The first few weeks of Chase's training went about as well as anybody could expect, but not quite as well as they'd all hoped.

To learn how to fight, they'd put him with the three other newcomers, both a little younger than he was. They started with the basic forms and movements and he picked up on those quick enough; they taught him how to hold weapons and were slightly relieved when he was quick to learn how to avoid slashing anyone open, even if the practice swords and spears were made entirely of wood. He learned to meditate, though that tended to be ruined by the fact that he was a seven year old boy being told to sit perfectly still and not think about anything. Still, he did all right, and at night Dashi and Guan would give him pointers about his forms - or tricks to pull on his teachers, in some cases.

But it wasn't the martial prowess that anyone was really concerned with. Children were quick to learn anything that let them run and jump and hit. Where people gave pause was in the afternoon lessons, when Master Bai took his young protégé into the classrooms and schooled him personally. The monks never said much about it, but things slipped, every now and again, and for boys whose ears were constantly listening for any possible hint of … anything, rumors were easy to find.

"I don't get it," Dashi announced one day, as he dropped down onto the steps next to Guan and watched the temple schoolroom that Chase and his teacher had disappeared into some time ago. "Why doesn't he just learn with the other initiates?"

"Maybe he doesn't know as much as they do."

"But they don't know anything! How can you know less than nothing?"

"Wouldn't you know?" Guan asked in a dry tone, looking up innocently when Dashi turned to fix him with a glare.

"Jerk." The younger boy slouched further and watched the early autumn sunlight shine on the green-going-gold trees scattered through the courtyard. "You know what I meant."

"Sorry. I couldn't help it." Guan shifted slightly, unfolding his legs and letting his feet rest flat on a stair. "He probably knows other things than we do."

"Like what?"

"Farming. Things about animals." Guan thought back to when he had been even younger, picking out fragments from the few scattered memories he had of his very early life as the son of a village prefect. "Seasonal changes, maybe."

"I know all about that kind of stuff."

"No you don't. When was the last time they even let you near the temple fields?"

"Last harvest! When we all had to go out there and help the villagers."

"That doesn't count. I meant when you weren't forced."

Dashi glanced out at the temple's high walls, mouth twisted in partial defeat.

" … the summer before that."

"And that was when they forbid you from ever going near them again."

"It wasn't my fault that fire started!"

Guan snorted, half in laughter and half in disbelief, making Dashi give him a dark look. They both knew that the fire had been mostly Dashi's fault, even if it hadn't rained in weeks and the situation was just waiting for a spark. Someone had to provide that spark, after all.

"Traitor. I thought we were friends."

"We are. But that's not my point. You don't know anything about farming. And probably less about animals."

"Horses go when you hit them," he said confidently, "and you get milk from cows and eggs from chickens."

There was silence.

" … that's it?"

"What else is there?"

"How do you take care of them?"

"With food."

"What kind of food?"

"With … " Dashi faltered. "Grass, right? They eat grass? Wait, why are you asking me all this? This isn't a lesson! And you're not one of the monks, so I don't have to answer your questions."

"But I am older," Guan said with a smirk, even knowing that his age superiority was only by a year and a few months and that since they were in the same position, it didn't make much difference. "So you should respect me."

"Oh, come on!" Dashi gave a long-suffering groan and lay backward on the steps to stare at the sky. "I get it, I get it, he knows animals and I don't. That's not exactly a huge achievement."

"It is for villagers who make their living that way."

"You listen too much."

And they were silent again. With Master Yi out instructing other apprentices in their work, the two of them had nobody to tell them what to do - a situation they sought with regular desperation - and found themselves, as they occasionally did, ridiculously bored. Guan didn't mind it quite as much, but Dashi couldn't stand it - procrastination was all fine and good, but actual boredom was practically a sin for his ever-active mind.

Within five minutes he'd stood up and was staring at the latticed windows of the schoolrooms.

"What are you doing?" Guan asked warily, knowing the determined light that had suddenly sprung up in Dashi's eyes.

"I want to know what he's learning. Come on, let's go peek."

"We can't."

"Why not?" Dashi started down the steps, and Guan scrambled up to chase after him.

"If they haven't told us, we're not meant to know!"

"Even better." Rules tended to flex and become suggestions around Dashi. "Maybe they're teaching him something secret and forbidden!"

"They wouldn't do that. Master Yi told us, Master Bai has to catch him up to us. It's probably just history and other lessons, things you already know."

"Then what's the harm?"

With his friend moving unstoppably toward the schoolrooms, Guan had no choice but to follow Dashi and hope for the best, his frustration countered by his own curiosity of why they had to school Chase separately. Why not put him with the other apprentices, the initiates freshly arrived from other cities and villages around the land? But unlike Dashi, Guan typically kept these thoughts to himself; answers either came in time, or stayed secret and hidden for a very good reason.

