Hyeong Daesung had a problem. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing—Dae loved problems! Moral conundrums, ethical dilemmas, logic puzzles, mathematical formulae, formation matrices—he could fill a book just describing the different kinds of problems he enjoyed. When they were written down on a piece of paper. Real life problems weren’t quite so enjoyable. They didn’t have tidy solutions, the parameters of the problem weren’t neatly laid out up front, and the nature of the problem could shift at a moment's notice without any input.

That’s not to say they weren’t still interesting. Dae’s first real combat experience had been as thrilling and intriguing as it was terrifying and stressful. He had found himself getting caught up in the fascinating flow of the battlefield—analyzing his opponents, identifying their patterns, and optimizing his spells in a way that created the best results for him and his allies. He’d quickly learned that real life problems weren’t so simple.

He hadn’t even realized they were losing until An Eui and Seong Eunae fell. One after the other before he even had a chance to react. Even now he could vividly remember the sight of their blood on the snowy ground, and the horrifyingly visceral scream of pain as the obsidian wolf’s molten blood covered An Eui. Dae also remembered what he had thought at the time, and it shamed him to this day.

His first thought had been that if he survived the encounter, it would be a valuable lesson about coordination and evaluation of one’s allies as well as opponents. He felt that he had done everything perfectly, and it was simply that his team was inadequate to the task. The obsidian wolves had been too strong, and his allies had been unable to match his problem solving abilities. He had barely finished processing the thought before he was proven completely wrong.

Faced with a hopeless situation, and distraught over the injury and possible death of her best friend, Lee Jia had still managed to quickly and efficiently identify what was wrong with their teamwork—him. Hyeong Daesung had never been more embarrassed in his entire life, despite the embarrassment being entirely private. Nobody even knew what he had been thinking, but he knew, and that was enough.

Dae had been too caught up trying to find the perfect solution. A way to defeat the enemies without sustaining any losses. In his arrogance, he had blamed the inadequacy of his teammates for the failure to execute his perfect solution—but in reality, the inadequacy was his. Lee Jia had realized that seeking the perfect solution meant finding only the path to failure. Instead, she’d intuitively identified a path to victory at any cost.

It wasn’t a pyrrhic victory, either. They had sustained damage, to be sure, but the worst injuries had been those sustained by Seong and An. Injuries that could have been prevented if Dae had been more aggressive from the start—if he hadn’t been so obsessed with perfection.

He wondered if that had been the start of his current problem, or if it had been even earlier. Certainly the problem had begun much earlier than his realization of it—which had been quite recent, actually. The problem was not Dae’s perfectionism, or his arrogance, or even his self-loathing. All very normal and typical problems for a young man in his mid-teens, and learning opportunities that he relished, in hindsight.

No, his problem was even more simple and common than any of that. Embarrassingly common, really. Perhaps, in his arrogance, Dae had thought himself above it—which seemed like a laughable notion, now. His problem was one that had probably plagued boys his age for as long as society had existed and perhaps even before then. His problem had a name, and it was Lee Jia. A girl.

He liked her—obviously, she was his friend—but it was perhaps inevitable that his feelings for her had ended up developing beyond friendship. Ironically, he’d only realized how he felt about her when he learned that everyone else already knew. He’d overheard a conversation between Lee Jia and Minami Yuuko, in which Minami had mistakenly thought that he and Lee Jia were a couple. He hadn’t meant to be eavesdropping, but his hearing was particularly good, even among his people, and they hadn’t exactly been quiet—Lee Jia had a habit of forgetting who was present when she got involved in a conversation.

He’d been mortified when Minami had made the error, and doubly so at how vehemently Lee Jia denied it. He had surprised himself at just how hurt he was just by Lee Jia correcting a misunderstanding, and it didn’t take a genius to realize that it was because he’d have liked Minami’s misapprehension to be true.

Once he realized his own feelings, it put many of his own behaviors into a horribly embarrassing context. He’d been acting like a love-struck moron for months! No, not acting—he had been a love-struck moron. Jumping at every opportunity to do any favor for the girl, to earn her approval, make her smile, prove his own worth—to market himself, essentially.

