The encounter with the girl with the white streak in her hair disturbed him on multiple levels. For one, it was a new phenomenon in the orphanage. Little Ta had already been in this place for slightly over a year, and that sort of bullying was not normal. Hopefully, it was only a symptom of the lack of adult supervision and not a more worrying domino effect of his true memories awakening. His second cause of concern was his own reaction – namely, the uncontrollable rage that had pulsed through him.

Not for the first time, he wondered exactly what did those memory holes hide. Was it possible something in there had caused that fury that coursed through him? It seemed ridiculous. On earth, he hadn’t believed the stories of people bottling emotions down and then having them eventually explode out into unexpected violence; but that was what that reaction had felt like, and it troubled him.

He comforted Bir, and then concentrated on being a child.

They reached the magic television room. The screen differed from the earth technology – it was far superior. When you activated the magic, it became more similar to opening a window and looking through it than it was to watching the regular television. Everything was perfectly three-dimensional with no noticeable pixilation issues.

“No, not like that. You need to remove the other one first, it’ll just click out.” Tom snapped.

Bir had been trying to shove in a memory crystal that captured a Druid’s battle before removing the old one.

She looked at him wide eyed.

“Let me show you,” he corrected hurriedly.

Bir let him demonstrate the technique of releasing the old crystal and replacing it with the new one. She smiled and then practiced popping the crystal out of the holder. Eight times in total! He knew because he counted, and then they settled down to watch. It seemed she had either already forgotten or never cared that he had briefly gone out of character.

He had gotten away with it.

It was, however, a wake-up call. This was a mistake he was making too often. Internally, he examined his fate pool.

It was over half-full.

He had to address the issue. It was, after all, an investment in his survival.

Fate could influence events indirectly; more importantly, the resource could act on a conceptual basis. It could be turned to improving his acting, or at least help to hide or prevent the larger missteps that risked revealing his status to a hidden observer.

Who, after all, might be watching him.

While it couldn’t directly change his thought patterns, it could cause something to fall and make a loud noise to distract him before he broke character, or cause a coughing fit by having him breathe in contaminated air and physically prevent the action. There were lots of pathways that it could use to influence him, and if he spent it early and cautiously, it would protect him cheaply.

Plus, Tom wanted to know how much fate he actually possessed, and this investment would answer that question.

Tom smiled wryly at himself. It was not like satisfying his curiosity affected his decision-making in the slightest. Not even a little. This was just something he absolutely had to do.

While they were watching a hero kill a wyvern with a spectral axe, Tom focused on his fate. One by one, he concentrated on the image he desired, then released a single point. He asked it to stop him from dropping out of character. After ten points, he tweaked what he was envisaging to create a direct protection. If anything that might reveal his nature happened, he wanted the energy to turn the enemies’ attention away from him, to save him from his own mistakes.

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Fifteen points later he had used about a third of his fate pool, which placed his current fate at somewhere between forty and fifty. The amount was perplexing, especially with Bir having similar quantities. Last life, there had been competent people at level fifty with less. This was another mystery to solve.

Tom recalled the bookshelf in the isolation room. He couldn’t wait to get locked in there and be able to find the answer to all these simple questions he was putting on his ‘to do’ list.

Under his clothes, where no one could observe, he manipulated raw magic and tried to corral it into the Touch Heal spell form he remembered. His mana would recharge every six minutes, and he had carried out a risk assessment. He had compared the benefit of practicing his spell form a hundred times extra per day versus the danger of an enemy of humanity observing it. The risk, as far as Tom was concerned, was low for several reasons. For a start, eight mana was well below background variation, so his magic should be lost in the noise of the environment. Furthermore, the clothes he wore were enchanted with what he suspected was a weak obfuscation ward, which would hide anything he did. Finally, the entire orphanage had regular artefacts spread throughout it - artefacts whose sole purpose was to spit out magic static, creating chaotic flows throughout the place. Even a single one of those precautions would probably have been sufficient for him to take the risk, but with all of them working in tandem there was almost no chance of anyone noticing what he was doing.

It was the eighth time since reaching this room that he had attempted to construct the spell, and this time the result was no different. It broke into pieces halfway through the process and the magic vanished.

Internally, he shrugged. Given the barely workable structure he had managed, even when using fate, the complete failure without it was not a surprise. But he was not discouraged. He had years of practice to complete everything before he could level. That gave him more than enough time to perfect this spell, though regularly cheating with fate would dramatically reduce the timeframe.

Bir jumped to her feet abruptly and sprinted out, presumably to go to the toilet again. Pa smirked, recognizing what she was doing too, and got up from the cushions. They followed her out. Magic screen-watching was finished. She would want to do something physical after lazing about here for over two hours.

The trio of them seemed to drift between activities. Sometimes it meant choosing vigorous play like physically pretending to be heroes and fighting monsters while jumping on top of the various obstacles in the greenhouse. Other times they would go to story time, which meant that an adult they had never seen before would read them and a handful of others a book.

Tom spent the day focusing on being a kid. He didn’t retreat to his system room because that would waste his time. Instead, when tricky situations arose, he relied on his more recent childhood memories to guide his actions. In between those problematic moments, in the long periods of drudgery that filled his day, Tom would dutifully practice his healing spell every time his mana pool filled up.

Like clockwork, it failed every time.

Before he knew it, he was back under the covers, knife in hand, with fate to spend. He made two cuts on his arm and then did a fate-assisted heal on one of them. The spell form was still embarrassing. It seemed a little lopsided, too. On the other hand, he thought he felt some itching when it landed.

With a sigh, he settled down to sleep. Today’s attempt had gone much better than the first one.

In the morning, he checked the two cuts. To be perfectly honest, the differences between them were negligible. Possibly the control one’s bruise was a darker shade, and the mostly-healed line an angrier red. While he was pretty certain of the variance, he was not convinced an independent authority would have made the same ruling.

This time when he left the warmth of his covers, Pa was also awake and ready to leave. So, after detouring to the toilet and the cleaning loop, they went down to breakfast. Tom had sausages and, at Pa’s urging, served himself a deep purple fruit that had been sliced but not peeled. Its outer skin had the sheen like one would see on the inside of an oyster shell.

“It’s nice,” Pa assured him. “Really yummy.” The other child had four slices on his plate.

After he had consumed the sausages, he played with the fruit segment to demonstrate his reluctance to eat it.

“Try it, try it.”

With his face screwed up in protest he bit into it. This was not something little Ta would have tried, but Tom saw it as an opportunity to push boundaries. The fruit was both alien and surprisingly pleasant. It tasted like a cross between carrot and blueberries that had been salted. The texture was closest to that of a mango. He could definitely see it being a part of his diet in the future. Even as he privately complimented the fruit, he allowed little Ta’s instincts to take center stage. Tom could feel the disgust that he should have felt get reflected across his face, and he spat it out onto the plate and made a point of wiping down his tongue while making gagging noises.

Pa laughed at him and then ate his fourth piece, unconcerned with Tom’s rejection of it.