They reached the porch surrounding the building. Dashi crouched and motioned for Guan to do the same before sneaking up closer and listening at the edge of the latticework window. Guan stayed a few inches away, unwilling to listen but willing to hear Dashi pass on any information.

"Well?"

"I can't hear anything. They must be in a different room." Dashi poked half of his head up over the windowsill, ignoring Guan's frantic motions to not do that, and peered around. "Yeah, they're not in there. This one's empty. C'mon!"

They snuck around the nearest corner and past another door before pausing again, and when that revealed nothing, too, they made their way to a third corner classroom. Here Dashi paused and tilted his head to better hear anything that might be filtering through the finely-wrought wooden windows.

"Someone's in here."

"Quieter!"

"Someone's in here," he said in a whisper, ignoring Guan's glare. "I think it's them. I can hear Master Bai. He's saying … " Dashi focused, eyebrows furrowed. "I think he's counting."

"Counting?" Even Guan's deeply thoughtful mind couldn't come up with a good enough reason to explain this. "Counting what?"

"I don't know. He just went up to ten. I think Chase is … never mind, I can't hear him." Dashi frowned and tilted his head further to the side. "I wish they were closer."

"They aren't. Listen better."

"I'm trying!"

"Shhh!"

For a split second, there was a squabble, but they fell silent and still quickly enough when they heard movement from inside. When the door didn't fly open and send them running, though, they resumed their eavesdropping.

"He said … 'good job'. And now he's talking about brushstrokes … is it calligraphy? Are they teaching him calligraphy?"

"That can't be, not even you know calligraphy yet."

"Lucky me, huh? I don't know what else it could be, then. He's definitely talking about brushstroke direction. It's gotta be something like that."

A thought occurred to Guan then, but it was so small he almost missed it. As it started to grow in his mind he was silent, making Dashi look at him in question.

"Well? What do you think?"

"I … what?"

"What else is it if it's not calligraphy?"

"I don't know."

"There's not many other options, though … "

"Well, what's he saying now?"

"Nothing. I can't hear anythi - wait, he just said goodbye."

Neither boy said a word.

Then, as one, they scrambled to try and run. Unfortunately for them, they were too close together and wound up getting tangled, Dashi's arm caught in Guan's elbow and both of them winding up falling face first (and in Dashi's case, half-on Guan) onto the polished floor, unable to extricate themselves in time to hide before the door opened and Chase stepped out.

He didn't notice them at first, rubbing something off the tips of his fingers, but it didn't take long for him to glance over and see the tangled mess of apprentices lying conspicuously close to the classroom window. He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at them.

"What are you two doing here?" he asked, sounding half-amazed and half-panicked.

"Waiting for you," said Dashi after a beat, his mind leaping into overdrive as he pulled himself off Guan. "Is that your last lesson for the day? We can go out and practice before supper if you want. What was that, anyway?"

"What was - what?" Chase shook his head and leaned away from Dashi's inability to realize people had private space. "No, it wasn't my last, it was … I have another … "

"Really? That's a lot of lessons." Dashi leaned back and ignored Guan's hiss of warning as the other boy climbed to his feet. "But I guess it happens some days. So what was it? Calligraphy?"

"No, it - I mean yes, I - were you listening?"

"No." Dashi smiled, then grimaced as Guan kicked him in the ankle. "Yes. A little. If it wasn't calligraphy, then what was it?"

"That's none of your business," Chase hissed in a similar tone to when Dashi asked about his eyes, but with less venom. Guan knew that it was probably best to back off, but this time, Master Yi wasn't around to reprimand the wayward apprentice, and Master Bai was still in the classroom. Only he was left to keep Dashi quiet, and another kick to the ankle wasn't going to do the trick.

"I'm just curious. C'mon, we're Dragons, aren't we? You can tell us. It was something to do with writing, but why would you have to learn that unless you were already - "

"It was writing!" snapped Chase, cutting off Dashi with a sharpness neither of them had heard from their friend before. "I can't read, okay?"

Dashi, stunned briefly into silence, blinked. Guan winced slightly at the admission, his theory suddenly confirmed.

"You can't read? Really?"

Guan stopped resisting the urge to kick Dashi.

"Ow!"

"Yes! It's stupid and I know it so just leave me alone!" Chase turned away and made to storm back to the temple, but Guan caught up to him first.

"Chase, wait. It's not stupid."

"Yes it is!"

"Lots of people can't read." He stridently ignored Dashi coming after them, trying to defend himself against any forthcoming accusations. "It's nothing to be ashamed of."

