Two exhausted freshmen of vastly different proportions, a giant and a dainty young girl, mirrored each other as they slumped into a pair of seats at their new University Canteen and crumpled, their tired faces resting on the cool surface of the mostly sanitized table that sat between them.

  The tall, muscular teenage boy opened his tired eyes to look into the petite girl’s vibrant green eyes, looking into his with the same exhaustion. They were tired too. And upside down. Still pretty though. Even partially covered by her pretty brown trusses that draped around her face and spilled around her, they couldn’t hide her loveliness.

  “Lily, please tell me that was the last orientation meeting?” The boy begged.

  “Just one more Davie.” The girl replied with cruelty. “I’m not sure why you’re complaining when you’ve slept through almost every one of these this week.”

  “It’s cause it’s all such common sense stuff. And why do we have an Orientation Week when we did the tours last week?”

  “Davie, last week was about becoming accustomed to the campus and the facilities, while this week is all the core foundational knowledge that every budding adult needs to know, even the ones that think they already know everything.”

  “Hey now,” Davie said as he finally managed the strength to lift his face, straightened his posture, thrust out his muscular chest, and tilted his face just right for maximum coolness, “don’t hate cause I’m awesome.”

  “Pft.”

  Lily straightened up and became serious. Davie almost flinched. Almost.

  “Pop-quiz. What are the restrictions of the Nexus Local Market and the most common workarounds?”

  “Wha-“

  “This is the common sense stuff you just slept through. Common sense. Every freshman knows this now. Wouldn’t it be embarrassing if you didn’t?” Lily taunted.

  “Ha! Kid’s stuff. You can send things you’ve hunted or made with your hands, like Jun’s sculptures.”

  “Sigh.” Lily placed a tired hand over her face.

  “What, aren’t I right?”

  “Lets order first. I’m starving.”

  Davie shrugged and hit a red button on the table. A light projection appeared between the two, listing a vast array of options. Flavors ranged from the traditional ones everyone grew up on, like breakfast, lunch, and dinner nutri pastes to some truly special experimental creations that one could only taste in the University Canteen.

  Lily scrolled down the long list of possibilities, wonderful and horrid alike, till she found what she was looking for. Davie found something interesting shortly after.

  It only took a few seconds for a server drone to come hovering over with their orders. Lily’s tall glass of cold nutrition was light pink and frothy with orange swirls, while Davie’s came on a plate in steaming brownish black squares. Lily took a sip of hers and Davie took a bite of his and they both moaned in contentment.

  “I’m so happy I finally get to try the NewFru series. These are so much better than what we had at home.” Lily sighed after another, more generous gulp.

  “I hurr dos migh go on the general market soon.” Davie said, cheeks bulging with food.

  “That’d be so great. Mom would love these new shakes. Cherry and Mango is so good, and it flows so much better than the old nutri pastes.”

  “I know, right? They got the texture of this grow meat perfect too.”

  “I’m surprised you chose that. Weren’t you a meat purist that only ate Gate meat? I thought you’d start chucking those at people eating grow meat.”

  “What kind of barbarian do you take me for? Don’t make me sound like some kind of animal. I only ever started the one food fight when we were kids. You need to learn to let things go, Lils. I’m a grown ass man now. Geesh.”

  “…One?”

  “….maybe two.”

  “Two?”

  “….maybe six.”

  “When we were kids?”

  “Hey, last month we were still kids in highschool. Now we are civilized college adults.”

  “Mmmhmm.”

  Moments later, they sat contented with empty dishes and bulging bellies.

  “So, getting back to why you’re so embarrassing,” Lily said, back to business.

  “Hey!”

  “Truth hurts. Deal with it. So, as I was saying, the current understanding of the Nexus remains limited. However, certain fundamental rules have, so far, proven consistent, allowing us to draw some preliminary conclusion.” Lily paused for dramatic effect before stating simply and sharply, “Killed by hand. Transformed by hand.”

  “Wha - I was right, wasn’t I?” Davie protested.

  “In the same way that the ‘sky’ is the answer to ‘what is up.’ There’s more to it than ‘what you killed’ and ‘what you made,’ Davie.” Lily answered patiently.

  Hearing the tone, the larger boy awkwardly scratched the tip of his nose, shrinking his shoulders in surrender against the slim beauty whose height did not even reach his chin.

  “Sorry sorry. Please continue.” Davie admitted defeat.

  Lily couldn’t help but smile. He was so cute.

