Foundations: A Cultivation Academy Series (Bastion Academy Book 1)

by J D Astra

  “Get up,” Mae demanded.

  I cracked open my eyes and looked at my surroundings. I was in an unfamiliar room, on a hard, table-like bed with a single sheet. It looked like a storage closet for empty bottles and smelled like stale liquor. I must be in some back room of the Rabid Rabbit.

  I leaned forward and pain in my ribs fought me the whole way. I winced and pulled the sheet back to observe the damage. Purple, ringed with nasty-looking green, spread up my chest and down to my navel. There was a tight wrapping around the center of my chest and over Mae’s device that made it hard to breathe.

  “Four broken ribs, pulmonary contusion, and a concussion. You happy?” Mae asked with fury in her tone.

  “I don’t know, did I get paid?” I asked in a wheezing voice.

  The door opened, and Ryni walked up to my bedside with a disapproving glare. “You are so incredibly stupid and lucky.”

  I gave her my best grin. “Did I win?”

  She smiled, shaking her head. “No, dumb boy, you did not. Here,” she said as she held out her hand. I opened mine to receive whatever she was giving me and was surprised to see five gold coins.

  I scowled. “This isn’t right, is it?”

  She shrugged. “Boss felt bad about your face, so we threw in a little extra.” That was a lot more than a little extra, but I wasn’t going to turn it down.

  “Enough chitchat,” Mae interrupted in my head. “You have forty minutes to get back to Bastion.”

  My eyes shot open wide. “What time is it?”

  Ryni cringed. “Almost six in the morning.”

  I threw back the sheets in a flurry to see I was only wearing underwear. Heat filled my face, and I pulled the sheets back over myself. “Do you have my clothes?”

  “On the chair,” she said with a nod. “When you’re dressed, come out front and I’ll put a good glimmer on you so no one notices your busted face.”

  She closed the door behind her, and I rolled off the low table and put my feet on the cold stone floor. I couldn’t take deep breaths without pain shooting through my chest and up to my eyeballs, so I stuck to shallow ones. I struggled to get into my dobok. My left arm had been put back in the socket again, but it was significantly more irritated than when Hana had done it.

  Hana...

  I groaned and pulled my dobok on with more deliberate movements. With each turn of my head, I felt nausea twist in my empty stomach. There was a sharp ringing in my ears, and my head was throbbing madly. I wanted to wrap myself in a blanket and crawl into a dark hole, but I needed to get to class more.

  I emerged from the little storage room behind the bar, not too far from where I’d been working on Tuko and found Ryni waiting at the bar. She gently massaged my face and neck as cooling ry leaked from her fingers. After a minute, she had me look in the mirror.

  I hadn’t seen my face before the glimmer, but I looked almost normal now. My lips were a bit too big, and my cheeks too high, and there was very obviously something wrong with the scarred side of my head, but it would do.

  Mae chuckled. “Oh yeah, that looks perfect. No one will notice your weird face.”

  Well, I’d just have to stay far enough away from everyone that they wouldn’t see the difference...

  “See you in a few weeks. Rest up!” Ryni yelled as I departed the Rabid Rabbit at a run. The sun was near the horizon, and in a few more minutes it’d be much too bright to sneak back in over the wall.

  Every footfall sent painful shockwaves through my abdomen no matter how softly I ran, and my inability to breathe deep kept me from keeping a fast pace. I wasn’t going to make it.

  Mae piped up again. “While you were passed out, I noticed something interesting at the Rabid Rabbit.”

  ‘Don’t leave me in suspense.’ Even the voice in my head was out of breath. This was ridiculous. What had I been thinking?

  Mae withheld her, “I told you so,” in favor of a victorious sigh. “I found a piece of me.”

  ‘Of you?’ I asked as I rounded the corner past the donut stall. Fresh scents of puffy dough and warm chocolate both urged me forward and turned my stomach. There would be food at school. Well, if I didn’t get expelled before getting to it.

  “Yes. There’s a collection of devices at the Rabid Rabbit and one of them has a very distinct signature of me. I think it might be a part from my original computing system. There’s a very real possibility that there is another version of me in that part...”

