"Yo boys."

Zeke waved as he appeared in the sitting room.

A beat. He looked around at the empty space.

"Oh. No one’s here."

"BOYS!!!"

He amplified his voice with mana, the word bouncing off every wall in the house with unnecessary force.

"Why are you shouting!"

Anton’s voice came from under the table. His body followed shortly after, unfolding from beneath it with the unhurried dignity of someone who had made a considered choice about where to sleep and was not embarrassed by it. He stood, stuck a finger in his ear, and wiggled it.

"What are you doing under the table?"

"It’s comfy. What’s your business? Why were you shouting — you woke me."

"Where are the rest of the boys?"

"There are more than boys in this house."

Yeon’s voice drifted down from the stairs before she did. Aaron appeared a step behind her.

"Oh. Zeke’s back."

"Your reading adventure has ended?"

Kai was already leaning on the bannister, arms folded over the railing with the ease of someone who had been awake for a while and was choosing not to announce it. Jude raised a hand from the landing above him.

"Yo."

"Where’s Michael?"

"Sleeping," Anton said. "Before you disturbed me."

"Perfect. You’re all here." Zeke clapped his hands once. "Let’s go out."

"Huh?"

The reaction was collective and immediate, every face in the room arranging itself into some variation of bafflement. Yeon’s did not.

"It’s been a while since we’ve gone out together — we haven’t, actually, not since the group got this big, not since we entered the Tower. We won’t be seeing much of each other from next week." He paused. "We also haven’t seen a lot of each other these past few weeks."

He glanced around the room. Everyone was still staring.

"If it makes you feel better — Yeon and I were going out by ourselves and I decided to include you lot. Since I was the one who converted you all into homebodies."

The room went quiet.

"What’s wrong with you?" Anton said.

"You could have left out the last part," Yeon said at the same time.

"And why would you tell them we were going out alone? You know how they are."

"Dirty?" Aaron said, the word doing considerable work.

"I’ll have you know," Kai said, straightening from the bannister, "I have waited my entire life for this."

"Mhm." Aaron and Jude nodded in unison.

"And now Zeke has ruined it by including us." Michael’s voice came from upstairs, level and unhurried. He appeared at the top of the stairs a moment later, apparently not as asleep as advertised.

The boys shook their heads.

"Tsk. Tsk."

"It’s really not that deep," Zeke said.

"In what universe," Jude said, "is a date not deep."

"It’s not a date."

"Deception of that level does not work on me." Jude’s face was entirely neutral. It made the line considerably worse.

"Furthermore," Michael said, descending the stairs at a measured pace, "you’ve been smiling at your phone for the past week. Screen not tilted sideways, which rules out anime. Typing speed consistent with active conversation rather than browsing. The only people you can reach from the tower were in this house." He paused at the bottom of the stairs and folded his hands. "It wasn’t any of us."

"Mm." The group nodded.

"We wouldn’t want to face Zeke’s wrath," Anton said, the picture of innocence.

"So. Definitely Zeke," Michael concluded.

"Sneaky, sneaky," Kai said.

Yeon looked at Kai. Just looked at him, the way a cold front looks at a warm afternoon.

"Ahem." Kai coughed.

"So." Zeke let the small smile that had been threatening to surface do what it wanted. "Are you coming or not?"

"Since Zeke has decided to have family time," Anton said, with the shrug of a man surrendering gracefully, "we have no choice but to oblige." He raised a finger, looked back at the boys and Michael.

"But—"

He held the pause. They looked at each other.

They nodded.

Yeon leaned forward slightly, cracking her knuckles. "I wonder what plan requires nodding."

"A nodding contest?" Kai offered.

"Let’s go."

Zeke placed a hand on Yeon’s shoulder, light and brief, and steered her toward the door before the knuckles became relevant.

...

The third floor of the Tower had opinions about weather.

The sky above Aurelia Prime was a blue that only existed in places that hadn’t entirely decided whether they were real — deep at the center, fading at the edges, with clouds moving at the pace of something that had somewhere to be but wasn’t rushed about it. The streets were cobblestone and wide, lined with buildings that couldn’t agree on an era. Stone facades with carved window frames beside timber-framed shops hung with hand-painted signs. Lanterns on iron brackets caught the afternoon light and held it, warm and amber, before it was needed.

It smelled like bread and something floral and, faintly, of mana discharge from somewhere further down.

Zeke walked with his hands in his pockets. Yeon walked beside him, her eyes moving across the storefronts with the specific quality of attention she reserved for things she found genuinely interesting but wasn’t going to say so.

Behind them, at a distance that was carefully maintained and occasionally recalibrated, the boys walked.

"Spread out," Anton said. "We look like bodyguards."

"We are bodyguards," Kai said.

"We are not bodyguards."

"Then why are we walking in a formation?"

"We’re not walking in a formation."

"Anton. Look at us."

