"Of course it's good. I, one of the strongest people in the kingdom, am going to teach you everything I know."
"Is that so?" I said, more dry than impressed, though, yeah, a little surprised. A lot of people claimed strength. Stacy said it like a weather report.
"This is a clothing store. Please don't talk about combat here. Go to the smithy for that," Lucy interjected, sliding between us with a measuring tape looped around her neck like a scarf. The glint in her eyes said she'd happily evict both of us if we started discussing dismemberment next to her silk display.
"Sorry, Lucy, but can you ring us up?" Stacy lifted both hands in truce. "I want to go to Steve. Need to talk to him."
"Fine. Come visit again, Onee-sama," Lucy said with a smile that softened her scolding. She swept behind the counter, the bell on her scissors chiming faintly as she moved.
The next few minutes were a soft blur of paper and string. Lucy folded and refolded the clothes with a speed that felt like a magic trick—jacket sleeves tucked just so, shirts rolled instead of creased to save the seams, boots nested heel-to-toe in tissue. Each bundle got a wax-paper wrap and a tie of red twine. She packed everything into stout canvas bags stamped with a tiny fox emblem I hadn't noticed on the sign. Every so often she glanced up, checking the set of my scarf or the way my ponytail lay against the jacket collar, nudging things into place the way a good craftsman can't help doing.
When we finally stepped back into the street, the bell over the door sang a short goodbye. The afternoon had brightened while we were inside; the sun sat higher and threw white light down the stone street, bouncing off windows and turning the dust into glitter. The road outside Lucy's shop squeezed into a small square where three lanes met; a fountain burbled in the center, ringed by a low stone lip where children balanced and failed to balance. The stalls around us buzzed—spiced meat smoking on skewers, a woman selling combs shaped like leaves, and a cart piled with brass hinges and locks clinking as the wheel hit a rut.
Walking out of the store with a lot of bags in our hands.
"She really tried to drag me out with all the clothes she got you," Stacy said, shifting the weight from one arm to the other. Her tail flicked with the motion, amused and put-upon at the same time.
"Yeah, there are like ninety different sets of clothes." I looked down at the handles digging into my fingers. The canvas creaked quietly under the strain. "I think she hid a curtain in here just to see if I'd notice."
"Can't you put all this in your Dimensional Storage?"
"I don't know how to use that." I gave her a deadpan look over the top of my scarf. I'd only just learned to make the status panel listen to me. Fancy pocket dimensions weren't exactly intuitive.
"Just think of the skill and pour mana outwards."
"I don't know how to do that, Stacy."
"Fine, come here." She put the bags down and reached to tap two fingers against the center of my forehead. "I will give you some knowledge so you can use your skill."
I stared at her hand like it had grown a second hand. "How does that work?"
"You know that I told you I don't have an element, right?"
Nodding, I said, "Yeah, that's why you can't help me with magic."
"Well, it is true I don't have an element, but I have a skill that can work with souls and memories."
The square seemed to hush around the edges of that sentence. Or maybe the hush was just inside my head. Either way, the words slid under my skin in a familiar, unwelcome direction.
"Stacy, is that how you knew I was a reincarnation?" I asked. Her ears flicked back, just a fraction, before she nodded—slow, measuring, like she was approaching a skittish animal.
"So you can see my memories of my past life." Heat crawled up the back of my neck. Old rooms, old hospital lights, the click of a pen against a clipboard—fractured shards tried to slide free. I pressed my tongue to the back of my teeth and swallowed them.
"Don't overthink it now," she said quickly. "Yes, I can do that, but I need verbal permission from the person to see their memories. That is why I didn't know your name before you told me. All I knew is that you were a reincarnation when I looked at your soul."
"But you still tried the skill on me, didn't you?" My voice went sharp, then louder. "You tried."
"Yes, but I wanted to alter your memories so you could forget about the five years of torture." Her hands opened, empty, like that made an apology. "I didn't want you to carry that weight."
"That doesn't change the fact that you tried it on me!" The shout jumped out of me faster than I could put a leash on it. Heads turned. The fountain's burble suddenly sounded small compared to the ripples of attention rolling our way.
From the corners, the crowd's noise crept in—a tightening ring: boots scuffing to a halt, cloth whispers, the way people breathe when they're deciding whether to watch or interfere. A child stopped with a honeyed bun halfway to his mouth. A pair of apprentices carrying a ladder stalled and tilted it down so they could see better. The square wasn't hostile, just curious, but too many eyes at once pressed against my skin like heat.
Stacy reached for one of the bags. "You did it, nice. Here, store my bags also," she said, not realizing we had a crowd around us.
