For a few months I had been trying to walk, but sadly it wasn't going as easy as I originally thought it would since I faced a great many difficulties in actually executing the task.

From my understanding, my body was old enough to be capable of walking, so I assumed that it was more to do with me not being used to this new body's function rather than a physical barrier.

Added on to that was also the fact that I also hadn't walked in a long time, not just from my time being a baby again but also from the time in my previous life in which I was crippled and unable to walk.

Back then I had given up all hope that I would walk again.

The doctor I talked to after my injury explained that the bullet had grazed my spine and caused severe damage to a lot of important nerves.

With Dark Cove's access to a far more advanced medical technology than what was publicly available, I was offered a set of procedures that would attempt to reconnect these nerves with hopes that it may also give me back the ability to walk.

The problem was that even with that type of technology, the risks of failure were still high due to the many unknown variables that could pop up.

The other option I had was taking the position of record keeper and being revoked of my status as an agent.

Ultimately the choice was left up to me, and in the end, I went with the second option.

I was convinced that even if the procedure succeeded, the results wouldn't be great, and that I would only be able to limp around at best, which to me didn't matter at all unless I could perform at my previous peak.

With my new situation though, not only could I return to my peak, but I had the opportunity to soar way past it.

So every day, I would dedicate a large portion of my time to relearning how to walk, however progress was slow, and even with my best efforts I had only reached the point of standing up with the help of my hands.

The problem was that I couldn't keep that balance when I started to walk for more than a few steps at a time, but through trial and error, I was steadily getting better and better.

Then, one night, the efforts of my labor culminated into a breakthrough.

*****

It was getting dark out, so mother went and put me into my crib before going off to attend what business she still had left.

After I confirmed she was out of the room, I got up to practice walking.

It was a bit harder to practice inside the crib with the blankets slightly throwing me off balance, but I just accepted it as another challenge.

Ten minutes passed by.

I fell down after another unsuccessful attempt piled on to dozens of others.

I took a deep breath and thought to myself,

'Why is this so hard for me!? I already know how to walk! And now that I think about it, why can I control everywhere else so perfectly except for my legs?'

'Perhaps it's just because I had a lot more time to get used to my upper body or because I never lost function to it, but still...'

I pulled myself back up and returned to practice.

To keep track of my progress I had been counting my steps, and recently the number had plateaued at around twenty steps without showing any signs of improving.

As if to demonstrate this fact, another attempt of mine ended before I could even reach close to that number.

I began to think, 'Maybe this has something to do with... no probably not.' before shutting off the idea.

Another attempt and another failure later, the thought sneaked back into my mind.

'What if this really does have something to do with, trauma, or something like that?'

'No probably not. I'm fine now after all, it's been so long since it happened, and it's not like it even bothered me that badly in the first place.' I thought while brushing it off once more.

More attempts.

More failures.

After my next fall, I decided to stay down.

'I have to admit, those memories from the boat aren't pleasant by any means, but classifying them as trauma seems a bit too extreme. I don't remember a single time that it even affected me after that.' I proclaimed to myself.

Immediately afterwards, my heart started beating faster and my body tensed up with discomfort.

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I thought back to when memories of that day emerged and threw me down spirals of grief and hopelessness, back to when they appeared in what little normal dreams I had and turned them into nightmares.

'Okay, maybe saying that it didn't have any lasting effects isn't true. But apart from ruining my day sometimes, it didn't affect me too deeply.' I started reasoning.

With that my heart began beating even faster, and the discomfort spread across my body once more.

Even before that thought was finished, I knew that it wasn't true.

I went from a complete fanatic of Dark Cove that would do anything for them to a traitor as a direct consequence of what I experienced that fateful day.

I wanted to throw myself back into whatever wall I could justify as training.

I wanted to hide from the feelings I was being reminded of.

But I stopped myself, because deep inside I knew what I had to do.

I tried recalling the memories of when I was sent on that mission, the memories of when I entered that yacht, and I zeroed in on those last moments inside the yacht where I held my targets at gunpoint.

The scene replayed in my head with great detail, the feelings intensifying as it reached the end.

I was finally ready to confess that it scared me, it horrified me to the point that I never wanted to go through something like it ever again, and once I did that I began to realize the ways it changed me.

The offer to get my legs back in working condition was the most obvious one.

The old me, the me from before the mission, would have gladly thrown his life away to help Dark Cove in any way, but I didn't.

I knew for a fact that I was more valuable as an agent than some record keeper, however in order to protect myself, to keep myself from the horrors I experienced that day, I subconsciously kept myself from accepting the procedure to walk again while trying to use other reasons to justify it.

