CHAPTER 28: TWO TRUTHS
Tang Rou's question hung in the air like a blade waiting to fall.
"Who are you really?"
Not "are you Ye Qiu." The forums had already answered that for her—the speculation had hardened into assumption within hours of Excellent Era's statement. She'd seen the Blood Gunner Yagg footage like everyone else. She'd read the threads connecting Lord Grim's Unspecialized class to the only player who'd ever made it work.
She wasn't asking about the name.
She was asking about the gap between what she saw and what she understood.
"You already know who I am," I said. "The forums told you."
"The forums told me you're Ye Qiu. The Battle God. Three-time champion. The greatest Glory player of his generation." She stepped closer, her eyes sharp with the focus I'd learned to recognize from training sessions. "What the forums didn't tell me is why your hands don't match your brain."
There it is.
The question I've been dreading since the first duel.
The question Chen Guo was too polite to ask.
"What do you mean?"
"You know exactly what I mean." Her voice was flat, certain. "I've watched you train me for two weeks. Your explanations are perfect—frame timing, positioning theory, combo architecture. You understand Battle Mage at a level I've never seen. But when you demonstrate..." She trailed off, then continued. "During that Falling Flower Palm sequence, your hands froze. I saw it. You dropped three inputs and pretended nothing happened."
The demonstration from the training session.
She remembered.
Of course she remembered.
She remembers everything.
"And the Wild Boss fight," she continued. "I watched the recordings. You cycled through five weapon forms in thirty seconds. But I also saw the gaps—the hesitations where your inputs didn't land clean. Three-time champions don't hesitate."
My wrist brace pressed against my skin. The gift she'd given me after that demonstration—the silent acknowledgment that she'd noticed something wrong.
"It's an old injury," I said. "It flares up under stress."
Tang Rou stared at me for five seconds.
"That's not the whole answer."
The back room of Happy Café felt smaller than usual.
Tang Rou stood between me and the door—not blocking it, exactly, but positioning herself in a way that made retreat feel like confession. She'd learned something about space and pressure during our training sessions.
She's applying combat principles to conversation.
She's getting good at this.
"What do you want me to say?" I asked.
"I want you to tell me the truth."
"The truth is complicated."
"I can handle complicated."
No.
You really can't.
You can't handle 'I'm from another world and I'm piloting a body that doesn't quite fit.'
You can't handle 'The person you think you're talking to died the moment I arrived.'
You can't handle any of the truths that actually matter.
I let the silence stretch. Tang Rou didn't fill it—another thing she'd learned. Patience as pressure.
"I'll make you a deal," I said finally.
Her expression shifted. Skeptical, but interested. "What kind of deal?"
"You want to go pro. You want to compete at the highest level of Glory. You want to be the best Battle Mage the game has ever seen." I watched her reaction—a slight narrowing of the eyes, the competitive fire that never quite dimmed. "I can help you get there. Real coaching. Professional-level training. Everything I know about Battle Mage theory and execution."
"In exchange for?"
"You stop asking questions I can't answer."
The words landed between us like a gauntlet.
Tang Rou didn't respond immediately. Her eyes moved across my face, reading whatever she could find there—the calculation of someone weighing a trade she knew was unequal.
"For how long?"
"Until I can answer them."
"That's not a timeline. That's an open-ended deferral."
She's not wrong.
"Yes."
"And if I say no?"
"Then we continue the way we have been. Training sessions when it's convenient. Party runs when schedules align. No formal commitment either way."
"But you won't answer my questions."
"No."
The silence stretched again. Tang Rou's hands—pianist's fingers, strong and precise—flexed at her sides. The same gesture I'd seen before every training session, every dungeon run, every competition she approached with the intensity that defined her.
"Fine."
She extended her hand.
I took it.
Her grip was firm, professional—nothing like Su Mucheng's gentle warmth or Chen Guo's nervous handshake when she'd offered me the job. Tang Rou shook hands like she was sealing a contract, which was exactly what we were doing.
[SRM Update: Soft Mist (Tang Rou) — 59% → 62%. Alignment detected: Mutual acceptance of incomplete information.]
Sixty-two percent.
The honesty of the negotiation built more resonance than the coaching itself.
She knows I'm hiding something.
She's choosing to work with me anyway.
That kind of trust—the kind that acknowledges limits—is worth more than blind faith.
"When do we start?" she asked, releasing my hand.
"Tomorrow. I'll build a training schedule—two hours minimum, daily, with intensive sessions on weekends. By the time the Challenger League registrations open, you'll be ready."
"The Challenger League is months away."
"Which is why we're starting now."
Tang Rou nodded once—sharp, decisive. Then she walked past me toward the main café floor, pausing at the door.
"For what it's worth," she said without turning around, "I don't care about the identity. Ye Qiu, someone else, it doesn't matter to me. What matters is whether you can make me better."
That's the most Tang Rou thing anyone has ever said.
Competition over curiosity.
Results over answers.
"I can."
"Then we have a deal."
She left. Through the doorway, I watched her walk to her usual station and start drilling the Battle Mage combo chain I'd shown her last week. The movements were cleaner than before—she'd been practicing during the time I wasn't watching.
She's already getting better.
She's going to be terrifying by the time the season starts.
My eyes burned with exhaustion I'd been ignoring. The counter-narrative operation, Chen Guo's confrontation, the server dynamics shift, and now this—the emotional processing debt was accumulating faster than I could pay it.
But there was one more thing to check before sleep.
The PRD's overnight data processing had flagged something while I was dealing with Tang Rou. I opened the alert.
[PRD Alert: Anomaly detected. Player "Drifting Wind" — activity resumed. Three dungeon clears logged: Frost Forest 10:12, Boneyard 8:31, Desolate Lands 11:23. Solo completion. All times exceed current server records.]
I stared at the numbers.
Faster than my records.
Alone.
Who the hell is Drifting Wind?
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