I looked at the ceiling.
She had a point in the technical sense. The minutes existed. I could, theoretically, give them to her.
But I had also seen Misato run the training session yesterday. I had personally been on the receiving end of her comntary while holding a plank in the grass, and I had no desire to show up late and give her additional material to work with. She would absolutely make do burpees until I died. She would enjoy it.
"Naomi." I shifted, rolling my shoulder gently until she had to adjust or fall. "Up."
She made a noise that was mostly vowels and lifted her head. Her pink eyes were at about thirty percent operational capacity. Her hair was everything I had predicted. The right side was pressed flat against her skull and the left side was enormous, the striped sections fanning out at a chaotic angle.
She blinked at .
"What ti is it," she said. Not a question. A complaint.
"Four fifty."
She stared.
"That’s not a real ti."
"It’s an extrely real ti. Misato starts at six."
Naomi looked at the dark window. Looked back at . Her face went through several expressions rapidly. Denial, calculation, the specific grief of soone who has rembered an obligation they were hoping to forget.
"I hate this school," she said.
"Welco to Obsidian."
She pushed herself upright. Sat on the edge of the bed with her feet on the floor, her back to , spine curved and shoulders soft. The hoodie had ridden up slightly in the night. She pushed her hair back with both hands, trying to smooth it into sothing that made sense.
It didn’t work.
I sat up beside her.
"Shower before or after?"
"After," she said. "I’ll shower in my room. I need my stuff." She looked down at herself. "I need literally everything."
"You look fine."
She turned and gave a look.
"I look like I spent the night being very thoroughly—"
"Fine," I said. "You look fine."
She exhaled through her nose, sothing between a laugh and a sigh. Started trying to finger-comb her hair into a braid she could walk four doors down in.
I watched her work on the braid. She kept losing sections and having to start over.
"Here." I reached over.
She went still.
I gathered her hair at the back of her neck. I wasn’t going to win any awards for technique but I could hold three sections and cross them without losing the pattern. She sat quietly while I worked, the back of her neck exposed, her breathing even.
I got it done in a minute. Not neat. Functional.
"That’s as good as it’s getting," I said.
Naomi reached back and touched it. Then she turned her head and looked at over her shoulder.
Her expression was the complicated one. The one she’d had at the elevator. The one she wore when she was deciding how much of what she was thinking to actually say.
She didn’t say anything.
She stood up, found her phone on the nightstand, checked it. Typed sothing. Probably her roommate, or her mother’s standing six AM text she’d ntioned.
I stood as well, found a clean shirt from the closet and pulled it on.
At the door, Naomi stopped.
She turned around. The hallway light was going to be on when she opened it, and the corridor was empty at five AM but she still checked through the peephole first, which was the right instinct even if it made feel slightly like an accomplice in a heist.
"Hey."
I looked at her.
"Thank you," she said. "For telling to stay."
I looked at her standing in my doorway in a crooked braid and yesterday’s clothes with the shell necklace twisted sideways and the essence buff making her eyes a shade brighter than normal.
"Thank you for staying," I said.
She held my gaze for a second. Then she nodded once, pulled the door open, checked the hallway, and slipped out.
Gone.
I stood in the empty doorway for a mont.
Then I closed it quietly and walked back to the kitchen.
The apartnt was silent. Hikaru’s door was shut. No light underneath it, though I genuinely couldn’t tell if she was in there maintaining perfect stillness or if she had sohow exited the building at three AM to train on a rooftop sowhere. Both felt equally possible.
I filled a glass from the tap and drank it over the sink, looking at the dark window and the first suggestion of grey at the horizon. California sunrise ca early. The ocean was invisible out there but I could hear it faintly through the glass.
Three days ago I woke up in an amphitheater with 71 hours on a clock I couldn’t stop and a system explaining that I had to drink milk from won or die. Now I had a stolen ability, 1,200 points banked, a full squad, and a girl who braided her own hair in my apartnt at five in the morning.
Progress.
The system had ticked to Level 1. That ant sothing was scaling. I needed to understand the level thresholds better, figure out what each milestone unlocked beyond the additional ability slots at 20. There were upgrades I hadn’t touched yet. Overclock still sat at Copper. Private Sanctum was Copper with its thirty-minute daily cap.
Twenty-five thousand points for the Midnight Foxes quest. Bronze rank for the Sanctum at forty-five minutes per day.
I put the glass down.
Endurance at 9/10. One segnt away from D-rank. One real workout away if I pushed. And Misato’s sessions were nothing if not thorough.
I went to get ready.
Clean gym outfit. Hair combed into sothing that wasn’t actively offensive. I looked in the bathroom mirror at the face that was slowly becoming more familiar, the amber eyes that were still strange to after three days, the jaw that was starting to show slightly more definition than the day I arrived.
My phone buzzed.
A ssage from Belle. Five ten in the morning.
Anyone else already awake or am I cursed.
I typed back: awake. kitchen. counting down to Misato’s six AM suffering.
Three dots.
I hate this. I hate all of this. I hate physical conditioning I hate running I hate Garrett and I hate whoever decided morning was an acceptable ti to be alive.
I set the phone down and went to make coffee.
From behind Hikaru’s door, I heard nothing. She’s probably at the gym.
I drank my coffee standing up.
Checked the clock.
5:14 AM.
Ti to go be a better version of the guy Naomi fell for when he was nobody.
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