Tsukishima paired me with a Ruby second-year named Okonkwo who stood six-foot-four and carried a training halberd like it weighed as much as a broom handle. He spent the first two minutes apologizing for his reach advantage and the next eight minutes proving it existed.
"Sorry," he said, after a shaft strike caught my forearm hard enough to numb three fingers. "You good? I keep forgetting people are smaller than me."
"Everyone is smaller than you. You're a building."
He laughed and reset. That was the thing about Ruby students. They hit you, apologized, and then hit you again harder because they'd decided you could take it. I liked them more than I expected to. Obsidian treated sparring like a status audit. Ruby treated it like a conversation where everyone got to shout.
