“I would have suggested breaking it slowly,” Kirin finished, sipping from the new glass of water provided by the waitress. Apparently the woman had sensed the gravity of their discussion, since she had plunked the glass down and promptly disappeared without taking any orders. Kirin wasn’t particularly upset, but she did hope she would return. Shrimp tempura udon was not to be missed, under any circumstances. 

She raised her eyebrows when Kirugetsu explained that she and Shisen had passed the first of their three trials. While she had been on high-alert since they had met, she hadn’t sensed anything going on that would have indicated a threat. There was nothing to test them [i]on[/i]. Shisen had been forced to leave Arashi outside—had that been her test? If she would actually leave her dog? That didn’t make sense. Shisen had passed, indicating that leaving Arashi outside was the correct choice, but why? 

Then there was her own test. What had she done? She had kept a bit of distance between herself and Kirugetsu on the way to the restaurant and had generally been on-guard. Was that the test? To see if she was blindly trusting? 

Maruki’s test was fairly obvious and his failure easy to figure out. He had failed to react in any meaningful way to Kirugetsu’s revelation about his grandfather. Instead of getting angry or showing shock, Maruki had immediately forgiven him and even expressed satisfaction that their teacher was powerful. Earlier in the day, he had seemed overly polite; now he just seemed puerile. He didn’t care that Kirugetsu had killed his grandfather. He only saw it as an opportunity to display his misplaced magnanimity. 

Kirin narrowed her gaze and listened in silence as Kirugetsu explained the next two of the three tests. She wasn’t particularly worried about the second—whenever an attack came, she would have to deal with it. Until then, she would remain on her guard and look for whatever it was that Kirugetsu wanted them to find for the third test. Her first thought: wherever Kirugetsu lived, he likely had some interesting knickknacks, gathered from a life spent in battle. There had to be something there—an artifact, a weapon, maybe even a scroll—that would fit the parameters of the test. 

Then he asked them to tell him about themselves. Kirin cracked an unwilling smile. “So we’ve reached the ‘Getting to Know You’ segment of our first class. Awesome. Well, I’m pretty sure I already told everyone, but I’m Kirin Haranai, I’m thirteen years old, and my specialty is taijutsu. My grandmother’s Akane Haranai, and my parents own the bookstore. My hobbies are reading and training with Gran.”