Chapter 63| Nine Days

Chapter 63: Chapter 63| Nine Days

The afternoon session ran from 2:00 PM to 4:30 PM.

Zane sat in his usual spot. middle row, aisle seat and let the session wash over him while his mind ran the numbers he’d been running since lunch.

Nine days.

Four candidates. Hypothetically three.

One quest he hadn’t figured out how to start yet.

The daily quest notification was already marked complete in the corner of his vision. He had finished during the morning before the drill without thinking about it, the fifty reps happening naturally in the training ground with maren. The system had logged it without ceremony.

He looked at the timer instead.

『 BOUND TARGET QUEST — Time Remaining: 9 days 11 hours 02 minutes 』

’Nine days,’ he thought. ’And I spent the morning throwing myself over a railing.’

Instructor Vael’s voice was doing something at the front of the room. He registered enough of it to know it wasn’t a question directed at him and let the rest run.

The familiarity standings were sitting in his head whether he called them up or not.

Maren at 58%. It was the closest by numbers. Six weeks of 6:20 AM training building something real and today he’d found out there was a whole context of her life he hadn’t been in. She had a lunch arrangement. She didn’t have a boyfriend. He’d asked, she’d called him a dummy, something in his chest had settled in a way he wasn’t going to examine too closely right now. But she had a world outside the training grounds that he hadn’t thought to ask about until today.

Sera at 25%. Daily lunches. She had a kink for stealing fries. Known for wearing various variants of hoodie doing its usual obstruction work with impressive consistency. Warm and present in a way that had stopped feeling like coincidence and started feeling like something she’d decided on quietly without announcing it.

Nyx at 8%. We had just one real exchange in a courtyard. She’d told me to make her a priority. Directly. Without framing it as anything other than what it was.

Then the last Nil — still unidentified. Still pending.

A student two rows ahead asked Vael something. Vael answered. The session moved.

Zane kept his eyes forward and kept running the numbers.

’The system has the percentages,’ he thought. ’I have the actual relationships. They don’t always point in the same direction.’

He was in thoughts and didn’t know when the session ended at 4:30 PM.

’So fast’. He thought. ’They really say time really flies when you’re lost in thoughts’. He packed his notebook and headed out.

The corridor between the academic block and the dormitory building was emptier than usual at this hour. Most students were still filing out, a few already ahead of the pack. The late afternoon light doing the gold thing across the campus the way it always did at this time of day.

Zane walked through it without catching on anything.

Past the east courtyard. Past the low wall where Nyx had been sitting the evening she’d told him to make her a priority. Past the practical complex entrance still closed from the drill earlier.

He pushed through the dormitory entrance and took the elevator to the seventh floor. He was for sure exhausted and couldn’t take any chances interacting with anyone.

He arrived at Room 714 by 6:00 PM.

Dex was already back. Jacket off. Laptop open. Noodles materialising from somewhere with the reliability of a natural law. He looked up when Zane came through the door.

"It’s Mr Railing guy," Dex said.

"Don’t please," Zane replied.

"Word travels fast in this building," Dex said. "Apparently several students on the observation access saw the whole thing. The railing grab specifically is getting good reviews."

"Great," Zane said.

He dropped his bag and sat on his bed.

Gerald wheezed.

"How’s the suit design coming," Dex said without looking up from his laptop.

"Working on it," Zane replied.

"You’ve been working on it for a while," Dex said.

"Hero names take time," Zane said.

Dex looked at him sideways. The expression of someone who had read four words on a notebook page and had filed them under things he was choosing not to push on.

"Sure," Dex said.

He went back to his laptop.

Zane lay back on his bed and looked at the ceiling.

Nine days. The quest sitting in his vision like a second timer running alongside the daily countdown. The system was for sure quiet for once. Not issuing prompts, not delivering observations, not commenting on hoodies or familiarity accumulation or the specific way Maren had said take good care of yourself in a corridor.

Just the numbers. Just the ceiling. Just Gerald wheezing every twenty minutes like a metronome nobody had asked for.

’Who do I start with,’ Zane thought.

Not a system question. A real one. The kind that didn’t have a notification answer and couldn’t be resolved by pulling up a percentage display.

Maren was closest by familiarity. But closest in familiarity wasn’t the same as closest in terms of what had actually developed between them. The training ground’s context was six weeks deep and real but what if she dosen’t... ’For fuck sake,I am for sure overthinking’. Zane muttered.

Sera was consistent. Present. The kind of consistent that had shown up every day at 12:30 PM for six weeks and ordered his coffee ahead and stolen his fries and said things that landed somewhere real without making a performance of it.

Nyx had told him to make her a priority. Directly. She’d also walked away in the courtyard in a way that had required him to look at the corridor wall immediately afterward.

’The system has the numbers,’ Zane thought. ’I have the relationships. They don’t always point the same direction and I’m the one who has to live with the direction I pick.’

He looked at the timer.

『 BOUND TARGET QUEST — Time Remaining: 9 days 10 hours 44 minutes 』

The system surfaced.

『 System Note: The host is overthinking. All three candidates are real connections. The quest does not require you to rank them against each other. It requires you to move. Pick a direction and move. 』

’That’s the most useful thing you’ve said all week,’ Zane thought.

『 I have my moments. 』

’Which direction,’ Zane thought.

『 You already know. 』

Zane looked at the ceiling.

Dex laughed at something on his laptop.

Gerald wheezed.

Outside the window the campus was settling into its evening rhythm. Lights coming on in the east wing, the practical complex dark, the low wall in the east courtyard empty the way it was most evenings.

Zane closed his eyes.

Nine days.

One direction.