Kenji didn’t head home straight away.

It was late afternoon and his head was a swim with everything that had just taken place. After stumbling hazily through the crowds in the village square he made his way past the rice paddies and farms lands towards the northern orchard close to his home. Han Village lay within the bowl of a valley, surrounded by thick forests and a lake to the south. The distant hills glowed orange with the fading sunlight which spilled onto the tall pear trees as he drew close to the orchard.

He vaulted over the low stone wall ringing the ten or so acres that housed the well-spaced trees. As the oldest orchard in the village, some of the trees here were well over a century old. But Kenji didn’t come for the trees. He made straight for the wooden tool shed to the west of the orchard and climbed the rickety ladder onto its thatched roof.

A wave of depression washed over him as he fell onto his haunches and stared at the soon to set sun.

Curse that Chet Fai. How did someone as wonderful of Shinoto end up with the same parents as him?

Kenji couldn’t remember a time when Chet Fai hadn’t been a source of pain to him, and it only became worse as the years went by—when it became clear that his advancement was impeded. It was as if Chet Fai saw his infirmity as somehow contagious and was convinced it was affecting his sister’s advancement as well. Seeing him with her, despite her rebirth, was for Chet Fai, perhaps a sort of last straw.

But while Chet Fai was openly hostile about it, at least he was honest.

Kenji was sure there were others in the village who felt the same way about his friendship with Shinoto…his own father one of them. He was doubly grateful now for Ben Fai not punishing him. If word of what happened got back to his father, it would only be the beginning of pain for him.

He felt again for the scar on his doma, the source of all his troubles. With no doma he could not store Qi, without Qi, he could not ascend. Without ascending to at least jade tier, he could not be reborn. And without being reborn, he could never court Shinoto.

“What did I do in my former life to deserve all this?” he said to the heavens.

Shockingly an answer came back: “You probably drank too much wine and chased too many women…” a belch followed. “… like me.”

Kenji stood and ran to the ladder. “Waru?”

The wrinkled, smiling face of the fieldhand beamed up at him from the foot of the ladder. “Help me up, lad.”

Kenji descended halfway down and then made good use of his strength to literally drag the half-drunken Waru up the ladder. He then rested him as gingerly as he could upon the rooftop. “How much have you drunk?”

“Only my third bottle,” Waru said and produced said bottle from his mud stained robes. He placed the white ceramic bottle to his lips for a long sip of rice wine. Or at least that’s what Kenji assumed it was.

Kenji chuckled. “At least you had the decency to not get drunk at the ceremony.”

“Huh?” Waru looked up at him bleary-eyed. “What ceremony?”

He had to be kidding. “Shinoto’s rebirth ceremony. Did you not know? Why did you think we had the day off?”

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The fieldhand shrugged. “I thought you’d just forgotten to come to work.”

Waru finally laughed and Kenji couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not. He was quite certain Waru couldn’t tell half the time himself. He sat next to Waru who offered him the bottle, but Kenji politely declined.

“Still not drinking yet, huh?”

“My father says it’ll slow my progression.”

“Which is coming along swiftly, no doubt.” Waru laughed again.

Kenji kicked him in the foot. “Not funny.”

“So how it go?” Waru asked. “The rebirth. That was your girl, wasn’t it? Shinoto?”

Kenji sighed. “I wouldn’t call her my girl, but yes…It went fine. She’s now seven years old again.”

He almost did feel like taking a swig of that bottle. And if not for the wariness of what exactly was in it, he may have. He glanced at Waru and saw his future: a shriveled fieldhand of fifty years or more; never tiered and never rebirthed. Kenji had never asked why or how he had become so. Perhaps some birth defect such as his own, or an injury in his youth.

He did recall Waru mentioning once that he had joined the imperial army as a conscript during the great rebellion. But whether that led to his infirmary or was as a result of it, Kenji was not sure. The Zhou Imperial Army was far less picky than the mystic schools. So long as you could heft a spear, you were fit to be fodder on the battlefield. It was hard to imagine Waru even lifting a spear, much less wielding one.  For as long as Kenji had known him, old Waru was simply a fieldhand who worked the orchards day and drank heavily by night.

What a life…

Kenji all at once had compassion and contempt for the man.

He was perhaps his only other friend in the village.

“I suppose I’ll be looking to ask someone else to the festival now,” Kenji said resignedly.

“Don’t give up yet, lad. You’re young still. The fates have much in store for you. Trust me.”

Kenji chuckled. “I wish I could be as sure about it as you.”

Waru sipped his bottle. “The girl fancies you, Kenji. I’ve seen it when she comes around here.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.” Waru tapped the air with his index finger. “If there’s one thing old Waru knows…it’s women.”

Kenji chuckled but then sighed. “Won’t matter anyway. If I can’t be rebirthed with her, it’s hopeless.”

“Why?”

Kenji gave him an accusatory look. “Are you sick in the head, old man? How am I supposed to court a sever year old?”

“Just wait till she grows up again then.” Waru shrugged. “It’s your fault you’re waiting in the first place.”

Kenji balked. “What?”

“Didn’t I tell you to ask her to the festival before she reached eighth tier? If you’d let your intension be known and given her the choice between you and rebirth, she would have chosen you!”

Kenji grew quiet. He did recall Waru telling him that. He recalled contemplating it too. “You’re right, Waru. She probably would have chosen me. Which is why I didn’t ask.”

“So who’s the fool then?”

“She wants to become a mystic warrior,” Kenji said. “That’s her dream. How could I ask her to choose between that and me?”

“So…” Waru shrugged. “You’ve got only one other choice then. Get to channeling, lad. You need to catch up to her before she goes off to become a great mystic artist, travelling the world in search of adventure and fame, never to return to this hovel and your sorry face ever again.”

Waru laughed then, amused at his own rhyme. It was not a haughty laugh, but more like one resigned to his own fate—as if he could see into Kenji’s soul and recognized the same illness that prevented him from ever reaching even the most basic of tiers. It was a laugh that said the ship had long since sailed.

But even if he could do just that, if he could be reborn and join Shinoto on her journey, there was another problem to overcome. “I got into a fight with her brother today, too. He wants me to have nothing to do with her.”

“That fool, Chet Fai?” Waru said, suddenly sobering. “What happened?”

Kenji told him the story and the old man laughed.

“Serves him right!” Waru slapped him on the knee. “To the hells with them all. With their baby faces and gold stripes. They probably hadn’t seen defiance like that since the days of the Bloody Duke!” Waru raised his bottle in salute to the legendary mystic warrior who had nearly overthrown the emperor decades ago. Waru then stared at Kenji with an odd little smile on his face. “Only natural, I suppose.”

“What do you mean?”

Waru slapped him on the knee. “Hells if I know. I’m drunk. Help me off this damn roof.”

Kenji slid Waru onto his back and lowered them both down the ladder. Waru wasn’t a small man, still stocky and strong for his age and it was only thanks to Kenji’s own strength—and that of the ladder—that they made it to the ground unharmed.

“I’ll take you home,” Kenji said, but by then Waru was already snoring upon his back.