunters moving toward the gate districts. Smoke rising from something being repaired in the construction zone two blocks east. People at the market stalls.
A school group crossing an intersection with the organized chaos of children who knew where they were going but were taking their time getting there.
Lily looked at the city for a long moment.
"Honestly," she said. "I don’t really want Authority."
Kai laughed. "Me neither."
She looked over at him.
He scratched his cheek. "I’d rather clear dungeons. Come home. Eat dinner. Do it again."
Lily smiled. "I’d rather research. Clear dungeons. Write papers. Do that again."
Both of them looked at the city below.
"And yet," Kai said.
"And yet," she agreed.
He looked at her profile. The way she was watching the school group cross the intersection. The specific quality of attention she gave to the smallest visible element of the scene rather than the broad view.
"You’re doing it for future hunters," he said.
She blinked. Looked at him. "Did you research me?"
"No," he said. "I remembered."
He had watched her in dungeons long enough. Every operation, every gate clear, Lily always checked on the least experienced person in the group. Always. It was not performed. It was just what she did before she did anything else.
"You always worried about the newest person," he said. "Every run we’ve been in together."
Lily laughed. Small and genuine. "I guess I wasn’t hiding it."
She leaned against the railing. Below them a hunter was running drills in an open area near one of the guild buildings, alone, no audience. Just running the same movement pattern over and over.
"Strong hunters don’t appear by accident," Lily said. She pointed at the city. At the schools visible in the residential district. At the training centers. At the guild buildings. "The city makes them. Better schools means better instructors means better beginners means better survival rate means more veterans means more experienced hunters teaching the next group."
She paused.
"The strongest hunter starts as the weakest," she said.
Kai was quiet for a moment.
"None of us picked that starting point," he said.
"No," she said. "We were placed in it."
She looked at the city. "Mira wants to build communities where hunters actually support each other. Raze wants to make sure families don’t lose everything when someone dies protecting the city. Elden wants infrastructure that outlasts any single person’s tenure." She looked at Kai. "You want your family to be safe."
"Yes," he said.
"Everyone has something specific," she said. "That’s the part that doesn’t get talked about. Everyone thinks Authority is about the city. It is. But the reason is always personal."
Kai looked at the street below. At the school group that had finally made it across the intersection and was now disappearing around a corner.
"We could still work together," he said. "After this."
"Eventually," she said.
A pause.
"The problem isn’t whether we’ll fix everything," she said. She was looking at the city again. "It’s what gets fixed first. What gets the attention and the resources in year one. Because year one shapes year two. And year two shapes year five." She looked at him. "The order matters as much as the goal."
Kai looked over the city.
None of them wanted different futures. They wanted the same future. But they simply couldn’t agree on which first step mattered most.
"Mine is obvious," he said.
"The awakening age," she said.
"Yes."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "You don’t trust me?"
"I trust you," he said immediately.
"Then."
"I don’t trust the position," he said.
She looked at him.
"You wouldn’t lower it," he said. "I believe that. But the position outlasts any one person. Whatever adjustments get normalized in year one become the baseline for whoever comes after." He looked at the street. "I trust you but I just don’t feel comfortable allowing it."
Lily nodded slowly. She did not argue with this.
Then she said, "Lowering the age saves lives."
Kai was quiet.
"The sooner someone awakens, the sooner they develop," she said. Her voice was even. Not pushing. Just accurate. "The sooner they can contribute. The sooner they can defend themselves and the people around them."
She looked at him. "There will be a situation eventually where you’re too far away to help. Where the gate appears and the closest people are the ones who didn’t awaken yet because the cutoff was eighteen."
She paused. "Wouldn’t you rather Leo already be capable when that happens?"
The school group was gone around the corner. Kai was looking at where they had been.
"I know," he said.
"Do you? The system won’t slow down because children aren’t ready. It’ll keep moving whether we are or not."
Kai trembled but didn’t say anything for a moment.
She waited.
"I’ve thought about it," he said. "You’re right. It probably is safer in aggregate. More people awakened earlier means more capacity when it matters."
"Then," she started.
"But," he said.
He smiled. Quietly. Looking down at the market stalls and the morning people and the ordinary city going about its business.
"I still want to come home and see Leo complaining about something. See Mina making dinner. Both of them safe. Just like that." A pause. "A little longer."
Lily didn’t say anything.
"I know the world won’t wait. I know danger won’t wait." Kai expressions soften. "But if I can give them... No, myself, one more normal year, I’d choose that every time."
Lily smiles. "You’re selfish."
Kai blinks.
"Not in a bad way. Just... as an older brother."
Kai laughs. "Probably. That’s why I can’t say I’m a good leader."
Lily looked at him for a moment. "Maybe but I’m not much different. I still worry every time my aunt enters a dungeon," she said. "She awakened so she could grow stronger. She said she wanted to be able to help me eventually."
She looked at the railing. "She’s capable. She knows what she’s doing. And I still check my phone every time she goes in."
"It always worries you," Kai said. Not a question.
"Every time," she said. "Especially when I’m not with her."
Kai laughed once. "I’m going to be exactly the same with Leo."
Lily laughed too.
The city ran below them.
A siren sounded somewhere in the eastern district.
Not an emergency. Just another gate opening. Neither of them looked toward it. Someone else would handle that one today.
A vendor at one of the market stalls was having an animated conversation with a customer about something, both of them gesturing. Two hunters on the walkway below were pointing at something on a phone, probably a clip from one of the recent fights.
"Mira said you overthink," Lily said.
"She’s not wrong," Kai said.
"Raze said you’re impossible."
Kai smiled. "Also not wrong."
"Elden called you the person walking in front."
Kai was quiet for a moment. "That one still feels strange."
"Why?" she said.
"Because I’m usually just trying to deal with whatever’s in front of me," he said. "It doesn’t feel like leading. It just feels like solving the next problem."
"That’s what leading looks like from the inside," Lily said. "It feels like problem-solving. It looks like direction."
He thought about this.
The wind moved through the overlook. Below them the city was the same city it had been every morning for the past months, continuing at the pace it had established, the accumulation of everyone in it doing whatever they were doing today.
Lily pushed herself off the railing. "If we keep talking we’ll end up agreeing on everything."
Kai laughed. "Probably."
She smiled.
"That would make this awkward. So, let’s find a dungeon."
He stood up from where he had been leaning against the railing beside her. "I know a good one," he said.
They walked away from the overlook together.
Two people who respected each other began their walk toward the same dungeon. Knowing one of them would leave it no longer a candidate.
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