The morning of the ceremony arrived like every other morning at the academy — disciplined, sun-bright, the air tasting faintly of incense and practice sweat — and yet it carried something else, too: the soft pressure of an ending. Lanterns burned steady along the walkways, and the students moved with that precise pre-ceremonial hush you only get when something important is about to be recognized.
Ethan tightened his collar and walked with the others toward the lecture hall. He felt small in the sea of uniforms, but that was fine; he had learned to like the edges. The Panel was a whisper against his wrist, patient as always. The Personal Taming Suite lay folded inside his mind like a closed book; Suzu and Aoi rested inside it. The ledger read the same as the night before.
PP: 115.
Rukia walked two steps ahead of him. Today she wore the academy sash on her shoulder, an understated band that meant more than any ribbon: she would graduate this cohort into the next rank. Ethan watched her from the corner of his eye. She was composed, but there was a small tightness at her jaw he'd learned to read as excitement.
At the entrance, Instructor Jinrō rang the ceremonial bell: a sound that made the whole hall lift its posture. Students filed in and took their places. Parents and a few senior officers filled the upper rows. The ceremony moved with bureaucratic grace: names called, achievements noted, short speeches that pretended they were brief but carried weight.
When Rukia's name was read, the room held its breath like a thing that knew it was watching a line of fate.
She approached the dais, bowed, received the certificate with the calm of someone who'd known this route for a long time, and then stepped back. Ethan felt an odd surge of something unfamiliar — pride, sharp and sudden. He glanced around; a couple of trainees mouthed congratulations at her, and the seniors nodded in approval. Rukia's face showed nothing, but her hands didn't quite stop trembling until the bow was done.
After the formalities, the hall broke into the small, chaotic business of celebration: students clustered in groups, laughing, trading congratulations; instructors gave curt, private praise; the older officers moved like quiet judges satisfied with order. Rukia found Ethan in the crowd and offered him something that almost looked like a smile.
"You managed not to fall asleep in the back row," she said.
"Barely," Ethan admitted. "Congratulations. You did great."
She shrugged the compliment off in the way people do when they don't want ceremony to feed pride. "You'll get there," she said instead, and then changed the subject. "We're having a small gathering after dark. You should come."
He promised he would. He also promised himself he would keep the Suite closed tonight. This was a day for Rukia, not for secrets.
—
The afternoon returned them to drills. Training at the academy never really stopped; it merely changed tone. Today's practicals felt faster, sharper — reflex rules that the instructors would later call "combat ordinariness." Ethan moved in the flow, practicing footwork until his feet hurt, fine-tuning the micro-muscle responses the Panel had given him without making a show of it.
He kept Suzu folded away. Aoi remained inside the Suite's quiet corner — he checked the consent log and reread the timestamp like a person checking that a promise had been kept. The Panel stored the consent in a neat, unblinking record; for Ethan the moral work was ongoing. Consent wasn't a checkbox. It was an action he had to honor every day by listening and allowing.
Toward dusk, as the sky leaned to peach, Rukia's small celebration began in a courtyard that smelled of grilled rice and tea. It was the kind of gathering that felt like family and not like a public record: friends and a few instructors, careful laughter, the small mismatched plates of food the trainees had arranged.
Ethan brought a plain wrapped snack and stood by the low wall, listening to the easy chatter. Rukia drifted through the clusters of people, attenuating jokes into an almost-smile. At one point she paused near him, voice low.
"You've been… different." She said it without accusation. "Not bad. Different."
"You notice everything, don't you?" he said. Rukia's eyebrows twitched; she was both a little reprimanding and fond.
She looked at him as if weighing whether to ask more and decided against it. "Good. Keep moving forward."
He kept his answers light because the truth — a suite in his mind, two bound beings, private consent logs — belonged to a kind of intimacy he wouldn't hand out like treats.
—
Night deepened. The students began to drift, the formalities dissolved into small circles of private congratulations, and Rukia stepped onto a little raised stone to give a short toast. Her voice rang out clear, not grand but steady — a small set of words about duty, learning, and keeping sight of why they had chosen to serve.
Ethan listened, and afterward he walked with her away from the chatter. The hush of the gardens felt like a place where real talk could happen without an auditor.
"You okay?" he asked her. "You did well tonight."
She shrugged. "It's not over. There are always more tests."
He knew the tone. It was a way of saying: I will not rest on this, I will go on. He admired it, but reasoned on the inside that people needed time to be celebrated sometimes.
"Promise me something," Rukia said quietly. "If you ever need help — real help — tell someone. Don't invent lonely solutions."
Ethan thought about the Suite, the bindings, the private ledger. He'd come so far at the cost of a dozen small moral calculations. Rukia's ask felt like a rope tossed into a pool. He nodded. "I'll try."
"You better," she said, with a small smile that chose to be teasing. "You've got work to do."
—
After the celebration, Ethan walked the grounds alone for a while. The academy shifted at night: lamp light, slow footfalls, the occasional soft murmur as patrols walked by. He activated the Suite for a brief moment — not to summon Suzu, but to check the fold and make sure it hummed correctly. The dampening function reported a tiny drift that the Panel suggested he patch later; a maintenance note, mundane and manageable.
He did not spend PP. 115 sat there in his ledger: small, deliberate, reserved for moments when evolution or a serious purchase would matter. He had learned restraint. Power without consideration tripped alarms; quiet stewardship did not.
He paused near a shrine gate and watched the lanterns swing. Rukia's day had been one of movement in the public world; his had been one of private adjustments. Both mattered. Both were necessary.
Tomorrow the academy would teach them new rudiments; the day after that they would drill discipline until their bodies memorized the right reflexes. Rukia would go on, certificate in hand, toward more responsibility. Ethan would continue as a student, learning, hiding his Suite in the margin, and holding the promise he'd given the small things he'd bound: to ask often, to listen, and to release if it was the right thing to do.
He turned and walked back to the dorms. The night was steady. The Panel hummed once, like a satisfied animal, and the ledger recorded his quiet life: two bindings, one secret suite, 115 PP, and a head full of vows he intended to keep.