Chapter 81| SoundProofed

Chapter 81: Chapter 81| SoundProofed

Zane skipped lunch.

Not intentionally at first. He’d walked in the direction of the cafeteria after leaving the training grounds and then kept walking past it without going in. His appetite had apparently decided that waiting for a message that might or might not arrive before a timer expired was a sufficient substitute for food.

He ended up at the third floor of the east wing.

The guest room block.

He’d half expected it to be what the name suggested —one room, functional, forgettable. What he found was different. A wide corridor with up to eighteen doors running along both sides. More than he’d expected from a facility most first years apparently didn’t know existed. A sign-in desk at the entrance with an officer in charge who looked up when Zane approached with the specific unbothered energy of someone who had seen first years discover this block before and had stopped finding it remarkable.

"Sign-in form," the officer said. Slide a clipboard across.

Zane filled it out. Got a key. And was assigned Room four.

He walked down the corridor and opened the door.

Small. Compact. A single bed, a desk, a chair, a window with the blind half drawn. Clean. Functional. The specific no-frills efficiency of a room designed for exactly one purpose without apologising for it.

He stood in the doorway.

Then noticed the walls.

Thick. The kind of thick that didn’t happen by accident. He knocked on one. The sound absorbed almost immediately, the composite material doing what the system had told him training walls did.

’Sound proofed,’ he thought.

He looked at the room.

’Dex said 80% highest probability,’ he thought. ’The system agreed.’

He stepped inside. Looked at the window. The blind. The door lock was a proper one, not the standard dormitory latch.

’This is actually better than I thought,’ he thought.

He stood in room four for exactly two minutes.

Then locked it behind him, kept the key, and walked back toward the boys dormitory.

’Prepared,’ he thought.

He arrived at Room 714 at 2:00 PM.

Dex was out. Torre presumably went back to his own room. Gerald wheezed at his standard interval.

Zane lay on his bed and looked at the ceiling.

The timer sat in the corner of his vision.

『 BOUND TARGET QUEST — Time Remaining: 10 hours 22 minutes 』

’10 hours,’ he thought.

He looked at his communicator.

No message.

He put it face down.

Looked at the ceiling.

’She said she’d contact me,’ he thought. ’Not no. Contact me. There’s a difference.’

He looked at the communicator.

Still face down.

’Is this the end of my story,’ he thought. ’Timer expires. System deactivates. Everything I’ve built in six weeks — Impact Breaker at 75%, Overdrive at 90% ceiling, Took eleven placement in trials, Rebranded as Code Zero on the academy blog. All of it just stops because I couldn’t cross one threshold in ten days.’

The system surfaced.

『 You should have more faith in yourself. 』

’Easy for you to say,’ Zane thought. ’You don’t get deactivated.’

『 The system gets deactivated with you. We are in this together. 』

Zane stared at the ceiling.

’We’re in this together,’ he thought. ’The parasite system built on my previous life’s desires is giving me motivational support on a Sunday afternoon.’

’This is my life,’ he thought.

Gerald wheezed.

He put the communicator face down on the desk.

Closed his eyes.

The communicator beeped at 3:30 PM.

He had it in his hand before the second beep finished.

One message. Maren’s name at the top.

Hey Zane. I really want to see you. I have something to tell you.

He stared at it.

Then his smile widened before he could stop it. The specific involuntary kind that arrived before the person wearing it had authorised it.

He typed back.

Yes. I’m available.

Her reply came in under thirty seconds.

Where can we meet?

He looked at the key in his jacket pocket.

The guest room block located at the third floor east wing. I already checked it out.

A pause. Longer than the previous ones.

Then...

Okay. Give me a few minutes.

Zane sat up.

Looked at the timer.

『 BOUND TARGET QUEST — Time Remaining: 9 hours 58 minutes 』

’She’s coming,’ he thought.

The system surfaced.

『 The system told you to have more faith in yourself. 』

’Don’t,’ Zane thought.

『 The system is simply noting that it was correct. 』

’Quietly be correct,’ Zane thought.

He grabbed his jacket. Pocketed the key. Headed out.

She was at the east wing entrance when he arrived.

Got it. Here’s the updated section:

She was at the east wing entrance when he arrived.

She’d changed. She was in a short skirt, Fitted crop top. Hair still tied back but the rest of her was different from training gear. Considerably different. The crop top sitting where it sat and the skirt hitting where it hit and the specific amount of skin visible between the two that Zane’s eyes registered before his brain finished processing the rest of the scene.

Her belly. Her thighs. The specific combination of someone who had decided Sunday afternoon called for something other than training gear.

He looked at her.

’Man,’ he thought. ’She’s hot as ever.’

The system surfaced.

『 The system is very pleased with this development. Full agreement with host assessment. 』

’I thought you were heavy on privacy,’ Zane thought.

『 The system can admire from a professional distance. 』

She looked at him when he appeared.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey," he said.

His voice came out more composed than he felt.

Neither of them said anything else for a moment.

Then he gestured toward the corridor.

"This way," he said.

She fell into step beside him.

They walked the east wing corridor in the specific silence that had texture in it. Not uncomfortable, not easy, just present with the weight of everything that had been building since the first day they glanced at each other.

He stopped at the sign-in desk.

The officer looked up.

"Guest," Zane said. Held up the key. "Room four."

The officer nodded. Went back to his desk he was busy and face down all through the interaction.

They walked down the corridor to room four.

Zane unlocked the door.

Pushed it open.

She looked inside.

The room. Small. Compact. The thick walls. The window with the half drawn blind. The clean functional no-frills space that didn’t apologise for what it was.

"You already scoped it out," she said.

"Earlier today," Zane replied.

She looked at him.

"That’s sweet of you," she said.

They stepped inside.

He closed the door behind them.

The lock clicked.

The room was quiet in the specific way rooms were quiet when the walls were thick enough to mean it. The outside world, the campus, the dormitory, Gerald subconsciously wheezing somewhere across the building, all of it reduced to nothing.

Just the room. Just the two of them. Just the window light and the specific silence.

Maren stood in the center of the room.

He stood near the door.

They looked at each other.

She looked at him for a long moment. The expression he’d never seen before. The one from the training grounds this morning, still there. Still processing.

Then..

"I don’t know exactly when it happened," she said. "But I’ve liked you for a while now."

Her face was red. Fully. The deepest red he’d seen from her deeper than the infirmary, deeper than the dormitory gate, deeper than any of the previous instances that the system had been cataloguing since week two.

But she held his gaze.

Zane looked at her.

From her cute face to her chest to her slender waist to the skirt hem and back up again. The specific involuntary full assessment that happened before the brain caught up with the eyes.

The pheromones hit him before he finished the look. The air between them carrying something that hadn’t been there in six weeks of 6:20 AM training sessions and classroom rows and corridor walks. Something that came with crop tops and short skirts and Sunday afternoons in empty corridors.

He crossed the room.

Put his hand on her slender waist.

She looked up at him.

"I’ve liked you too," he said. "For a while now."

She held his gaze.

Then he leaned in.

She met him halfway.

The kiss landed soft. Then real. The specific kind that happened between two people who had been moving toward each other for six weeks without naming it and had finally stopped moving and arrived.

When they pulled back she was still red.

He looked at her.

"Are you okay," he said quietly. "I want to...I want to make love with you. But only if you’re okay with that."

She looked at him.

Her face somehow went redder.

Then...

"I’m all yours," she replied.