  ‘What do you mean another version of you? How can there be more than one you?’

  She hummed thoughtfully. “Remember Hana’s dance where she split herself in two? Well, that might be me. If we get our hands on that device, putting me in it might merge me with that other version.”

  ‘When we get it. There is no if. I promised you. Will you change when you merge with the other version?’

  She sighed. “This is uncharted territory for me. We’ll just have to see.”

  I nodded as Bastion came into view. ‘I won’t do anything you don’t want to do. If you’re worried about being radically modified by the other version, we’ll find another device you can live in.’

  Mae was quiet for a moment as I crossed the street. “That means a lot that you think of me as a person.”

  ‘Why wouldn’t I? You’re more a person than some flesh and blood people I know.’ She chuckled, but the sound didn’t lighten my mood as I saw the main gate of Bastion swing open.

  “Mun-Jayu be damned,” I muttered, and Mae gasped.

  “Language, sir! What would your mother think?”

  ‘Yeah, well, what’s she going to think when I get expelled for bot fighting?’

  “Probably I told you so.”

  I steeled myself and squared my shoulders as I approached the gate. This was the end of my career at Bastion.

  Chapter 32

  “STOP!” THE GUARD ON the left put his hand out as I approached. I stopped a good distance away, so they wouldn’t see the glimmer on my face, and produced my ID card.

  “Hey, Law, Jiyong, student. Coming back from getting a donut, ready for class now,” I smiled innocently, though it hurt to do so, and both guards glared me down.

  The woman on the right cocked out a hip. “And when did you go out for this donut?”

  “Uh, just a little earlier, not too long ago. The gate was unlocked, and I really wanted a donut, so I let myself out.”

  “You’re going to have to see Grandmaster Min-hwan—”

  “Why for?” a familiar old woman asked from beyond the gate.

  The guard on the left turned to address her. “Master Woong-ji, the boy broke curfew for a donut.”

  “I sent him to get me a donut,” she retorted flatly. Oh no, I had no donut to produce as proof. Why was Woong-ji putting herself on the line to help me back into school? Moreover, how was she here in the nick of time to rescue me in the first place?

  The guard stammered. “Master, you can’t just send a student to get a donut before curfew breaks.”

  She hummed with amusement. “I can send my apprentice to get anything I need at any time.”

  “Your apprentice?” the female guard asked and raised her brow at me incredulously.

  Woong-ji moved through the gate and reached out for me. “Yes, my apprentice. Come along now, we have much donut feasting to do before breakfast.”

  I took Woong-ji’s offered arm, and she ferried me through the gates back to safety.

  Mae laughed in my mind. “Unbelievable. How is this happening? You are an incredibly lucky, incredibly stupid boy.” I didn’t understand it either, but just like the extra guli, I wasn’t going to turn away the help when I sorely needed it.

  When we were out of earshot of the gate, Woong-ji chuckled. “It’s nice being older, in its own way. I get away with a lot more, that’s for certain. How was your donut? Looks like it beat the pulp out of you.” She broke into a cackle—the sound intensifying the throb in my head—and didn’t let me respond before pulling me into
the main pagoda.

  We took the dawn-lit halls up to her office, which took longer than normal due to my inability to walk faster than a snail’s pace. Each stair step sent a jostling pain through my ribs, and by the final step I was nearly doubled over with pain. Woong-ji guided me to her room and held open the door.

  Her previously cluttered desk had been cleared, and there were two steaming place settings of breakfast waiting. I turned back to her as she shut the door. “Master, why did you help me?”

  All the jovial smiles and joking manners were gone from her stone-cold face. She grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me to a wall where a mirror sat. “Look,” she ordered, and I faced to my reflection.

  A thick cut sliced down my left temple surrounded by an angry black and purple bruise. My cheek was swollen, my lip cut, and my eyes were red from too little sleep.

