Kael's POV
The office is quiet enough that I can hear the old ventilation working behind the wall.
I sit with the guild file open on the secondary display and do not touch it. Akira Renshi. D-rank support. The designation sits there in clean official type, the same way it has sat there for as long as I have been looking.
I have stopped believing it the way a man stops believing a weather report that keeps contradicting the sky outside his window.
I have known for weeks.
Not in the loud way. Not in the way that demands confrontation or confession. In the quieter way that simply accumulates until the conclusion is the only thing left standing.
The Shinigami's lieutenant should not have gone down the way it did with a D-rank anywhere near the field. The projection discharge I felt at the edge of my senses during that engagement had weight behind it that no D-rank mana pool could carry.
