The Extra's Rise - Chapter 745

745: Peace (5) 745: Peace (5) The kettle began to whisper before anyone spoke.

That’s how you know morning is honest.

Seraphina arrived on the whisper with a paper bag in one hand and a narrow thermos in the other.

She set both down on the counter with the sound of decisions that do not require discussion.

Her hair was the kind of neat that implies nothing has ever been permitted to tangle her attention.

She looked me over the way a mechanic listens to an engine-kind, precise, uninterested in theatrics.

“Pain scale?” she asked.

“Annoying,” I said.

“Acceptable,” she said, which did not mean she had stopped paying attention.

She turned the flame down one degree without looking; the kettle’s whisper settled into the quiet of someone who has been heard.

She opened the paper bag.

Rice, ginger, scallions, a small jar of something that looked plain and would refuse to be boring.

“Congee,” she said, already rinsing the rice.

“The patient food.” “I’m not a patient,” I said.

“You are patient,” she corrected, nodding toward the couch.

“Sit.

We negotiate after breakfast.” Seraphina can lift a person with two fingers at the hinge of elbow and wrist and make it feel like kindness.

She guided me to the stool with that strength tuned down to domestic, then poured the rinsed rice into the pot and added water by the count of her breath.

No measuring cups; her hands remember.

“Stella,” she said, not looking, “fetch the big spoon.

No, the other big spoon.” Stella fetched both because she enjoys being overprepared.

Seraphina accepted them gravely like a general receiving banners.

She set the spoon in the pot and began to stir-slow, even arcs that made the liquid think about becoming silk.

“If you watch water, it becomes shy,” she said to Stella.

“We will look away and talk until it can pretend it did this by itself.” “What do we talk about?” Stella asked, delighted by an assignment.

“Names for steam,” Seraphina said.

“There are many.” “Whisper,” Stella said, immediately.

“Fog,” I offered.

“Breath,” Seraphina added.

“Dragon,” Douglas said from the doorway, because he is contractually obligated to suggest dragons.

Seraphina inclined her head as if he had answered a riddle correctly.

She sliced ginger as if the knife preferred to be led; the pieces came out identical because the knife did not dare disobey.

When a jar lid refused to twist, she pinched it once and the seal gasped and gave up.

She lifted a laden stockpot with one hand to move it off the back burner, then set it down without any of the burners daring to rattle.

Power leaked out around the edges of simple acts, the way warmth leaks from a sun-warmed stone.

“Pulse check,” she said quietly, and took my wrist between her fingers with the right amount of pressure.

She counted against my skin in a language only bodies speak.

“Good,” she pronounced, which felt like a trophy.

We did rehab between stirs because Seraphina believes in honest multitasking.

“Rotate,” she instructed, taking my forearm in both hands and circling the wrist until the joint remembered it had options.

“Stop when the kettle sings.” She set a timer anyway.

Seraphina trusts singing kettles, but she trusts her systems more.

“Does it hurt?” Stella asked, folding herself into a chair so her chin cleared the counter by an inch.

“It’s annoying,” I repeated.

“Annoying is a flavor,” Seraphina said.

“We dilute it.” The congee began to thicken.

She salted with two precise pinches and then a third half-pinch that she tasted and nodded at.

She grated the ginger without sulking; ginger will cut you if you are sloppy.

Seraphina is not sloppy.

She slid the last of it into the pot and switched to a smaller spoon, easing out lumps with the patience of a person who has convinced rivers to curve differently.

Aria padded in with the soft gait she uses when she is almost awake.

“Tea?” she asked.

“After,” Seraphina said.

“Tea is dessert today.” Aria smiled at being told what to do by someone whose orders feel like hugs.

Seraphina brushed her knuckles against Aria’s wrist in passing-small, grounding-then returned to the spoon as if she had been born to stir.

We carried bowls to the table.

Seraphina ladled with the kind of exactness that makes unequal portions seem like a personal failing.

She sprinkled scallions with two efficient taps.

“Blow,” she told Stella.

“Your mouth is valuable.” Stella blew like a responsible dragon.

She took a cautious spoonful and then a second, less cautious, and then inhaled like a person who has found a secret fireplace.

“It feels like a nap,” she said.

“Correct,” Seraphina said, pleased.

We ate without conversation because good congee persuades you the world will manage without your commentary.

The texture was perfected compromise-no grain left with a separate opinion, everything silky, the ginger an idea rather than an argument.

I did not realize my eyes had closed until I opened them and discovered Seraphina watching my face as if she were ready to take notes on relief.

“Better?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Good.” She slid my empty bowl away and replaced it with a glass of water.

