Jingyi Bo’s group of associates had more than doubled - a harrowing, but necessary experience in this world of cultivation. By some miraculous gift of the gab, Chao Da had even managed to convince the others to share resources - namely, allow each other to share techniques, awakening advice, jade slips and this training location.

Bo’s initial shock over learning the name of a woman who ostensibly had been stalking her was greatly smoothed over by how eager she was to provide assistance and stay out of the way. A quiet observer, compared to the rest, who seemed to be something of a kindred spirit to Bo herself. Izumi didn’t join in the Saoka games - there was an uneven number of players with her involved, and she seemed more content to watch from the side-lines. In fact, her observational skill was of great worth to everyone. Izumi was quite talented, able to point out small mistakes people had made. Bo’s only worry was that Izumi seemed to be especially critical towards her specifically.

“Jingyi! You could have scored a goal there!” The entire afternoon had been punctuated with such outbursts, and while everyone appreciated the advice, it was starting to wear on Bo. “When Hizashi feinted a block towards Youni, you had a clear shot with a low kick.”

It didn’t help that she was usually right. “Jingyi! Amai was wide open there!” “Jingyi! You’re meant to collect the ball, not let Tatsumaki steal it out from under you!” “Jingyi!” “Jingyi!”

The sun was starting to set, and Jingyi Bo had a headache. “How about we stop playing for a bit and work on your awakenings … ?”

Of the lot of them, Bo was the only one who had awakened her mana sense. Chao and his gang had been actively trying, but apart from Izumi (who, to Bo’s distinct distress, had apparently been seated within sight of her in every magic lesson she attended), the others had been purely focused on their martial arts.

“Wait, Tatsumaki,” Chao raised a hand as they all sat around Bo, “Weren’t you at Elder Qin’s first proclamation? Not to mention, you’re always there at Elder Hwang’s lessons.”

Tatsumaki rubbed the back of his head and laughed sheepishly. “It, uh, never made much sense! All thinking and feeling and stuff. I kept going, but martial arts are so much easier to understand.”

Bo sighed. The group consensus was to work exclusively on mana sense, as the rest had at least beheld Elder Qin’s jade slip. Looking at the state of things, it wasn’t going to be easy. They spent some time into the evening, with Bo only really able to elaborate on Elder Hwang’s lessons from her perspective. With all of them meditating on their awareness, Bo didn’t have much to do but some meditation of her own, though she decided to sit slightly away from them - she recalled how distracting it had been trying to awaken her mana sense in a classroom full of people doing the same thing.

--

Heading home, everyone went their separate ways, promising to meet up again the day after next. Izumi and Hizashi had to walk all the way back to the girl’s dorms, but the rest of them could walk together. Bo wondered, now that Izumi had made herself known, if she might end up getting something better than the shed near the boys, but somehow she didn’t like her odds.

“I think I was wrong in my initial assessment,” Hoshikawa noted, “But I’m still keeping my eye on you.”

The diminutive martial artist was still keeping close to his cousin, but his face said it all. One measly round of meditation and a ball game wasn’t going to convince me that you’re not up to something!

“Cousin, you worry too much!” Bo hated how much she loved hearing Amai laugh. He was the prime example of how martial arts can do wonders for your looks. Not that Bo was particularly into masculine guys. Amai looked down at Bo, and she realised she had been staring - her head snapped forward, eyes on the path, no cute boys in sight.

“Jingyi, the others call you ‘senior’, but you seem more like Junpei’s age. Just how old are you?” His easygoing and innocent smile was something that Bo made a point of not looking at, even as she answered - or began to.

“You can’t just ask a lady her age!” Chao blurted out. Jaw dropping, Bo turned and glared at him. After a moment of silence, Chao realised what he had just said. “A-Ahaha, th-that is to say, it’s lucky that Senior Bo is … not a lady!”

Bo would have slapped her palm to her face in disgust, if it weren’t for the quiet murmur of agreement. All of them seemed to simply just accept that on face value, it seemed. Are all guys this daft? Or just the ones I choose to spend time with? I don’t know whether my looks are a blessing or a curse at this point.

The matter of Bo’s age apparently lost to this turn in conversation, it wasn’t long until she was able to peel away to her shed. In the interests of keeping the location a secret from as many people as possible (despite how easy it was to find, apparently), Bo parted ways and headed into an alley, doubling back to her shed out of sight. It was only when she closed the door behind her that she allowed herself a sigh of relief, one she hadn’t realised she had been holding all day.

--

Bo awoke the next morning with a start. There were people in her shed! Leaping to her feet, ready to defend herself and her meager possessions, she realised she needn’t have worried.

“Well how’s about that, Fu?”
“What’s it, Mu?”
“Looks like that young feller’s awake!”
“Well, heck! Yer right!”

Ru Fu, and Ru Mu. Two old men that Bo had never expected to see again, now inexplicably sitting in her shed drinking her tea! Both of them gave her those familiar, toothy grins and went straight back to drinking and chatting over whatever it was old men found interesting.

“What the heck are you two doing in my house?!”

“Woah, you live in a shed?”
“Even we don’t live in no shed, feller!”
“‘Sides, this is our shed!”

