Chapter 33: Please Stop Coaching My Love Life

Jett arrived for Friday breakfast carrying a banana and the expression of a man about to make it somebody else’s problem. Dante told him he planned to ask Anika out before he could demonstrate whatever enchanted property the fruit possessed.

Jett’s pointed ears twitched beneath shaggy red hair when Dante mentioned his sister, then he put the banana down as though the conversation deserved a weapon-free start. He said Anika liked coffee, winning and men who finished sentences, while Dante promised to pay for breakfast before arranging his own funeral.

"Are you asking permission, or warning me to leave the country?" Jett asked, peeling the banana now that nobody seemed likely to need it for self-defense. Dante said he was asking for advice, then regretted giving that much responsibility to a man currently eating his emergency weapon.

Jett asked whether he liked Anika or enjoyed being frightened by attractive women. Dante considered lying, then admitted both, adding that he liked hearing her talk about her work. He had developed complex theories about magic choosing him; liking a woman ought to permit a simpler explanation.

Dante asked Jett to watch practice and tell him when something looked wrong, then messaged Professor Bell about stopping the familiar lift. The reply came while they cleared their plates: come to the practice room, but wait for the nurse before casting.

A sports-center replay showed an underwater player losing an electric-blue fish when his possession clock expired. Jett explained Depth-Charge, separate from his ordinary football. Dante spotted a shorter pass. Reading a battlefield came naturally, apparently, although the battlefield had just bitten its own quarterback.

Jett said this was how one game became a weekly argument with the coach, then replayed the tackle because friendship apparently required watching strangers suffer twice.

Professor Bell found them debating whether a fish could receive a scholarship and brought them inside. Martin was already there with a padded practice dummy, a floor stand, and the yellow equipment case Dante remembered from the cleaner’s.

Martin, the huge gray technician with tusks and careful hands, was preparing Saturday’s sports demonstration. He fitted the dummy’s waist belt to a floor stand with a blue line, pulled it sideways over a mat, then pressed the red release button to let the line slacken.

"If that release fails, this disconnects the line," he said, lifting a yellow tool with two short prongs. "It needs three beeps, so don’t pull it away after the first."

He reset the belt, fitted the prongs around the blue line, and squeezed the handle. Three rising beeps sounded before the dummy dropped onto the mat.

Dante asked where the fork touched, and Martin showed both prongs around the loose line, away from the dummy. It broke the connection rather than cutting the person, a distinction Dante made himself repeat before Martin packed it away.

The demonstration equipment stayed unplugged afterward while the nurse arrived to check Dante’s hand. Professor Bell had arranged the short appointment after Dante asked at breakfast, and permission covered one familiar lift with his uninjured hand.

His first unpowered lift spiral resembled an elderly sperm, according to Jett. Dante preferred a sign too advanced for ordinary eyes. Professor Bell pointed out the bad hook and made him practice the Korean words, reducing his ancient wisdom to an incorrect drawing and poor pronunciation.

Dante asked how to fix it before Jett could comment on its family. Professor Bell drew a second hook beside his. He copied the turn until it matched, keeping the first attempt for comparison. A master would study his mistakes, privately, where nobody could ask why they resembled sperm.

"Why learn the drawing if I can picture it?" Dante asked.

Professor Bell tapped the corrected hook. "Because you can show me this mistake. You can’t ask someone to inspect a picture locked inside your head." Dante looked at the two drawings and finally understood why guessing faster wasn’t the whole lesson.

Jett watched him mark the correction without joking. Dante nudged the board over, wanting his friend to see. He could pretend this was all beneath him, or enjoy getting something right with someone who had watched him get it wrong.

Posey and Anika arrived after their morning lecture carrying the notes he had missed. Posey put her bag beside an empty chair and asked him to save it while she found the page. Her tea went on a separate bench, safely away from the practice tray.

Professor Bell demonstrated the ring stopping above a pencil mark before lowering it, and Dante pictured that familiar lift once permission came. Warmth filled his good fingertips, but the ring overshot, then wobbled when he forced it down.

Dante pictured the gap above the tray instead of chasing each wobble, and the ring settled. Obviously, he thought, then caught himself. He had changed something specific. He wrote it down while the nurse checked him, determined to reproduce it without relying on his opinion of himself.

Posey smiled at him, then tried a small warming charm around the tea she’d brought. Her traced loop glowed through the final Korean word, but the light faded almost immediately.

"Oh, that’s strange," she said, setting the cup down before her trembling fingers spilled it. "It normally lasts longer, and I haven’t even been to tennis." She tucked one hand inside her sleeve while Dante stopped admiring the ring.

The nurse checked Posey and asked her to rest, eat, and report any further shaking. Dante asked permission to record the failed charm beside his lift, then showed both times to the nurse. He carried Posey’s notes to the door without offering to warm her tea with another spell.

He circled the times together. His ring had obeyed; Posey’s charm had failed. The triumphant account forming in his head needed that second fact, however badly it spoiled the mood. He couldn’t call himself her protector while editing her shaking hands out of his morning.

Anika stayed after Posey left for her next class. Dante could hear Jett taking an unusually long time to find something inside a bag that contained almost nothing.

"Coffee in Tenswa after your next lecture," Dante said before his courage expired. "With me, because I want to take you out, and I promise not to bring a suspect."

Anika studied him while his mind prepared explanations for either answer. If she refused, he could devote himself to forbidden knowledge. If she agreed, he would need clean clothes. She took his phone and pointed to the noon shuttle, leaving forbidden knowledge temporarily unattended.

"You’re choosing the place," she said, returning it. "And Dante, if you spend our date asking Jett what to say, I’ll make you both sit at the children’s table."