Reika nodded from the doorway as if she had authorized the swap.

After dishes, Seraphina pointed me to the balcony.

“We align your shoulder, and then I will do the house.” “The house?” I asked.

“It slouches,” she said.

“Only a little.” She guided me through a set of movements so plain they looked stolen from a carpenter’s handbook: lift to the horizon, circle like a small sun, draw a square with the elbow, stop before the muscle writes an angry letter.

“We build back the way we built it the first time,” she said.

“Grain by grain.

No speeches.” I did not pull on power, because sometimes strength is the refusal to use it.

She watched my face and not the clock.

When the timer forgot itself, she remembered for it.

“The house,” she announced, and went inside.

Seraphina does not tidy; she calibrates.

She cracked a window exactly the width of two fingers and a breath; the room shifted in appreciation.

She adjusted a lamp shade by a millimeter and the corner learned how to be lit.

She lifted the enormous planter by the balcony door with two hands-no strain, no tilt-and rotated it one quarter turn so the ficus would forgive the sun for being seasonal.

She put it down with a soft thump that made the floor feel seen.

At the photo wall, she noted the HOME picture had developed a charming slant.

“Temporary,” she said, and left it crooked for reasons of soul rather than geometry.

She straightened the second photo below it by a fraction of a degree because the human eye is a tyrant.

She did not explain.

She does not need to.

“Teach me tea,” Stella demanded when the kettle began to whisper again.

“Tea is a verb,” Seraphina said, already rinsing the pot.

“We do it; we don’t have it.” She warmed the pot with a swirl that looked like a constellation being fed.

She measured leaves with a motion that made the tin feel trusted.

“You listen,” she told Stella, “for the note between silence and fuss.” She poured just at that note, set the lid, and did not glance at the clock because she carries her own timer around her wrist disguised as a pulse.

While we waited, she wiped the counter with a cloth whose edges she folded into squares as she went.

“Arthur,” she called without turning.

“Breathe.” “I am,” I said.

“Make it easier,” she said, and I did.

We poured.

Seraphina set my cup on the right because that is where my hand always goes.

She placed Stella’s in both hands because hot cups teach respect.

She gave Aria hers last on purpose so Aria would not feel hurried.

Then she leaned against the counter and sipped like a person who actually tastes when she tastes.

“It’s different,” Aria said, surprised.

“It is the same,” Seraphina said.

“But we are not.” Later, she did the house with the same strong gentleness.

She lifted the end of the couch so Reika could tuck a rug corner under without swearing.

She twisted a stubborn screw in a cabinet hinge with two fingers until the squeak admitted defeat.

She stood on one foot on the stool to reach a top shelf because stepping stools are a courtesy, not a necessity, and placed a jar with so little sound the shelf decided to behave like it had always wanted to.

“Will you stay for supper?” Alice asked, holding two wooden spoons like a conductor about to make soup sing.

“Yes,” Seraphina said, then added, “I accept credit for nothing.” Which is her favorite lie.

The day slid into evening as if the floor angled that way.

We made a small supper that did not apologize for being simple.

Rose contributed bread that had ideas about being necessary.

Cecilia set the table like a poem that rhymes at the corners.

Rachel tied ribbon around the napkins without comment and made the bows sit like well-mannered expressions.

Reika timed everything so nothing had to wait for anything else.

Seraphina brought the congee as a last course-plain again, perfect again.

“For sleep,” she said.

No one argued.

We ate.

We talked about names for steam and why some spoons feel faster than others.

Stella made a toast to the fox in the reading nook.

Douglas toasted the bird’s eyebrows.

Aria demonstrated the backward rain shuffle; Seraphina watched once and then reproduced it, slower, until Stella cheered.

She does most things slower than she can.

That is strength dressed properly.

After, I found her at the doorframe touching two fingers to my pulse the way she does when words are extra.

She held there a beat, then another, then released.

“Steady,” she said.

“Because of you,” I said.

“Because of us,” she corrected, and accepted the compliment only by splitting it.

We ended with dishes drying in ranks that would have impressed a general, the kettle calm, the photo still a little crooked because someone had decided to let personality win a small battle.

Seraphina turned off the kitchen light with the back of her knuckle, a sound like a soft period to a good sentence.

She lifted the paper bag-now empty-and the thermos, tucked them under one arm, and looked at me long enough to make time behave.

“Tomorrow,” she said, which in her mouth means nothing but what it says.

“Tomorrow,” I agreed.

The house hummed-not with warnings, not with wards, just with the physics of things being where they should be.

We had done nothing grand.

We had done everything necessary.

And the steam had learned our names.