Warmth gathered in Hajin's chest as light spilled across the clover and climbed the glowing marks along both his forearms. It carried none of the pulses' biting pressure, and the shapes on his skin answered without any pain at all.
'Okay, where's the catch, since nothing this nice ever walks into my life without a bill attached.'
For once the bill never arrived, and the warmth simply waited for him like a door left open.
It felt like a welcome offered before anybody demanded proof, nothing like the rooms where his birth answered for him. Her presence asked for none of those conditions, settling around his spirit while he waited for the kindness to bite.
His broken flesh still waited somewhere outside the ring, but the comfort belonged here, and it refused to leave.
He kept his palm flat on the grass until a startled voice reached him from beside the overturned basket.
"Master," the spirit whispered, backing away from the spreading light, "behind you."
