The quad was mostly empty when I arrived. Mid-afternoon meant most students were in classes or training sessions, leaving the grass and benches populated by scattered upperclassmen studying outdoors and a few couples making out behind the larger trees. I found an unoccupied bench near the fountain and collapsed onto it with the boneless exhaustion of someone who had just survived something they probably shouldn’t have.

Belle appeared three minutes later, moving through the sparse crowd with the kind of aggressive walking that suggested she’d been running scenarios in her head the entire trip over. She sat down beside me without asking for permission or space, close enough that our shoulders touched.

"Talk."

I talked. Everything Cassandra had said, everything I’d said in response, the quiet threats and quieter observations. Belle listened without interrupting, her expression growing more closed with each new piece of information.

"She knows about Addison," Belle said when I finished.

"She knows about everyone. She probably knows what we had for breakfast this morning."

"She’s building a profile. Mapping your connections. Looking for weak points."

"Or she’s just thorough. Diamond-tier investigators don’t get lazy just because the target seems boring."

Belle’s jaw tightened. "You’re not boring. That’s the problem."

"Thanks?"

"It’s not a compliment." She pulled out her phone and started typing rapidly. "We need to tell the others. Full debrief tonight, no exceptions. Misato needs to know the specific details about the investigation scope."

"What about Aurora and Addison?"

"Aurora’s already in the chat. Addison’s... still recovering."

Despite everything, I smiled. "That bad?"

"She sent Aurora a voice note that was four minutes of incoherent screaming followed by demands for coffee jelly. So yes. That bad."

My phone buzzed again. Private message this time, not the group chat.

Vale: "Heard you had a meeting. Come to my office. Now."

I showed Belle the screen. Her eyebrows climbed toward her hairline.

"How does he know already?"

"He’s Dominic Vale. He probably has surveillance spirits or something."

"That’s not a real thing."

"Are you sure?"

She wasn’t sure. Neither was I. The man operated on levels that defied conventional understanding, and at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if he had the entire campus wired directly to his nervous system.

"I should go," I said.

"I’ll update the others. Be careful."

"When am I not careful?"

Belle’s look communicated volumes about my track record with careful decisions. I chose not to argue the point.

Vale’s office was in the faculty building, third floor, corner unit with windows facing east and south. The door was open when I arrived, which saved me the indignity of knocking and waiting like a supplicant. I walked in to find the professor standing by his desk, examining something on his tablet with casual attention.

"Close the door."

I closed it.

"Sit."

I sat.

Vale set the tablet down and looked at me with those mismatched eyes. The ice blue one seemed to see through flesh and bone to whatever secrets lived underneath. The storm grey one tracked surface details with the intensity of a hawk spotting movement from a mile up.

"Cassandra Davenport is a problem."

"I noticed."

"She’s not your problem. She’s my problem." Vale moved around his desk and settled into his chair with the kind of easy grace that made expensive furniture look like natural extensions of his body. "Her investigation into your performance reflects poorly on my judgment. It suggests that I’ve taken on a student who might be compromising academy standards. That implication is... inconvenient."

"I didn’t mean to create problems for you."

"Of course you didn’t. You’re too busy creating problems for yourself." A thin smile crossed his features. "But the result is the same. Cassandra is now watching you, which means she’s watching me, which means she’s watching everything I’ve built over the past decade. I don’t appreciate having my work scrutinized by someone whose primary qualification is being born into the right family."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"Yes. Don’t give her reasons to dig deeper." Vale leaned forward slightly. "Your improvement rate is remarkable but defensible. Your training schedule is brutal but documented. Your associations are... colorful but not criminal. As long as those things remain true, Cassandra has nothing to pursue."

"And if something changes?"

"Then we’ll have a different conversation. One you won’t enjoy."

The warmth from our training sessions was gone. This was Vale the strategist, Vale the political operator, Vale the man who had survived decades in a world that ate the unprepared for breakfast. He was reminding me that our mentorship existed within certain boundaries, and crossing those boundaries would end badly for everyone involved.

"I understand."

"Good." The warmth returned, sudden as a switch flipping. "Now. Let’s talk about your physical scores. Your Endurance hit C-rank this morning. I want to see you pushing for B by the end of the month."

And just like that, we were back to training. Back to the comfortable rhythm of teacher and student working toward shared goals. The threat underlying the conversation hadn’t disappeared, but it had been filed away for future reference.

I spent the next hour discussing training modifications and dietary adjustments and sleep schedule optimization. Vale had opinions about everything, all of them delivered with the authority of someone who had personally tested every theory he proposed. By the time he dismissed me, the afternoon had faded into early evening and my brain felt like someone had put it through a washing machine on spin cycle.

The campus was different at this hour. Softer. Golden light painted the buildings and the paths and the students wandering between destinations. I walked toward my apartment building without any real urgency, letting the day’s accumulated stress drain away with each step.

My phone buzzed. Multiple messages, multiple sources. The group chat had exploded with the debrief Belle had promised. Naomi wanted to know when I’d be home. Aurora sent a photo of Addison eating coffee jelly with an expression of religious devotion, captioned with a simple "you did this."

I typed back: "worth it."

Addison’s response came thirty seconds later, clearly sent from Aurora’s phone since Addison’s number was still unknown to me.

"damn right it was. come back tonight. i have opinions about round two."

I smiled at the screen. Somewhere behind me, a Diamond-tier investigator was probably analyzing satellite footage of my walking patterns. Somewhere ahead, a complicated web of relationships and responsibilities waited to consume whatever energy I had left. Somewhere in between, my death timer continued its relentless countdown toward zero.

But right now, in this exact moment, I was alive. I had survived the meeting. I had learned what I needed to learn. And three different women were waiting for me to come home.

The universe could throw worse problems at a guy.