The Weight of Staying Up
Rei barely saw the blur before his fist buried itself in her ribs.
A shockwave tore through her side, breath gone, legs buckling, before she crashed into the dirt. Her body screamed, but she still forced herself up.
One knee. Then both feet.
Her arms lifted, trembling, palms bloody and raw.
Kota exhaled, it was clear to him she was just buying time.
Rei lunged first, a wild hook.
He tilted his head effortlessly. It missed by inches. Another swing, dodged. Another, brushed aside with a flick of his wrist.
Every failure widened the gulf between them. He wasn’t countering; he was watching.
Studying the desperate rhythm of someone who didn’t know when to quit.
“Why bother?” Kota said, voice almost drowned by her scuffling boots and ragged breath. “You can’t win.”
He burst foreward, a jab planted against her cheek, sending her sprawling. She rolled, dust and blood mixing on her chin, ears ringing.
Rei coughed blood, but she stood again on shaky feet, using the tree to support her weight.
She took a deep breath and tried to rush him again, her innate mana flaring weakly at her feet—a desperate burst of speed flickering like dying fire.
Her palm grazed his chest.
“You didn't fight this hard during the other fights?” Kota asked, catching her wrist mid-swing. His grip tightened until bone creaked. “You think more effort is enough?”
He slammed his knee into her stomach, she gagged, air and sound collapsing.
“No matter what you do…” Another strike, elbow above her eye, sharp and fast. “I’ll win.”
She hit the ground, rolled onto her side, one eye swelling shut, the other locked on him.
Still, she clawed at the ground, dragging herself upright, legs shaking like splintered wood.
Kota watched, expression unreadable.
Rei charged again, weak but relentless, landing hit after hit against his chest and shoulder, a flurry of defiance.
Each strike not even getting a reaction out of Kota.
“See,” he murmured, voice low, almost regretful. “Useless.”
Her final punch landed on his chest, fist staying planted there. Her chest heaved, breath panting and sweat and blood dripping from her face.
“Then why not just end it…?” she rasped. “Having fun toying with me?”
His finger twitched. Just barely.
Then he spoke slow and calm.
“Maybe I am.”
She shook her head, slow, defiant. “No. It’s more than that, Isn't it.”
She looked up, really looked, meeting his eyes and something cracked behind his stare. Pupils widening ever so slightly.
“You’re like me, right?” she whispered. “Constantly trying to be useful to people? Trying to do your best to prove yourself?”
Kota froze. His breath hitched, once, before his hand clenched into a fist.
“What an odd thing to say...” His voice was colder now, sharp as glass. “Whatever gave you that idea. We're not the same, rat.”
His next hit came faster, clean, brutal hook to the stomach. She hit the ground and skidded, dust erupting around her motionless frame.
Kota slowly went to walk past her, eyebrow twitched slightly, not from effort, but from something he didn’t want to name.
Dust curled around Rei’s body, then her fingers twitched.
He exhaled sharply, a sound caught between disbelief and irritation. “…You really don’t know when to quit.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Her hand dug into the dirt, dragging her body up inch by inch. One arm hung limp. Legs wobbled.
Yet her eyes burned, bright and wild.
She took a step.
Then another.
Every movement screamed.
Kota’s jaw clenched. Something in his chest coiled tighter.
“…Annoying,” he muttered.
He moved again. The air cracked. His knee slammed into her stomach. She crumpled, rolled, coughed, but pushed herself up.
A rhythm—hit, fall, stand with every movement.
Her guard tightened, bones screaming. Her arms found the angles, her footing steadied, her eyes read him... Not his style, not his speed, but his rhythm.
Barely surviving every attack.
But his blows still tore through her defenses, every block rattled her frame, every dodge a graze, but she lasted.
Longer than anyone expected her to.
Rei could feel it. The irritation creeping up Kota’s neck and the heat in his breath.
She struck again, but Kota caught it.
His hand clamped around her wrist like a vice.
Rei screamed, raw and human, as he twisted. Pain flared, tendons straining under the pressure.
His expression didn’t change, until it he saw something strange.
A flicker of something uncertain.
Kota’s grip loosened, just a fraction. His gaze dropped to her face.