Both of the men laughed. Bo raised an eyebrow.

“What do you mean, your shed? I was given this shed to live in when I arrived here.”

“Don’t s’pose you’ve been here longer th’n the Academy has, have ya?”
“Consid’rin’ we dragged you here, I doubt it!”

After getting the two to stop laughing in her face, and retrieving a cup of tea for herself, Bo forced them to explain. The two were apparently some kind of mortal handymen who had been brought here for their skill. To hear the two Ru men speak, one would think they were cultivators of their own kind - their abilities lying entirely in knowing how to do every mundane, mortal task imaginable.

“Wait, weren’t you two rice sellers?”

“Well, at the time, we was.”
“We was land-clearers, then we was farm-hands, then we was rice-sellers, then we was--”
“Fu! We don’t talk ‘bout that one.”
“Riiight, right, Mu. We don’t talk ‘bout that one. Then we was groundskeepers!”

“That … still doesn’t explain how you’re in my shed. Or why.”

“This was our shed when we helped build the place up! Stashed our snacks in ‘ere!”
“‘Course, we din’t know it was gonna be a big ol’ Academy, ‘til we came back ‘ere with the whole place put together. Real nice of ‘em to leave the ol’ shed behind, even if they tried lockin’ it up.”
“But it’s real easy to get back in here. Watch!”

Fu (or Mu, Bo was never quite sure which was which) stood up, walked out the door and shut it behind him. Jingyi Bo’s heightened senses let her hear the lock click into place, and her mana sense saw the formation that sealed it against casual intrusion activate - it would normally require a key, like the one Bo carried on her at all times. The Ru brother simply slammed the door with a fist - the entire lock mechanism bounced and came free, and the formation was disrupted long enough for him to just open the door. Bo knew she had been shoved in here as a last-moment consideration, but she didn’t realise just how last-moment that had been in the first place.

The brothers didn’t seem in any hurry to leave - in fact, they treated Bo like a house guest, rather than the other way around. They prepared rice for her, made her a second pot of tea, and rambled about old people's stuff for nearly two hours. In fact, Bo had zoned out so hard that she hadn’t even realised that she was meant to be at Elder Hwang’s lesson in a few minutes. Bidding the men a good day and a good please get out of my house, she sprinted out the door.

Jingyi Bo’s martial arts awakening was a blessing in this case. She sprinted at top speed all the way to the lecture hall, arriving moments before the class was meant to start. The hall’s seats were nearly filled, even her traditional place surrounded by the Chao gang. The three of them looked sadly at her - Tatsumaki Ryu had elected to take the central seat, and Youni couldn’t see past him. One good place remained, right next to Izumi Makoto.

Izumi had very clearly saved a spot. She had a fist on the chair, and glared daggers at other people daring to come closer. Given that most of the attendees were mages, they clearly thought better about tussling with a Yamato martial artist over a singular seat. There were possibly a handful of mages in the room that would be fast and skilled enough to avoid getting punched in the gut, and all of them had the wits to simply show up on time. Bo approached the seat, and was relieved to see that she wasn’t going to get gut-punched for it.

“I thought you might be late, what with the return of those men.” Izumi’s voice was low, but just enough for Bo to hear.

“Y-You knew about them … ?”

“I did a bit of digging through the records. Apparently they had tea with Magus Hwang during construction and he quite liked them, so the shed remained. They’ve been called back--”

“To be groundskeepers, I know that much. They talked about it for two hours straight!”

Izumi giggled. She was quite cute when she laughed. Why am I staring at her like that? She’s a girl! With a blink, Bo turned her attention back to the front of the lecture hall. Elder Hwang had taken the stage and was starting his lecture.

--

The next day, down on the Saoka pitch, the group met up once more. Jingyi Bo had already been quite the insomniac, so her martial arts awakening left her waking up earlier and earlier. The sun had barely risen by the time she got there, only to find all of the Yamato students already in attendance. Izumi was off to one side, meditating, while the other three were practicing their martial arts forms. Hizashi Kokoro was the first to notice Bo's approach.

“Good morning, Jingyi!” The sun had yet to rise, but here it was smiling at her. Bo almost had to cover her eyes for fear of being blinded by the woman’s enthusiasm. Bo returned a small bow and fell in alongside their practice.

“Ah, hello, Jingyi!” Amai Ichiro gave a wave. Hoshikawa Junpei elbowed him in the side, glared at Bo and got straight back to it. Tatsumaki Ryu entirely ignored her, punctuating every practice strike with a loud grunt.

“Good morning to all of you, I suppose …” Bo stifled a yawn. She couldn’t help but look over at Izumi, meditating quietly. Perhaps she was more confident in her martial arts than she let on?

--

A rousing day of Saoka passed without much incident. The goals were transformed from stone to metal after a particularly impressive kick from Tatsumaki sent the ball flying straight through the stone arch. The ball itself frequently required repairs, something Bo was capable of, but none of the group could think of a way to particularly prevent this from happening. Apart from that, everyone had begun to fall into a groove - they all knew the rules, and it was a simple game of emerging tactics, refining skills and getting to know one another’s limits.

