Two days after moving in, Raizen learned that there are exactly three ways Kori wakes people up.
The first is with tea.
The second is with a thrown pillow.
The third - the one she used today - is with a wooden spoon and a saucepan and the cheerful declaration, "Field trip, minions! Get dressed. We’re going to the Academyy!
Raizen jolted upright on instinct, the room tugging sideways - and his face collided with Hikari’s. She was already leaning over him, studying his pupils like a medic. It was starting to become a habit now... Something soft ghosted the corner of his mouth and vanished, like a thought he couldn’t quite catch. Then both of them went very still like statues that hadn’t decided what expression to keep.
Hikari froze, eyes wide. Her hand hovered mid-air, close to her jaw.
Kori clanged the pan again from the doorway. "Rise and sparkle, disasters! We’re gonna be late!"
Hikari straightened so fast her braid smacked her shoulder. Raizen looked anywhere that wasn’t her - the wall, the lightbulb, the very interesting crack in the floorboard.
"S-Sorry!" She said, voice a shade too high.
"My bad!" Raizen said at the same time, as if he was talking to the ceiling.
"Clothes," Kori said, conducting with a wooden spoon. "You’re Royal Scholars. Uniforms are a suggestion. Wear whatever won’t get you arrested by the fashion police - and Raizen, if you wear those tragic hospital socks again I’ll cry."
He found his voice, belated. "Royal Scholars?"
Kori winked. "You’ll see."
The stiffness in his legs had receded to something that felt like a warning instead of a chain. He picked clothes that moved with him - dark trousers, light elegant shirt, the first-stage badge pinned high on the lapel like a small star that had landed there by intention. Four points. Clean edges. It caught the room’s light whenever he breathed.
Hikari’s badge sat centered on a pale collar, the silver gleam pulling the eye to her throat before it slid to the staff she leaned against the wall. Arashi wore his as if it had been born on that jacket. Keahi hesitated long enough that Kori came over, took the badge from her hand, and fastened it with surprising gentleness above her heart.
"There," Kori said. "Legal royalty."
"Please don’t call us that," Keahi murmured, cheeks coloring. Thɪs chapter is updated by novel_fіre.net
Kori had barely locked the door behind them before she was herding them down the stairs with cheerful menace. "Shoes, stride, spark. Let’s go meet the building that’s going to either turn you into legends or chew you into decorative mush."
They spilled into the morning, a wash of brass light tipping every edge of Neoshima in warmth. The city stacked upward in terraces and spires. Bridges stitched buildings to buildings until the skyline looked like embroidery. Even at this hour, you could hear the far-off rumble of suspended trams and the nearer, softer music of shop doors opening and the day beginning to count itself.
Kori led like a banner that had learned to walk. She cut through a market where vendors were only now hanging scarlet awnings, then onto a bridge that arced toward the Academy’s quarter. Raizen kept pace without accepting Hikari’s arm - not pride, not exactly, more the stubborn decision that his steps would be his today. She hovered in his peripheral vision anyway, a steadying presence he didn’t need and wanted all the same.
They turned a corner and the Lotus Academy rose up all at once.
It didn’t present itself like a school. It looked like a cathedral had married a palace and then decided to learn to fight. Gothic-like ribs lifted into spires that wore crowns of lotus petals, each petal stylized into a sharp, regal silhouette. Scarlet and crimson banners fell in clean lines from high windows, the lotus crown emblazoned in dark gold on each - a circle of petals tucked onto a low, simple crown base. Fountains pattered down a long, stone courtyard, their basins arranged in a line that pulled the eye to a grand archway whose keystone carried an inlaid star. Not the full Vanguard crest, not yet - a four-point start of one, all beginning and intent.
Students poured through the place like a current. Raizen counted quickly and lost the count just as quickly. Dozens and dozens, a sea of uniforms in deep slate with lotus trim. It should have felt formal. It felt alive.
Normal students didn’t have the badge he had. They moved in clumps and lines, laughing, arguing, hands full of books or practice blades wrapped in cloth. Faces turned as Kori came down the central walk with her little parade of not-uniformed exceptions. You could see it pass through the crowd in waves - recognition, curiosity, the decision to applaud and then the choice not to because your friends were watching, the ugly itch of jealousy and the way it got smoothed out by Kori’s grin.
"Hi, hello, yes, please don’t throw yourselves at my feet," Kori said as they went. "I know you want to. It’s early."
"Those are the Royal Scholars?" someone whispered, not that quietly.
"They don’t even wear the uniform?"
"They don’t have to."
"Last year’s Scholars wouldn’t even look at us."
Kori heard everything and pretended not to. She walked them under the arch and into the main quadrangle. It was huge. There, sunlight bathed in the square like honey and the sound of the fountains bounced softly off stone. A narrow line of older students clapped, then stopped, then started again because they’d started at the wrong time and it was more embarrassing not to finish.
"Welcome, my dear calamities," Kori said, sweeping a bow so deep it was a parody of respect that somehow still felt like the real thing.
"To the Lotus Academy. Seat of learning, training ground for the absolute best, home of too many libraries and not enough naps. Keep up. If you get lost, follow the smell of ink, terror and maybe luxury"
Lynea stepped from a side path and fell into pace without being asked. Shiny black hair braided back in a line that almost reached for her ankles. Her badge sat on her chest - perfectly centered.
"You’re late," she said.
"We’re a concept," Kori said. "Concepts are never late. They arrive when they arrive and everyone agrees it was the right time."
Ichiro ghosted beside Lynea, silent as a thought you’d forgotten you were thinking. He nodded at Raizen. Raizen nodded back. The quiet sat between them comfortably. Esen arrived last, jogging backward while talking to Feris in animated arcs of hands. "I’m just saying, fate is great, but so is a plan that doesn’t require the planets to get along."
"Destiny has structure," Feris said smoothly. She had the kind of smile that makes you nervous about your wallet. "You’ll see."
Esen said spotted Kori and immediately grinned. "Ah. Our illustrious chaperone."
"Teacher," Kori corrected him. "The difference is that chaperones care if you fall off things."
Feris’s eyes snagged for a half second on the small four-point star Raizen wore. She adjusted hers like she hadn’t paused at all. "Are we touring the halls or what?"
"We’re touring, indeed" Kori said. Then they started moving.