Chương 262: Chapter : 262

"Good morning," Luna said, her voice still thick with sleep. She shuffled across the room and dropped onto the opposite end of the couch with a soft, satisfied grunt. Her legs curled under her. Her head tilted back against the cushion. Her eyes were already starting to close again.

"It is almost noon," Ken observed without lifting his head.

"Exactly," Luna said, as if this proved her point.

"Good morning." She sat there for a moment, her sleepy eyes fluttering open and closed. Then she took a deep breath, stretched her arms above her head, and let out another enormous yawn. When she lowered her arms, there was something different about her. A brightness in her half-lidded eyes. A color in her cheeks that had been missing for weeks. A quiet, unmistakable vitality that made her look like a flower that had just been watered after a long drought.

"I feel good," Luna announced. She said it simply, without fanfare, but the words carried a quiet, profound weight.

"Like, really good. The poison is gone. My mana channels are clear. I can feel my lightning again, and it is singing." She held up her index finger. A tiny spark of yellow electricity danced between her fingertip and her thumb, crackling softly in the morning light. It was small. Barely visible. But it was there. Alive and bright and full of promise.

"I am officially ready," Luna declared, her tired face breaking into a warm, genuine smile.

"Ready to contribute. Ready to fight. Ready to do something other than lie in bed and cough." She paused, then added with a cheeky grin, "I mean, I will probably still nap a lot. That is just who I am. But I will nap between battles instead of during them." Ken looked at her. His dark eyes were still lazy and half-closed, but there was a warm, quiet relief in them that he did not bother to hide. He had sat by her bed during the worst of it. He had watched the blue fire burn under her skin.

He had listened to her ragged breathing and pretended he was not terrified. And now she was here. On his couch. Sparking electricity between her fingers and grinning like she had just won a prize.

"Good," he said simply. Then he yawned.

"Now stop making noise. You are interrupting my ceiling-staring schedule." Luna laughed. A real, full, healthy laugh that filled the living room and spilled out into the hallway. It was the best sound anyone in the estate had heard in weeks. The living room door swung open and Risa walked in, carrying a small wooden box under one arm. Her pink hair was tied back with a yellow ribbon, and her green eyes were bright with curiosity.

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"What is so funny?" Risa asked, peering at Luna's grinning face.

"Ken is being grumpy because I interrupted his ceiling time," Luna reported happily.

"I am not grumpy," Ken said, grumpily.

"I am relaxed. There is a difference." Risa giggled and sat down on the floor near the couch, placing the wooden box on the carpet in front of her. She opened the lid, revealing a neat stack of colorful playing cards with painted designs on their backs.

"I found these in the storage room," Risa said, holding up the deck.

"Does anyone want to play?" Ken's eyes opened. Both of them. A rare occurrence. He looked at the cards with the calculating intensity of a general surveying a battlefield.

"What kind of cards?" he asked.

"Regular playing cards," Risa said, fanning them out.

"We can play anything. Go Fish. Old Maid. Or there is this one game I used to play with my neighbors where you try to collect sets of matching cards and the person with the most sets wins." Ken sat up. Slowly, like a man rising from the grave, but he sat up. The ceiling could wait. Card games were a different matter entirely. Card games involved strategy, reading your opponent, and most importantly, winning without having to physically move. This was his kind of combat.

"Deal me in," Ken said, sliding off the couch and settling on the floor across from Risa. He crossed his legs and cracked his knuckles with unnecessary drama.

"I hope you are ready to lose, Risa. I have been training for this my entire life."

"Training for what?" Risa asked, tilting her head.

"Sitting down and winning things," Ken said seriously. Risa shuffled the cards with surprising skill, her small hands moving the deck in quick, practiced motions. She dealt seven cards to each of them, then placed the remaining deck in the center of the floor between them. Luna watched from the couch, her sleepy eyes tracking the cards with mild interest.

"I will referee," she said.

"Because I am too tired to hold cards." The game began. It started simply enough. Risa asked Ken for a card. Ken said he did not have it. Ken asked Risa for a card. Risa handed it over with a sweet smile. They went back and forth, the game flowing at a relaxed, casual pace. Then Ken won the first set. And the second. And the third.

He won them with a lazy, infuriating grin on his face, laying down matching pairs of cards with the casual confidence of someone who had somehow seen every card in Risa's hand before she even knew she had it. He did not cheat. At least, not in any way that Risa could prove. He just seemed to know things. Things he should not have known. Things like exactly when to ask for a card and exactly when to hold back.

"How are you doing that?" Risa asked after Ken collected his fourth set, her green eyes narrowing with a mixture of admiration and suspicion.

"Doing what?" Ken asked innocently, rearranging his cards.

"You keep getting the exact card you need! Every single time!"

"It is called skill, Risa. Look it up sometime." Risa puffed out her cheeks and studied her cards with renewed determination. She was not going to let this lazy, messy boy beat her at a simple card game. She was a healer. She had steady hands, a sharp mind, and excellent pattern recognition. She could do this. She could not do this. Ken won the fifth set too. And the sixth. Risa's pile of completed sets was pathetically small compared to his growing empire of matched cards.

Her sweet, gentle face was scrunching up with frustration in the most adorable way possible. *

"What is going on in here?" Naomi stood in the doorway, her red ponytail swinging as she surveyed the scene. Ken was sitting on the floor with a smug grin, surrounded by cards. Risa was sitting across from him with a fierce, determined expression that looked hilariously out of place on her usually sweet face. Luna was asleep on the couch again, a soft snore escaping her lips.

"Ken is cheating!" Risa announced, pointing an accusatory finger across the card battlefield.