“I understand,” Nik said.

“Show me your lip. Oh fuck! You ruined your beautiful face again!” Kors clasped his head in his hands in absolutely genuine despair. “What is it!” He grabbed a small round mirror from the table and handed it to Nik:

“Look! Look what’s wrong with your lips! My beautiful, lovely lips, what have you done to them… damn…”

Nik completely indifferently looked in the mirror at his now crooked and swollen lip, which slightly turned upward from the incipient edema.

Kors tossed the mirror aside and thrust the opener into his hand.

“Take out the rings!”

“Why? It hurts,” Nik disagreed.

“You have edema, they interfere, don’t you see?!”

“It happened a hundred times, it will subside and everything will be fine a bit later.”

“Get it out, fuck!” Kors growled with such anger that Nik immediately grabbed the unclamping instrument, hastily removing the jewelry from the purple lip.

“You ruined your tender lips, you don’t take care of your beauty at all!”

“What’s the difference? I’m not a piece of cake for everyone to lick at me.”

“What does this have to do with it? How stupid you are! You don’t know how to use your advantage. Good looks, correct posture, unaccented speech and noble manners – that’s it! You are sitting pretty!”

Nik shook his disheveled head a little.

“I’m not a girl! I fought and they broke my lip a little, what’s wrong with that?!”

Kors looked at his beautiful face, like a girl’s, and involuntarily smiled, realizing that Nik had completely misinterpreted his phrase “you are sitting pretty”, and seeing also Kors’ condescending smile, he literally burst inside with indignation, but endured and kept silent.

“You misunderstood me a little,” nevertheless tried to explain Kors, rather not because he felt that Nik was unpleasant, but simply because he loved to teach:

“To be sitting pretty” – this is a phrase from a game on a chess board, you can still play a simpler game of checkers, and if a checker crosses the entire field and has not been eaten…

Nik looked up at him.

“Maybe it’s enough? Please…”

“Nik, you don’t understand your advantages and don’t use them. You have not only a beautiful appearance, but also a good voice, I am not kidding. In fact, you have a beautiful voice.”

Nik looked at Kors dubiously.

“I speak seriously. Yes, your voice is low and hoarse, but there is something exciting about it. If you remove gross mistakes in words, it will be very good.”

Kors calmed down a bit:

“What will your unclean ones think now? I yelled at you in front of them, won’t that hurt your reputation as a commander?”

“They won’t think anything, everything is fine…”

Zaf came to them, he grinned like a satisfied cat:

“What, my Lord, are you getting away with your greyhound daddy?” Zaf, unable to resist, laughed. Kors froze.

“No,” Nik said.

“I left to feed Barla,” Zaf continued, “and when I returned, I saw that you were not there, and they told me how dad yelled at you and took you away.”

Zaf turned to Kors:

“You did everything right. I never fight for fun, combat is not a game! And you?”

“Never! And I won’t let him anymore!” Kors replied sharply.

“If only he still listened to you,” Zaf smiled again, “he doesn’t listen to anyone.”

And Nik, as if confirming Zaf’s words, showed Kors a tattooed finger with the image of an inverted ace of spades on the “ring”.

“And what does it mean?” Kors asked with a grin. “That you didn’t have enough money for real jewelry, and that’s why you drew them for yourself?” He looked at Zaf. “Nik is just not used to obeying. I was not with him, and no one raised him. But I’ll catch up. He will stop behaving like a thoughtless boy and become a worthy warrior, become a truly great, powerful Demon, the way he really is! I will grind this rough diamond into brilliant! I will put the best in him!”

Zaf shook his head, and Nik sat down and was sad and silent.

“Vi-i-tor,” Zaf suddenly said tenderly, as he did in the Limit and in the Ore Town, slightly stretching the vowel, and after “v” he did not insert this rough sound “kh” into his name, as did Nik. Zafa managed to pronounce the name of Kors softer, almost correctly. And Kors froze.

“You are beautiful,” said Zaf, and he didn’t need to say that already. Kors understood everything perfectly, he was shaking, unconsciously and even in some kind of panic. Kors mentally darted to Nik: “What should I do?”