I wasn’t sure if I liked Radek or not, but there was one thing I had to admit. He was a cool guy. He didn’t pester me with questions, nor did he have that look Belfray always carried as though I was a newborn chick about to die at any moment. There was no anxiety or any purposeful care.

  The man was being himself, from what I gathered.

  “I train all day.” I surprisingly found it easy to open myself to him, something I never did even in my second life. “All I do is that. Preparing for something I don’t even know. It’s not that I don’t want to get strong, but sometimes it feels too much, and I’m not sure if I’m doing it right.”

  “Troubling circumstances,” Radek said, reaching closer to the table in my bedroom and taking a pastry from the tray. What was up with this pastry stuff, anyway? It seemed everybody in the mansion couldn’t get enough of them except for me. Some sort of sweet tooth shared by all the maniacs, maybe?

  “Please, go on.”

  “I like runes,” I said, averting my eyes and peering into the night sky. There were plenty of stars. I felt ashamed. “I like the sword and the spear. I like them all individually, but when there’s someone else to deal with… my head hurts.”

  “Physical pain?” Radek muttered.

  “Not like that.” I shook my head. “I get that in my arms and legs, and I can deal with it. My head, though, is different. Sometimes I feel like I’m not even there. I’m not present.”

  I expected him at any moment to comment on my vocabulary. That was basically the case whenever I met a new person. They would get shocked by the way I spoke, how I carried myself, and how I was different from a normal child.

  That was, in part, inevitable. I was an adult man, after all. Gotta say, however, it got pretty old being treated like that. I didn’t know what I wanted, but other than Belfray and Mother, the rest of the house staff basically saw me as someone inhuman.

  “Interesting. What makes you feel that way?” Radek asked after he gulped down his second pastry.

  “I… don’t know.” I lied. I couldn’t tell the guy that I spent the better part of a “first life” being a miserable fool.

  “I remember my training like it was yesterday.” Radek wiped his mouth and tapped a finger to the table, drawing slowly back into his chair and smiling almost sadly toward the wide windows. “We often jest about the Knights and call them brutes in our circle, but Mages could be brutes themselves as well. I’ve had the misfortune of taking one such specimen as a Master back in the day.”

  “How old were you?” I asked.

  “Around six, I believe,” Radek said. “Seven, when I completed the long journey and arrived at the school.”

  “School?” I frowned. “You went to a boarding school when you were six? Like in a different city?”

  “Try different world,” Radek laughed lightly. “I was seen worthy of the chance of attending the one and only Blaston Magical Academy, to be taught by Archmages with one hell of a Headmaster.”

  “Still…” I muttered. “Isn’t six years old too young? What about your family?”

  “I didn’t have one,” Radek said, his smile still lingering on his lips. “That helped to sort things out. One fortunate meeting with a Priest, then a quick evaluation. That’s what it took me to get the ticket. I was a rare gem, unpolished and not molded by lesser hands. They could make anything out of me with the talent I had. I believe that was their reasoning.”

  “It doesn’t sound like a school,” I said. To me, it seemed like he was taken as a recruit to an army that sought to mold little kids to their satisfaction.

  “Again, I was a rare case. Often the case is that you will wait until you’re sixteen, form a Mana Core, and then try your chances. My initial mana reserves were such that I was beyond the general expectation and above common practice, and it put me in an enviable position.”

  It didn’t sound enviable at all. If anything, it sounded like a nightmare to take a kid who didn’t have parents and send him to a different world, to a school where people learned how to kill things with magic.

  “It wasn’t so bad,” Radek said, shaking his head. “But it was true that I felt alone. I had no one else to talk with. Old mentors and powerful Mages. Young, jealous teens looking at me as though I was a freak—which I was—but it still didn’t help me. In the end, I poured everything I had into my training and became one of the youngest Mages ever to form a Core. That is, until I hit a roadblock.”

  I was about to tell him that we were too different since he could make something out of himself, but... I could almost relate to everything he'd said. Glancing at his eyes, I tried to somehow see through this powerful man’s emotions. I couldn’t. It was like facing a wall, empty and thick.

  “The general belief that you can become stronger as long as you push yourself hard enough is a mere myth, Young Master. I’ve known men harder than steel break after years of self-inflicted torture, many of them too shocked to understand what was happening to them. I’ve known geniuses from the big, bad Planar System and saw them crumble because they weren’t taught the importance of balance. So while it is praiseworthy to strive for something hard enough to forget just about anything else, there lies wisdom in caring for one’s self.”

  I had never been to a therapist even though at some level I knew it could help me. Never managed to bring myself to completely believe I was messed up, either. But this seemed a lot like what I thought a therapy session would look like, and I didn’t know how to feel about that.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  But then, I could see Radek wasn’t just talking to make a point. And therapists weren’t supposed to share their own life stories, right? So, assuming what he’d said was true, then he’d gone through something similar to me. Of course, in his case, he was a real genius while I happened to get a second chance as a damn baby.

  What would he say if he knew my origins? Now, I’d like to see that, but unfortunately, I couldn’t do that. I highly doubted genius fake babies and children were welcomed in this world or in the Planar System as a whole. There was nothing like that in the books I’d read.

  “Great things are indeed expected from you,” Radek continued, this time with a certain weight to his gaze as he looked at me. “A Runemaster is a boon, a rare commodity, a force of nature worth millions of men, and likely more. So few of them are alive today, many of whom have already been taken by certain powers. It is only normal then that you’d feel the pressure of this invisible weight, but you can’t blame yourself for it. I'm sure my Lady will soon realize her mistakes, as well. Can you give her some time?"