The eye that had been swollen shut… was slowly receding.
Not fully, but it was wrong. The puffiness was receding, the skin drawing tight as if pulled by unseen hands. Color crept back where bruising should have deepened.
His eyes narrowed. Then widened.
Wherever blood had broken her skin, it wasn’t lingering. It thinned and drew back slowly into her.
As though her body were quietly reclaiming what it had spilled.
“You can’t be serious…” The words slipped out, disbelief roughening his voice.
Rei didn’t hear him.
Her breathing came sharp and uneven, pain still blazing through her ribs, but the blood at the corner of her mouth had slowed. The bruises darkened, then dulled, their edges softening instead of spreading.
She wasn’t healing herself.
Something else was.
Deep inside her—primal, half-aware—something was responding to injury the way lungs respond to air.
Not thought. Not will.
Instinct.
A body that refused to stay broken.
A miracle clawing its way out of pain.
Kota’s gaze lingered, a beat too long.
Rei felt it, this moment of hesitation.
With a sudden burst of adrenaline, she lunged forward, throwing her whole weight into a headbutt.
Kota reacted in time, his palm slamming against her face. The impact rattled her skull but loosened his grip enough for her to fall back, gasping.
“You’re a bit more dangerous than I thought yo—”
“RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!”
The scream tore through the air.
It was everything she hadn’t said, frustration, defiance, pain, exhaustion, erupting all at once.
Her lungs burned, throat shredding with sound, the kind that wasn’t meant to last but had to exist.
It echoed through the trees, shaking the birds from their nests.
It made the forest listen.
Kota stood there stun for a moment from the outburst, eyes widening slightly in disbelief.
There's eyes locked for a beat, Rei's burning with everything she has to give and Kota's simmering with everything he refused to admit.
Her body lurched forward, staggering, driven by something primal and desperate. Her right arm swung, the motion heavy, but precise. A hook aimed at Kota’s jaw.
Kota tracked the strike—but at the last second, Rei twisted her wrist, letting the blow slip just wide. She stepped in with it, momentum carrying her close as she spat blood at his face.
He blocked most of it, forearm snapping up on instinct—but not all of it. A fleck caught his eye.
He recoiled, cursing, arm lifting higher to shield his vision.
That heartbeat was all she needed.
Rei pivoted, planting her foot and driving forward, pouring her weight into the motion the way Rizaru had—no finesse, no restraint.
Just forward. Just through.
“'I don't—see—like Dozai—,” she rasped as she came in. “—don't read—movements— like Nobu.”
Her fist came rocketing towards Kota’s chin, like a wrecking ball of pure force.
“But I see the flinches—! Behind those eyes—!”
SLAM.
The word died as Kota’s boot crashed into her stomach, before she could land her fist.
Rei was lifted off her feet, hurled backward into a tree stump. Bark burst outward as her body folded around the impact. She coughed violently, breath tearing out of her as she stayed on her hands and knees. But when she looked up at him.
She smiled through gritted teeth and trembling lips, eyes half lidded with exhaustion.
“I see a boy... trying to survive,” she said hoarsely, blood at her lips. “…like the rest... of us.”
Kota went still for a hearbeat.
His jaw set, teeth grinding as his shoulders lifted a fraction, breath caught too high in his chest. He turned his head away and wiped at his eye with the heel of his hand, slow and deliberate, as if buying time. As if refusing to look at her.
“Shut up.”
The word came out flat. Too controlled.
As he stepped forward, his Abyssal Pressure bled from him—silent, crushing, warping the air in faint, invisible waves. The ground beneath his boots groaned.
“Shut. Up.”
His fist dropped.
Rei barely had time to react. She crossed her arms, bracing—
THUD!
The impact hit like a piledriver.
Force tore through her guard, snapping pain up her elbow as her body skidded backward through the dirt. She twisted with it at the last instant, bleeding off just enough momentum to stay conscious.
Dust hung in the air and when it settled, she was still there—crouched low, arms shaking, body wrecked and breathing ragged.
Still smiling.
“You talk like a heartless monster,” she breathed, voice shaking but certain. Her half-lidded eyes found his and held—warm, unflinching.
“I see you, Kota.”
