“Hey! You’re back already?” Katie asked, seeing Ning at her doorstep. She hadn’t expected him to be back this early, considering he had mentioned that he would be away for a while.

He hadn’t exactly said where he would be going, only that he would be gone for a while.

“Did things not turn out well?” she asked and then her face paled. “Did something go wrong with those drug lords?”

“Everything is going well. Thank you for worrying about me, but you need not be,” Ning said and walked into the door. Inside the house, he saw Katie’s military uniform on a chair, as if she had only recently taken it off.

“Did you go talk to your superior?” Ning asked.

Katie took a deep breath and nodded gently. “I’m to begin my rehabilitation sessions starting tomorrow. They say it will be a while before I go back to work, which if I do will be as a cadet.” “Congrats. That’s still a big step,” Ning said and sat down on the empty bed.

“Do you want some tea? I can prepare some,” Katie said. “I was about to make some for myself.”

“Oh, sure,” Ning said.

Katie turned on the stove on the side and began boiling water.

Ning was simply sitting in wait when Katie asked something suddenly.

“Ning, what exactly are you doing here?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” Ning asked, confused by what she meant. “I’m here to meet you.”

“Yes, but why?” she asked. “Is it… is it because you think I’ll take my own life if you don’t keep up with me?”

Ning turned to look at Katie, unable to answer. He thought for a moment as he didn’t know the answer himself. “That is not why I’m here,” he said after a while. “I think… it’s because I have no one else to talk to.”

He couldn’t help but sigh. “I have no friends.”

Katie narrowed her eyes, a look of pure doubt appearing on her face. “You… don’t have friends?” she asked.

“Nope,” Ning said. “There were a few Cadets I liked talking to for like 2 days before I was made into an officer and taken away to train. After that, I haven’t found the chance to make any friends.”

“What about before that?” Katie asked.

“No, none,” Ning said. “You are the first friend I’ve had in here.”

Katie couldn’t help but feel a little happy hearing that. “Is that really true?” she asked.

“Of course. Why would I lie?” Ning asked.

She smiled widely. “I haven’t had any friends before this either,” she said. “I’m glad to have a friend like you, Ning.”

Ning smiled back. “Same here.”

The tea was ready soon afterward and the two drank it while they chatted. As they chatted,

Ning realized Katie was trying to ask more about him to learn about his past.

There was only so much Ning could say, so he decided to change the topic entirely.

“I’ve been wondering,” he said. “What does it mean to be Sparkless?”

Katie gave him a weird look. “What do you mean? It just means you can’t use Spark anymore.”

“No, I meant what has to happen for one to be Sparkless,” Ning said. He quickly turned toward her. “Okay, let me explain. What does it mean to be blind?”

Katie shrugged. “It means you can’t see.”

“Yes, but why can’t you see?” he asked.

Katie thought for a moment. “Could be many things. You could have lost your eyes, or your eyes were damaged somehow. Developed some sort of disease.”

“Yes,” Ning said excitedly. “But in every instance, it’s because something happened to your eyes. If so, what has to happen for someone to become Sparkless?”

Katie thought for a bit, but she had no answer. “I don’t think it works like that. Being Sparkless is something different. It’s like… it’s like losing connection to some sort of higher power. I don’t think it works like normal organs.”

Ning chuckled. “Yeah, I don’t think there is a higher power here giving you powers.” However, Ning struggled to imagine just how Spark worked.

The System hadn’t given him too much knowledge about Spark. He could learn more about it

if he wanted to, but he did have 6 years to spend in this world. It was better to take it all slow.

There was no hurry in anything.

“What do you think it is then?” Katie asked.

Ning thought for a bit. “I have two possibilities,” he said. “The problem is, each one is equally viable.”

“What possibilities?” Katie got curious.

“Okay, here’s what I’m thinking. It could be that your body thinks of Spark as something foreign and always fights to destroy and create immunity toward it. Every time, you work fast and use it up before your body can learn from it. But when you spend some time not using it up, your body catches up and creates immunity against it.”

“When that happens, no matter how much Spark you consume, your body can never convert it into energy, and thus you cannot use it anymore.” saʀᴄh th 0velFre.nt website on Ggl to access chapters of nvels early and in the highest quality.

Katie gave it some thought. She didn’t understand the full thing, but she did understand

enough to see where he was getting at.

“Could that really be the case?” she asked.

“Maybe,” Ning said. “As I said, I don’t know much about the Sparkless.”

“Okay,” Katie said. “Wait, that was just one possibility. What is the other one.”

“Oh yeah, the other possibility is that there is an organ in your body that can use Spark, and when you consume too much of it, you end up damaging it. Since it struggles to heal, you can

never use Spark again.”

“And organ? Inside of us?” Katie asked. “What organ?”

Ning shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “And the chances of this being true is even lower.”

He had healed Katie already when she overdosed on drugs, so any organ of hers that was damaged should have already been healed. And yet she still couldn’t use Spark, so it was likely that the first theory was more possible.

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