By Day Karlin Took Up the Sword; by Night She Chose My Name
Frontline. Day twenty since the summoning.
Karin's injuries had almost fully healed. The bandages came off, and she could use her right arm again. The first thing she did was step outside the tent, take a tree branch in her left hand, and settle into a sword stance.
'Almost' was a standard measured by visible wounds. Marta had written down her terms: the right arm was not to be raised above shoulder height, nothing heavier than a kilogram, and an immediate stop if the pain score passed three.
"The bandages are off, so I'm healed, aren't I?"
"Skin knitting shut and the muscle needed to hold a sword coming back are two different things."
Karin bared her teeth at that, but she didn't demand a real sword. She weighed the branch herself and copied the restrictions onto the top of her training sheet.
It would have been easy to dress it up romantically and call it a knight's resilience. But if she ignored the limits and got hurt again, the price was Karin's to pay.
Shff. Shff. The branch carved through empty air.
...An impossibly perfect recovery. Is it a knight's resilience, or the warm-up stage right before the 'female' system kicks in? I can't tell. Could be both. Fuck—if it's both, that's a disgustingly convenient body. Convenient for whom?
Daytime training didn't even last an hour. Karin gripped the branch like a sword and repeated the basic stance. Her fingertips shook through the first ten repetitions; on the eleventh, a metallic ring from behind her made her flinch and fold forward.
Erika measured not how many times she reacted, but how long it took her to come back afterward. At the first metallic ring, a minute and forty seconds passed before Karin could say today's date. The second took fifty seconds. The third, contrary to the trend, ran past two minutes.
The graph of improvement was not a straight line. As fatigue piled up, the later attempts turned worse.
"Failure."
Karin ground her teeth.
"No. Your body recognized the danger. Now lift your head and check where the sound came from."
Erika deliberately dropped an empty scabbard on the ground. Clank. Karin flinched—but this time she didn't bolt. She looked toward the sound.
On the third drop she didn't lose her grip on the branch. On the fourth, she returned to the basic stance once the sound came.
There was no fifth sound. Karin was the one who said, "That's it for today," first.
"One more and you'd do it better."
"Maybe. Or it could get worse."
"That's why I ended it. Not because you told me to."
Karin wrote the ending time on the training sheet with her own hand. The stop wasn't a failure—it was a judgment the knight herself had made.
"Today's goal wasn't cutting down an enemy. It was coming back after a scare."
"Isn't that setting the bar awfully low for a knight?"
"It's the right goal for the Karin of right now."
When training ended, Karin wiped the sweat from her palms on her trousers. She didn't smile even when I called it a success. Instead, she asked me to come to my tent that night.
"Not my tent. Yours, Karin. It's better somewhere you know the exits and the space."
"Will Erika be there too?"
"At first, while we set the conditions. After that, whether the two of you stay alone is your call, Karin, and Erika will check on your condition separately tomorrow."
Karin didn't answer right away. She began writing the night's conditions on the back of the training sheet: the door stays unlocked, the sword stays outside it, no alcohol and no Sedative Herb, no reading of memories.
"Emotion manipulation too."
"Even if the hyperventilation gets bad?"
"Then I'll set the rule again. Don't use it on the sly."
"Understood."
Where the day's training ended, the night's safety line was drawn in Karin's own hand.
"I didn't cry during the day, so am I allowed to cry tonight?"
"Do tears carry training points too?"
"No. That's why I'm asking. I've hardly ever done anything that didn't come with a score."
The night meeting wasn't about desire alone. It was the first time Karin would show herself in a form that couldn't be converted into results.
Night. Tent Three.
Karin sat at the edge of the bed. This was the knight who had picked the sword back up four times that day—now she was clutching the blanket with both hands.
Erika read the condition sheet first. Karin explained every line back in her own words.
"The door stays open, and it ends when I say stop or knock twice on the bedpost. What I allow today doesn't carry into tomorrow. No reading my memories, no touching my emotions."
"And the treatment relationship?"
At Erika's question, Karin looked at me.
"What do you mean?"
"If Dohyun stays your primary counselor while also carrying a private relationship with you, it can cloud his judgment. If tonight goes ahead, it's safer for me to take over your trauma counseling from here on."
"Isn't he leaving anyway? So you'd be taking over regardless."
"I mean the roles need separating starting now, even before he leaves. And you should know—refusing the private relationship changes nothing about your counseling."