  "I... guess?" I muttered. "I know she's being hard on me because she wants me to become something, but her methods are a bit questionable."

  "She has been through a lot," Radek said with a faraway look in his eyes. Before long, however, that smile returned to his face. "But this is something you two should figure out. It's not my place to interfere."

  "Right."

  "Anyway," Radek continued. "That anger you feel during practice sessions. Have you ever tried to listen to what it says?”

  “What it says?” I echoed, slightly taken aback.

  “Men are like coin, Young Master. One side is out in the light, while the other one faces upside down. It lies there in the dark of your heart, kept as much as it could be from people around you and even yourself. When a Heart Mage pulls at an emotion, he doesn’t bother with what is blindingly obvious. No, he pulls at that forgotten part of a man’s heart, for that which is cast away would be hungry for any attention.”

  It took a second for me to digest his words. I wasn’t sure I had it completely right, but he seemed to be saying that there was another part in me that I basically ignored.

  “That anger belongs to you, both,” Radek said, pointing a finger at my heart. “The longer you ignore and treat it as a source of trouble, the harder it will get for you to understand it. May I be bold to offer a solution?”

  “Sure,” I said, confused.

  “Let it out,” Radek said. “There is nothing wrong with being angry. We are all human, young and old. Let it blind you with rage. Scream all you want, but don’t try to blame your other part because he’s refusing to collaborate. It simply wants to be seen, to be acknowledged by you, not being kept in the dark as something vile. Does it make sense?”

  “I... think so?” I muttered. While it was confusing on so many levels, I thought I understood what he was saying.

  The problem wasn’t that I got angry during practice sessions due to my former life’s issues. The main issue was that I blamed myself and even felt ashamed of losing my cool. It was a constant circle that repeated itself. There was no way out.

  Much like how it had been in my first life.

  I remember thinking a lot about doing better after college. Or rather, I’d daydream about a better life in which I could do just about anything I had ever wanted. That expectation wasn’t realistic, but it allowed me to survive. It filled me with false hope and let me get away from my problems.

  Never did I try to face them head-on, though. I’d secluded myself so that other people wouldn’t see me. That wasn’t just because I hated people with a passion. It was that their presence made me uncomfortable. I couldn’t trust them no matter how hard I tried.

  Here, though, things were different.

  Hell, I was a seven-year-old child here. Pushing myself was good and all, but why did I try too hard in the first place? Why did I feel like I had to be perfect?

  “Don’t you ever feel ashamed for being yourself, Young Master.” Radek clasped my right shoulder with a hand. “This is why we all strive for power. To be unapologetically ourselves when the circumstances try to mold us into docile little creatures.”

  I glanced at him deeply and saw in his face the same smile. That never changed during our conversation, but it wasn’t the case for me. I’d gone through many emotions and felt like a complete fool.

  Perhaps I needed just that. Someone to tell me it’s okay to be a little messed up.

  ….

  The next day, I was a changed man, through and through. I climbed down the stairs of our underground training complex with a spring in my step, a glint in my eye, and a smile that was willfully ignorant and more stubborn than ever before.

  Mother raised an eyebrow at me but remained silent as I changed my clothes. Then we took our swords and stood face to face.

  Well, sort of.

  I was barely more than half her size.

  Still, my back was ramrod straight, and there was a certain strength to my fingers. I clasped the wooden sword’s handle tight, taking my breaths long and smooth.

  As always, the first move belonged to me. In this scenario, I was the one who had to press on his enemy to take her on. I had to be The Undying who pressured his foes like a worked-up coke addict deprived of his quality supply.

  I went at her straight through the middle with a satisfying swing, got my sword bounced back forcefully, and felt the force of her parry in the back of my wrists. I turned and swept at her feet, then stepped closer the second she backed away. I came at her from the left, then jabbed thrice while using the sword’s tip like a spear.

  Most of my probes were answered in quick, precise taps, and I was already breathing like an overworked bull from the effort. My internal channels hurt like bastards since it would take at least a week for them to heal. The heels of my feet scraped the ground painfully with each motion.

  All in all, I was barely standing on my feet right after the start of our session, which got me worked up more than it probably should have.

  Anger rose within me as I kept swinging and coming up short. She was right there, but it was as though I was facing a slippery eel with a nasty tail that could sway this way or that while ignoring my full-force attempts.

  When she figured I was getting a little angry, she started pressuring me, which made everything worse. Annoying, almost humiliating taps found my arms, legs, and on one occasion scraped my nose. She played me like a cat toying with a mouse, then sent me stumbling away with a kick to my ass.

  This time, however, I didn’t think much about my anger. I didn’t care whether she took a different face or that she reminded me of my bullies. I let the boiling emotions in my heart spill out all they wanted. My face burned as rage kept building up and up.

  I wish I could say I finally got her once I stopped feeling ashamed of myself, but I couldn’t. She gave me one good ass whooping by the end of which I was kissing the ground with way too much tongue than I’d like. Still, my anger was gone by the time our training ended. I was drained and completely spent, but it was just that.

  Fatigue.

  There was no shame in there.

  I didn’t even feel the growing seeds of vengeance I imagined each night toward my Mother. They were gone, and I was… glad to have been battered and bruised? Weird, I know, but I couldn’t stop smiling as I lay there breathless. Mother kept sneaking confused glances at me, and I let her.

  Was this the secret sauce, really? Just let it play out and not think too much about it?

  It certainly wasn’t that simple, but for this once, I was simply glad to take the win.

  So I did that. I dragged myself, smiling, to my door after I bowed respectfully to Mother, leaving her alone and senseless in the underground complex, already imagining the taste of the cheeseburger I’d planned to order from Belfray.

  …..

  Here!