"Everybody at the temple can!" There was a frustration in his friend's voice that bordered on despairing. "And they all know it! They don't think I'm fit for this because of it!"

"I was just asking - " Dashi started, but one look at Chase made his defenses trail off.

"Why wouldn't you be fit?" Guan asked as they all slowed to a halt along the path.

"I don't know. But I've heard them." Chase stared at the ground. "I know they think I'm stupid because I'm from a village. Because I was a farmer. They don't think I can be a proper monk." His voice wavered for a moment, but he collected himself with a shake of his head. "And they don't want me to stay here, and they think it's all a big mistake, and that Master Bai was wrong about m-me … "

For once, even Dashi didn't say anything immediately, though from the look he and Guan shared, he wanted to. Neither of them could find quite the right words. Then Chase looked up at them, his jaw clenched hard against any tears.

"I'm no good at it, either. I don't understand what they're trying to teach me, and they think I'm stupid. Right now I just … I wish I hadn't come here."

It wasn't my choice to bring back a child from the middle of nowhere and claim he's the next Dragon of the Wind.

Master Yi's words echoed in Guan's mind. Even though he was only 10, he was still the oldest of the three; he was also the quietest and listened the most carefully. Sometimes he heard things he knew he wasn't meant to hear. Often, they were the words that went unspoken.

He remembered little bits and pieces of what life had looked like for the villagers in his town, having gone with his father out to ensure everything was running smoothly. They'd seemed happy, in their way, but he'd never spoken to any of them. And then he'd come to the temple, closing out almost everything else in the world. Even when the monks went to help with the local village's harvests, he didn't talk to many of the people. They kept their distance and treated the young apprentices with a respect bordering on reverence, which unnerved him sometimes but wasn't much different from the way he remembered being treated back before.

And of course, he had known how to read and write practically before he could remember. It was standard. Dashi had been the same way. What would it be like to suddenly be pulled into a world like this, where knowledge was paramount, where words were stored for centuries on scrolls?

It wasn't my choice …

The other monks left Chase's education up to Master Bai because Master Bai was the only one willing to do it. They didn't want to deal with a peasant boy who'd only heard of libraries in stories.

"But you are here," Guan said finally, trying to keep his voice confident. "And you're learning. New things are never easy."

"Everyone else thinks they are."

"That's because they've already been taught. The older you are, the harder things are to learn."

"So I'm hopeless?"

It was an accusation out of nowhere, and Guan practically recoiled.

"No, I - "

"Don't be stupid," Dashi cut in, arms folded across his chest. "I already told you - if Master Bai thinks you're right for this, then you're right for this, no question about it."

"But everyone else - "

"Who cares what they think?" He shrugged with his entire body, practically knocking himself over in the process. "They're a bunch of old coots with no room in their heads for anything but mantras and history." Now he pointed at Chase, no sympathy anywhere on his face. "They think everybody's stupid because everybody doesn't know exactly what they know. If you wanna up and believe them, then you are stupid."

Chase stared. So did Guan.

"But!" Dashi's grin returned, a faint curve of his mouth that belied a thousand pranks just waiting to happen. "If you don't want to be stupid, then you can't believe them. You've gotta prove them wrong by learning everything they think you don't know. Then one day, you can shove it right in their faces and laugh at them when they fall over."

For a moment, the air was tense. Dashi's casual attitude toward this sort of thing - a lack of sympathy first and foremost - was a subject Guan was hesitant to breach. He'd seen Dashi fight with other boys over this sort of thing before. Deal with your own problems and make people realize they were wrong, was what he'd gleaned from the few times it had come up. It rarely worked.

Would it … ?

Then Chase's frozen expression changed. The frustration stayed, but the anger and unhappiness shifted into a sort of wary curiosity.

"So … they think you're stupid, too?"

The air cleared.

"Of course. They think I'm the dumbest monk ever admitted to the temple."

"It's true," Guan added, smiling now as well. "You can ask anyone and they'll agree." Dashi shot him a dark look.

"You can't ask me."

"But you just admitted to it."

"Yeah, but it's not true true! I'm not actually dumb!"

"I don't know … "

"Oh, come on!"

Dashi groaned in agonized irritation and slumped, sulking theatrically where he stood. Guan snickered under his breath, earning himself another glare, and Chase's shaky smile reappeared.

"Just because you do better than me in the classroom doesn't mean anything. We're training to be fighters, remember?" Dashi stormed past them toward the temple. He only got a few feet before Guan and Chase caught up to him with a double flying tackle to prove that even if they were training to be fighters, he still wasn't the best just yet.