Sitting at her favorite stool by the kitchen counter in the common room, Ty slowly sipped on her coffee while watching her classmates.

  “You must eat.”

  “I know, I know. I jus’, I wanted to clean up my spear…”

  “You, skinny. Eat. I do later.”

  “No, I’ll do it. I really just came to—”

  “No. Eat.”

  Like a defeated child, Elias let Darius take his weapon away from him to set against a wall, the Ancient unwilling to hear any objections as he took a plate from the kitchen table and handed it to him.

  “Thank you, Darius, but—”

  “Eat.”

  With a wry, not unkind smile, Elias took the plate from the Ancient’s big, worn hands and watched him walk away, not knowing that his own expression was full of childish admiration.

  “—I-I told him that, but he just kept going on and on, I didn’t know what to do so I said—”

  “Hey, hey, Ty, hey.”

  “Oh good Graces, Alex, please.”

  Ty blinked, pulling her attention away from Darius, who had walked back to the table by the kitchen to grab another plate and some food.

  Alex was standing across from her, on the other side of the kitchen counter, eyes wide and enthusiastic as Callie looked unbearably uncomfortable.

  “So, so, Callie and I were talking,” blathered Alex, tugging her friend along so that she was flush against the counter with her. “Have you seen Luci around today? Apparently he was looking for you earlier. He went up to Callie asking for you, and she’s been feeling weirdly anxious about it all day thinking she accidentally set him on you because she told him that she thought you were in the library because Theo mentioned something about that in the morning, but I’ve been trying to convince her that she’s totally fine and that she’s been worrying about it for no reason at all.”

  Processing the barrage of words, Ty set down her coffee. “No, I haven’t,” she replied hesitantly, eyeing Callie concernedly. “Wh—”

  “See!” Alex burst, nudging her companion, whose spirits did seem to lift slightly. “No harm done. You’re all good.”

  But the tactician was already prepared for confrontation if necessary. “Did he do anything to you?”

  “Oh—oh no, he didn’t. Thank you.” Callie stepped back and slightly raised her hands. “I, um, I was with Elias anyway, we—”

  “Oh?” exclaimed Ty, sitting straight up in her seat, remembering something important.

  Callie jumped at the sudden outburst, the blood draining from her cheeks. “Y-yes?”

  “You had class with Elias today?” Ty asked quickly, feeling bad for having spooked her.

  “Oh, yes, we did. Um, early morning…or so, we went to get food after…” She wrung her hands, avoiding eye contact and then trailing off when she saw Alex zoom off to scold Elias, who had ditched his plate and was now individually picking food off the platters.

  “Did it go well?” prodded Ty kindly.

  She refocused her eyes on Ty and blushed for having been caught. “Mm, yeah. I…I think so.”

  Ty nodded and opened her notebook. “Thanks for letting me know,” she remembered to say before writing. “If you could get me a list of content you covered yesterday and today, that would be great.”

  “Okay, I’ll get that done,” nodded Callie confidently, starting to turn away but looking torn. “He, um, Elias isn’t a bad learner,” she offered nervously. “I think…I think if he just went to class and paid attention…”

  As she squirmed, a certain student from the dining table perked up.

  “I heard my name! Callie, better not be talkin’ about me!” he yelled with a full mouth of food and an entirely non-threatening look.

  Ty opened her mouth, about to reply when Callie beat her to it. “No, no, it’s alright. I’ll deal with it,” she insisted.

  Watching Callie shuffle over to the end of the kitchen, near the front entrance where Elias was standing with Alex, the tactician wondered to herself if the lazy student had finally changed his mind about studying, or if it was something else entirely.

  Two study sessions in a row, huh.

  Stifling a yawn, Ty wrote a few more notes for herself in her notebook before also remembering that it was about time to take her medicine.

  “Yo, thanks for that earlier. I guess I brought the wrong book.”

  “Is all right.”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  There were a few packets in her pocket as usual, her own mixed with Nate’s.

  “I know you don’t really like me, so thanks for that.”

  “Yes. I here to help.”

  Glancing into her pockets, Ty barely discerned a packet containing a darker powder and gently placed it on the counter.

  “Also, thanks for getting me those herbs the other day. And for not saying anything. Been rough with my parents recently.”

  “Mm.”

  “I know you don’t approve of what I am.”

  “But you, still you.”

  “That’s right.”

  Right as she was about to tear open the package, she heard another voice. Closer, this time.

  “That stuff again, huh.”

  “It’s not bad,” responded Ty mildly when she saw who it was.

  Faris pulled up the stool beside hers and set down a plate of some sort of stewed meat before sitting down himself. “Looks like death.”

  She saw no reason to cover up anything to him. “It’s just some Ancient herbs. I usually take it once or twice a day for nausea.”

  “What does it taste like?”

  “Bitter.” She tried to think of anything else while pouring some of it into her cup, but she couldn’t think of any. It tasted like calm, like nerves settling at the bottom of your stomach—but she couldn’t possibly say that.

  “Can I try some?”

  Ty froze and looked at her caster.

  “What, it’s just herbs, right? For nausea?” He gestured to the packet with one hand and ate another bite of his dinner with another hand. “Will it kill me? I’m curious.”

  “I—” she stuttered, “I-I don’t know.” It wasn’t the whole truth, but she really wasn’t sure about the side effects of someone else taking it. Her own mother never touched the stuff, only prepared it for her.

