Chapter 313: A Long Time After (3)

[Pinnacle Academy, Classroom 1-A]

[Friday, 8:42 AM]

I got three hours of sleep and it showed.

The classroom was full by the time I got there, which was unusual for a Friday, and the noise level told me everyone had already worked out what today’s announcement was going to be. Bags on desks. Laptops open. That particular buzz a room gets when people are pretending not to be nervous.

I took my seat by the window.

"You look like death," Bazz said from two rows down, without turning around.

"Morning to you too."

"I’m serious. Did you sleep at all?"

"Some."

"Define some."

"Three hours."

"That’s not some, that’s a nap."

Jan leaned over the back of his chair from the row above, and there was a bruise-coloured tiredness under his eyes too, though he was doing a better job of covering it than I was.

"He’s been like that since we got back," he said.

"So have you," I pointed out.

"...Fair."

Neither of us took it any further. That was becoming a habit between us, this thing where we both noticed the other was carrying something and both agreed, silently, not to reach for it yet.

The doors slid open.

Kolek walked in with a stack of papers under one arm and the expression of a man who had been awake considerably longer than three hours, and the room went quiet on its own.

"Morning, 1-A."

He dropped the stack on the podium.

"I’ll keep this short because I’ve got the same speech to give twice more today. Your first year is over in six weeks."

The buzz came back instantly.

"Which means," he continued, raising his voice slightly over it, "final assessments. Two of them. Theory in two weeks. Practical the week after."

I already knew the shape of it, but hearing it out loud still did something to my stomach.

_Six weeks._

"Theory covers everything from the start of the year. Mana enforcement, dungeon classification, monster taxonomy, association law. If you’ve been coasting on practicals to carry your average, this is where that stops working."

A few groans. Someone near the back said something about association law that got a laugh.

"Laugh now," Kolek said flatly. "Half of you failed that module."

The laughing stopped.

"The practical is the one you actually care about, so listen." He picked up the top sheet from his stack. "Three days. Generated island. All first year classes are on the same landmass, with the third-year assessment team observing from the perimeter."

Whispers everywhere now.

"Objectives will be released on the morning of. What I’ll tell you today is that this isn’t the elimination format you’ve done before. There’s a central objective, there are monsters up to and including B-Class, and there is no automatic teleport-out."

...

The room went completely silent.

"Sir—" Someone had their hand half up.

"No teleport-out?"

"You’ll have a distress beacon. Using it ends your exam." Kolek let that land.

"That’s not the same thing. Every year a few of you decide your pride is worth more than your ribs. Don’t."

B-Class.

I ran the number again, because it mattered.

The practical exams for first-years had never gone above C-Class. Not once, not in anything I’d written, and not in anything this world had done since.

C-Class was already generous for a group of seventeen-year-olds with one year of training behind them.

And Morwen’s vial elevates the boss monster to B+.

That was the part nobody in this room knew.

Which meant the exam was already B-Class before Bennett had touched anything, and by the time he was done with it, whatever was waiting at the centre of that island was going to be sitting somewhere well past what a first-year assessment was ever built to contain.

He hasn’t even done it yet. And it’s already worse than the version I wrote.

"Now." Kolek set the sheet down.

"Staffing. Four instructors on an island that size isn’t enough, so I’ve brought in an assistant."

...!

I already knew.

I’d known since the moment he said the word "practical," and I still felt my jaw tighten when the doors slid open.

"Morning, everyone!"

Damon Bennett stepped into the room with a smile that reached exactly as far as his cheeks and no further.

Neatly pressed slacks. That same boring button-down. The whole man calibrated to be forgettable, and it worked, because half the class actually brightened when they saw him.

"—Oh, it’s Mr. Bennett."

"—He’s not bad, honestly."

"—Better than Kolek, at least."

"I heard that," Kolek said.

Bennett laughed along with the room, and his hand went briefly to his back pocket.

Not to take anything out. Just resting there, checking, the way you check for your keys.

The mirror.

Four minutes, maybe five, since the last time he’d looked at it. He’d be twitching soon.

"Mr. Bennett will be assisting on both assessments," Kolek continued.

"He’s already run the theory prep for two of the other classes, so if you need extra sessions, he’s your man."

"Happy to help," Bennett said warmly.

"Genuinely. My door’s open, my study sessions are open, and I’d rather spend an hour with someone in week one than watch them panic in week six."

There it is.

That was the whole method, delivered in a single friendly sentence to a room of tired first-years, and I watched at least six of my classmates decide he was one of the good ones.

Club time, private study sessions, practicals. Every opportunity to isolate.

He’d built the same trap in my novel and it had worked for weeks. The only difference was that back then, he’d been fishing.

Now he had a list.

Valencia. And me.

I let my eyes drift toward the window, before his gaze had a chance to travel down the rows.

Too late.

I felt it land on the side of my face and stay there for about a second and a half, which is roughly a second longer than a teacher looks at a student he doesn’t care about.

Weaken him little by little.

I kept looking out the window.

Go ahead and try.

"Anyway." Kolek clapped his hands once.

"Sign-up sheet for optional theory sessions is going around. Take one or don’t, it’s your average."

The sheet started moving down the rows, and the room dissolved back into noise.

Bazz turned around properly this time.

"You signing up?"

"No."

"Course not." He rolled his eyes.

"Some of us aren’t built like textbooks."

"Some of you aren’t built like anything."

"That’s just rude."

The sheet reached me. I passed it on without writing anything, and Bennett, standing beside the podium with his arms folded and his pleasant expression fixed in place, noticed that too.

***

The bell went at 9:30 and the room emptied in the usual chaos.

I was halfway to the door when a hand caught my sleeve, and I turned to find Jae Yoona standing there with her bag over one shoulder and the flat, unreadable expression she wore approximately always.

"You owe me," she said.

"...Good morning to you too."

"The bow."

"I remember the bow."

"’The week before the theory exam.’" She recited it exactly as she’d said it back then, which was somehow worse.

"That’s next week. The library. You, me, and Alice."

haah...

I’d honestly hoped she’d forgotten. Which was stupid of me, because Jae Yoona has never forgotten anything in her life, including the fact that I once got on my knees in an administration office and begged her for archery equipment.

"Next week’s fine," I said.

"Good." She adjusted her bag.

"Alice already asked twice whether you’d back out."

"...She did?"

"Mm."

She said it in a way that gave me absolutely nothing, and then she walked off down the corridor before I could ask what that meant.

I stood there for a second.

Alice.

In the story I wrote, she survives her first year. Then Cyran Gray takes an interest in the girl whose father he murdered, works out that she’s the closest thing to a soft spot the anomaly in Class 1-A has, and uses her exactly the way you’d use a hook.

None of that has happened yet.

Right now she’s a sixteen-year-old who ranked second, reads fantasy novels she’d never admit to reading, and apparently asked twice whether I was going to show up to a study session.

haah...

Six weeks to the end of the year.

Two years to the towers.

And in between, a man with a pocket mirror who has been told to take me apart slowly, and a study date I now had to survive.

I shouldered my bag and headed for the stairs.