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When Rien placed him under the tutelage of the Pinky Nursefather, he had expected the same things whispered about the rest—discipline measured in bruises, emotions manipulated through veiled kindness, obedience taught through scathing remarks. It was simply how the Nursefathers operated. How the House functioned.
The Pinky Nursefather was not like the others, they said—but that did not mean she was kind. Only quieter. Less inclined to waste her breath on such cruelty when indifference would suffice.
Apprentices were tools, and tools that dulled were discarded.
For they could never replace the pristine blade of the Arayashiki.
Ren had accepted this without protest.
It was easier to believe that his place was temporary. Easier to believe that obedience alone would be enough to justify his continued existence at her side—and the opportunity to claim the title of the Dihui Star, should fate look down on him favorably.
Yet the woman who trained him did not treat him as some disposable weapon.
She corrected his stance with careful, gloved hands. Adjusted the angle of his wrists when he drew his blade. When he bled, she bound the wounds herself rather than sending him away. When he spoke, she listened—if not with warmth, then at least with her presence.
Once, in a moment he still did not understand, she had placed a cup of tea beside him after a particularly brutal sparring session and told him to rest.
It unsettled him more than cruelty ever could have.
There was one—only one—time that his master’s treatment ever felt cruel.
It was after he had seen another apprentice dragged across the floor by his collar, tears streaking down his face in silence as he did nothing to defend himself from the brutal blows of his Nursefather. Ren had instinctively turned to his master then, waiting for command, permission, something.
She had said nothing. Only watched, eyes distant, unreadable behind her veil.
Later that night, she had ordered him to train until his hands bled. As though she feared what would happen if he were ever as helpless as that child.
His hands stung with a pain so deep that tears eventually streamed down his face—his scabs never having time to fully heal as he endured once more.
The pain would not have been enough to dissuade him, nor was his pride, though it was seemingly enough to convince his master to finally end their training session.
It was then that Ren realized: whatever the Pinky Nursefather truly was, she was not like the other Nursefathers.
And that made her far more unnerving.
They had not meant to linger in the corridor.
The Nursefather had stopped mid-step, hand tightening around her sleeve as though to anchor herself to the present. Ren had recognized the signs immediately—the slight tilt of her head, the delay before her breath caught up to her body.
Another lapse.
He turned to her, ready to ask if she required rest, when her foot slipped against the wooden floorboard. Not a full stumble—just enough that he reached out on instinct, catching her by the sleeve before she could lose her balance.
His fingers brushed against the edge of her veil—before quickly pulling away when he realized what he was doing.
The clip at her temple, already loosened from earlier skirmishes, snapped free with a soft, almost harmless sound. The fabric lifted, caught by the draft that swept through the open stairwell, drifting upward like a pale petal torn from its stem.
Ren froze.
He had never seen her face uncovered—not fully.
The veil had fluttered away, clipped from its perch, as though ordained by fate.
And for a moment, her face had changed—altered—shifted.
Innocence—so impossibly young in the blink of an eye, a stretch of time that he could not perceive—as her watery eyes stared back at him with such sincere heartbreak that only a child could ever give. She clung tightly onto his sleeves with strength that her hands could not muster, though they held the conviction to back it up.
The child could not bear to look back at him, burrowing her face lower and lower, as though her body was attempting to shrink and compensate for the larger frame that was forcibly given to a mind that could not comprehend it.
Ren’s arms were limp, his eyes staring ahead without any target—hands trembling with no clear idea of how to proceed.
He had known that his master had suffered from temporal entanglement—it would’ve been foolish if the fickleness of her place within their time had gone unnoticed by the humble student—yet, he had never observed such severe symptoms with his own eyes.
Her grip tightened.
Not in anger—no, Ren knew the difference too well—but in desperation, fingers curling into his sleeves as though he were an anchor she could not afford to lose. Her breath hitched, uneven and shallow, and then the words came spilling out, fractured and venomous, hurled not at him but at a specter only she could see.
“Why didn’t you come back?”
Her voice warped—too young, too old, but overlapping itself all the same.
“You said—you said—”
The air around them felt wrong, stretched thin, as though time itself recoiled from her accusations. She cursed someone with the rawness that only a child could exhibit, words jagged and unfiltered, each one soaked in years she had been forced to live all at once.
“Why—why didn’t you come back?” she choked, words tumbling out unevenly, fractured by breaths that came too fast, too shallow. “You said you would—you said you would, and I waited, and waited, and waited—!”
Her voice cracked, splintered like wood—youth and age overlapping in a way that made Ren’s skin cold.
“I was good,” she whispered so faintly, causing him to shiver. “I did what you told me. I stayed where you put me. I waited like you said, so why—WHY…”
Her rage was reaching a crescendo, to the point that Ren nearly feared that it would be taken out on him—his body steeling itself in a way it never did before.
“…Why didn’t you want me anymore, mommy?…”
But the strike that had never reared itself in the past—would not be delivered.
Her grip slipped from his sleeves, hands trembling uselessly as they pressed against her own chest, as though trying to keep something from spilling out.
For a fleeting, shameful instant, his mind betrayed him.
This—is when it happens. Maybe not before, but now.
This was when whatever semblance of kindness she held would dissipate. When this vulnerability would blossom into violence, a sight he had witnessed several times in the past within this cursed house. He braced himself for the strike that would teach him he had overstepped simply by being close.
But it never came.
Instead, her knees gave out.
She collapsed forward, her forehead pressing weakly into his chest as her hands slackened, the strength draining from them all at once. Her body convulsed—not with rage, but with something smaller, more humiliating. Sobs trapped behind clenched teeth, as though even crying was something she had learned to ration.
Ren did not move.
Because he did not know if he was allowed to.
His breath caught painfully in his throat as she seemed to regain her voice, sharpening as rage flashed through her tears.
“I hate you,” she hissed into the empty air, words not meant for him, not meant for the present. “You left me to rot in the dark—you abandoned me and ran far away!—“
Her nails dug into her own arms, and Ren hated the way that his body moved on an instinct it had never even required against her. He half-expected that now, finally, he would suffer something—anything.
But he didn’t.
She only collapsed inward, folding into herself, shoulders shaking as though her body could not tell how old it currently was.
And Ren realized, with a quiet, awful certainty…
She would never be dangerous in his eyes.
Though his master had never once struck him—and even if there would come a time when she would do so.
He did not know if he would ever be able to hate her.
Ren let out a shaky, quiet breath—a breath he had not realized he had been holding, trying to navigate a task he was terribly ill-equipped to handle. His eyes trembled as they fell onto the limp body of his master, sobbing so silently that he would not have immediately noticed it; save for the dampness in his chest or the convulsions of her body.
He stared at the blank space ahead of them, heart pounding, realizing with quiet horror that this—this—was the most frightening thing he had ever faced.
Not violence, nor orders, but the weight of something so fragile as his arms carefully wrapped around her.
He did not know whether he saw her as just a mentor or something else. He did not if he viewed his Nursefather in a similar vein to some of his fellow apprentices. All he knew was that she was hurting in a way he would never be able to comprehend.
So he remained where he was, trembling hands steadying by degrees, bearing witness to a grief that time itself had failed to cauterize.