Anton looked. Michael on the far left. Aaron on the far right. Jude directly behind Anton, Kai half a step behind Jude. Objectively a formation.

"...Spread out," Anton said again.

...

The first food stall sold something that looked like flatbread folded around a filling that smelled aggressively good. The vendor — a broad woman with flour on her forearms and the energy of someone who had been winning arguments since before Zeke was born — held out two pieces before they’d stopped walking.

"Try it." Not an offer.

Zeke took both, handed one to Yeon, and bit into his without ceremony.

"Mm."

Yeon took a smaller bite. Then a larger one.

"Don’t say anything," she said.

"I wasn’t going to say anything."

"You had a face."

"I have a face. It’s attached to my head. That’s where faces live."

Yeon gave him a look that communicated several things at once, none of them complimentary. Zeke smiled at her, unrepentant, and finished his flatbread in two more bites.

She finished hers four seconds later.

They moved on without discussing it.

...

Thirty feet behind them, Kai was already on his second piece.

"Did you see that," Aaron said. It wasn’t a question.

"The face thing?" Jude asked.

"The face thing."

"I saw the face thing."

"What face thing?" Kai asked, mouth full.

"Zeke made a face when she liked the food," Michael said. He was watching their retreating figures with the focused attention of someone conducting field research. "Approximately 0.3 seconds. A micro-expression. Satisfaction-adjacent."

"He was happy she liked it," Anton said flatly.

"Yes."

A pause.

"That’s disgusting," Anton said, in a tone that suggested he didn’t actually find it disgusting.

"It’s cute," Kai said.

Everyone looked at him.

"What? It’s cute. I’m allowed to say things are cute. I’m a complex person."

"You have flour on your face," Jude said.

Kai wiped his face. Badly. The flour redistributed rather than disappeared.

"Better?"

"No."

...

Past the food stalls the street opened into a wider recreational quarter — cobblestones giving way to packed earth, buildings stepping back to make room. An archery range on one side. A ring toss on the other, posts set at ascending heights from knee level to well above the head. In the middle, a low wooden platform where two people were working through a sparring form for a small, watching crowd.

Zeke looked at the archery range.

Yeon looked at the ring toss.

They looked at each other.

"Ring toss," Zeke said.

"Obviously," Yeon said.

The stall keeper — a thin older man with the resigned expression of someone who had watched too many confident customers discover humility — handed them each five rings and gestured at the posts.

Zeke tossed his first. Clean landing, second post.

Yeon tossed hers. Third post.

Zeke raised an eyebrow. Yeon did not look at him. She tossed her second ring. Fourth post.

"You’ve done this before," Zeke said.

"I’ve done everything before."

"That’s not the humble origin story I was expecting."

"I don’t have humble origin stories. I have origin stories." She glanced at him sideways. "Side characters like you wouldn’t understand."

"I’m too handsome to be a side character."

Zeke’s second ring landed on the fourth post. He tilted his head, recalibrating. His third went to the fifth.

Yeon’s third went to the fifth.

They both looked at the far post, which was doing nothing except existing at an inconvenient height and waiting to become someone’s point.

"If I land this," Zeke said.

"You’re not going to land that."

"If I land this."

"Finish your sentence."

"I haven’t decided the stakes yet."

Yeon turned to look at him. "You opened a conditional with no conclusion."

"I’m thinking." 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

"Think faster."

Zeke tossed the ring. It caught the top of the far post, wobbled with the specific drama of something that hadn’t decided the outcome yet, and dropped off the side.

Silence.

"You were saying?" Yeon said.

"I was thinking," Zeke said.

"Out loud, apparently."

He handed her his remaining two rings without comment. She tossed the first — clean on the sixth post. The second caught the far post, settled, held.

The stall keeper handed her the prize with the expression of a man completing a transaction he’d seen end this way before. A small cloth token, shaped like a stylized bird.

Yeon looked at it. Then held it out to Zeke.

"Consolation," she said.

"I don’t need consolation."

"I know. Take it anyway."

"I let you win. It was originally mine."

He took it. Turned it over once in his hand. Tucked it into his coat pocket without further comment.

They moved on.

...

"Did she just—" Kai started.

"Yes," Anton said.

"And he just—"

"Yes."

"And neither of them—"

"No."

Kai pressed both hands to his face. "I can’t watch this. It’s too much. It’s too real. I’m not built for this level of emotional tension."

"You’re being dramatic," Jude said.

"Jude. She gave him the prize. He kept it. Neither of them said a single normal human thing about it. That’s not dramatic. That’s a medical situation."

"Calm down before they hear you," Aaron said quietly, eyes still tracking the pair ahead.

"They’re not going to hear me, we’re thirty feet back—"

"Twenty-five," Michael said. "You’ve been gradually accelerating."

Kai looked down at his feet as if they had made a unilateral decision he hadn’t authorized.