How far back did it go!? When they’d first met? No...at first he was sure he’d just been intrigued by her. A mortal girl who’d somehow ended up gaining entry to the Academy by chance? Well, even back then Dae had suspected his master might have had a hand in that, but it was still remarkable. And of all the people she could have approached for assistance—she’d picked him. There was probably nobody else in the entire academy better suited to help her.

Dae had been quick to identify that luck for what it really was—intuition. All mages had it—probably all cultivators. It was a poorly understood concept, but common enough to be undeniable, and there were clear parallels in the other disciplines if you knew where to look. Spiritual artists believed in a sort of predestination—the idea that some individuals were born more or less lucky, and that if you could identify that luck, you could take advantage of the favor of the heavens.

Dae wasn’t really certain what the equivalent for martial artists was, but he was sure it would be there, if he looked. Intuition—an uncanny ability to simply feel the right course of action, to understand something without ever really knowing. Many young mages and proto-mages learned to trust their intuition, letting it guide them to the best outcomes without a need to fully grasp why. As they grew older, most mages lost or ignored their intuition, learning to trust hard data and science above all else. And the oldest? The truly venerable sorcerers such as Magus Hwang, or Dae’s master, Do Hye—they learned to trust their intuition again.

The most advanced levels of cultivation required sparks of inspiration that defied logical analysis. One had to understand the very fabric of existence, and their own place and purpose within it. It wasn’t something that mortal minds were made to comprehend—but the intuition of a cultivator was what allowed them to surpass the limitations of a mortal mind.

Lee Jia’s intuition was—to put it bluntly—completely absurd. Dae had grown up around mages—spent his entire life immersed in the culture of magical study. He’d met dozens—hundreds of talented people. A strong intuition was not uncommon among such peers, but Lee Jia’s defied explanation. Dae had been fascinated by both the speed of her cultivation, as well as her ability to pick friends and allies. That fascination had grown into admiration when he saw the way that she made decisions under pressure, and conducted herself in what should have been hopeless battles.

Then, from admiration—well, Dae had a problem. He liked Lee Jia, really liked her, but he hadn’t the slightest clue what to do about it. He had no experience with girls—not that he hadn’t known any, but they’d mostly just been classmates—and he had learned his lesson about real-life problems being more complicated than his favorite math puzzles. This wasn’t a problem he could research his way out of. He certainly wasn’t going to ask his master about it. He shuddered at the very thought—that would be asking for disaster.

No, this was a problem he had to face on his own—or at least choose his allies carefully. Perhaps Ishihara and Fujino? Not Harada—Dae suspected that Harada Jun wasn’t interested in...girls. Fujikawa? No, girls had solidarity. Even the studious and pragmatic Fujikawa would likely tell Lee Jia right away. Tae In-Su? No, terrible idea! His roommate and brother-in-craft hated Lee Jia. For now, his strategy would just be to give himself as many opportunities for contact as possible.

Easier than expected, despite the fact that she was grounded to her dorms—where he was unable to visit her. She’d started tutoring more than half of the members of his martial arts class, and since he was already friends with everybody involved, it was trivial to get himself invited to join those extracurricular training sessions.

Chances to speak to her alone were much more difficult. Not only were the training sessions very much a group activity, but Lee Jia had become increasingly inseparable from her friend and roommate An Eui. For whatever reason, Miss An didn’t seem to like Dae very much. At first he had simply attributed it to her generally hostile attitude—it was a wonder she’d become friends with Lee Jia at all, and apparently she had bonded with Takeda Rika over a stab wound of all things—but no matter how comfortable An Eui got with Jia’s other friends and associates, her attitude towards Dae always seemed to land somewhere between cold and outright hostile.

Was it misandry? Had he insulted her in some way without realizing? Perhaps she realized his feelings and was simply over-protective of her best friend. Regardless, An Eui was now his greatest obstacle towards...well, Dae wasn’t even entirely sure what his goal was at this point. He was acting on intuition—for once trying to solve a problem with his heart, instead of his head. It was a problem of the heart, after all.