  “Here, wait.”

  Faris put down his fork and hopped off the stool, cloak majestically flowing behind him, brusquely moving his classmates out of his way as he opened the door to check outside, and then the hallway connecting the dorms.

  While he did that, Ty recovered from the shock and poured most of the package into her cup before leaving a small pinprick of medicine. She set it on the table between her cup and his plate and held her breath, hoping that if anything went wrong, Darius or Korinna would be able to fix it.

  “Useless. Cyril and Theo are nowhere to be found.” Not even asking first, Faris sat back down on his seat and shamelessly picked up the small packet that Ty had left on the table. “Guess if I die, it’s on you.”

  “Uh—”

  But before she could even get the rest of her warning out of her mouth, Faris raised the near-empty package up as if to toast, and then dropped it all into his mouth.

  “Oh. Oh no,” whispered Ty, unconsciously lifting her hand to her mouth as she watched Faris swallow her anima-suppressing supplement.

  The panic really only lasted for a few seconds before Faris noisily smacked his mouth and scrunched his eyebrows.

  “Not good. Not good at all,” he surmised after a few moments of deliberation, using some of the food on his plate to get rid of the taste. “You sure this is for nausea?”

  Lowering her hand, knowing full well she was grimacing, Ty tried to give him a straight reply. “I…yes, it’s…” She observed his face, feeling overwhelmed by the amount of concern she didn’t realize she had for the socially detached, unbelievably brazen caster. Why? Was it just how she felt, or was it years compounded on years of reverses, of redoes and resets? Exactly how much did her heart remember of her classmates?

  Watching his nonchalant gaze steadily, she whispered, “It’s to suppress my anima, since…since…”

  If there was anyone else to tell, it would be him.

  “Since?” asked Faris with a raised brow, eating another polite bite of meat, looking like the epitome of healthy.

  “…since I’m a halfling,” she finished quietly, unfathomably perplexed by the perfectly normal human being in front of her.

  Faris finally stopped.

  Speechless, he opened his mouth and then put his fork down. He looked at her for what felt like forever, no witty or biting words escaping his mouth, and then stared at the empty white paper sachet on the table.

  He met her gaze. “Did I just eat just some type of magic dust?” he asked her with the silliest, awestruck smile on his face.

  The absurdity of it all was just too much for Ty to bear—she had worried, she had fretted. She had kept everything a secret, told herself that it was okay—had she believed it?—shut herself away convinced of her own loneliness, then been talked out of it by Nate, and now—now she had told Faris, out of all people. Faris, who she could say beyond a shadow of a doubt that she trusted. With absolutely no evidence, no logical data to back up her claims other than it was what her heart told her.

  The corners of her lips raised up. She chortled at first and then stopped. And then started laughing again, unable to stop the giggles from escaping. Oh, she felt free. The world felt so calm, her heart unbelievably light.

  Her laughs garnered a few looks, and even a few chuckles from Faris before he returned back to his food, but eventually everything returned to normal, and it was Class 1-A in the common room again.

  And it was Ty and Faris by the counter. One deciding that she won’t have the medicine she poured into her coffee after all, knowing that she didn’t need it to feel how light her heart could be, one briskly finishing the rest of the food on his plate like he would in front of a friend rather than with a stranger.

  Two students, mischievous at heart.

  “I think that’s the first time I heard you genuinely laugh.”

  She smiled to herself timidly. “Yeah?”

  Silence.

  “Did you eat anything earlier?” he prodded.

  “A bit.”

  “Soup a—”

  “—nd bread, yes.”

  “You finally caught on.”

  “No, Theo told me.”

  Saying nothing to that, Faris exhaled and got up from his seat, heading over to the table and picking out a single strawberry out of a bowl.

  He brought it to her and gently placed it on the counter before sitting back in his chair, crossing his arms, and observing the rest of their classmates start to gather around the living area. Sometime during her conversation with Faris, Cyril had even appeared.

  “Eat it.”

  Ty felt an acute sense of déjà vu.

  “I don’t care what you are. Fruit’s good for you, eat it.”

  When she picked it up and did what he wanted—having had many strawberries from her mother’s garden before, just never having been so forcefully asked to eat one—Faris started to speak again.

  “I’ve been meaning to apologize for practice earlier.”

  She couldn’t reply because she had food in her mouth.

  “It’s purely customary. I think saying sorry is a waste of time. It won’t happen again.”

  She took another bite, contentedly ruminating.

  “No excuses,” he whispered under his breath, his voice quiet. No longer detached and haughty.

  Ty finished her strawberry.

  “Good?” he asked promptly, eying her and back to his usual stoic self.

  “I’ve had strawberries before, they’re fine,” replied Ty in earnest, wiping the edges of her mouth with a finger. “This one was sweet. It was good. I think…Theo likes them more than—”

  “Hey Faris, get your gold out, I’m beating you in Fairakarta today!” yelled a voice from across the room.

  Ty was the last one to look up at Korinna waving a deck of cards by the couches, Elias and Cyril already hunched over the table as well.

  “Well, that’s my cue,” grunted Faris, sliding off his stool and grabbing his plate, then giving her a final glance. “Glad to see you’re doing better than this morning.”

  She watched him walk to the dinner table, grab the rest of the strawberries, and then head over to the big coffee table surrounded by plush red couches, his old self again. Confident, pompous, hardened, and above all, veiled, loathe to let anyone in.