The silver blade of a dinner knife scraped against porcelain. Clean, precise enough to register.
Of all the ways Solan had imagined sharing a meal with Clara. This ranked somewhere below public execution. She had invited him. That wasn’t the problem.
They were seated across from her brother. In the main dining hall of the administrative sector , of all places. Solan didn’t even know students were allowed here. A room so immaculate it could double as a tribunal chamber.
Damien didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t lean forward.
Solan still felt smaller. The overhead light slid along his silver hair and stayed, as if it had found a surface worth keeping. Even seated, he carried height with him. His shoulders filled the chair without effort.
The knife in his hand moved in clean, quiet strokes. Solan became acutely aware of his own elbows. Of the way his fork scraped too loud. Of the mushrooms he’d already mutilated beyond recovery. Sitting across from him felt like being measured against a ruler no one had warned you about.
“First year?” he said, not looking up yet.
“Yes.” The word came out light and unarmed.
“I’m a senior.” Another quiet slice. Then, almost as an afterthought: “She rarely brings classmates here.”
It wasn’t a warning. It didn’t rise in tone. It just existed.
Clara turned her head slightly. “Damien.”
The faintest shift passed through him. A pause half a second too long before he resumed cutting his steak. Which, somehow, made Solan feel even more like the unstable variable at the table.
Solan, meanwhile, had already interpreted this as a formal indictment of his existence.
“She—this is literally the first time,” Solan heard himself say. “We’re in Disaster Response Theory together. That’s it. Just class. Very… not this.”
He wanted to die immediately after finishing that sentence.
Damien held his gaze. Solan felt the need to justify himself, though no accusation had been made.
“Kamuy type?” he asked.
“Summoning-type, weapon manifestation. Limited to bladed weapon. Strictly no usage at night!” It sounded like he was being interrogated.
“Stability?”
“Uh—generally stable!”
“Generally,” Damien repeated, as if testing the word for hidden cracks.
“Do I need to cover your meal?” Damien’s eyes flicked to Solan’s plate—where the mushrooms lay butchered beyond recognition. One tragic splash of sauce stained the napkin like something from a crime scene. Before Solan could answer, Clara spoke.
“He’s usually not that nervous.” Her voice was calm, but her fingers tapped lightly against her glass. “During the drill, he threw himself at the gun man.”
Damien’s hand stilled—not in alarm. In recognition. He shifted his gaze to Clara, not to correct her, not to challenge her. Just to confirm that she meant what she said. There was something in that look—brief, almost tired.
Solan’s fork stopped mid-air. She remembered? She actually remembered?
Then: “Have you ever dueled someone?”
“Uh…,” Solan said, before glancing up and immediately regretting how small that sounded. “But I’m not avoiding it. Just… waiting for the right match.” It wasn’t exactly a no. But close enough.
Damien didn’t smile, but his expression shifted—fractionally. Thoughtful. “I know the Scratchlist isn’t mandatory. But it’s a tradition. Students sometimes start a duel not to win. Just to learn where they stand.” He didn’t press the point. Just let it hang there, offered without weight or pressure.
Then he looked at Solan more directly. His voice didn’t change, but something in his eyes steadied. “You don’t have to prove anything to anyone. Just don’t pretend you don’t belong.”
Then, a pause. A shift. Unexpected. “He’s honest,” Damien said, as if filing a report.
“Mm.” Clara looked across the table—directly at Solan.
Clara’s mouth curved, small and quiet. “And sometimes kind of funny.”
Clatter. Solan’s dinner knife hit the plate. His ears rang like someone had lobbed a flashbang into the dining room. Did she—did she just call him funny? In front of her brother? That brother?
Damien looked at Clara. Something like resignation crossed his face, gone before Solan could place it.
Solan kept chewing his steak as if it mattered. He focused on breathing. That felt ambitious enough.
The dorm room door clicked softly open.
Solan slipped in like a fugitive—each breath turned down to a whisper.
“Well, well. The survivor returns,” Matt half-lifted one eye from his phone. “How did the dinner go.”
Solan said nothing. Didn’t even take off his shoes. He collapsed face-first onto the bed, like the mattress might absorb everything he didn’t want to feel. Flat on his back, limbs loose as string, he looked like a specimen drained of bone.
“That face…” Matt tugged one earbud free. “They put truth serum in your drink or something?”
The blanket whipped up, then dropped—
Solan wrapped himself tight, sealing all edges like a man preparing for re-entry.
He wasn’t tired. He was wide awake. Terrifyingly awake. His brain felt like someone had taken fine-grade sandpaper to it—raw and hyper-aware, every nerve ending lit up and twitching.
“He’s kind of funny.” The sentence ricocheted through his skull like a stray firework—lodged deep in the folds of his cortex, fizzing endlessly.
It wasn’t the first time someone had called him funny . His elementary science teacher said his silk moth experiment was funny—which was a polite way of describing bug-based chaos in a shoebox. Matt called him funny too, usually between “you’re a menace” and “how did you turn mac and cheese into pavement?”
But when Clara said it...
Her lashes had caught the dining room light like fine thread. Her smile had curved like she’d spotted an oddly-shaped cloud. Her voice—barely a breath—had landed on the table like snowfall on porcelain.
Solan flipped onto his side. Then back. Then curled into himself like a sea creature sensing danger. What was “funny,” really? Was it politeness? Like complimenting a painting in a dentist’s office? Was it amusement? Like watching a panda fall off a slide?
Or—just maybe—was there the tiniest, stupidest, statistically irrelevant chance that—
“Nope.”
The word came out muffled through the blanket. He knew himself too well. The drill? He tripped and body-slammed. Class? He was a frequent flyer in nap-land. Presence on campus? He could disappear for a week and no one would notice. And today? He launched mushroom fragments in front of Damien Vale.
“If she actually thinks I’m interesting, her standards are buried somewhere near the Earth’s core.”
From the top bunk, Matt snorted. “You just had a three-minute silent monologue with the facial expressions of a tragic soap opera lead.”
Solan yanked the blanket up past his nose. Outside, wind rattled the branches. Shadows clawed softly at the wall. He shut his eyes. But the word echoed louder in the dark: funny . Not a crush. Not infatuation.
Just…
A moment. Like walking past an exhibit. Pausing. Tilting your head. Saying, “Huh. That color’s kind of nice.” And then moving on.
“Think about something else,” he muttered to the ceiling. “Like the rib structure of the Effigies specimen...” But his brain had other plans. It projected tomorrow like a pre-scheduled breakdown: Would she sit in the same spot? Would her hair brush the edge of his notes? Would she—god forbid—turn and say something again?
“Lost cause,” he whispered into the pillow. “Terminal.”
His phone buzzed under the pillow. A text from Matt, top bunk oracle.
Need me to book psych services?
P.S. You were smiling like a serial killer.