Chapter Sixty-Six

"Doing your drills again?" Seishirou asked, peering into the backyard through the kitchen window.

Syaoran looked over, lowering his sword. "I have to practice the basics, so I can learn more complicated techniques later." When I go back. If I go back.

"You were interested in the basics when I taught you, too."

He looked down at his feet. No, that was the Other. "The basics are important. If you don't learn them, you get sloppy."

His teacher watched him a moment more, then abandoned the window so he could slip out through the back door. "It's been almost three days since the fight. Is your wrist feeling better?"

Syaoran nodded. "Yes. It doesn't hurt at all anymore." Cautiously, he curled and uncurled his fingers, letting the muscles in his hand work. After he'd fed from Fai-san's look-alike, the pain in his wrist had all but disappeared. Feeding must accelerate the healing process somehow. That, or whatever Miss Adele put in her tea truly works miracles.

"I figured we'd stay here a few more days," Seishirou said. Syaoran sheathed his sword and sat down on one of Miss Adele's plastic lawn chairs to rest. "Fuuma seems to be responding well to this place. He's woken up twice in the time we've been here. I've even managed to get some real food into him."

"Okay."

"And as long as we're here, I might as well make good on my promise to teach you."

Syaoran felt the first stirring of enthusiasm he'd felt since before he'd fed. "What are we going to learn?"

"Magic. From what I've seen, your array of spells is fairly limited, yes?"

"I guess. I'm really only good at attack spells." I can only destroy, only hurt others . . .

"Right. And there are other kinds of spells that might prove valuable to you. For example, have you ever thought about healing magic?"

"A little." It would've helped in Tokyo. I might've been able to help Sakura with her injuries after she came back.

"Or you could try to move objects with your mind, or even travel between dimensions without Yuuko-san's help."

"I'm not sure that's a good idea."

"But it's the principle of the thing. What if you were in a position where you were unable to contact her, or you didn't have enough to pay? Can you imagine the freedom being able to traverse worlds would give you?"

He bit his lip. Freedom was something he'd seldom experienced. For years, he'd been sealed away in Reed's magic prison. Even after escaping, he'd been hemmed in by the walls of his room in Infinity, away from the piercing glares of his traveling companions, free only in the sense that he could walk away if it ever became too much to bear. The first taste of freedom he'd experienced was having the option to go with Seishirou, and even that had been partially motivated by a desire to escape the cold glances of his traveling companions.

"You don't have to learn all that right now, but it might be beneficial to see how far you can stretch your magic ability. And I can help you with that."

"What do I have to do?"

The dark-haired man smiled. "Follow me. We're going to need an open space."

"Okay." Syaoran followed Seishirou as he climbed over the fence, glancing around to make sure no one noticed the casual display of agility. It was just a small thing, leaping the fence, but the ease with which it was done could've given them away if anyone was paying too much attention. Kurogane-san would've noticed something like that, he thought. But he's probably gone to the next dimension. If they haven't tracked me down by now . . . Yes, they're almost certainly gone. The thought made him feel cold. I wonder what world they've fallen into now.

They walked quite a while, passing people dressed in colorful clothes and wearing shoes with Velcro straps instead of laces. Like everything else in the world, such garments gave away the childish nature of its people. "I don't think I've seen a single child since we've come here," he muttered. Seishirou looked at him, surprised by the observation. He went on, eyebrows knitting together in speculation. "It seems like there should be. If not coming into this country on the train, at least born here naturally. But all the people I've seen are older than I am."

His teacher considered that a moment. "Perhaps they're trapped in their own delusions."

Every citizen of this country, entrenched in the wonders of this place, unable to move forward . . . "It's a little sad. That these people chose to come here to live out a second childhood. What must've driven them to forego the whole process of growing up? Or, more importantly, why build a place like this? Surely, this whole world can't be like this. The human race would die out."

"Very possible," Seishirou said, deep in thought. "Miss Adele is the most competent person we've met in this world, and I suspect her emotional age is no more than seven or eight."

"It seems too . . . idealistic. I'm having trouble believing everything is as great with these people as they act."

"What do you mean?"

"When the Other was traveling with Father, he learned the history of many different countries," Syaoran explained, remembering the countless history books the Other had read when traveling with Fujitaka-san. "One of the things that surprised the Other most was how, in certain totalitarian regimes, people didn't rebel. When reading about the brutal things these dictators sometimes did to their people, one wonders why they don't simply overthrow their leader and make way for a better country. But the simple fact is that most people in such dictatorships are so thoroughly deceived into believing they live in the best country in the world that, in spite of brutal treatment, the idea of rebellion never occurs to them. That was how oppressive these governments were. They could control the thoughts and feelings of their people.

"I wonder if this isn't the same kind of thing," he went on. "Wouldn't that be the perfect plan? Keep all these people in the dark, letting them live in their imaginary happiness, never giving them the opportunity to grow or think for themselves . . . Children don't understand how brutal the world can be—a world that shapes adults into children would be the ideal place to run such a government."

"You learned about all this by reading history books?" Seishirou asked.

"Some of it is speculation," he admitted. "But I've been uneasy about this world since we arrived here. There's something wrong with a world full of adults who refuse to grow up." He glanced up, waiting for his mentor to tell him his speculation was senseless. But Seishirou's face was, for once, serious.

"So you thought so, too, huh." The man lifted one hand to his chin in thought.

Syaoran's volume dropped. "What if this world is a setup? It's happened before, I'm sure of it. The Other once landed in a jungle world where the only intelligent creatures were furry rabbits. He didn't think anything of it, but I wondered how, in such a warm environment, they'd evolved to have heavy fur coats. It didn't make sense. But the only thing I could think of what that someone was interfering with the natural order of things."

"Why would anyone be setting you up, though?"

He watched the lines in the sidewalk go by as they walked. "I don't know," he finally said. He suspected it was Fei Wang Reed, meddling with the intended order of things, but explaining everything to Seishirou would be tedious, and not especially helpful. I'm on my own this time, he thought. I've always been on my own, and I probably always will be.

"Even if this world is a setup, there's no harm in doing a little training before we go."

Syaoran glanced around, remembering their purpose here. They were wandering up the grassy hill to the park they'd fought at only days ago. "We're practicing here?" he asked.

"It's the nearest open space. And it's almost empty."

They crested the hill, and Syaoran realized his teacher was right. The park was totally empty except for one person: the Other.