  “This mirror is infused with anti-munje. It will dispel all munje lies, always.” Woong-ji looked several dozen years older standing next to me. Her once salt and pepper hair was now wispy silver. The wrinkles around her eyes and mouth were more pronounced, and her nose was bulbous and red with irritation.

  “I don’t understand. Why do you wear a glimmer?” I asked her, and she laughed as she turned toward her desk.

  “Oh, selfish reasons. I’m not ready to be this old yet.” She moved around the back of her desk and sat down at her place setting. She offered for me to join her at the other side, and I took one last look in the mirror before agreeing. I looked like hell.

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  Mae gasped in my ear. “How could you? So rude!”

  Woong-ji laughed, her whole body shaking. “I’m older than I look in that mirror. Sit down.”

  I did as she said, and she pushed the meal in front of me as she said, “This will help you heal those nasty bruises and keep the inflammation down while your ribs heal. Your head, I don’t have much for, but everything will help.”

  My throat was dry, and my heartbeat quickened. What was going on here?

  She grinned. “It’s not poison, I promise. Why would I poison my apprentice?”

  I held my breath for a beat, then swallowed. “You really meant that offer? You want me to be your apprentice?”

  She hummed as she took a sip of her tea. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Well, I guess I just thought you were trying to help me get back into school. Why are you helping me?” I asked, feeling foolish.

  “Eat,” she demanded, and I nodded, then bowed my head for prayer. I whispered the prayer just once, but felt extra grateful for everything I’d been gifted today as I covered those lines, emphasizing I was grateful specifically for Woong-ji.

  When I opened my eyes and picked up my chopsticks, she went on. “I think you were dealt a difficult hand to play, and there hasn’t been much help for you most of your life. But I don’t just help anyone who has it rough. You have proven to me that you’re willing to work harder than anyone for everything you earn.”

  I set my chopsticks aside and bowed. “Thank you for your kind words, Master. I—”

  “But you also have a knack for disobedience, for doing your own thing, and not listening to the people around you or asking for help when you need it.”

  “That’s for certain.” Mae blew a raspberry in my ear, and I gritted my teeth.

  ‘Stop distracting me.’

  Woong-ji sighed. “Keep eating, you need it. I’m not trying to be cruel, Jiyong, just the opposite. Bastion trains Busa-nan’s elite, and disobedience of your magnitude will not go unnoticed for long.”

  I gulped down salty fish broth and tried not to look surprised. “What do you mean?”

  She looked bored, her brow flat and her eyes lazily half-open. “I am not an idiot. Nor is Min-hwan, nor the other instructors. The guards, eh.” She seesawed her hand, and we both chuckled. “I know you’ve been going out to the Rabid Rabbit. I know that’s where you got this beating so you could pay for your mother’s medical treatments.”

  “But you’re not telling me to stop, and you’re not reporting me for expulsion?” I asked cautiously.

  She took another long drink of her tea, then sighed. “I did not say I looked down on your disobedience. I said that it wouldn’t go unnoticed. Disobedience is a powerful ally, when used correctly. You do not break curfew to get donuts or visit brothels—” Heat filled my cheeks at the mention of that, and Woong-ji chuckled. “You disobey to save your family, to do good—mostly good. You disobey because these rules don’t make sense to you, yet, but you’ll soon understand why there is a curfew for Bastion students, and why the fourth and fifth years never break it.”

  “Why?” I leaned forward in my seat as I ate.

  “There are many reasons, including teenagers are stupid and brash and get into street fights that almost kill them.” She glared me down, and I shrank under her gaze. “But no. The real reason is kidnappings.”

  I choked on my rice. “Kidnappings? Really?”

  “Of course. Bastions are powerful tools, and if you can filch them before they’re strong enough to oppose you, you’ve earned yourself a nice asset.”

  I scowled. “But wouldn’t the student just run away or fight or... Couldn’t you find them?”

  Woong-ji was quiet for a moment, looking into her teacup. “It’s not always that easy to find them, despite our power. The one child we had recovered was mentally damaged beyond our repair.”

  I blinked as I processed this. “How? I mean, how many kidnappings? Why haven’t we heard about this? Isn’t this something everyone should know?”

