The second day passed the same way as the first. But with fewer words.
Shina decided to change her approach — instead of trying to understand Ozoki, she began studying the dungeon, not wanting to waste time. Level Seven maps. Types of possible enemies. Weaknesses in the environment. Available resources.
Methodical and cold and logical.
Ozoki sat beside her, the device between them, while she explained.
She didn't know if he was listening.
She didn't know if he understood.
She didn't know anything about what was happening behind those dark, quiet eyes.
And this unsettled her and frightened her slightly — not because she needed to know everything, but because she was used to knowing. Always. About everyone.
Ozoki was an exception she didn't know how to handle.
Iris on the other side of the space trained alone.
Strikes at the air. Fast, quiet, precise movements. Her icy aura forming and fading with perfect regularity.
But her eyes sometimes drifted.
Toward Ozoki sitting beside Shina.
Then returned.
She wasn't noticing herself doing this. Or perhaps she noticed and didn't admit it.
During the break, Shina closed her device and said without preamble:
"Can you use other weapons?"
"Yes."
"What kind?"
"Any kind."
Shina looked at him.
"Any kind means you've tried different weapons?"
"Yes."
Iris from her place in the distance: "And the result?"
"No difference."
The sentence came out quiet and simple as though he were talking about the weather. No difference. One weapon or another or no weapon. No real difference.
Shina and Iris exchanged a look from a distance.
Something in that sentence was different from ordinary indifference. It held something deeper — a person who sees no difference between things because all things have become the same distance from him.
Shina wrote in her device.
Iris returned to her training.
On the third day, they tried direct training.
Shina attacking from the right, Iris from the left. Ozoki between them.
He fell several times. Got up. Fell again.
"You have an unexpected endurance but that's normal, nothing new," Shina said.
They continued what they were doing — strikes and feints and attacks, as though playing a small game.
But in one moment — one moment only — his body moved in a way neither of them had anticipated. He dodged Iris's strike with an old, instinctive movement, as though it came from somewhere in his body his mind didn't know.
Then he fell from the next strike as though the moment had never happened.
Iris stopped.
Shina stopped.
They looked at each other.
They said nothing to Ozoki. But Shina opened her device and wrote quickly.
On the way back on the third day, Shina and Iris walked side by side, a few steps away from Ozoki.
"I don't understand him," Shina said.
She said it in the tone of someone admitting something that's hard to admit.
"I know," Iris said.
"Not the usual kind of not understanding." She paused for a moment as she walked. "I analyze people. That's what I do. Always. Even when I don't want to. But he…"
She didn't finish.
"Like you know him from before," Iris said.
Shina looked at her quickly.
"I feel that too. Like someone I've seen somewhere and can't remember where."
"That doesn't make sense."
"I know."
A silence stretched between them.
"We care because the exam matters. Because the points matter. Because—"
"Yes."
Iris cut her off with one word.
Shina looked at her.
Iris was looking ahead. Her face reflected nothing. But the word had come out too quickly — the speed of someone wanting to close a door before something walks through it.
Shina said nothing more.
But she noticed.
Night.
Ozoki on the sofa. The usual darkness.
"Day three," Shin said.
He sat in front of him on the floor with the same strange ease. Chin on his hands.
"Do you know what I noticed today?"
Ozoki looked ahead.
"Iris trained on the other side of the space. Almost all day." His smile didn't change. "And Shina only spoke to you when necessary."
He stood.
"It seems they've come back to their senses at last."
He walked through the room.
"This is what you've always been. Someone who doesn't deserve to be approached. Damage to himself and what's around him."
He stopped.
"And you know this."
Ozoki didn't move.
"No denial. No anger." He laughed — but this time the laugh was quieter. Less light. "Of course."
He looked at him for a long moment.
"Interesting and sad at the same time."
He disappeared.
The fourth day.
Shina came with a different idea.
"We'll put Ozoki in the real dungeon situation. Hostile environment. Constant pressure. Let's see what happens."
She changed the shape of the space — the walls moved to narrow it. The floor became uneven. The light was dimmed until it was faint and unclear.
"And you?" Iris asked.
"I'll attack too. One team against him."
Ozoki in the middle. His staff in his hand.
The simulation began.
Shina from the front. Iris from the back. Alternating, consistent, without stopping.
Ozoki dodging sometimes. Falling more.
But his body was moving more than on the first day. Not better. But more. As though something had begun waking slowly without completing itself.
At the end of the day, Ozoki sat on the floor. His breathing normal in an unsettling way — a body being crushed all day that didn't seem to have tired.
Shina writing. Iris watching.
"Are you in pain?" Iris asked.
Ozoki: "…"
"Ozoki."
"I don't know."
Iris looked at Shina.
I don't know again. But this time it was different. Not not knowing how to explain. But not knowing whether he felt pain at all.
Shina closed her device.
The fifth day passed the same way. But Shina and Iris had become less talkative and were hitting more.
It wasn't cruelty. It was something else — as though they had found in this training a way to avoid the questions they couldn't find answers to.
Ozoki fell and got up. Fell and got up.
In one moment — like on the third day — something appeared. An old instinct for one second. A precise movement that briefly confused Shina.
Then it disappeared.
And Ozoki fell as usual.
On the way back from the fifth day, the three walked in silence.
Shina didn't try to fill the silence.
Iris didn't try.
Ozoki never tried.
At Ozoki's house:
"One day after tomorrow," Shina said.
Ozoki went in.
Iris looked at the closed door for a moment. Then walked.
On the way with Shina, neither of them said "why are we doing this?" again.
Because neither of them wanted to hear the answer the other would give.