He chucked to himself at the wordplay. Hyeong Daesung had a problem, but he realized as Lee Jia waved at him from across the training field, that it wasn’t a bad problem to have. He waved back, blushing fiercely before he averted his eyes awkwardly.

Not a bad problem at all.

Jia finished giving Yuuko a few tips on Corruption of the Fetid Bog, then left her to her meditation to go join Dae, who was supposed to be working with Fujino and Harada on something, but seemed to have gotten lost in his own thoughts. It was a bit embarrassing, teaching someone else her incomplete technique, but Yuuko had insisted that Jia’s noxious aura would be a huge boon to her own style. Jia had tried to explain that it wasn’t a very good idea, but Yuuko was extremely stubborn.

Only Yuuko had actually chosen to use any of the manuals that Jia had to offer. The boys had both decided to work with Dae to select manuals from the archives that suited their styles. After some discussion, Fujino’s team had decided to give up on their uniform style. Yue, Jia, and Dae had explained to them that forcing themselves into a predefined mold might be good for combat in the short term, but would dramatically limit their future potential.

While the boys worked with Dae to find spiritual techniques suited to them, the girls—and Ishihara—availed themselves of Yue’s knowledge and experience. To Jia’s surprise, Yue’s repertoire was much more diverse than she had imagined. Though Yue didn’t have any manuals, she had memorized the training techniques for over a dozen different spiritual arts of various elements, mostly focused on the neutral and yin-aligned.

“I turned out to have quite a talent for my mother’s signature technique, and made it my own, but the daughters of Qin nobility are expected to know a wide variety of techniques, so that they might be able to train their own daughters one day—daughters that may express talents from entirely different clans. I’ve never practiced most of these techniques, myself.”

Yue explained, when Jia asked about it. It was an odd way of doing things, but Qin society had very strict gender roles. Izumi Makoto had been inspired by her duels with Rika, and had ended up choosing a technique that employed the element of force, to complement her body’s natural mist affinity. The same elements that Rika used, but in reverse—Jia wasn’t sure how that would end up looking, but she was interested in finding out.

Fujikawa Ayumi had an extremely pragmatic approach, and focused on using a water technique through which she would be able to channel her natural affinity for purity. It was a little bit unbalanced, but Yue assured her that she would be able to balance it out with other techniques after breaking through to the qi condensing stage. In the meantime, it would make Fujikawa one of the most capable healers Jia had seen. One of the only ones, now that she thought about it—healing techniques were surprisingly rare.

Ishihara Nao was a little bit of a strange case. The frail, gloomy looking boy didn’t speak much, but he had taken a keen interest in Yue’s signature Melody of the Dreaming Moon technique. Though it didn’t balance out his body’s natural affinity for the rare sky element, it complemented it well enough, and he seemed to be very enthusiastic about the idea of mind magic.

Jia grimaced at the idea, finding the entire concept unpalatable. It was horribly intrusive, and she’d had nothing but bad experiences with it so far. According to Yue, her mother’s technique was actually considered to be one of the more gentle forms of mind manipulation known to cultivators, with some of the more extreme techniques actually being banned as forms of demonism. Jia couldn’t possibly imagine why.

Jia joined the boys’ group—and Eui, who had been harassing them about something or other as an excuse to avoid being anywhere near Yue. Fujino smiled brightly and bowed in greeting as she approached.

“Ah! Greetings Miss Lee! Miss An was just warning us of the dangers associated with the element of destruction. Harada has a natural corrosion affinity, and he was considering learning a destructive art to complement it, but apparently that’s not recommended.”

Eui snorted derisively, waving off Dae who was nervously trying to interject.

“No shit it’s not recommended! If I didn’t have a natural affinity for it, there’s no chance I’d be fucking with the destruction element, and even then it’s already caused me a ton of problems. You’ll probably learn Body Lightening at some point anyway, so you may as well train Awakening Dragon or something like it. Train the component elements separately so you don’t have to deal with the actual destruction element itself.”

Dae blinked in surprise at Eui.

“That...is rather insightful, Miss An. Once again, you are surprisingly well informed.”

Eui rolled her eyes and made a rude gesture at Dae.

