District 7 ranking board, Day 35 post-Integration:
Rank 1 — Su Ming | Level 89 | Class: Undead Summoner | Guild: None
Rank 1.
It had happened quietly, the way unstoppable things often do — not with a dramatic push but simply as a natural consequence of a gap that had been growing since day one finally becoming too large for anyone else to close.
Liu Cheng had fallen to Rank 2. He had responded to this by entering three consecutive A-rank dungeons in forty-eight hours, which was impressive and had the effect of him reaching Level 88, which was less impressive in context because he had gained one level and the person he was chasing had been gaining, on average, three per day.
The Iron Vanguard had put a post on the district forum: District 7's first Rank 1 is a solo Player with a joke class. The system is broken and needs to be reviewed.
Su Ming had screenshot this and sent it to Su Xuan with three laughing emojis. Su Xuan had not responded with emojis. He had responded with: Zhao Wei is planning something. I've been watching his guild's movement. Be alert.
Su Ming had written back: You're always watching something. Are you ever not watching something?
Su Xuan had not replied to this because the answer was no and there was nothing to be done about it.
Ling Xue had joined their dungeon runs five days ago. Not formally. Not with a declared arrangement. She was simply there when they arrived at gates now, in the way that things become true through repetition rather than declaration.
Su Ming had, within two days, treated her with the warm familiarity of someone who had decided she was family. She accepted this with the faint bewilderment of someone who was not accustomed to being included in things without negotiation.
Su Xuan watched this and felt something that he identified, after a brief internal review, as glad.
He was glad she was there.
He was glad in the way that people who don't often feel at ease are glad when ease arrives — quietly, carefully, like holding something that might be startled.
He was not loud about it. He was not demonstrative. But he moved differently when she was present. He noticed things about her — the way she ate when she thought nobody was watching (methodically, like a task to complete, and then sometimes pausing on things she liked with a momentary expression of surprised pleasure). The way she responded to his silences (by filling them exactly as much as they needed and not beyond). The way she had, twice now, stood slightly closer to him than the situation strictly required, and then not moved away.
On Day 33, in the aftermath of a cleared A-rank dungeon, while Su Ming's summons were collecting loot and she was cleaning her hands with a cloth, she had said, without looking at him: "You're staring."
"I'm thinking," he'd said.
"You think by staring at people?"
"Sometimes."
She had looked at him then, sideways. "What are you thinking about?"
He had considered the answer for a moment.
"You," he had said.
She had been still for a moment.
Then she had gone back to cleaning her hands, but her chin was down, and there was something in the set of her jaw that was not annoyance and was not indifference and was something he did not have a clean word for but recognized, because he had felt it himself, sitting at transit stops watching cars go.
"That's inefficient," she'd said. "You could be thinking about dungeon strategy."
"I can do both," he'd said.
She had said nothing.
But she had not moved away.