"Lunch now!" Kori announced. "There’s a library with a ridiculous tree growing inside. Apparently soone decided photosynthesis belongs indoors. We’ll sit there and I’ll tell you everything else you need to know. Soone remind to tell you about the professor who collects pins. No, that’s not a taphor. The guy is actually obsessed."
They let themselves be swept in the direction Kori indicated. As they moved, heads turned again. That kind of curiosity wasn’t quite polite.
The students threw weird looks as if they still didn’t know what to think about these Royal Scholars.
After a few corridors and students trying to look like they didn’t stare, they crossed through another, smaller library - the one with the tree. It rose out of a central planter as if a gardener had convinced it to try being a piece of the furniture. Or a chandelier. It was both, really.
Branches arched into the rafters and spread a canopy of green leaves over the reading tables. Leaves threw dappled light that moved even when the air around didn’t, as if the tree had its own kind of wind.
Students read in puddles of sun. One of them dozed under the tree with a book over his face. The book’s ribbon was stuck to his cheek.
Kori pointed at him. "Don’t be him. If you nap here, the librarians and students will decorate you with sticky notes and call it... Modern art."
They stepped back outside. The garden outside ran around a pond. Well... It was too elegant to be called a pond. It was more like... A miniature, neat lake. The sea stretched over the walls and horizon, nowhere near them but managing to perfu the air with salt anyway.
They ate from paper boxes balanced on their knees – baked potatoes that were sohow perfectly seasoned, slices of ginger and chili peppers that made Keahi complain they weren’t hot enough, and so grilled greens that snapped when you bit them.
Realistically? Lunch tastes better when you’re sitting in places where you shouldn’t be. Esen told a story that might have been true about sneaking into so archives as a kid and being rescued by a rolling ladder he swore he never saw moving. Feris insisted fate had planned the mont. Lynea corrected Feris’s grammar - twice - and Feris thanked her in a very elaborate way just to be unsettling.
Ichiro set his box down and aligned its corner with the tile seam because he apparently had an obsession with perfectly aligned things. Arashi took in the entire group with a gaze that cataloged and sighed without malice, carefully studying everyone’s faces and little gestures.
Kori watched them with bright, restless satisfaction, like a cat that had decided all of its mice were entertaining enough to keep alive.
Every ti soone at a nearby table glanced over, she gave them a tiny salute that ant "yes, I see you looking at us, carry on!"
A first year tried to nonchalantly take a picture; Kori winked at the slate and the student almost choked on air.
Suddenly, Kori stood, stretching. "Last stop. The part where I ruin your day in a way that makes you better people."
She tossed her chopsticks into the compost slot with sniper accuracy and then pointed at Esen without looking. "Don’t try making accusations you know nothing about. I’ll make the dummy beat you up next ti"
They walked back toward the Hall of Petals. On the way, Raizen felt it again - that faint thrum under his feet, like a giant chanical heart sowhere below the stone.
He slowed a fraction and Hikari matched him without asking why, out of instinct. A breath later, the hum was gone, or maybe it had just decided to be quieter. A column to the right was labeled COURSES followed by a list that included stuff like Advanced Luminite Theory, Combat Kinematics, Ethics Under Pressure, and Eon Foundations.
Kori clapped her hands once. The sound echoed neatly off the tiles. "All right, my new tragedies. Go ho. Sleep. Don’t try Raizen’s dash in a hallway... I don’t have enough apologies - or pastries - for the walls. Don’t ask what’s under the floor because I won’t tell you. Be patient, the ti shall co... Eventually.
"What do you an-" Feris started a sentence but was interrupted by Kori next second.
"What I ant was: Show up tomorrow looking like you always ant to be here. After all, this is your Academy now. And if anyone asks for help-"
"...You say no and stare at them dead in the eyes?" Esen tried to be funny.
Kori’s smile softened in a way that had weight. "You try and help. Obviously."
They turned to go, the eight of them moving as a formation that just looked like a wild flock of sheep. Students made small spaces for them without thinking about it, like water parting when you hit it with a stick. Soone hissed, "Royal Scholars" and soone else hissed back "Be nice" and soone else said sothing unintelligible, Raizen only caught the first words "They seem..."
Esen walked backwards again, hands in his pockets, grin back in place now that his badge had been restored to its proper, lower, safer position. "So, tomorrow. Any tips?"
"Don’t be late" Lynea said.
"Don’t blow anything up with your shockwaves. Pretty please." Arashi continued.
"Don’t be boring" Kori completed, already turned away from them.
They crossed the threshold of the Hall of Petals and the sound changed - the surf of voices fading slowly. On the mosaic just outside the door, an old dye stain shaped like a special footprint had been worn almost invisible by generations. Kori stepped over it without looking down, like her feet had learned the mark and stepped over by habit.
From there, everyone went in separate directions, only the original four - I an five, with Kori, silently walked on Neoshima’s streets.
Tomorrow, the real lessons would start - and the floors under those lessons would, eventually, give way to sothing else.
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