“Seriously… go ahead…” Hyrin gasped for air in between every word as she tried to convince Seren to leave her be and run ahead. Not only was her stamina way worse than she had already thought, but she was getting surer with every step that she just wasn’t suited to running. She stopped and leaned over, putting her hands on her knees.

“You okay?” Seren immediately leaned in to check on her, but she waved her hand at him to stop him from coming too close. It would be too infuriating to see his completely dry face while she was bathing in sweat. Who the hell had come up with a ten kilometer run before training? That meant that this wasn’t even considered part of their training. It was just a warm-up.

She clenched the black fabric of her sweats, hating their demon vice captain more than she could’ve ever imagined hating anyone.

“Take a break and catch your breath,” Seren told her way too nicely and gestured to a fallen over tree on the side of the forest path they had been running along. “Sit down over there. Do you want some water?”

He handed her his water bottle but she pushed it away and straightened herself.

“Seren,” she told him with a stern voice, “you need to calm down with this. Please just run ahead at your own pace. I’m not dying or in danger, I'm just slow. I’ll see you back at the base.”

He clenched the water bottle so hard that water spurted out of the top, but he ignored it and gave her a reluctant nod before running away instead. She watched him until he had disappeared out of sight before she started running herself again, at a much, much slower pace now that she didn’t feel like she had to keep up with him. 

She knew she had just been way too mean to him, especially with how he kept literally doing anything for her, and it’s not like she didn’t feel guilty about it, but this way she’d at least be able to finish the remaining seven kilometers without throwing up in front of him. If anything, she had done them both a favor.

“You just didn’t work out at all ever in your life before this one, huh?” Row caught up to her from behind and slowed his pace to run next to her. Just like Seren, he hadn’t even broken a sweat yet, even though catching up to her meant that he had already finished one round and was almost done.

“Apparently not,” she admitted rigidly and he laughed, slapping her shoulder.

“It’s fine, this stuff just takes time to build up. In the meantime,” he grabbed her shoulder and pulled it back. “Don’t slouch, you’re just making it harder on yourself. And don’t slam your feet into the ground like that, take lighter steps and roll your feet from heel to toe.” 

He let go of her shoulder and held his hands low in front of his body. “Keep your hands loose like this and engage your core. It may feel more tiring at the moment, but it’ll definitely help you in the long run.”

She groaned but followed his instructions anyway. At least straightening her back helped a little. She hadn’t even realized how badly she had been slouching.

“Urgh…” she gave him a sideways grin. “You were definitely one of those people, right?” She asked, already out of breath again. “Like a super peppy fitness instructor or one of those healthy lifestyle influencers or something.”

He burst out laughing. “Thank you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Did I accidentally make that sound like a compliment?”

He chuckled, but his look quickly got more distant as he slowly kept jogging next to her. “Do you sometimes feel like you’re just about to remember something, but it never comes to you in the end?” He suddenly asked.

She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. So far, she hadn’t seen him be serious very often. And almost never when the others were around as well. Was that why he had slowed down to match her pace? To talk about this in private?

“All I remember is feeling like I’m falling,” she admitted softly. “Long, endless falling. Everything else is just a black void no matter how hard I try to remember.”

“Endless falling…” he repeated softly and she could tell how hard he tried not to shudder at the insinuation of what that meant. “Do you think that’s how you died?”

She shrugged. “Maybe.” She stopped running, changing to a slow walk instead so she could talk to him without having to gasp for air between every word. 

“Maybe I jumped off a bridge,” she put his unspoken thought into words as she wiped some sweat off her forehead with her sleeve. “Maybe someone pushed me off a cliff, maybe I just slipped and fell down the stairs. Maybe I died in a completely different way, but that was just kind of how I felt in my everyday life.” She lowered her arm with a sigh. “It’s the fact that it could be any of those or none of them at all that makes this suck so much.”

He nodded and put his hands in his pockets. “I think Lily remembers,” he confessed quietly. “How she died, I mean,” he quickly added. “But when I asked her, she just talked over it with a joke and then pretty much ran away from me.”

Hyrin chuckled, not having any trouble at all imagining how Lily completely overwhelmed Row with her newly constructed, sunshine personality and then escaped before he even realized what had happened.

“Maybe don’t ask her anymore then,” she told him dryly.

“But don’t you want to know?” He took one big step to block her path, forcing her to stop. “She may actually know what kind of person she was before. What happened to her.”

“Not even a little.” Hyrin put her hand against Row’s arm and pushed him aside. Despite the fact that she kept slowing down to walk, she hadn’t forgotten the fact that they were still timing them. Walking was one thing, but she wouldn’t let Row stop her completely for something like this.

“Why not?” He followed behind her.

“Because that Lily died, Row.” Hyrin tightly pressed her lips together. She knew how harsh that sounded, but she was also pretty sure that Lily wouldn’t snap at Row like this, to make sure he understood. 