"...We should spread out more," he said.

"We should," Anton agreed.

Neither of them slowed down.

...

The sparring demonstration had ended by the time they looped back around, the platform cleared and replaced by a small open space with low benches arranged around a fire pit that was more aesthetic than functional in the afternoon light. A few groups had settled into corners — older students with books, a merchant going over ledgers with an assistant, two children racing a wooden toy across the flagstones with the absolute focus of people for whom this was the most important thing happening anywhere.

Zeke dropped onto one of the benches. Yeon sat beside him — not quite close enough to be remarkable, close enough that the space between them had been a considered decision.

"Next week," Zeke said.

"Next week?" Yeon raised an eyebrow.

"Next week the group’s going to be busy. A lot."

"I know." She leaned back slightly. "It doesn’t change much for me — it’s the same as before, more or less. You boys are the ones who’ll feel it most."

"Who says I won’t miss you more than before?"

"If you do," Yeon said, "I’ll have to check if you’ve been replaced. A few stabbings ought to confirm it."

"It seems you’ve already started."

"Oh?"

"I feel a stab in my heart."

"Deep or shallow?"

"Difficult to say. It’s already healed." He glanced at her. "Your smile does that."

Yeon was quiet for a moment. She looked at the unlit fire pit.

Zeke leaned back, one arm resting along the top of the bench — not quite around her shoulders. Not quite not.

"Don’t make it weird," she said.

"I’m not making anything weird."

"Your arm."

"My arm is on the bench. The bench is a publicly accessible structure. I have no further comment."

The corner of Yeon’s mouth moved. Not a smile, exactly. Close.

"You’re insufferable," she said.

"You keep showing up," Zeke said.

A beat.

"You have my brothers," Yeon said.

...

The boys arrived forty seconds later and distributed themselves across the remaining benches with the energy of people who had definitely not been waiting at a respectful distance for a natural entry point.

"Good fire," Kai said, gesturing at the unlit pit.

"It’s not lit," Aaron said.

"Good pit, then."

"How was the walk?" Anton asked, settling across from them with the specific casualness of someone who had been waiting to ask that question for a while.

"Fine," Zeke said.

"Fine," Yeon said.

"At the same time," Kai noted.

"We noticed," Jude said.

"I’m just saying—"

"Kai."

"What?"

Yeon looked at him. Not aggressively. Something quieter, and therefore more effective.

Kai closed his mouth.

"For the record," Michael said pleasantly, "this has been the most informative afternoon I’ve had since arriving on the third floor."

"Informative," Anton repeated.

"Mm."

"I don’t want to know what that means," Yeon said.

"Probably for the best," Michael agreed.

Zeke looked at him. "You’re enjoying this."

"I don’t enjoy things."

"You’re enjoying this."

Michael considered this for a moment. "...That would be the most Zeke thing to do," he said.

Aaron laughed first. Then Jude. Then Kai, who had clearly been holding it in for some time. Anton shook his head, but his mouth was doing something that wasn’t a frown. Yeon’s expression shifted — a small smile, controlled but present.

Zeke looked at all of them, then looked up at the too-blue Tower sky, and said nothing. Which was its own kind of answer.

...

They stayed until the lanterns meant something, the light shifting from afternoon blue to something deeper and warmer. Food came back from various stalls in paper wrapping, distributed without ceremony, eaten on the benches while conversations ran in every direction at once.

Anton told a story about a dungeon from a previous life that grew progressively more implausible while he maintained throughout that every detail was accurate. Kai challenged this. Anton doubled down. Jude fact-checked using logic alone and identified at least one specific detail as fabricated. Anton said that was the truest part. The argument was still ongoing when they finally stood to leave.

Aaron and Michael walked ahead — which almost never happened — speaking too quietly to catch — which also almost never happened. No one pointed it out, because pointing it out would end it.

Kai fell into step beside Jude. "Next week’s going to be different," he said.

"Yeah," Jude said.

"It’s not that bad though. We share a class. Same academy. Anton and Michael have it worse."

Kai nodded. That was enough.

Zeke and Yeon settled naturally into the rear, the gap between them the same size it had been all afternoon.

"Good day," Yeon said. Not a question.

"Good day," Zeke agreed.

"We should do it again. When my social battery recharges."

"Why would I want to see your face again?"

"It’s the face of your favorite male Slut ."

"I prefer Immortal Waste of space."

"As long as the space is in your heart," Zeke said, "I’ll stay there all day."

"Stop flirting and be serious for once."

She gave him a look — the death glare, with a smile threatening its edges, losing the battle by a small and visible margin.

Zeke flinched. Then, with the energy of someone who had decided something, he closed the small distance between them and took her hand, locking their palms together.

{ This brings a tear to my fucking eye. }

The lanterns threw their shadows long on the cobblestones behind them, two shapes at the same pace, fingers interlaced, neither of them saying anything about it.