The Supreme Return Of Logan Kai

Chapter 3

“Mia, I cannot—”

“You can and you will,” she said. “Do not make this situation  stranger than it all ready has.”

He held her gaze a moment longer. Then he set the needle back carefully into its silk, closed the case, and put it in the chest.

“Thank you,” he said. And he meant it the same way he meant most things completely, without decoration.

Megan stepped forward next. She was holding a wooden crate no bigger than both fists put together, and inside it, packed tightly in dark cloth, were six small clay jars, each one sealed with wax and marked with characters. 

“Ancient herb compounds,” Megan said. “Six blends. My family's collection — my mother sent them last season.” She lifted the crate a little, showing him. 

“There is a healing blend for deep tissue damage, one for complete bone fracture recovery, one that accelerates spiritual energy circulation, one that treats blood disease at the root, one for neurological disruption—” She paused. 

“And one for fertility.”

Kai  raised an eyebrow.

Megan's did not look embarrassed. “You are going to be working in a hospital, Kai. so many woman will be running after you, so you will need it.”

She said Jealously.

He took the crate from her hands and looked at the jars. He could smell them even through the wax seals the deep, complex smell of compounds that took years to prepare, ingredients that could not be rushed. He recognized all of them. these are herb compositions that were supposed to only exist in three or four family lines in the entire country.

“Megan.” He looked up at her. “This is—”

“I know what it is,” she said quietly. “Take care of yourself.”

She added sadly.

He set the crate in the chest beside the needle case.

Malisa was last.

She walked in and she was not carrying anything he could see. Her hands were at her sides. She reached into the fold of her inner garment and pulled out something flat and rectangular a card, gold on one side, matte black on the other, with a seal pressed into the surface that he did not immediately recognize.

She held it out to him.

He took it and turned it over.

The seal on the front was a double phoenix old symbol, older than any of the current major families used. Below it, in fine print, was a line of text that he read twice.

"Universal Access — Open Clearance. Valid for entry, recognition, and passage across all registered medical, academic, and professional institutions under the Continental family circle."

He looked up at Malisa.

“I have been keeping that for a year,” she said. Her arms were folded again, her chin up, but her voice was doing something complicated underneath the surface of it. 

“I knew you were going to need it someday. Maybe not today, maybe not right away, but someday.”She shrugged one shoulder too casual, the way a person is casual when they have been thinking about something for a very long time. “Consider it an open door. When the time comes and you need it, use it.”

Kai held the card and looked at it.

A card like this did not get made. It got inherited, or it got earned over decades of work inside the those family, or it got gifted once in a long while between people who trusted each other completely. He had read about them in Master Lian's old texts but he had never actually held one in his hand before.

He looked at Malisa.

Malisa looked back at him, and she was doing the thing she always did when she did not want anyone to see what was actually happening in her face, which was look at something just past his left ear instead of directly at him.

“Malisa,”  he said.

“Do not get sentimental about it,” she said immediately.

“I am not getting sentimental.” He held up the card. “This is a serious gift.”

“I know it is.” Her jaw moved. “That is why I gave it to you and not someone who would waste it.”

He put the card in the chest.

Then he stood up and turned and looked at all three of them standing in his small room Mia with her arms loose at her sides for once, Megan with her hands folded in front of her, Malisa with her chin still lifted and her eyes still finding the wall behind him. Two years of mornings on this mountain. Two years of training together, eating together, learning together, fighting over technique until Master Liam came in from wherever he was and told them all to be quiet.

“I am going to miss this place,” Kai  said. “I am going to miss all three of you.”

Mia looked like she wanted to say something sharp back to that and chose not to.

Megan nodded once, quiet.

Malisa said, “Don't you dare have a girlfriend in the city, because I'm coming soon” and turned and walked out of the room first so no one would see whatever was happening in her face right then.

*

Kai left at first light.

The path down from the Supreme Forest was not a path that existed on any map.

 He had walked this path down and back up so many times over eight years that his feet knew it without his eyes.

He did not look back at the dwelling.

He knew that if he did, he would see all three of them at the edge of the clearing, and he would see their faces, and it would be harder to keep moving. So he kept his eyes forward and his feet moving and he let the mountain fall away behind him.

At the top of the final ridge, where the forest gave way to open sky and the land below was suddenly, entirely visible, he stopped.

Harlow City was laid out far below him vast, glittering even in the early morning, buildings stacked against each other so thick they looked like they had grown up out of the ground all at once and kept going. Roads threading between them. Bridges. Lights that were still on from the night before. The whole enormous breathing machine of a modern city, ten times bigger than anything he remembered from before.

He stood there and looked at it.

Eight years.

He had been 20 years old when the accident happened. That was the word his mind reached for first accident and then immediately replaced with the true word, which was not accident at all. It had been deliberate attack on his family.

Every part of it had been decided in advance by people who looked at his family and saw something that needed removing from the world.

His father had been standing at the front door when it happened. His mother had been in the kitchen. His little sister seven years old, just starting to lose her first teeth had been in the back room with her drawings spread across the floor.

He had been the only one outside when it started.