Chapter 114: My Useless Talent Paid in Food
The herb had survived the night, which was more than Jin had expected, given the beast sharing his room.
Glitch was awake before he was, sitting beside the desk with the focused patience of a creature guarding something that was rightfully his. His gold-eyed stare stayed fixed on the small green sprig as if it might try to escape, but the instant Jin stirred, the full weight of the lizard’s attention swung onto him. The position was clear and deeply aggrieved: an inheritance was being withheld.
"It’s a garnish," Jin said, sitting up. "You get a piece with breakfast. That’s the whole negotiation."
He portioned out the morning feed, feeling the bag’s weight as he did. Lighter than he’d like. A day and a bit left in it. He broke off a small fragment of the herb to go on top, and Glitch inhaled the meal before eating the fragment with the ceremony of a man sampling a fine vintage. Then he looked pointedly at the remaining sprig to indicate that the negotiation was, from his side, ongoing.
The bruise on Jin’s shoulder had faded another shade overnight. Seven days old now, healing at seven days’ honest pace, it no longer seized up his movement the way it had midweek. He ran a hand over it out of habit and got a mild flinch instead of a real one.
Better. Still a bruise. Still his to protect.
He had two things to do that morning, and he did the harder one first.
The call connected on the second ring, three faces crowding the little screen because the whole apartment still fit in one frame.
"Jin." Elena’s face did its usual arithmetic, relief and worry arriving together before he’d said a word. "You look tired. Did something happen?"
"Something good, for once." He kept his voice level. "I passed. The seven-day assessment’s done. I’m in the Regular Combat Program."
For a second, nobody said anything at all.
Then Elsa’s face filled the entire screen. "Obviously you passed." She said it with enormous scorn and a grin she couldn’t kill. "Was there ever a question? Did anyone seriously think you wouldn’t? What was the point of making us wait a whole week—"
"There was a lot of question, actually."
"Well, they were wrong. Everyone who doubted it was wrong." She jabbed a finger at the camera. "I want that in writing. From the school. Framed."
"You and Glitch can start a collection."
Behind her, Elena had already moved past the good news and reached the load-bearing part underneath it. "Are you eating? Is the room safe—does the door lock properly? Is Glitch recovering, is he still hurt from—you said he got hurt during the assessment. Is he limping? Are they treating you decently, or are they—"
"Room locks. I’m eating. Glitch is recovering fine, the bruise is almost gone, he’s not limping, and Meridian’s been hard but fair." Jin answered them in a row before she could stack more on. "Nobody’s mistreating me. It’s a real school. It’s demanding. That’s the whole point of it."
Some of the tension left her shoulders, which was the point.
His father had been quiet the whole time. Arthur’s silences were never empty, and this one had weight in it.
"The combat program," Arthur said finally. Not a question. "You know what that program is for, Jin."
"I know."
"Getting in is the achievement everyone will congratulate you for. What it trains you toward is the part nobody says out loud." Arthur held his eyes through the screen. He was a crippled former Rank 2 Ironclad who’d watched a beast die in an ambush and worked a warehouse desk ever since, and this was one subject Jin wasn’t going to pretend he lacked standing to speak on. "I’m proud of you. I am. Just don’t let passing make you forget what you’re passing into."
"I won’t." Jin meant it. "I’ve seen more of what’s out there in the last month than I ever wanted to. I’m not confused about it."
Arthur studied him a beat longer, then nodded, satisfied.
Which was, of course, when Glitch realized voices were coming out of the phone and that the conversation concerned his triumph.
He shoved his head into frame, radiating the expectation of applause. Elsa shrieked with delight, Elena’s whole face softened, and even Arthur’s mouth twitched.
"There he is," Elsa crowed. "There’s the champion. Look how smug. He knows he won. Jin, he knows."
"He’s been unbearable about it for two days," Jin confirmed.
Glitch preened, taking this as the compliment it was not.
Elena’s voice went practical again under the cooing. "Is the feed they give you enough? A growing beast eats a great deal, and you never ask for anything, you just—"
And there it was. The door Jin had been steering around for the whole call.
"Meridian’s got campus work," he said easily, redirecting before she could finish the thought. "Paid assignments for students. Credits, supplies, that kind of thing. I’m sorting one out today, actually. It’s covered."
It was technically true. He had not yet secured a single thing, but the answer closed the door before Elena could start finding money that didn’t exist in a budget already scraped to the walls, or Arthur could offer something the family couldn’t spare. Jin was not going to take one more thing from people who’d spent their entire savings on a mocked Iron egg so he could sit an exam.
They’d sacrificed everything reasonable already. The rest of it was his to carry.
"You’re sure," Arthur said.
"I’m sure. I’ve got it handled." Jin let a little dryness into his voice to sell it. "Go tell the neighbors your useless son got into a combat program. Enjoy it."
"He’s not useless," Elena said automatically, which was the whole reason he’d said it.
He got off the call before anyone could circle back to money. For a few seconds he stayed sitting there in the quiet afterward, phone still in his hand, then stood and went to do the other thing.
The listing was still where he’d flagged it.
[Campus Support Assignment — Incoming Supply Division]
[Role: Feed Inspection & Nutritional Assessment Assistant]
[Duties: Assess incoming beast-feed shipments for quality, contamination, and nutritional grade.]
[Compensation: Meridian Credits + access to inspected surplus feed]
[Requirement: Demonstrated appraisal or beast-nutrition aptitude.]
[Trial assessment required.]
He submitted with his real, public, unglamorous qualifications: C-Rank Data Appraisal and Device Link, Regular Combat Program student, registered Grey Rock Lizard partner.
The reply came back inside the hour, and it did not read like the response of a division fielding a flood of eager applicants. It read like a division that processed boring, repetitive, thankless work and had trouble keeping assistants because every combat student in the school would rather be swinging a beast at something for merit points.
There was a trial slot that afternoon.
There were, Jin suspected, usually trial slots.
Boredom is an excellent working condition.
A warehouse that paid in food beat a glory assignment that paid after you won, every single day.