Jingyi Bo felt she had a fairly good handle on what everyone was capable of. Everyone here had their own spiritual or martial arts to work with, on top of Elder Ienaga’s basic forms. 

Tatsumaki had a Heat-based technique that allowed him to leap higher than everyone else, and remain in the air longer than normal - he used it mostly for a kind of spinning kick maneuver that enabled him slam a ball down out of the air with extreme force. He refused to share the technique with anyone, claiming it to be a family technique - Izumi thoroughly deflated him when she noted that it was a family technique of basically every family from the man’s home province.

Amai and Hoshikawa had similar techniques with slightly different elemental expressions. The older of the two showed an affinity for Earth and was able to use it to harden his body and add weight to his strikes. The younger cousin seemed to have a more compatible elemental affinity in Metal, the technique being more effective in his hands, if only limited by his being smaller and lighter than his older cousin. 

Hizashi’s technique was probably the most difficult to deal with, at least in this specific circumstance, though Bo could see it being a nightmare in a fight. Her affinity was Light, and her technique basically offset and distorted her appearance. It was like looking at an object underwater, the object failing to align with one’s perception. As it involved the ki in her body, she couldn’t maintain it indefinitely, but it fooled all of Bo’s other senses too. Nothing was more frustrating than going to sweep the ball out from under her, only to realise the real thing was a metre to the left.

Izumi, meanwhile, had not even once taken to the Saoka pitch. She was more than happy to shout suggestions to the group, offer martial arts advice where it was needed, and listen to Bo’s mana sense lessons, but she never joined the game. As a consequence, Jingyi Bo hadn’t the faintest clue what kind of martial arts she knew. Unable to hold back her curiosity, while everyone rested at the end of their final Saoka game of the day, Bo approached the girl.

“I just don’t have much interest in the game,” Izumi explained, “And watching is more informative than you’d think. Have you noticed how Chao is always looking back at Amai when he can?”

Sure enough, Chao was currently making a very poor attempt at subtlety, his eyes drinking in Amai. He’s clearly just interested in learning his martial arts, after all. I can’t think of any other reason he would be doing that.

“I don’t think they’d make a very good couple. Chao would never notice, but Wang is always there for him.” Bo made a face at that. A couple?! But they’re both … !

“U-Um, I don’t think they can be a couple anyway, as they’re … you know … ?” Izumi made a face at that. 

“Right, I forgot Qin is a bit backwa-- ahem, of a different opinion on that. In Yamato, it’s perfectly acceptable for any two people to be lovers. It’s accepted in Goryeo too.”

Any two people? Even two boys? Even two girls … ? Bo was in a state of deep concentration, her cheeks slowly flushing red. She looked between the assembled people, thinking about how much attention she had been giving certain people. Sure, her eyes had lingered on Hizashi’s glorious smile, or her bountiful … presence, but she had definitely been just appreciating her aesthetically. Besides, the guys were far more interes-- 

“Senior Bo! Watch this!” Chao, Wang and Youni were all doing a one-handed handstand. It would have been impressive, if not for the fact that their robes were starting to slip. Bo absolutely did not wish to watch this any longer. A sweet, tinkling giggle erupted next to her, and Bo cleansed her visual palate with Izumi’s face. Admiring aesthetically! Much better than the Chao gang!

Izumi caught her staring but didn’t comment, even as Bo’s eyes flicked straight into the ground. One would have thought Bo had found an artifact of immense power by the intensity of her stare.

“Jingyi,” Izumi gently called to her - Why did that voice sound so nice? - “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something I’ve arranged. Hizashi’s housemate has recently been called back home, and there is a spare place there. I sorted the appropriate paperwork to have you moved in there - no more shed!”

“Mhm. Mhm.” Bo nodded along as she spoke, continuing to stare at the ground. Maybe if she stopped looking, her blush would go away. Wait. What did she say? “Y-You mean I can have a real house?!”

Looking back up, Bo realised she had accidentally come a lot closer to Izumi than intended. Both of them shuffled back a little, both of them suddenly a bit self-conscious. They both mumbled an apology and carried on - with Hizashi called in to the conversation. The boys were all trying upside-down handstands now, and Bo was thankful she had Hizashi’s tallness blocking out the unpleasant sight. Youni is right in the way of Amai, anyway …

Brought up to speed, Hizashi’s smile lit up the area. “I’d love to have a new roommate as fun as you, Jingyi!”

“W-Wait, aren’t you worried about, erm, a guy living with you?”

Hizashi just looked confused. “I thought you were a girl, Jingyi.”

Bo sighed. Apparently, only the guys had fallen for it. Still, it was fine - Hizashi was promised to secrecy, and her house was far enough out of the way that it would be easy enough to keep out of sight. Izumi handed over the second key to Hizashi’s house, and Bo couldn’t help but smile as she held it in her hand.

“It’s such a relief, getting to have a real house. I was afraid I was going to be accosted by strangers visiting me whenever they felt like it for the rest of my time here.”

“Don’t rest too easy,” Izumi smirked, “My house is right next to Hizashi’s. It’ll be much easier to keep an eye on you now.”