I was still panicking about the number of eyes on me that I didn't even look at her. My gaze skittered over faces—wide-eyed, wary, frankly fascinated—and then up, up, catching on the low roofs that framed the square. Slate tiles. Good distance. Two handholds to the gutter, then a pull.
While I was looking around, the mutters edged in, carrying the oily slide of guesses.
"Why is Lady Draig arguing with that man?"
"He looks so scary."
"Did you see his eyes?"
"Yes, they look like the eyes of a monster."
The words didn't hit me so much as they piled up against each other, a stack of bricks building a wall around my lungs. The scarf felt too close. The square felt too loud. The bags in my hands felt like anchors. Somewhere under the panic, a childish, offended voice wanted to correct their pronouns; the rest of me just wanted out.
I looked down at the bags and tried to do what Stacy said to me. Think of the skill. Pour mana outward. I had no map for "outward," but I had instincts and stubbornness. I pictured a door—small, clean-edged, opening where my fingers met the canvas handle. I pushed with whatever that quiet cold hum inside me was.
The world made a tiny, neat sound, like a bubble popping somewhere behind my eyes. The bag vanished without weight or drama, as if it had always been a thought.
I blinked at my empty hand. Then at the space where the bag wasn't.
"You did it, nice," Stacy said, pride brightening her voice. She thrust another bag at me. "Here, store my bags also."
I took them without answering and made the door open again. Pop, pop, pop. To anyone else, it looked like I was doing a simple trick; to me, it felt like slipping stones from a backpack one by one while running uphill. Every disappearance took a pinch of that cold hum, not painful, just noticed. Someone in the crowd gasped. Someone else clapped once before their friend elbowed them.
I was still breathing too fast. The press of eyes hadn't lessened just because the bags were gone. If anything, it thickened—curiosity turning to gossip turning to stories in the making. I traced a path to the roof again. One, two, pull.
Stacy saw the tilt of my weight and the angle of my shoulders. "Kitsuna, you are still injured. You might not make it," she said. Warning, do not order.
Ignoring her, I jumped up towards the roof.
The world tilted and compressed: the stone lip of the fountain became a stepping stone, then the edge of a windowsill; my fingers found the gutter and yanked. The slate greeted my boots with a scrape and a sliding complaint. Pain lit in both calves, clean and bright like a struck match, then flared to a ribbon that wrapped all the way up behind my knees. A reminder that you don't sprint on new legs, even if you're you. I braced low and rode the ache into stillness.
Landing on the top, I could feel that I injured my leg muscles with the jump, but I didn't care about that; I just wanted to get away from the crowd. The square shrank beneath me, people reduced to coins and bright heads. The noise softened by distance became almost pleasant—market sounds, not suffocation.
A shadow leapt up beside me and resolved into Stacy. She landed with a cat's economy of motion, a hand out like she'd catch me if I toppled, though she knew I wouldn't.
"I am sorry; I didn't notice the crowd." She said it without excuse, ears dipped.
"We can talk later. Point towards Steve's place." I said, taking the last of the bags from her and storing them as well. Pop, pop. The sky did not fall. The relief of lighter hands made room for the ache to register properly.
She started to move in a direction, and I followed behind her. We ran the roofline at a sensible pace, which for Stacy meant quick but not reckless. The buildings here leaned into one another the way old friends stand—close enough that their eaves nearly touched. Laundry lines hung like pale flags between them; a pot of rosemary on a sill threw up sharp green whenever our steps sent a tremor through the bricks. Somewhere below, a smith's hammer rang a steady heartbeat over the chatter of the streets.
"About my skill," Stacy said after we crossed a narrow alley in a single step. She didn't look at me, just watched her feet, the angles of tiles, and the places where the sun turned slate into glare. "I can't see people's memories without their permission, or the person's mental power must be weak. I can also lock away memories like I wanted to do with you. All I needed to do so was force myself through, but your mental power was too strong for me to do so. I was confused about how that was possible for a 10-year-old and one that has been through torture for 5 years. That is when I check out your soul. Just with one look at it, I knew you were a reincarnation like my daughter. It was still weird, though; your mental power shouldn't be that high even if you were a reincarnation. I gave up after a couple of days of trying. But when you woke up, I knew there was a reason behind your mental power, and it had something to do with your life before this one."
Her words threaded between footfalls. I let them, because the rhythm helped. Roof joint, gap, chimney; word, word, pause.
"How did you figure out in just one day that it had to do with my life on Earth?" I asked, still puzzled about how she knew so much without touching anything I didn't give.
