Chapter 22

“I don’t ... It’s just ... Aagh I don’t even know where to start,” fumed Grace, throwing her good arm up in frustration.

“You don’t have to-” Ethan tried to speak.

“No, I do,” countered Grace, cutting Ethan off, her thoughts going back to the fight with the dungeon boss. “I’ve been putting this off for how long now? Harris was right to ask you about it. They let us take risks in E-ranked dungeons, and we’ve seen how those are dangerous enough. We’re never moving up to D rank without me taking a Bond.”

The room fell silent with quiet agreement.

She pressed on, her eyes meeting the others in turn. “So, that means getting my reservations out into the open instead of keeping them to myself. When I take a step back and look at the team without the idea of needing to Bond, it’s everything I want. I don’t have any complaints there. I’m worried that Bonding will fuck that up.”

“How?” Penny prodded gently. “I mean, when you say you’re worried that Bonding will mess things up, what specifically worries you?

“Sex can make things weird,” blurted Grace, scanning their faces, seeing the agreement on everyone’s expression. “See? If I learned anything from my ex, it was how sex can be used to plaster over problems. We’d have an argument and end up in bed without ever resolving it. Right now, when there’s an issue, we talk about it. I’m worried that would change.”

“I don’t want to speak for everyone, but I haven’t felt that pressure,” interjected Alice. “But ... I get that it’s different for me, Ethan and I have known each other forever.”

“I agonized over the same thing, Grace,” confessed Mei. “That if I allowed Ethan and I to grow close, more than teammates, we’d end up being ... Worse off for it?”

“What changed your mind? Grace asked earnestly, wanting to banish her own skepticism at the idea.

“The month with you here on the team,” explained Mei. “I saw how Ethan and Penny worked together. You’ve seen them, neither of them hold back on their criticism just because they’ve been dating for a few years. If they could handle it, I realized, why couldn’t I?”

Grace leaned back into the bed with a deep breath out, wincing at the pain in her ribs, absorbing the words. Mei was right, the egoless synergy was the team’s greatest strength, and Graced craved that. She’d worked with enough Class Marked over the last five years to know how valuable and rare a team like this was.

“We stumbled upon that when we first started dating,” Penny admitted. “Both terrified of giving each other criticism, afraid of hurting feelings. Thankfully, Alice called us out on it.”

Alice laughed at the memory. “They’d both secretly begged me to ‘talk to the other.’ After the third time, I got so fed up with being the messenger, I snapped. Sat them both down together and shrieked: Use your damn words!”

The whole room laughed, easing the tension as everyone compared the Ethan and Penny in front of them to the version in the story.

“It worked,” chuckled Ethan, rubbing his neck. “We realized the feedback came from care, not malice. Since then, it’s been the default. My Class depends on that sort of honesty. Without it, none of us would be here.”

“I was skeptical,” conceded Mei. “Until I Bonded. I miss a lot of things from my old team, but we’d never had the sort of trust I found here. He didn’t dodge a single question, even when I asked about him and Alice, or how his class worked with Penny and his relationship. That ... that’s what convinced me. No hidden agenda here.

“If we can be honest about our daily essence dramatics,” teased Penny, smirking. “I think we can endure being honest about anything else.

“So, practically,” pressed Grace, cheeks flushing, “how does it work when we all need to imbue daily? I mean, just the time it takes alone...”

Ethan gave a surprised laugh, running his hand through his hair. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever feel normal talking about his class like this. “Surreal question, but fair. Essence ... It streamlines things. The Essence itself magnifies what you’re feeling. With Mei, even casual touch like hair stroking, hand holding, triggered enough Essence to ... finish quickly.”

“What we fell into was weirdly relaxing, is what he’s trying to get at,” added Mei, nostalgic. “There weren’t any romantic undertones, not really. It was like unwinding in a bath after training. At first, it was purely functional. It wasn’t until later that it grew ... deeper. It had a feeling of routine to it, after a while,” she continued. “Neither of us intended for it to happen, but it did put up a wall between us. I guess you could say it was almost platonic? While we can still fall back into our routine, we’ve also learned that that’s not all it has to be.”