  “The Local Market only allows the responsible party for the trade of goods that fall under those two categories of ‘killed by hand’ and ‘transformed by hand.’ Thankfully, the first category only refers to Gate Monsters while the second has looser restrictions.”

  “So what about ranged attackers and mecha pilots? Can they not sell their kills on the spot, then?” Davie asked, now realizing he didn’t know what counted as ‘by hand.’

  “That would still be ‘direct involvement,’” Lily explained.” It’s more about the kills from mass-produced traps and auto defenses - they need to be ‘transformed by hand’ through dismantling before the dismantler can sell ‘processed materials’ on the spot through the Local Market.”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “Why is it called the Local Market, anyway? Is there a Foreign Market or something too?” Davie asked, distracted by a new curiosity.

  “I don’t know, maybe,” Lily said, thinking back on the assembly they just had, not recalling any mention of it. She would ask her mom later - since she was a Hunter when she was younger, she should know.

  “Well, I still think my answer was fine. Kill it or make it. It’s also got nothing to do with me, anyway,” Davie concluded, since he had no production skills and had no plans of becoming an active Hunter or a material harvester. He just wanted to focus on crushing his brother’s records he took such pride in, and becoming an ace mecha pilot. Bastard.

  “The work around, Davie. There is still a way for us to use the Local Market.” Lily reminded her companion.

  “Like what?”

  “Well, GRIN is still fairly new and limited to the Gate Cities. Outside, the trade convoys have no reliable access to the rune networks, so they use the Local Market.”

  “For communication? I thought you could only send and receive objects,” Davie said, confused again.

  “Well, what did I say about transformation? Say you took a rock from the side of the road. Once you’ve infused inner strength into your finger, you could easily transcribe a brief note. Now it’s not a rock, but a message made of stone. The Nexus will accept that and then you can send it out as you wish,” Lily grandly concluded.

  “Why can’t you just write something down on a pad and send that?”

  “Because that would just be a used item, not ‘transformed.’ A raw material given a real and meaningful purpose is ‘transformed.’” Lily tried again.

  Davie was first only mildly interested in the common hack. Then he began considering how that would ever be helpful to him when he abruptly caught up with Lily.

  “We can message Jun!” Davie almost jumped in excitement before being franticly shushed by Lily. She looked around to see if anyone had been listening. She was both glad and disheartened by what she saw.

  The bustling canteen, packed with students new and old, had voided a wide space around them. People were walking out of their way to not approach their bubble. Let alone pay them any mind. It was like they didn’t exist as people, only a void not to be entered or acknowledged.

  After a week of such treatment, this was the first time Lily was glad for it.

  “Why didn’t you say anything about this before?!” lil Davie was still pumped about the news, unaware of Lily’s moment of reflection.

  “Well, I didn’t know about it till the orientation meeting. The one you just slept through.” Lily defended and accused.

  “Alright, alright. We need to send something. It’s been almost a week, and we have heard nothing from Jun. Ask him if he’s still alive.” Davie couldn’t calm himself. Jun’s matters had been a constant weight on his shoulders. Just knowing if his brother was safe would relieve him greatly.

  “Why do you want me to write it?” she asked curiously. Lily had envisioned Davie breaking off a chunk of table for a note pad immediately.

  “Because my handwriting is awful. You know that.”

  “Oh, yeah.” It was really bad. “We’ll do it tonight. Let’s find something to use in the meantime. If we use a tool, I can probably write small enough to pack a lot. I hope everything is alight.”

  “I’m sure he is. I may not know a lot, but I do know there aren’t many that could pose a threat to him now.” Davie reassured.

  “Yeah.” Lily said, a bit downcast, “I just miss him is all. I hope he comes back soon.”

  “Me too.” Davie agreed. He finally looked around at their void.

  “We have not been having the fun friend-filled school life adventure we envisioned, have we?” Davie sighed.

  “It’s cause they love Jun so much and they hurt for him.” Lily said softly.

  “Yeah, but then why are they taking it out on us? We love Jun more than anyone else.” He spat with some heat.

  “These people don’t know us or our circumstances. They just know that we’re the younger siblings of the ‘most hated couple’ from this school. They don’t know what to make of us, so they stay away.” Lily was always the understanding one, but Davie still resented it. He didn’t care much that no one wanted to befriend him, but Lily didn’t deserve the treatment and he resented his inability to fix it.

  “Remember how Jun would just melt into furniture and cry out how it’s so hard to make friends?” Lily asked to break the tension.