"Your eyes and you aren't that good at lying." A corner of her mouth ticked. "You are good at hiding things visibly, but your eyes gave it away."
"My eyes gave it away? What do you mean by that?"
"I have worked with a lot of mental traumas. Over the years, I learned to read people through their eyes alone."
"You sound like a person that has decades of experience, but you are only 32 years old. That is not long enough to learn that."
"When the king found out about my skill, he used me to get to people and help people."
Realization crossed my face—hot and sour—as the picture filled itself in. "How old were you when it started?"
"5."
We ran two roofs in silence, and the city ran with us—clotheslines and sun-warmed brick, the smell of yeast from a bakery vent, someone tuning a lute badly at a window. The quiet between us wasn't empty. It was a room you could stand inside without tripping over anything.
"It seems we are more alike than I thought," I said finally. The first time I'd been strapped down had been at five. The first time I'd learned how to fold and put away fear had been at five. I kept my eyes on the next jump and made it clean.
"Yes, we both have been used and betrayed by people." She gave a sad smile that I caught from the side, quick as a bird and just as easily missed if you weren't looking.
"Did your mother or father betray you?" I asked without looking at her, partly because I didn't want to fall and mostly because some things felt easier to say to the city.
"Both in a way, and you?"
"Father."
We moved until the roofs grew lower and the houses got rougher around the edges—less glass, more patched shutters, the kind of place where the stone remembered heat longer because more fire burned inside it. The ring of a hammer got louder, steadier, and more confident. Somewhere ahead, a chimney smudged the sky darker than its neighbors.
"If you want to talk more about these things, we can." She gave me a gentle smile then, one she didn't pull over her face like a banner but let sit there like something found.
"Thank you for being so open with me," I said. "And I will if I am ready to talk about it. When I am ready, we can tell each other our life stories." The scarf made my voice softer; the roof wind caught the ends and tugged them like a friend.
"Any time, Hunny Bun," she smiled, lifting the mood of our conversation.
"Still not calling you Mom," I said, because balance demanded it.
"I will get you to call me that one day." She slowed and came to a stop on the roof next to an alleyway that cut a dark slice down to the street.
"Haha, we will see." I stepped to the edge and looked down into the alleyway.
"We are here." Stacy crouched, gauging the jump the way a person measures a cup by eye after a thousand breakfasts. The alley was narrow and clean by alley standards—just a stack of crates against one wall, a bucket tipped on its side, and a scatter of coal around a back door. The black scuff of boot traffic ran like a path toward the street end. To the right, past the lip, I could see the corner of a sign wrought into an iron hammer silhouette.
Jumping down into the alleyway, I aimed to land soft, knees bent, weight rolled onto the balls of my feet. The ground came up faster than my legs were ready for. The calf muscles that had already protested on the first jump decided to sing the same complaint louder; the landing wobbled, tilted, then dissolved into a graceful flop to the floor right on my face.
"Kitsuna, are you okay?" Stacy asked, already dropping beside me with hands hovering, not touching until I told them to.
"Yes, that jump from before just injured me more than I thought." The words came out damp against stone. I rolled to sit up and rubbed my shins with both palms, feeling the heat of strain under the skin. "Think you can carry me for a while?"
"Okay." She planted her feet, bent to scoop me up, then stopped mid-bend and facepalmed so hard her ears bounced. "We are dumb. Use your regen skill."
"Aah, that's true." I squinted at my own common sense. "How do I use this one, though? Is it the same as the other skills?"
She nodded. "Most skills work the same."
"I see." I pulled in a breath and did the same as before: thought the name without saying it, and let the cold hum in me wake and move. Super Regen answered like I'd flipped a switch I'd been leaning against all day. Across both calves, the soreness sharpened into a clean ache, then fizzed like seltzer poured over bruises. Threads tugged tight, heat turned to cool, and the heaviness I'd been ignoring let go.
It only took a couple of seconds for it to completely heal. Standing up, I bounced on my toes twice, then jumped around a little just to be rude to physics. Everything answered back steady. "I am all good. Let us go."
We stepped out of the alley toward the street, where the hammer rang steady as a metronome. The sign I'd seen from the roof showed itself fully now: STEVE'S, cut bold into the iron plate below the hammer silhouette. The door stood open to spill heat into the day. Inside, sparks jumped and died, and the air wore the smell of charcoal and hot metal like a cloak.
I touched the scarf once, a reflex more than a thought, then looked at Stacy. She looked back and didn't push. For once, we matched in silence without needing to earn it. We crossed the threshold together.