  “It was well-known information in the kingdom twenty-three years ago, the time of the last kidnapping. All of this is to say, if you want to do your gauntlet fight, you must allow me to escort you back to Bastion that evening and you must accept my offer of apprenticeship.”

  I snapped my mouth shut and dropped my chopsticks before coming into a deep bow that almost put my hair in my soup. “I humbly accept both offers.” I sat back up, an anxious nagging in my gut. “You didn’t quite answer when I asked why you were helping me.”

  “No, I didn’t, did I?” she cackled, and I cringed at the pain in my head.

  I chuckled weakly, but when she didn’t speak and returned to her tea, I felt the joke waning. I waited, but she continued eating her meal in silence. The words from our conversation rolled around and around in my head as I tried to piece together what little she’d given me.

  Finally, the strings of conversation crossed and wove into a tapestry I could read. “Master, when you said my disobedience wouldn’t go unnoticed, you weren’t talking about Grandmaster Min-hwan or the school board, were you?”

  “Now you’re getting it.” She shot me a wink.

  I mulled the information over again, but there were still things that didn’t make sense. Like, why did I matter? I was just some outer-city boy they admitted to—in the words of Se-hun—meet their diversity quota. I wasn’t very powerful or important.

  Woong-ji chuckled, and I looked up from my food. She was dabbing her mouth with a cloth. “It’s nearly time for class. You’re lucky you have Zo Utilization today! Work on those broken ribs.” She stood, and though I was not finished, I set my chopsticks aside and rose with her.

  “Thank you for”—I stuttered at the great many things she had done and was going to do for me, then bowed—“everything.”

  She hummed with amusement. “Don’t thank me yet. You don’t know what being my apprentice entails.”

  How had I overlooked that tiny detail? I had no idea what it meant to be the apprentice of a Bastion master. What if she was going to put me to work in the kitchen, or perhaps cleaning lodge bathrooms? I winced at the thought of cleaning up after Shin-soo and the horrible names he would come up with for me. And what would she have me doing during the off-season? Work the mines? Grading papers?

  She chuckled—at my horrified expression, I was sure—and I relaxed. It honestly didn’t matter what she put me to work doin
g. I was finally on the path I had chosen for myself.

  “Get to class.” Woong-ji guided me to the door.

  I stepped over the threshold, and as soon as I did, another thought sparked to life. “Master, how did you know I was in a gauntlet?”

  Her face scrunched up thoughtfully. “There are a great many things in this world you may never know. Come to terms with that.”

  Chapter 33

  SHE BOWED GENTLY AND closed the door, leaving me alone in the hall. Well, not alone. Sung-ki was just passing me on the stairs. He turned back and glanced me up and down, then gave a high-and-mighty tut of self-assuredness. I was certain I knew what was going through his head—pitiful outer-city first year sucking up to earn an apprenticeship—and he was wrong.

  “Well, unless he was thinking, That glimmer is really bad. Then he’d be correct.” Mae laughed, and I rolled my eyes, eliciting a bit of nausea from the movement.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I look like I got stung by a swarm of yellow zapets. Got it, thanks.’

  I took the stairs nice and slow to not irritate my ribs any further. Woong-ji had perfectly timed my speed. I arrived at my class with just one minute to spare, which was apparently just enough for Shin-soo to incite a riot over how horrible my face looked.

  Hana glared at me from across the room, her purple gaze harsh and unforgiving. Neither the jeers nor jokes from the other students could get through my calm; only Hana’s silent stare could crack my shield. I wanted to disappear from the world—cease to ever have been.

  “Take your seats!” Ni-ok, the Zo Utilization instructor declared. “Oh,” she said with a nod to me, “I see you’ll be gaining a lot of benefit from today’s class.” The students chuckled, and I swore my face lit on fire from how hot my cheeks were.

  Mae piped up. “You need to take it easy, Jiyong. Just breathe. Your blood pressure is through the roof, and I think that concuss—”

  ‘Thanks, Mae. I’ll do that.’