Help! I'm just an extra yet the Heroines and Villainesses want me! Chapter 186: Ordinary (II)

William looked at Sara across the table.

He had been in rooms with her during competition week and before it and had ford the impression that was available from those interactions — competent, direct, observant in the way that so people were observant without performing it.

This was another instance of that. She had identified sothing true about Henrik’s situation without anyone pointing to it, and had done sothing practical about it without making it a statent.

"I’ll co," he said.

Sara looked at him with mild surprise. "To see Henrik?"

"Yes."

"Okay." She returned to her food without elaborating.

Liam was watching this exchange with the expression of soone observing sothing that was ordinary on the surface and contained other things underneath the surface, which was an expression he had been wearing frequently for the past week.

He said nothing.

Mira appeared at the table at twelve twenty-five, which was slightly later than usual, and sat with the precise economy of movent that was simply how she occupied spaces.

"You look like soone who’s been sowhere interesting this morning," Liam told her.

Mira looked at him. "I look the sa as I always look."

"That’s what makes it interesting. The saness is different sohow."

"That sentence doesn’t an anything."

"It ans sothing. It just ans it imprecisely." Liam pointed his fork at her. "You had a morning."

Mira was quiet for a mont.

"I spoke with my mother this morning," she said. "She sent a ssage through the family crystal." She served herself from the communal dish in the center of the table with the composed attention of soone doing sothing ordinary while thinking about sothing else. "She knows about the Hollow Court contract. The regional inquiry has apparently reached the families of the students who were on the expedition."

The table was quiet.

"What did she say," Sara asked.

"That the family is aware of the situation and is monitoring the inquiry’s progress." Mira’s voice was level. "And that she has confidence in the academy’s managent of it." She paused. "Which is the most my mother has ever said about confidence in anyone’s managent of anything."

"That’s positive," Marcus said.

"It’s significant," Mira said. "Whether it’s positive depends on what cos next." She looked at her food. "She also asked whether I was alright."

The table received this.

"She asked how I was feeling. Whether the aftermath of the expedition had been difficult. Whether I had support." Mira’s voice had the quality of soone describing sothing that had surprised them and they were still processing the surprise. "My mother doesn’t typically ask those things. She manages situations. She doesn’t ask about feelings."

"What did you tell her," Sara asked.

"That I was alright. That the people around had been — " Mira paused, "present. In the ways that mattered." She looked around the table briefly. Not seeking anything. Just acknowledging.

The table was quiet for a mont.

Liam said, "We are pretty present."

"Yes," Mira said. "You are."

She ate her lunch.

The table returned to its regular register, which was the comfortable noise of people who had been through sothing together and were now just eating lunch.

---

Third period after lunch was magical theory with Professor Winters, who had the specific teaching energy of soone who found her subject genuinely interesting and assud that students who had chosen to be in her classroom shared that interest, which produced an atmosphere that was different from most other classes.

William sat and listened and took notes and was present in the full sense of the word, not the managed version he sotis deployed in classes where the material required less than his full attention.

The theory content was dense and rewarding in the way that dense things were rewarding when you were actually equipped to engage with them, which the year’s accumulation of training and experience had made him more capable of than he’d been in September.

Halfway through the period, without deciding to, he thought about his father.

Not the operational context — not the network or the inquiry or the legal chanism. Just his father as a person, which was a fra he rarely used because the relationship had never been one that encouraged it.

Duke Aldric Cross. Who had been a presence in William’s life primarily through absence and expectation. Who had built a network across seven entities and multiple operations. Who had used his son’s life as a variable in a calculation.

The inquiry would reach him. His mother was making sure of that. The legal chanism was in motion.

William thought about what ca after the legal chanism, which was a question he hadn’t allowed himself much space to sit with because the imdiate situation had always required the imdiate attention.

After the chanism worked through what it worked through, he would have to know what his father was. Not in the way the inquiry described it — the institutional language of networks and operations and charges. In the actual way. The way where a person understood sothing about the family they ca from and what that ant for who they were.

He thought about Seraphine in the garden.

He thought about his mother reviewing docunts by candlelight at five in the morning.

He thought about what Seraphina had said in the steam room, about things mattering not just operationally but actually.

The people were real. The connections were real. The things that had been built this year were real and were still built regardless of what the inquiry found about his father.

That was true.

He wrote it in the margin of his notes, not the words but a marking that ant he had registered sothing, which was a habit from months of taking notes in situations where the relevant information wasn’t always the information being said out loud.

He registered it.

The theory lecture continued and he returned his attention to it fully, because the material was good and Professor Winters deserved the engagent she assud and the hour had enough of its own content without needing to carry more than that.

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