My Femboy System

Three days. That was all that separated me from the tournament now, and yet it loomed in my mind like an unpaid debt I didn’t have the money for and certainly didn’t intend to repay.

The market district of Graywatch was as crowded as I’d ever seen it, and it wasn’t just the usual noise of vendors shouting over each other about the superior quality of their cabbages.

There was a tension in the air, that electric prickle that says everyone’s pretending to be cheerful but secretly stockpiling something sharp under the counter. People smiled too much. Laughed too loudly. They glanced over their shoulders in the way prey animals do when they can smell the predator but couldn’t see them.

I walked beside Salem, who for all his quiet, looked like the kind of man who could walk through a war camp and somehow keep his boots clean. The man had that infuriating air of self-possession, the one that suggested he’d not only anticipated every possible thing that could go wrong today but also had at least three uncomfortably efficient plans to make it worse for someone else.

I was in the middle of deciding whether the smell in the air was roasted chestnuts or overcooked regret when Salem spoke, and in true Salem fashion, it was not what I was expecting.

"Cecil, you suck with the sword."

I turned my head slowly, the way you do when you’re deciding whether to be offended or simply resign yourself to the fact that the other person’s mouth is connected to some unfiltered place in their brain.

"Well, good morning to you too," I said, deadpan. "And here I was thinking we were going to ease into the insults with a gentle warmup before the main event."

"It’s not an insult," he replied, though he didn’t bother to look at me. His eyes were scanning the crowd, cataloguing something. "It’s an observation. If you go into that tournament with a weapon like that, you’ll be dead before the crowd even sits down."

"That’s comforting," I muttered. I would’ve asked him how he planned to bolster my morale, but knowing Salem, his idea of encouragement was reminding me how many ways I could die in the next week. "So, what then? You going to teach me the ancient, secret art of winning without touching your opponent?"

He gave me a glance, the kind that suggested he’d briefly considered throwing me in a canal just to see if I’d swim. "No. I’m going to get you a weapon that doesn’t make you look like a child who stole his father’s cutlery."

"Ah, so we’re going shopping," I said, because if there’s one thing I love, it’s wandering through stalls of overpriced steel while being judged by a man whose idea of small talk is reminding me of my mortality. "And here I thought I’d be spending the afternoon doing something fun, like stabbing myself in the hand repeatedly."