“Listen, Row,” she looked up at him with a slightly kinder expression, “the Lily we know, the one we’ll be spending our days with, the one we’ll be sharing all these experiences with,” she grinned, “the one who we’ll be drinking milkshakes with, is the one that’s with us right now. For some reason, Captain Harumi’s words resonated with her and it’s clear she’s trying really hard to be the kind of person she wants to be. So, stop prying into the person she was.”

Row stared down at her as if she had slapped in him his face, his eyes wide, his mouth slightly open. But at least he seemed to get it.

“Now, stop distracting me,” she told him and started running again. “I just know the vice captain is going to make whoever takes too long run extra laps and I may honestly rather die again.”

Row obeyed and didn’t say another word to her, although he kept running next to her, matching her pace for the next seven kilometers. Meaning he ended up doing fifteen in total, still without barely sweating at all, to Hyrin’s frustration.

“Why did that take you almost two hours?”

Hyrin froze. Before Seren could even come running to her with a water bottle and a towel, captain Harumi appeared behind her. He carried a black, plastic looking sword, a normal sized one this time. He put it on the ground and leaned on it like a cane, staring at her with one eyebrow raised.

“Did you even try to run?” He asked, leaning closer to her.

“Yeah, I…” she felt her face burning up, painfully aware of all the side-eye the other recruits were giving her. “Of course I did, I’m just… not good at it.”

“Hm…” He looked her up and down. “You’re what, twenty five, twenty six? And you’ve got a pretty normal build. You should be able to at least run that in an hour.” He flipped the training sword up and leaned it on his shoulder. “I came to check your skills, but now you’re making me think that the reason you collapsed and took almost a week to recover after fighting that drake wasn’t because you were hurt so badly, but just because you’re kind of… weak?”

“Wha-” she opened her mouth to protest but then closed it again, unable to say anything back to that.

“So, what?” She eventually mumbled, but then scraped her throat and continued in a clearer voice. “Does that mean you’re going to stop randomly popping up everywhere I am? Captain,” she added after noticing vice captain Leyleina staring daggers at her.

He burst out laughing. “You may not be able to run, but at least you know how to run your mouth.” He threw her the training sword and she almost dropped as it bounced from one hand to the other until she ended up awkwardly hugging it.

“Come at me any way you want,” he told her as he nonchalantly stood opposite her. “Show me what it was about you that let you single-handedly kill a drake.”

“Captain Harumi,” the vice captain walked up to them, speaking so coldly that it made even captain Harumi flinch. He turned to her with a sheepish grin, but she clearly wasn’t amused or charmed.

“The last time I checked, the captain of this base doesn’t bother himself with training new recruits, so I’ll have to kindly ask you to cease this interruption and return to your job so I can do mine.”

Captain Harumi’s grin widened. “And you can, go ahead!” He told her a little too excited. “With all of them.” He waved his hand to the fifteen other recruits in the enormous training hall they had gathered in as if he were gesturing to a bunch of chickens.

“I’ll just be borrowing Rin here for a bit,” he added. “Judging from that run she won’t last for more than five seconds anyway.”

Hyrin tightened her grip on the sword he had given her, her eyes spitting fire. She knew better than anyone that she wasn’t suited for any of this stuff, and despite the fact that she had kind of liked his cavalier attitude before, she was about ready to smack the captain across the face with that very sword.

“Captain,” Leyleina’s voice got softer, as if she were trying to turn their conversation into a private one, “I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to-”

“It’s fine,” Captain Harumi cut her off, a lot less playful than before. “I have my reasons, I’m sure everyone here who owes their life to her killing that drake understands. Right?” He turned to the others over his shoulder with a questioning look, although Hyrin was pretty sure none of them would have dared to disagree with him at that moment. She definitely wouldn’t have if she had been in their shoes.

“See?” The captain gave Leyleina a smug look after the others had all nodded as one.

The vice captain’s eyes darkened, but then she just turned around without saying a single word and ordered the others to follow her with one angry wave of her arm.

Hyrin followed them with her gaze, but none of them actually seemed to mind all that much. The captain had probably been right that there was more than a little good will towards her. For now, at least. The only person who didn’t seem very happy about this development, who kept glaring at the two of them from the corner of his eye, was the guy with the same bright white hair as the vice captain. Hyrin quickly looked away, afraid that she’d only make things worse if she met Seren’s gaze now, although she knew he would come running the second anything would happen to her anyway.

“If I can have this, then what are you going to use?” She asked the captain instead, nodding at the hard plastic sword in her hand, but he just laughed at her.

She slightly bent through her knees. “All right then,” she told him, unable to completely hide her annoyance, “but don’t blame me if you get hurt, because I don’t feel like I can afford to hold back.”

“Well, at least that makes sense,” he grinned, and she shot forward, hoping to catch him by surprise. She failed miserably, of course. He didn’t even try to evade or move from his spot, he just grabbed her wrist and pulled it towards and past him, ruining her balance. She awkwardly tiptoed two steps trying to regain it and then fell flat on her face.

“That was pathetic.” He crouched down next to her and leaned over her to make sure she could see his mocking grin. “Wanna try that again?”