Someone declined a training partner four times across two years,
politely, with the same sentence each time, which they had got very good at.

The fifth time was not an offer.
It was a bar loaded to a number that was not coming off their chest alone,
and the answer got out before the politeness could reach it.
The whole of it — the ask, the lift, the thanks — took nine seconds.
Two years they had spent budgeting for that.

The Book of the Ghost — Return 38:3