Still Falling BACKYARD SPAR
Seven days after the gate run with Dawn and the twins, Val still had nothing assigned to him. The board stayed blank while everyone else's names climbed. He was stuck at Level six on paper—combined stats frozen—and the dry spell had worn past annoyance into something he could taste every morning, grit at the back of his throat.
He needed real answers, not schoolyard rumors. Dawn, Mei, and Xian lived inside the gate world he only brushed against; they were the ones he would ask.
Rain had left the pavement slick outside Highschool A. Exhaust hung in the corridors with the damp. Val kept his tone easy beside the library while Ashley's golden hair caught the hallway light and Liz listened at her shoulder, half a conversation about nothing in particular.
Dawn cut through it—chaotic blonde, eyes an impossible pale blue—and introduced herself to Ashley and Liz with a smile too warm for the mood Val was carrying. Before either girl could pin him with more questions, she hooked his elbow and steered him toward homeroom, leaving them with a first impression and a talk cut in half.
"How does the Order of the Silver Cross level people up?" he asked on the walk, pride shoved aside. "Is there any gate I can tag along on—anything that actually lets me grind?"
Dawn's whole face changed when he asked—relief, then regret. She had to tell him no anyway. Silver Cross operations didn't hand out casual invites, and she couldn't smuggle him through on friendship alone.
She didn't dress it up as rejection. The gate on the twenty-sixth of January—the one he'd effectively stolen into—was already filed as her solo clear in church records. Monsters had been bleeding out before he arrived; the false E-rank report from that day was church paperwork, not truth. She was keeping his name off the forms to protect him. Val heard the care in it. The door still slammed shut in his chest.
Defeat sat heavier on the walk after that. His shoulders still looked ready to hold a line; his level sheet didn't move.
Cafeteria noise rolled over four chairs: Val, Mei, Xian, and Dawn. He gathered himself and tried again—how did the Gu clan handle gates, and could he come on one?
The twins' answer surprised him. Clan rules were brutal, but not as sealed as the church. Mei and Xian drew assignments every week or so; that was why their levels had ticked up over the past seven days while his hadn't.
Hope flickered. "Can I come on the next one with you?"
Xian's eyes went wide. "No. You're dead weight."
Dawn laughed—bright, unguarded—at Xian's certainty and Val's face.
Xian flushed. "Why are you laughing?"
Dawn wiped her eyes. "He's far from weak. He's probably stronger than you, if you'd actually listen."
Xian's jaw locked. "Fine—spar, after school, my place." Not the main Gu estate—the school-town house near campus. "Prove it on grass."
The rest of the day blurred: bells, teachers, homework he barely touched while the challenge sat in the back of his skull like a second pulse.
When the final bell rang, the four of them met at the school gate and walked to the twins' modest yard behind a modest wall—close enough to campus that it felt like a second homeroom for clan kids.
Trimmed grass under their shoes. Xian eyed him. "Protective gear?"
Val shook his head. "No need."
Xian's smirk said she still outclassed him by leagues. "Ok, don't blame me then :)"
She came in fast—trained punches meant to land. Val didn't throw a single strike back. He leaned, sidestepped, let her fists cut air until her breath turned sharp with frustration. Dawn and Mei watched from the yard edge.
He stopped moving long enough to meet her eyes. "Why are you not taking this seriously? You're a mage, are you not?"
The smirk came back. Fine—magic, then. Basic F-rank fireballs bloomed at his chest and face, heat against the cool afternoon.
Palms flashed with packed Aura; each fireball died on contact—sparks, smoke, grass untouched, shirt unburned.
Xian staggered to a stop, defeated in a way punches hadn't managed. She gave up the spar. "What level are you?"
"6."
Adrenaline drained into talk. Val laid out what Aura was—how breath and intent shaped power before it ever became a named technique on a sheet. Three girls listened.
He set a breathing drill—entry-tier work, the kind registers labeled Initial Aura once you earned it. Mei, Xian, and Dawn copied him in the yard until their shoulders dropped and inhale matched exhale on his count.
Hours slipped by. Late night settled over the school-town house; the yard went quiet except for breathing and small questions.
Streetlights lined the walk home. Val and Dawn fell into step together.