  “Yeah, that was so funny. The way his arms would just go limp in weird angles.” They both laughed at the memory, stopped, and sighed.

  “I totally get it.” She said.

  “Yup.”

  “It’s impossible to make friends. We’re just too cool.”

  “Yup.”

  “Next time I see him, I’m gonna give him a big warm hug and apologize for always teasing him. I feel like I should have given him more.”

  “Yup.”

  “You need to loosen your body more. Just let everything drop.”

  “….yup.”

  Lily giggled as Davie corrected his ‘melting Jun’ impersonation. It was pretty good. After a pause, she began again.

  “It’s not all bad, you know. Everyone leaving me alone has given me some space to think about what I want to do with my life.” That got a look from Davie.

  “What do you mean? You already made it into the Prompter Department. Didn’t you want to make films?” Davie asked, confused.

  “Honestly, I don’t really want to be a Prompter.” She responded cleanly.

  “Wasn’t that your dream?”

  “It was when my choices were limited.”

  Davie paused. He was always so careful about skirting around the topic, choosing to show his concern with his actions. He blamed himself for the injury that took away so many of her possibilities. Unable to perform strenuous activities without suffering from heart splitting pain, she wasn’t even able to cultivate. Even her personal rune was still in its basic seed form because she was too weak to kill the immobilized monsters at the Nexus Identification Bureau, unable to even learn the nature of her rune.

  “Well,” Lily looked at her protector that had no business looking so timid and finally opened up, “I haven’t told mom yet because I don’t want to get her hopes up till I’m super, super sure but… I think I’m healed now.”

  “What do you mean, you think?” Davie demanded as he quickly leaped over the table to kneel at her side and gently took her hand in his. Feeling the warmth of Davie’s protective grasp, Lily looked down and blushed at Davie’s anxious eagerness. It made him look just like the young boy that would grab her shy little hand and promise to always protect her. He hadn’t changed since. Not really.

  “It was the Garden. When Jun first finished his sculpture, I felt a wave of warmth. It made me comfortable, but since I was so upset, I didn’t really think about it.” Lily gave Davie’s hands a reassuring squeeze. “I haven’t been in any pain since.”

  Fidgeting, Davie had difficulty suppressing his urge to hoist her up into the air and shout. Lily could see right through his battles. She smiled, leaned forward, and embraced her protector around his neck.

  Davie escaped his role as a human statue and brought his trembling arms around her small frame and man-cried. Yeah, they were in public, but his girl was finally free from a life of constant torture. The one that he caused. He bawled, uncaring about the strange stares he was attracting.

  Lily had tears too, but snorted with laughter when her big angry man-boy started crying like a baby in her arms.

  As children, their adventurous little spirits were untempered and only encouraged when it led to their discovery of Jun, their newest and most beloved family member, and didn’t diminish with the years. When they were ten, however, their adventures took a deadly turn when they encountered a deadly entity that frequently formed from the resentment of the ancient dead in the sewers. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem since these entities could only exist in brief bursts within the tunnels, and why would there be children in sewage tunnels for this to be a problem?

  If a passing maintenance worker hadn’t heard the terrified screams of the children, neither would have seen the next day. The event had left the little girl with scars both physical and spiritual and the little boy a profound sense of responsibility that shouldn’t be felt by a child.

  The fountain of tears lil Davie shed that day wasn’t because of the ass whipping he got from his poppy for taking Lily down into the sewers to look for monsters. They were shed exclusively for the scar on Lily’s soul that he was solely responsible for.

  While Lily often put up a strong front to the rest of her family, enduring the pains of a damaged soul with a smile, it was in Davie’s protective arms that she was free to cry in pain, to find the strength to endure another day.

  Years of Davie’s comforting back strokes made her more familiar with Davie’s hands than any other. So they were hers. If there was one lesson she learned from her older sister, it was to mark him early and protect your territory, and unlike her, she meant to keep it.

  For the first time in their lives, their roles had reversed as Lily sat and comforted a tearful Davie, gently stroking his back, whispering that they were fine now.

  She knew how shackled with guilt he’d been. It never mattered how much she insisted it was her choice to go exploring with him and that he was too young to protect her from the surprise attack of a rare spectral monster.

  Now the spiritual scars that marred her soul and caused constant burning pain that no modern medicine could cure or alleviate, were gone. She was free now. And so was he.

  Neither cared for the looks and whispers when so much joy was to be felt. A joy gifted by their older brother. Jun.