“Fuck off, Hyeong! I get it—you think I’m stupid. You can stop being surprised that I’m not any time.”

Jia grimaced as everyone present took a half step away from Eui. She’d been particularly irritable lately, and though Dae was well-meaning, Eui wasn’t exactly wrong. Eui actually spent most of her free time reading and studying, but her harsh demeanor and penchant for violence tended to give people the wrong impression.

Jia stepped in to try to defuse things a bit.

“I’m sure he just meant that he was impressed by your knowledge of mana theory, Eui. Remember that we haven’t been studying for as long as most of the other disciples.”

Eui crossed her arms and looked away, frowning.

“Sure, whatever.”

Jia smiled weakly, but was willing to accept Eui’s begrudging cooperation for now. She turned back to Fujino, Harada, and Dae.

“Any progress picking out your spiritual arts?”

Fujino nodded.

“Senior Dae has recommended some techniques. I’ll be balancing out my stone affinity with a sky art—not the Path of Heavenly Ascension, since that’s a bit too advanced for a novice like me.”

Harada glanced at Dae and frowned for a moment before shrugging.

“Dae recommended a lightning art for me, but I’d prefer to focus on power now, and balance things out later.”

Jia tilted her head curiously.

“Lightning and Corrosion? That’s the same combination as me, except backwards—like Izumi and Rika.”

“I’m sure it’s fine, Miss Lee, but I’d rather find my own path.”

Jia smiled at Harada and for some reason that only caused his frown to deepen.

“I can respect that! Following someone else’s tried and true method is easiest, but I think that forging your own path has a lot more potential.”

Harada scoffed and turned away, and Fujino chuckled awkwardly.

“We’ve actually started attending Elder Qin’s regular lessons, and that’s pretty much word for word what he said as well.”

Jia blushed and scratched an ear.

“Uh...sorry. I wasn’t really trying to quote him.”

“Not at all, it’s good to have an important lesson reinforced. Some of us have rather mixed feelings about Elder Qin and spiritual arts in general. The Qin disciples haven’t exactly been welcoming—they’re particularly dismissive of the girls.”

“Tch, well that’s what we’ve got Yue for, I guess. She wasn’t a third stage cultivator at eighteen for nothing.”

Fujino laughed jovially.

“Hahaha, true! I’m a little envious of the girls, getting such a superlative tutor. I suppose centuries of freely available conventional practice methods is rather a steep price to pay for it, though.”

“Well, I don’t have Yue’s experience, but I do have plenty of unconventional practice methods that I can share. Speaking of which, Dae, are you free?”

Dae looked up with a start.

“Yes! I-I mean, um, probably hehe. For what?”

Jia raised an eyebrow at him. He was being weirdly eager again—wait, did she ever get around to talking to him about—ancestors damn it, she’d forgotten. Well it would be too awkward to bring it up now, in front of everyone, so she stuck to what she had originally planned to say.

“I was hoping you could help me gather my thoughts on the theory of unified cultivation so that we can put together a presentation on it. I think it would be helpful if we could figure out how to practice it without getting choked nearly to death by a demon’s domain.”

“A-ah...yes, that would be wise, hehe. Should we meet in the library, then?”

Jia shook her head.

“I’m still semi-housebound. Instead I’ve asked Magus Hwang to let you join us on our next visit to his lab. We can talk about it then—oh! I also wanted to ask you about defensive formations—we’ve had some issues with vandalism recently.”

Dae frowned.

“I’d heard about that—terrible business. Of course I will help as much as I can, but for that you’d best attend some of my master’s lessons—you are registered for them, you know.”

Oh, right. Jia had forgotten that Do Hye was here to teach formations. She’d yet to actually attend any of his lessons, having focused on other things leading up to last month's incident and then entirely forgotten about it since.

“I guess I’ll do that, then. Thanks, Dae.”

Dae’s face brightened and he beamed at her happily, his tail wagging.

“Any time, Miss Lee!”

Jia’s smile stiffened a bit as Eui—and Harada for some reason—both glared angrily at her and Dae. She should have listened to Eunae while she had the chance. Now, she had a problem.