Karin added a line to the condition sheet.
[Trauma counseling: Erika. Meetings with Dohyun are not to be counted as treatment rewards or training points.]
"Is that good now?"
"One more thing. Don't widen the scope right after you cry today. Drink some water, take one pause, then decide again."
Erika set an hourglass on the table and stepped outside. She would wait beyond the tent flap and come in only if called.
"I'm the one who told you to come, and now that you're here I don't know what I'm supposed to say."
I took the chair closest to the door.
"Let's start the way we did during the day. Name three things you can see right now."
"The lamp. Your shoes. The door."
"It matters that you can see the door. You can walk out whenever you want."
Karin lifted her head. Her green eyes flooded in an instant.
"I think I came out because I wanted to live. Not because the captain ordered it. And I'm so sorry for that."
"Why is wanting to live something to apologize for?"
"Because they didn't get to."
Once the tears broke loose, they didn't stop for a long while. I didn't move closer. I only held out my hand, and long after, Karin took it and drew it to her side.
Even after the sobbing ebbed, she didn't move right away. Karin drank a full cup of water and watched the sand run out of the hourglass.
"Same thought as before?"
"You mean being held?"
"Including what comes after that."
"Same. But this isn't me repaying you because you're my healer. My squad, my injury—none of it is a debt to be paid off."
"Should I record that sentence too?"
"Later. Right now, look at me, not the paper."
Karin put time between the crying and the choice. Strong emotion didn't automatically void a decision—but the pause let her check again whether it was the only thing driving one.
"Don't act like a counselor tonight. Just hold me."
Only after her permission did I wrap an arm around her shoulders. Karin buried her face in my chest and called her four squad members' names again. This time, she added her own name after the last.
The moment her hyperventilation began to climb, I felt the pull to use [Emotion Manipulation]. Lowering her fear, the way I had during the day, would have steadied her faster.
But the condition sheet said forbidden. Instead, I repeated the five names Karin had chosen, in the same order.
Raul. Jess. Mina. Owen. Karin.
On the second pass, her breathing lengthened a little. Even without the power, there was a road back to the present.
"Karin. The fifth. The one who has to live to make the report."
"You did well."
"Don't praise me. Kiss me."
"From this point I'm stopping the treatment record. I'll keep only the safety record: the stop signals, your physical state, and the fact that no ability was used. That's all."
"Then what about my crying?"
"That's for your session with Erika tomorrow. I'm not taking it with me."
Only after confirming that line had been drawn did Karin close the distance.
Lips touched first. Clumsy teeth bumped, then parted. Karin looked mortified, but she didn't retreat.
I checked once more.
"Think about whether you're choosing this because your emotions are in upheaval right now. Just falling asleep in my arms would be enough for today."
"I spent four days thinking about it, every step you came closer. Tonight, the last step was mine."
"We still need to confirm pregnancy risk and your physical condition."
"I drank the contraceptive tea. I picked it up from Marta myself, so the timing was right, too."
Karin showed me the chart beside the bed: dosage time, cycle dates, right-shoulder pain scores. Pinned to it, in Marta's handwriting, was a note explaining that the contraceptive tea does not erase the risk entirely.
"Nothing inside. And no position that drags on my shoulder."
"If the pain climbs?"
"You stop. And even if we end it there, you don't write it down as a training failure."
"Understood."
"And tomorrow I get checked by Erika alone. If you're standing next to me, I'll just end up saying I'm fine."
It was a condition that kept the aftercare check from resting on me alone.
Karin tugged at my shirt. The kiss stretched long, and our hands went searching across each other's backs. Every time I moved to undress her I told her she could stop me, and every time, Karin unfastened the next button with her own fingers.
Even laid out on the bed, Karin was the one setting the pace. When her body went rigid with nerves—it was her first time—I stopped my hand. I worked her open slowly with my fingers and told her that if it hurt, today would end right there.
"No. Come in slow. And don't move until I say."
I set the tip of my cock against the wet entrance of her cunt and pressed in a little at a time. The Level 2 change had grown it to twenty-four centimeters. Getting all of it in was not the goal. Only as much as Karin could take.
Three breaths passed between us before her hands found my hips.
"Move now."
A short, slow tempo carried on. Karin tapped my shoulder twice when it hurt; when it eased, she was the first to wind her legs around me. Across several rounds of that signal, pleasure began to edge ahead of the fear.
