Naomi fell into step beside and we pushed through the lobby doors into the California morning.
The air hit clean and salt-sharp, the kind of early morning where the island hadn’t fully decided to be warm yet. My stomach made a sound that was less a growl and more a formal complaint filed with HR.
I checked the ti. 7:52 AM.
"We missed breakfast," I said.
"I know." Naomi took another bite of her apple, completely unbothered.
"Where did you get that."
"Grabbed it from the bowl on the common room counter on my way down."
I looked at her apple. I looked at my empty hands. I looked back at her apple.
"There’s a bowl."
"There’s always been a bowl."
I had walked through that lobby six tis. There was a bowl of fruit on the counter next to the notice board and I had never once registered its existence. The entire ti I was nearly dying of starvation on day three of my transmigration, there was a bowl of free fruit twelve feet from the elevator.
I was a genius. A visionary. The foremost strategic mind of my generation.
Naomi held the apple out to .
I took a bite without stopping walking.
She took it back and took her own bite right on top of mine. She didn’t comnt on sharing an apple at eight in the morning. She just ate it like this was normal, like we’d been doing this for years, like waking up in the sa apartnt and sharing breakfast fruit was just a thing we did now.
"Pull up the schedule," I said.
Naomi transferred the apple to her left hand and pulled out her phone with her right, thumbing to the academy app.
"Okay." She scrolled. "We’ve got weapons training. Zone Two, East Arena annex."
"With who."
"Professor Tsukishima." A beat. "And House Ruby."
I took a second with that.
Reika Tsukishima. Gold ponytail, cargo pants, lollipop permanently installed between her lips like a structural feature. Mass Manipulation ability, S-rank, forr independent hunter who had turned down every guild that offered her a contract.
She ran Sapphire’s Physical Conditioning track and taught weapons to whoever IHC decided needed it on combined schedules.
She was also responsible for the specific variety of suffering she called a weapons class, which was less about learning to hold a sword and more about discovering which students would pass out before their hands blistered.
She and Dr. Cross were in a category I had privately labeled the Academy Elder Goddesses, which was not a respectful title so much as an acknowledgnt of physical reality. Cross had the dark purple hair and the outfit that technically violated four separate dress codes. Tsukishima had the body of soone who had spent a decade bending gravity to her personal preferences and absolutely knew it. Both won taught at San Nicolas and both had sohow negotiated contracts that allowed them to wear whatever they wanted, which I suspected was less about IHC policy and more about nobody being brave enough to argue with either of them.
I would have loved being in Tsukishima’s house.
Sapphire. Two-ti reigning championship house. Honor culture, structured hierarchy, Katerina Volkov at the top with Platinum rank and an S-level ability involving fire and ice simultaneously.
Katt would have identified in forty-eight hours. Maybe less. She had the political awareness of soone who had been playing this ga since middle school and the analytical instincts to match. Lottery kid with a touch-based ability, mysteriously improving stats, suspicious proximity to multiple female students within the first week?
Yeah. She would have dissected like a lab specin and served the results to IHC administration with footnotes.
I was genuinely safer in Obsidian, where Vale showed up when he felt like it and spent the rest of the ti playing mobile gas at his desk.
"You know her?" Naomi asked.
"By reputation."
"She’s supposed to be good."
"She’s supposed to be terrifying." I handed the apple core back and Naomi dropped it in a bin we passed without breaking stride. "What’s the class objective."
"First weapons selection." Naomi read from the app. "We’re choosing training weapons from the armory today, then beginning basic forms on Friday before the assessnt. These are class weapons, not personal ones. It says here that if you have custom weapons or team-practice gear, those stay for squad sessions and gate runs only. These are specifically for her class."
That made sense. IHC wouldn’t want first-years bringing personal equipnt into a mixed-house environnt before anyone had a baseline read on skill levels. Give everyone identical starting conditions, see what shakes out.
The East Arena annex was a long, low building attached to the main arena field, with actual walls and a roof unlike the open field we’d been running Misato’s circuits on. Through the windows I could see racks of weapons along the far wall and padded flooring covering most of the space.
Ruby students were already filtering in from the opposite entrance.
Red trim on black blazers, easy confidence in how they moved, the specific energy of a house that had spent the last year climbing rankings fast enough to start believing in montum. Jin Park’s crucible program had done sothing real to their culture. These weren’t the disorganized individualists from Obsidian’s files. They ca in already checking each other’s positions, already defaulting to loose group formations.
Naomi and I pushed through the annex door and found Belle standing just inside, arms crossed, looking at the weapon racks like she was assessing their resale value. Jordan was against the wall with his eyes half-closed, possibly asleep upright. No sign of Misato yet.
"We need to talk about training tis," Belle said, without turning around.
"Good morning to you too."
"I haven’t eaten." Belle turned. Her blue hair was in a high ponytail today, the asymtric bangs framing her face, uniform blazer barely functional across her chest. She looked immaculate and furious about it. "Misato scheduled six AM knowing full well that breakfast runs until eight-thirty. We’re burning calories before we can replace them."
"We’re athletes now," Jordan said from the wall. His eyes were still closed.
"We are lottery students who were not athletes before last week and whose bodies are adjusting to a new training load," Belle corrected. "I need Misato to either start at five-thirty so we have ti to eat after, or cut twenty minutes so we’re done by seven-thirty."
"She’ll say that’s soft."
"I will fra it as optimizing recovery windows."
That was actually smart. Misato responded to tactical framing. Emotional argunts would get you extra push-ups. Scientific nutrition argunts might actually land.
"Bring data," I said. "Caloric deficit impact on afternoon performance. If our session scores drop because we’re running on empty, that’s a squad ranking problem."
Belle pointed at . "Yes. Exactly. You’re useful sotis."
Naomi laughed softly beside .
More students filled in around us. Ruby house clustering on their side, Obsidian students spreading across the other half of the space with varying degrees of awareness. I spotted a few faces from Physical Conditioning yesterday, the Ruby girl with battle braids and the specific energy of soone who’d been training since she could walk, a broad-shouldered Obsidian kid who kept rotating his shoulder like sothing was sore.
The door at the far end opened.
Tsukishima walked in.
She had the blonde hair in the high ponytail exactly like every description, a lollipop stick visible at the corner of her mouth, and the academy instructor jacket open over a black tank top that was doing an enormous amount of structural work. The cargo pants sat low on her hips. She moved across the annex floor with the unhurried confidence of soone who was aware that the room had just shifted its center of attention to her and found the whole thing mildly entertaining.
Jordan’s eyes were fully open now.
Belle made a small sound that might have been involuntary.
I kept my expression neutral through what I consider an exceptional act of personal discipline.
Naomi glanced at . I looked at the weapon racks. Naomi looked back at Tsukishima and then back at with an expression that said she had clocked exactly what just happened and was choosing generosity.
She was a good person. I’d already established this.
"Obsidian. Ruby." Tsukishima stopped at the center of the room and pulled the lollipop out. Cherry, by the look of it. "Welco to your first weapons session. I’m Professor Tsukishima. You will call Professor, Tsukishima, or nothing at all. You will not call ma’am. I’m twenty-nine."
She said this with the flat certainty of soone who had opened every first class with exactly this statent for several years running.
"Here’s what today is." She gestured behind her at the racks. "You pick your training weapon. These are academy issue. They stay in this room. Whatever you bring to squad practice or gate runs is your business, but in my class, everyone starts equal."
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