Chapter 184: Dinner Together
They walked back from the dungeon without talking much.
The city was doing its evening thing, the light changing, people heading home, the specific quality of a day ending. Kai’s arms were still slightly numb from the final exchange. He did not mention this.
"I’m exhausted," he said.
Sera laughed. "You won."
"Exactly," he said.
She shook her head.
They reached the apartment building and Kai had not even gotten to the door before it opened.
Leo was standing there with the specific energy of someone who had been waiting for an unreasonable amount of time and was expressing this through the speed of the door opening.
"Kai!"
"I’m home," Kai said.
Then he noticed the extra pair of shoes by the entrance. Small. Neat. Arranged carefully in a way that communicated that the person they belonged to had been taught to arrange shoes carefully.
A girl appeared around the corner. She had blonde hair and blue eyes and she looked about twelve and she was clearly attempting to look completely unbothered by the situation. She was not entirely succeeding.
She bowed quickly. "It’s nice to meet you."
Leo grinned. "Oh! Right. This is Hana."
Kai smiled. "You too."
Leo leaned toward Kai and said, at a volume that was entirely audible to everyone in the room, "She’s your fan."
Hana turned completely red. "Leo!"
Leo laughed.
Kai crouched slightly so he was closer to her eye level. "Is that why you’re hiding behind the wall?"
She nodded. Still red. "I watched all your fights."
"Thanks," he said.
He reached over and gently ruffled her hair.
Hana went very still. The expression on her face was the expression of someone who had not expected this and was now processing it.
Leo started laughing again. "She’s going to remember that forever."
"Leo," Mina said from the kitchen doorway.
"It’s true," he said, still laughing.
Kai stood up and looked around the apartment. Nobody had cooked. The kitchen had the untouched quality of a room that had been waiting for someone to make a decision about it.
"Nobody’s eaten," he said.
Mina came into the main room. "I wasn’t expecting six people tonight."
Kai thought about it. "Let’s go out."
Leo stood up immediately. "Yes."
Hana blinked. "Really?"
"Come with us," Kai said.
Her expression went from surprised to something much warmer.
Sera and Mina looked at each other briefly.
...
The restaurant Leo chose was the kind of place that had been there for years and felt like it, warm lighting and slightly mismatched furniture and a menu that had not changed much since it was established. Nothing expensive. Just reliable.
They ordered and the food took fifteen minutes and Leo filled those fifteen minutes with questions.
"When the monster jumped at your back during the opening," Leo said. "You didn’t even look."
Kai laughed. "I didn’t need to."
Hana looked between them. "Why not?"
Kai pointed at Sera.
Hana looked at Sera. "You were already there?"
Sera smiled. "I would have been annoyed if he’d turned around to check."
Leo pointed at Hana. "See! I told you."
Hana shook her head. "How do you know where she’s going to be?"
"We’ve run a lot of dungeons together," Kai said.
"How many?"
He thought about it. "I stopped counting somewhere around the third Mythical gate."
Leo leaned over to Hana. "That means a lot."
Hana nodded seriously, filing this away.
"My favorite part," Hana said, after a moment of apparently deciding it was safe to have opinions, "was when both of you attacked at exactly the same time. At the end."
"That wasn’t planned," Kai said.
She stared at him. "It wasn’t?"
"No."
Leo leaned back in his chair with the expression of someone whose view of the world had just become larger. "That’s even cooler," he said.
"It really is," Hana agreed.
Mina laughed. "My favorite part wasn’t even the fight."
Everyone looked at her.
"You two arguing about the eggs at breakfast," she said.
Sera laughed. A real one.
Kai sighed.
Leo nodded enthusiastically. "True. You guys acted like it was a completely normal morning."
Hana looked confused. "You weren’t nervous?"
"We were," Kai said.
Sera nodded. "Just not about the fighting part."
Hana thought about this for a moment. "What were you nervous about?"
Kai and Sera both started to answer and then both stopped and looked at each other.
"The part after," Sera said.
Hana did not entirely understand this but nodded like she was saving it for later.
The food arrived and the conversation continued across it.
Leo at some point looked at Kai. "So who’s stronger?"
Kai pointed at Sera immediately.
Sera pointed at Kai.
Leo groaned. "You’re both impossible."
Hana giggled.
Mina shook her head. "They’ve been doing this for months."
"It’s easier," Kai said.
"It is not easier," Leo said. "It answers nothing."
"It answers everything," Sera said.
Leo looked at her. "What does it answer?"
"That the question is wrong," she said.
Leo stared at her. Then looked at Kai. "Did she learn that from you?"
"No," Kai said.
"He learned it from me," Sera said.
Kai did not confirm or deny this.
Leo suddenly pointed at Kai with a piece of bread. "What happens now? With Authority."
"Probably another reward from the system," Kai said.
"I know that," Leo said. "But what reward?"
Hana raised her hand.
Everyone looked at her.
She had been listening carefully to all of this and had apparently arrived at a conclusion she felt confident about.
"The system makes Kai king," she said.
Silence.
She kept going, now with full momentum. "Like in my city-building game. He gets to move buildings around. Make new roads. Build parks wherever he wants."
Leo stared at her.
Then shook his head very slowly. "Hana," he said.
She looked at him.
"Don’t be silly," he said. "Kai couldn’t possibly get something that cool."
Kai said, "Thanks?"
Everyone laughed.
Mina said, "I’m hoping it’s something simple."
Sera said, "I’m just hoping it doesn’t involve another enormous dungeon."
"Agreed," Kai said.
Hana looked between them. "Would you have to go right away?"
"I don’t know," Kai said honestly.
She accepted this. "Okay." She looked back at her food. "But you’re coming back?"
"Yes," Kai said.
She nodded, satisfied.
The food continued. The conversation moved to other things. Leo’s school. Something Hana had found interesting that week. A situation at Mina’s workplace that she described for a few minutes before deciding it was too dull to finish explaining.
Kai mostly listened.
He watched Hana trying to follow the conversation and occasionally asking Leo something quietly. He watched Leo answer her with the specific energy he had when he was talking about something he actually knew. He watched Mina laugh at something Sera said and then immediately try to look like she had not just laughed at it.
The restaurant was warm and busy in the comfortable way of a place that had been filling up at this hour for years.
Kai looked around the table.
No gates. No briefings. No candidate list or system announcements or ancient archives underneath the city.
Just dinner.
Sera noticed him looking at nothing.
"What?" she said.
He shook his head. "This is nice."
Mina smiled.
Leo raised his glass. "To Kai!"
Hana immediately raised hers. "To Kai!"
Sera raised hers. "So that’s what we’re doing?"
Leo nodded seriously. "Yes."
Mina lifted hers. "To coming home."
The table was quiet for a moment.
Kai picked up his glass.
"To coming home," he said.
Everyone clinked.
The restaurant continued around them. Somewhere a table over, two people were laughing at something. The kitchen made kitchen sounds. The evening outside the windows had gone fully dark and the city lights had taken over.
They stayed until they were the kind of full that made moving feel optional.
Then they left.
The evening air was cool when they stepped outside. Hana was telling Leo something about a game and he was disagreeing with her interpretation of one of its rules. Mina walked beside Kai.
The street was quiet.
Then every phone vibrated simultaneously.
Every screen on every building face lit up.
The sky flickered blue.
A familiar voice came through the city’s air.
[Authority Selection Complete.]
Kai stopped walking.
Everyone did.
He looked up at the blue.
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