"Dohyun. Look at me. Don't think about anyone else."
"I'm only looking at you."
The instant she heard her name, her body clamped down hard. For the first time, Karin didn't hide what she wanted—she hauled my hips toward her.
"Not inside. Not today, not yet."
I pulled out at once and finished on her stomach. Karin got her ragged breathing back while staring at the ceiling for a long moment. Then she searched for my hand again and laced her fingers through mine.
"It went exactly the way I decided."
"That's how next time stays yours to decide, too."
At that, Karin smiled for the first time. Exhausted to the bone—and unmistakably smiling.
After Karin fell asleep, I went over the abilities I'd used today. Memory reading: never opened. Emotion manipulation: twice, both brief, both to bring her hyperventilation down during daytime training. Not once after the night session began, and not once after intimacy did.
I logged the two daytime uses separately from the night hours. Night: no use. Not when Karin cried, not after the kiss, not when she spoke of pain.
The sentence no ability used was not a medal honoring my conscience. It was only confirmation that I had kept the minimum conditions I'd promised.
On the record sheet I wrote stop signal functioned normally, twice rather than first time. What mattered more was that Karin had separated pain from desire in her own words, and that I had followed those words in what I actually did.
I logged the time from each stop to the restart, too. The first: four minutes, after water. The second: six minutes, after changing position. More important than the single line stopped, then resumed was whether the pause had actually bought enough time.
Right-shoulder pain: two points before we began, three after. Below the cutoff line Marta had set—but it needed rechecking the next day.
Just before five in the morning, Karin read the record sheet the instant her eyes opened.
"You didn't write 'first time.'"
"I'll write it if you want."
Karin turned it over for a long while, then left her own handwriting at the very bottom.
[The first night the orders for my body were set by me.]
Below that, she added one more line.
[Dohyun was not my healer tonight. Tomorrow's trauma session proceeds with Erika.]
With her own hand she fixed the boundary in place, so that a relationship beginning would not blur the roles of treatment along with it.
In the aftermath, Karin, held in my arm, cried a little more. This time the tears carried not only the dead, but the strangeness of her own body, alive.
I made her drink water and wiped her down with a wet cloth. Drawing the blanket up, Karin asked,
"What if I regret it tomorrow?"
"Even if you regret it, today's choice doesn't turn into a lie. You simply make a different one next time."
"If I regret it, do I have to tell you?"
"Only if you want to. You can tell Erika first, or refuse the next meeting without saying a word."
"And if that hurts you?"
"Then that feeling is mine to deal with. It isn't something to be repaid with a meeting you don't want."
Karin turned that answer over for a long time.
"Then tomorrow I'll do the choosing too."
"Choosing what?"
"How many times I swing the sword. Whether I call for you again. All of it."
Karin fell asleep without letting go of my hand. Before dawn arrived, she murmured one more thing on the edge of sleep.
"Wake me at five. I'm not skipping knight training."
Karin woke first, but she didn't head straight for the training ground. Marta checked the right shoulder and asked for the pain score again. Three, unchanged. No bleeding, no heat in the wound. Training was capped at half of the day before.
Erika sent me outside, then held the aftercare interview with Karin, just the two of them. The record that emerged thirty minutes later held exactly three sentences.
[No regret at present. Next private meeting: undecided. Consent to the counseling handover: maintained.]
What mattered wasn't the content. It was that I hadn't been in the room for that interview.
Before taking up the wooden sword, Karin asked me directly.
"Only six times today. Two metallic sounds. When I say we're done, we're done."
The night's choice hadn't knocked the day's training off its foundations. And training results didn't retroactively justify the night's choice, either. The two sheets stayed separate, all the way to the end.
"Coming again tonight?"
"You said you'd be the one to decide, Karin."
"Then it's still undecided. I'll see whether I feel the same after training ends."
"Understood."
Only after she'd heard my answer did Karin pick up the wooden sword. She didn't book today's hours in advance on the strength of last night's closeness.
At the first metallic sound she was back in the present within fifteen seconds. The second took thirty. Slower—but she didn't write it down as a failure. She marked it as accumulated fatigue and closed out the day's training.
Afterward, she and Erika finished a single squad report together, alone. I never read it. A private relationship did not come bundled with the right to open treatment records.
Only when every check of the morning was done did Karin give my shoulder a light swat with the training sheet.
The next dawn, the one who rose first and woke me was Karin.