It wasn't too difficult to imagine what I would likely end up doing in the future if I became a Shenrin, harming others if not just killing them like I had been tasked on during my mission, and it was what I couldn't do that day because of fear.

The first step to that future was literally taking steps, and it took me some time to accept that fact.

Even while full acknowledging it however, I still wanted to go down that path.

I had no qualms against killing in situations where it was called for, hell I had even ended up killing some of security personnel on that boat during my escape.

What I didn't want rather than that was to ever fall short again, and so I got up once more.

'This time,' I thought as I stood with my back completely straight, ready to tread the path I set for myself, 'This time it's going to be different.'

I began to walk.

Slowly the imbalance of my steps faded, as each step became more consistent and steadier than the one preceding it, until I reached my hundredth step.

Even then, I didn't fall down, instead I decided to stop because I was sure now;

I had relearned how to walk.

*****

About an hour later my parents returned to the room to turn in for the night.

I momentarily glanced at them before going back to sleep as they settled into their bed, allowing for the silence to overtake the room once more.

A few more minutes went by before father suddenly spoke up.

"Lailan, are you awake?" He asked.

"Mghhh... Yeah," Mother groggily responded.

"I've been thinking about Vaikus recently."

My eyes shot open.

"What about him?" Mother asked concerningly.

"Well, I've been thinking about him recently... and I don't think I want him going down the same path I had to."

...

'What?' I thought in confusion, seemingly not alone though.

"What do you mean you don't want him going down the same path?" Mother asked.

"I mean I don't want him learning to become a warrior, going to a war he has no part in, and risking his life in some pointless power struggle... that's what I mean."

A moment went by in silence before mother turned over to look father in the eye.

"Saruk, no one wants their kid to die in the war, and I'm no different, but you know the situation isn't as simple as that. Plus, you were there at the Naming; chances are he'll go far as a warrior, if he even decides to become one, and he'll make it back to us in one piece."

There was another pause after that.

"That's exactly the problem I see though, even with how skeptical I am about the Naming, this time I can't help but believe it as well.

Vaikus isn't a normal kid, just compare him to Armot who'd keep us up all night with his crying.

I haven't heard him cry even a single time after he was born.

He's been learning things at a rate I've never seen, every time I see him watching something I can sense a level of focus past what Armot can manage even today.

There's no doubt in my mind that if I let him take the steps to become a warrior, he'll probably make the jump to Shenrin.

After that he would undoubtedly win a place in the tournament, and you know even without me saying how difficult it is to keep a boy that age from participating in the tournament.

Not only that, but as his father it would be wrong of me to keep him from making his own family after everything, I went through myself.

Finally once he's won himself a spot in the draft, I'm sure he would take the second option, like my brother did and like I would've, had I been able to.

All of this can be stopped as long as I can keep him from getting strong enough to qualify for it."

Mother's expression changed suddenly as if she made a realization.

"So this is about your brother then... okay, I understand. But what about Armot then? You don't think he'll do the same?"

"I'm only training him in the first place because he kept asking me to for months, and to be quite honest, he probably won't ever become a Shenrin so there's no worry there."

"That's a bit mean, but I was more so thinking about how Vaikus will probably find it unfair."

Father sighed.

"Well I can't just stop with Armot now otherwise he'll start nagging me again. I think he's naturally going to lose interest with enough time so let's let time solve that issue."

"Okay then... Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

...

'DAMN IT!'

This complicated everything, my act in the naming ceremony and my neutral behavior thus far could not have backfired more spectacularly.

Though some of it came from my own preferences, most of what I did was to keep attention away from myself based on the logic that one who acts out gains more attention than one who is well-behaved.

Looking to do some damage control on the situation as soon as possible, I reviewed my options in order to unlock Shensi and it didn't look great.

Option A was to convince father to go back on his decision - highly unlikely and troublesome, I would probably need to find out more about his reasons which I felt would be very difficult in itself.

Option B was to find someone else who could teach me - possible but the only other candidate I could think of was the leader whom I didn't see helping his 'rival's' son.

It was that or option C, figuring it out by myself - basically impossible, I would have to be a genius on the level of Galmur and the knowledge from my past life didn't exactly help me out here.

There was no harm in option A so I decided to try that first, option B would be my best bet but I couldn't be sure until I checked, and finally there was option C, the one least likely to work and the one that would require the most effort, my last resort.

I lost myself thinking more and more about the mess I had found myself in until I dozed off to sleep.