Chapter 127: The chairman and the organiser

Chapter 127 — The Chairman and the Organizer

The student council room sat at the top of the east tower, a round chamber with tall windows and a long oak table that had probably witnessed a century of arguments. Roxanne arrived ten minutes early with her notes pressed to her chest, expecting a short, dull meeting and a quick escape.

Lucien was already there. He stood at the head of the table sorting requests into tidy stacks, his jacket buttoned to the throat, his face composed into something polished and impersonal. He glanced up when she entered and gave her a small nod, the same nod he gave everyone else.

It was strange. Only days ago he had sat on a squashed sofa defending the structure of a dreadful film. Now he looked like a man carved for the purpose of chairing things.

Roxanne took a seat near the middle, between a sound technician and a girl from grounds who was knitting under the table. Representatives drifted in from the other teams, and Lucien welcomed them in a clear, even voice.

"This meeting exists to find practical problems before the event does. Please be brief and specific. Objections are welcome. Surprises are not."

Roxanne caught herself watching the way he moved from page to page, never hesitating, never raising his voice, the whole room bending around him without effort.

He sounds different when he is giving instructions, her wolf remarked.

Pay attention to something else, Roxanne told her.

There is nothing else as interesting.

Roxanne opened her notes and read the same line four times.

The facilities representative, a stooped man named Mr. Pell with a tape measure hanging from his belt, raised the first issue. "The proposed food stalls would obstruct the east side exit. That is not permitted."

"We could move them outside," someone suggested.

"And if it rains?" said the food volunteer, aghast.

Lucien tapped the table once. "Place them along the back wall instead. They remain indoors and clear of the exits."

"That won’t work," Roxanne said.

Heads turned. Lucien’s expression did not change. "Explain."

"The back wall sits right beside the quiet seating. Put forty people queuing for food there, and the seating becomes a corridor. The whole point of that corner is that people can sit without being jostled." She kept her voice level. "I’m not objecting because it’s your idea. I’m objecting because of the floor."

"Do you have a workable alternative?"

"Keep the stalls in the courtyard under temporary canopies, with a small indoor refreshment table as a backup for bad weather."

Mr. Pell stroked his chin. "That could work, provided the school confirms the canopies and the safety requirements."

Lucien made a note. "Has your team considered the additional cost and setup time?"

Roxanne hesitated. "We haven’t received final confirmation from the suppliers."

"Then the plan cannot depend on resources you may not receive."

Irritation flared, hot and quick. She had spent two days making this thing stand upright, and he had put his finger on its weakest joint in a single sentence. But it was a fair concern, and she knew it, and she made herself breathe.

"Then we prepare two layouts," she said. "The courtyard version as the preferred option, and a simplified indoor backup that needs no outside supplies."

"Agreed. The facilities office will review both." Lucien turned to the music team, and the meeting moved on. Nobody had been embarrassed. Nobody had surrendered. It felt oddly like a game of chess in which both players sat on the same side.

Afterwards she caught up with him in the corridor by the stairs. "Do you always sound so serious in council meetings?"

"People ignore instructions when I make them sound optional."

"You could try smiling occasionally."

"I smile when something is funny."

"Liam finds nearly everything funny. It hasn’t improved his sense of responsibility."

Lucien laughed. It was short and startled, as though it had escaped without permission, and a passing first-year nearly dropped her books. Roxanne felt a ridiculous glow of triumph.

Then his expression sobered. "Were you annoyed with me in there?"

She considered it honestly. "I was annoyed by the way you questioned my plan. Not by the fact that you questioned it."

He was quiet a moment. "That is a useful distinction."

"I thought so."

She carried the council’s feedback back to the volunteers, who groaned in chorus at the idea of drawing a second layout.

"Another plan?" said Jace. "I have only just learned the first one."

"Then this one will be easy," said Mason dryly.

"Better now than scrambling on the night," Roxanne said. "If the courtyard falls through, we want to already know what we’re doing."

Mason pulled the list toward him and began dividing it. A girl from the food team volunteered to call the facilities office. Wren took the lantern count. Roxanne waited, pen in hand, for the heaviest task to land in her lap, and noticed with some surprise that it didn’t. She left with a short, manageable list and a quiet certainty that the rest was in capable hands.

Later that afternoon she sat on the low wall beside the academy garden, eating an apple and reading through that list, when a shadow fell across the page.

"Have you time to walk with me before my next meeting?" Lucien asked.

"I thought the chairman wasn’t supposed to socialise with event organisers."

"The meeting is over. I am asking you personally."

She tucked the list into her bag. "Then yes."

They took the gravel path between the hedges, where the last roses hung heavy and brown and an old gardener nodded to them from behind a wheelbarrow. They talked about nothing in particular. The dreadful film, and the locket nobody had explained. The lantern test, and the single faulty connection that had nearly sunk it. Whether he would attend the social without spending the whole night checking the exits.

"I rarely attend student events without feeling responsible for something," he admitted.

"Then try being a student for one evening."

He considered it as gravely as he considered everything. "Would you let me know if I begin acting like a chairman?"

"Gladly. I’ll even charge you for the service."

He smiled, and it was not a formal smile at all.

At the end of the path, beneath an archway of wilting ivy, he slowed. "If I attend the Autumn Social as a student rather than a chairman, will you save me a dance?"

Roxanne stopped walking.

She could tease him. She could refuse. She could pretend she hadn’t understood. She looked at him standing there with his hands behind his back, perfectly calm and very slightly uncertain, and chose something else.

"If you ask me properly when the music starts."

Lucien nodded as though she had handed him a serious assignment. "I will."

She walked back toward the dormitory with an unfamiliar flutter under her ribs, and she was not at all surprised when her wolf spoke.

You could have simply said yes.

Roxanne kept walking. I could have.

But you did not.

And I am not discussing it with you.