Chapter 43: Strictly Lower Body Research

Chapter 43: Chapter 43: Strictly Lower Body Research

Dante sent Senn a reply before Anika left, stating that he had never inspected Mara or accepted a transfer. The inspector confirmed receipt and told him the booking was being held, which did not make the forged approval disappear but kept Dante from having to chase it through the night.

By Sunday afternoon, his plans involved a folded exercise mat and Jett explaining why they were technically improving themselves. Student health had approved gentle seated activity for Dante, while Jett’s recovering forearm kept him beside the wall with the observers.

"I have never been more committed to rehabilitation," Jett said as the first students entered Professor Vale’s club room. His pointed ears reddened when Rhea dropped a folded towel over his eyes.

"Then start by rehabilitating your ability to count," she told him. "You’re helping me put the spare blocks away afterward."

Posey arrived in a pale blue exercise top with her hair tied back and chose the chair beside Dante, putting her notebook and water where both could reach them. Her morning reading allowed watching rather than joining in, so he offered to be equally useless beside her and earned a quiet laugh before she asked him to help count.

Anika put her mat near them without mentioning the previous night. That should have made things easier, but Dante could now remember kissing her whenever she looked at him, which seemed like an unreasonable distraction to expect him to manage in public.

Professor Vale checked their arrangements before beginning. She wore dark exercise clothes and had tied up her hair, leaving her glasses on the shelf beside a chocolate bar she covered with the attendance sheet.

"Anybody counting my snacks can demonstrate the balance sequence," she said when Jett glanced toward it. He immediately developed a deep interest in the ceiling.

The mats unrolled themselves and gripped the floor. A round spirit demonstrated a stretch with four arms until Professor Vale made it fold two behind its back. Dante appreciated an instructor remembering how many limbs the class had paid for. Posey suggested he start by using his lungs.

He warned her he might forget what came after four. "We could share the counting, if you’d like," she offered, sliding her notebook between them. "I’ll do the numbers, and you can practice breathing when Anika bends over." Dante looked at her, and Posey hid her smile behind the page as his ears warmed.

Anika caught him watching and told Posey to move him closer to the clock if he lost count. Jett laughed when Dante obeyed, delighted that university had apparently arranged a group review of where his eyes went.

The next exercise used paired resistance bands, leaving the injured men holding counting cards. Jett wrote dramatic ratings beside each position, and Dante added a comment that Rhea read before he could hide it.

"Highly educational, provided nobody calls your mother. Is that the official breathing instruction?" she asked. Posey lost her place laughing, and Dante claimed his work before Jett stole the credit, pleased to entertain them without anyone needing rescue.

When the class moved into balance work, a student’s heel caught the edge of an empty mat. It curled upward to tidy itself, tugging a resistance band that had been left across it and sending a foam block toward the observers.

Dante caught the light foam block against his chest before it reached Posey’s face, while Jett pinned the band under his shoe and called for Rhea. She pressed the mat’s woven stop patch, cutting off its tidy-up motion before another ankle got caught, and Dante handed over the block with the private satisfaction of solving a problem without warming a single finger.

Professor Vale checked the student, then tapped each empty mat’s stop patch before moving it. Jett asked whether Dante wanted a medal for surviving aggressive upholstery. He requested a tasteful statue, with shoulders that communicated the ordeal.

He checked with Posey that the block had missed her, then let Jett describe the catch as a decisive victory over foam. "My enemies keep getting softer," Dante said, and Rhea asked whether that explained the furniture he had attacked yesterday. He accepted the hit because Jett was smiling again, and because winning one small argument with an exercise mat felt better than defending another disaster.

Posey said she would draw him one, then reached for her water and missed the lid with her first try. Dante moved the bottle closer without making everyone turn toward her, remembering how quickly she had apologized the night before.

Rhea’s tail lifted a towel, and Dante asked whether it could carry his notebook. She told him he could admire something without giving it a job, leaving Jett helpless with laughter while Posey offered to add the lesson beneath his statue.

After the session, Jett spent their agreed snack budget on two warm buns that argued about which one contained cheese. Dante divided them on napkins so everyone could try a piece, then discovered both were full of potato, earning Jett’s defense that neither had ever produced a written guarantee.

They claimed the table outside the club room and spread out the napkins while Rhea put away equipment and Anika answered Ms. Lane’s call. Posey drew Dante holding his rescued foam block with shoulders too wide for the page, and he was still negotiating the statue’s trousers when she turned to the notebook the nurse had asked her to keep.

"You said your notes might help," she reminded him. "I thought we could look together, if you still wanted to."

Dante brought up his exercise record, expecting to find a simple mistake that somebody cleverer had missed. He found Friday’s ring lift, the day he had stayed away from spells, and the times she had written beside her low readings.

Posey pointed out that her clinic visit came after breakfast, not before it. Dante moved the entry, watching his neat explanation fall apart. She had lived through the symptoms while he was trying to arrange them into an answer; getting her time right mattered more than keeping his theory.

One drop fell on the day he had practiced holding the ring. Another came after a day when he had cast nothing at all, leaving his neat little explanation useless before he had even earned the chance to announce it.

He asked whether the headache had returned, and she said it had faded while the cold hands stayed. He recorded that difference too. Treating every symptom as one thing would be easier, but easier had already cost them enough.

He sent both records to student health with Posey’s permission. Before he could close the message, she turned back a page and showed him a third low reading, taken while he had been asleep.