The park was empty when I settled onto my bench. Just me and the afternoon light slanting through the trees, that particular quality of illumination that made everything look like it was being filtered through amber.
I wasn't expecting company.
"You seem pretty relaxed."
The voice belonged to a guy I'd seen around the orphanage enough times to recognize but not enough to have integrated into my actual social awareness.
He was big—genuinely substantial in the way that suggested natural athleticism rather than trained strength. Dark skin, freckles scattered across his face like constellations, hair that was somehow both shiny and chaotic. He moved with a kind of unselfconscious confidence that marked him as someone reasonably secure in his place in the world.
He sat down next to me without being invited, which was either disrespectful or comfortable depending on your perspective.
"There's only one day left," I said, shrugging. "You guys should be resting. Saving energy."
He made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a growl. "You used to train all the time. I remember you actually putting in work."
"People change," I said, which wasn't technically a lie.
"People don't change like that." He was genuinely frustrated now, his teeth gritted like he was holding back something larger. "You're talking like you've given up."
I looked at him properly for the first time.
There was something earnest in his agitation, something that suggested he actually cared about the outcome of this match in a way that went beyond personal survival. That was rare. Most people were just trying to get through.
"My body can't handle it anymore," I told him, and this was true. "The tumor. Exercise just makes it worse."
"You're eighteen. How are you old?"
He didn't get it. Of course he didn't. Unless you'd lived in your own body while something was actively killing you from the inside, you couldn't understand how arbitrary age became.
Age was just a number. Eighteen-year-olds could be ancient. They could also be infants. It depended on what they were carrying.
But I didn't bother explaining that.
He gestured toward the playground—where younger kids were running around with the unselfconscious joy of people who hadn't yet learned that joy was temporary.
"Look at them. If we lose tomorrow, they don't just lose a home. They get scattered. Separated. Some of them probably end up in places that make this orphanage look like paradise. And you're just... sitting."
There was real passion in his voice. Real fear. He wasn't worried about himself. He was worried about the kids.
"If they get sold to another country," he continued, his voice dropping, "nobody's coming to find them. They just disappear. You know that, right?"
I did know it. I knew it intimately, in the way you know things that have been encoded into your body through experience and observation. The orphanage system wasn't kind, but it was consistent. Other systems—the ones kids got pushed into when facilities closed—were unpredictable in their cruelty.
He stood up suddenly, dusting off his pants like the gesture might clear away some of his frustration.
"You're a disappointment," he said, and he meant it, but there wasn't malice in it. Just disappointment. Which was somehow worse.
"Save it for tomorrow," I told him. "I'm not planning to lose."
He stopped. Turned back to look at me. "Really?"
"Really."
Something shifted in his expression then—a settling, like he'd been holding his breath and finally let himself breathe. "Then I'll trust you. That's all I can do at this point, right? Just trust."
He said it like a question, like he was asking for permission to believe in something.
I recognized him then. Not his name—that still wouldn't come to me—but the core of who he was.
This was the guy. The one who'd sat with me when I'd shaved my head for surgery, who'd made sure none of the other kids made fun of me for looking like a cancer patient. He'd been kind in that unconscious way, not performing kindness but just... being it.
"Get some rest," I told him. "And hey—thanks."
He smiled a little at that, and walked away.
I watched him go, feeling something complicated twist in my chest. He was going to lose tomorrow. So were the other eight.
They were walking into a match that had been rigged since before they were born, and they were doing it with actual hope.
They believed in effort. They believed in unity. They believed that if they just tried hard enough, fought well enough, the universe would reward them.
I envied that.
Not the hope itself—I'd burned through my supply of that years ago—but the ability to access it. The capacity to genuinely believe that tomorrow could be different than it was supposed to be.
Mine had been scorched out of me. Or maybe it had just been educated away, burned off through repeated exposure to systems that didn't care, people who didn't listen, institutions that operated on logic older and colder than hope.
Tomorrow I would fight. Tomorrow I would impress Sia. Tomorrow I would take another step toward dismantling the machinery that had already destroyed so much.
But If my latter works, which has small chances of working, then it would be better.
---
I didn't sleep much.
My body was too wired, too aware of the significance of the approaching hours. I lay in my bunk and ran through sequences in my head—not the physical movements, which had become automatic, but the broader tactical structure. Where would I be positioned? How would the other warriors approach the match? What kind of opening would I need to demonstrate competence without raising suspicion?
The tumor pulsed faintly throughout the night, a reminder that pain was always waiting, always ready to emerge when I pushed my body too far.
I could channel the Dark stone tomorrow. Use it to boost my capabilities beyond what Gun Man's training alone could accomplish. But it would hurt. It would leave marks. It would be noticeable.
Unless I was careful.
Unless I made it look like I was just pushing through pain rather than artificially amplifying my output.
The Journal sat against my chest, a steady, subtle presence. The Dark stone hummed within it—or maybe that was just my imagination, the weight of knowing what I was carrying making me imagine sensations that weren't there.
Around three in the morning, I gave up on sleep and sat by the window, watching the orphanage grounds in the darkness. The buildings were dark. The training field was empty. In a few hours, the machinery would start again—the nine would wake, prepare, walk toward their predetermined loss.
And I would be there to observe it, and to calculate how best to use their failure for my own purposes.
It wasn't cruel. Cruelty required caring enough to inflict suffering intentionally. What I was doing was simply navigating the existing landscape, accepting the shape of the terrain and learning how to traverse it.
Tomorrow would test whether all of this was actual advantage or just elaborate fantasy.
Tomorrow would tell me whether my regression had actually changed anything at all, or whether I was just another kid in an orphanage, waiting to be discarded when I stopped being useful.
The thought should have frightened me.
Instead, it just clarified things.
I watched the sky lighten incrementally, minute by minute, as the night bled away toward morning. Somewhere out there, Sia was probably sleeping, unaware that her day was about to include a performance by a dying orphan who was trying very hard not to be irrelevant.
She had no idea she was about to meet someone who already knew her future.
The thought was almost amusing.
I dressed in the clothes I'd prepared—nothing fancy, nothing that would stand out. Just the plain training uniform that everyone at the match would be wearing. Then I waited for the dormitory to wake up, for the machinery of the day to begin its inevitable turning.
In a few hours, everything would be different.
Or nothing would change at all, and I would have to find another way.
Either way, there was no going back now.