Morning came in a thin silver line over the rooftops. The academy's drills began with the same measured obedience: swords thumped syllables of wood on wood, students breathed in time with the instructor's count, and the world narrowed to posture and balance.
Ethan slid into that rhythm with the kind of concentration that felt almost like not thinking. The Panel hummed in the background, notes and nudges kept to themselves. Suzu, folded inside the Suite, waited like a thought he could call on. He had not told anyone about the familiar. He intended to keep it that way.
Class that day was kido rudiments—hands and forms, no power, only the movements that would later let expression become pain or protection. Ethan's fingers were clumsy at first, then better. Rukia moved beside him with the economy he admired: small corrections, no wasted motion. At one point she bumped his elbow in mock irritation.
"Focus," she said. "If you space, you'll forget which seal is which."
"Noted," he muttered, and kept his hands busy.
At noon there was a break. The courtyard smelled like drying wood and rice. Ethan intended to return to the practice fields to review the lecture notes, but a tiny interruption pulled him: a tremor in the edge of awareness that felt like a human whisper folded into glass.
It was different from the hollow he'd bound the day before. This thing's presence had a shape—fragile, nervous, and confused. Not the jagged hunger of hollows; more like a small knot of lost memory.
He followed the thread down a narrow passage behind the library, where prayer flags frayed and the air thinned. There, crouched between two stone lanterns, was something that looked almost like a child made of fog. It had a faint glow where eyes would be and trembled when Ethan stepped closer.
He didn't reach for the Suite yet. He walked slowly, letting his presence be an offering.
"Hey," he said softly. "You okay?"
The thing looked up. Where a mouth might be, it produced a sound that was more thought than voice: lost… alone… hungry…
Ethan felt the Panel check the target automatically: Sentience check — PASS. Mental-capacity pattern detected. The little being showed signs of coherent awareness.
That meant the rules changed. Sentient binds required the target's mental consent.
He crouched at a respectful distance and opened the private channel the Panel showed him—the same safe hand the Suite used to prompt assent. You could compare it to holding out a small, invisible lantern and saying, If you want, say yes in your mind.
He waited. The spirit's glow flickered, like a candle resisting wind.
You bind me? the thought came, thin and urgent. Not a trap. Not a lie—just fear and hope braided together.
Ethan felt his chest tighten. Binding a sentient thing was different on a dozen small levels. It meant a moral responsibility he did not take lightly. He remembered the ledger the Panel kept, the way consent would be recorded and never vanish.
"You have to agree," he said aloud, quiet enough that when Rukia later asked why he'd been speaking to the stone, no one would hear. "I won't force anything."
The spirit's answer came as a concentrated mental image: a soft echo the Panel translated into the parchment of its logs. Consent—clear, deliberate, and offered.
Ethan's thumb brushed a small gesture he'd used before to summon the Suite. The personal sanctum opened at the edge of his awareness, dampening the world to a private room where stray reiatsu could be folded without ringing the academy's bells. He initiated the handshake sequence.
The Panel recorded the assent in a tidy line: mental signature, timestamp, waveform. The log would exist in his private ledger—irrefutable, but only his to see unless he chose otherwise.
"Name?" he asked, voice low.
Aoi, came the thought. A name like water. The Panel stored that too.
The binding was intentionally simple. The Protocol turned Aoi's scattered reishi into a tether. It did not overwrite memory. It made a promise: follow; stay; share shelter. For a sentient being, the bind also gave the right to refuse commands that threatened selfhood. The Panel enforced that by design—Ethan would be able to ask, and Aoi would be able to say no.
When the sequence completed, Aoi blinked—if spirits blinked—and straightened, small but steadier. The thing's eyes were clearer, the tremor damped.
Thank you, Aoi sent, not in a voice but like a hand passed through an open window.
Ethan felt a new kind of weight then: a warmth that wasn't his, a tether that meant responsibility. He put a palm, very lightly, on the spirit's shimmering shoulder. The contact was not physical; it was a sharing of steadiness.
He had bound a person who would now trust him. That trust sat like careful glass in his chest.
He could have announced the binding to an instructor and asked for formal oversight. The academy had rules about spirits and possession and safety. But he'd learned to keep certain things quiet. Sometimes secrecy was not cowardice; it was practical kindness. Aoi was fragile and small and likely to be afraid of Seireitei's heavy gaze.
He told the Panel to tuck Aoi into the Suite for the time being—quiet storage where the spirit could acclimate. The Suite complied and the paper-thin dampening envelope swallowed them, leaving only the hush of stone.
A shadow moved across the passage. Rukia had come looking for him, eyebrows arched like a judge. "What were you doing back here?" she asked.
"Just… helping an old shrine," Ethan said, with the simplest truth his face could hold.
She studied him for a beat and then, with a small, exasperated sigh, said, "Don't make a habit of vanishing."
He nodded. He did not tell her about Aoi. He kept his mouth closed because Aoi had consented to him; it would be wrong to parade that consent. Private agreements stay private unless both parties choose otherwise. That felt like a rule older than panels and shop entries.
The day carried on. In the afternoon, the instructors put them through tactical drills—small unit coordination, silent movement, and observation exercises. Ethan kept Aoi in the Suite, letting the spirit rest. Suzu remained folded too, an unseen pair of ears in the dark.
That night, when the dorms breathed quiet and the lamps slept, Ethan sat with the Panel open and the ledger laid like a small, secret book.
Bindings: Suzu (Common Familiar), Aoi (Sentient Companion — consent recorded)
PP: 115
Personal Taming Suite: active (private)
Notes: Aoi acclimating. Recommend slow integration into training routines.
He thumbed the line that stored Aoi's mental signature and felt, on a small level, like someone who had signed their name where it mattered. There were moral dictionaries the Panel could not write for him. It was his job to decide what consent meant in practice: to listen, to ask again, to release if Aoi wanted release. The Protocol had made binding easy; living with binding would be harder and more honest.
When he finally lay down, the academy's night held its steady hush. He felt a small presence settle near his bed, like the inhalation before sleep. It was Aoi, awake and curious, but patient.
Ethan closed his eyes with the simple intention to learn and to do right by the choices he'd made. The Panel closed its own ribbon and hummed the quiet of a private ledger at work.
Tomorrow would bring new drills, more corrections, and—if he was careful—another few small, secret things done quietly enough that the big machines of fate would not notice.
He had 115 PP. He had two bindings. He had a ledger and an ethic. That was the beginning of the kind of life he had chosen: small, deliberate, and private.