They let themselves be swept in the direction Kori indicated. As they moved, heads turned again. Curiosity that didn’t quite trust itself.
They crossed through a smaller library - the one with the tree. It rose out of a central planter as if a gardener had convinced a forest to try being a chandelier. Branches arched into the rafters and spread a canopy of green over the reading tables. Leaves threw dappled light that moved even when the air didn’t, as if the tree had its own ideas about wind. Students read in puddles of sun.
A student dozed under the tree with a book over his face. The book’s ribbon had stuck to his cheek. Kori pointed at him. "Don’t be him. If you nap here, the librarians will decorate you with sticky notes and call it an art installation."
They stepped back outside. The garden outside ran around a pool too elegant to call a pond. The cliff face fell away beyond the balustrade and the sea threw up spray that came nowhere near them but managed to perfume the air with salt anyway.
They ate from paper boxes balanced on their knees – baked potatoes that picked up sun, slices of ginger that woke the tongue, grilled greens that snapped when you bit them. Lunch tastes better when you’re sitting where you shouldn’t be sitting. Esen told a story that might have been true about sneaking into the archives as a child and being rescued by a rolling ladder he swore had moved on its own. Feris insisted fate had planned the moment of his capture to teach him humility. Lynea corrected Feris’s grammar - twice - and Feris thanked her just to be unsettling. Ichiro set his box down and aligned its corner with the tile seam because the world is easier when angles behave. Arashi took in the entire crowd with a gaze that cataloged and sorted without malice, as if arranging the courtyard into a painting only he could hang.
Kori watched them with bright, restless satisfaction, like a cat that had decided all of its mice were interesting enough to keep alive. Every time someone at a nearby table glanced over, she gave them a tiny salute that said "yes, I see you looking at us, carry on!" A first year tried to nonchalantly take a picture; Kori winked at the slate and the boy almost swallowed his tongue. Google seaʀᴄh novelFɪre.net
Kori stood, stretched. "Last stop. The part where I ruin your day in a way that makes you better people." She tossed her chopsticks into the compost slot with sniper accuracy and then pointed at Esen without looking. "Don’t try that pin joke again. The dummy will win this time"
They wound back toward the Hall of Petals. On the way, Raizen felt it again - that faint thrum under the soles, like a giant heart somewhere below the stone choosing to keep time. He slowed a fraction and Hikari matched him without asking why. A breath later, the hum was gone, or maybe it had just decided to be quieter. A column to the right labeled COURSES followed by a list that included Advanced Luminite Theory, Combat Kinematics, Ethics Under Pressure, and Eon Foundations. The word Eon looked like it flickered for a heartbeat, then settled, like a door exhaling behind a lock.
Kori clapped her hands once. The sound cracked neatly off the tiles. "All right, my new tragedies. Go home. Sleep. Don’t try Raizen’s dash in a hallway - I don’t have enough apologies for the walls. Don’t try to heal the fountains - they like being dramatic. Don’t ask me what’s under the floor because I’ll lie to you. Show up tomorrow looking like you meant to be here. And if anyone asks for help-"
Kori’s smile softened in a way that had weight. "Obviously, you try and help."
They turned to go, the eight of them moving as a formation that hadn’t learned it was a formation. Students made small spaces for them without thinking about it, like water parting for a new stone. A girl in ink-stained cuffs mouthed good luck and looked like she meant it. Someone hissed, "Royal Scholars," and someone else said, "Be nice," and someone else said, "They seem it."
Esen walked backwards again, hands in his pockets, grin back in place now that his badge had been restored to its proper, lower, safer altitude. "So, tomorrow. Any tips?"
"Don’t be late," Lynea said.
"Don’t blow anything up with your shockwaves" Arashi continued.
"Don’t be boring," Kori completed, already turned away from them.
They crossed the threshold of the Hall of Petals and the sound changed - the surf of voices fading slowly. On the mosaic just outside the door, an old dye stain shaped like a handprint had been worn almost invisible by generations. Kori stepped over it without looking down, like her feet had learned a path she no longer had to think about.
They passed a closed arch whose ironwork was warmer than the air around it should’ve made it. Raizen glanced at it. Something in the metal hummed back - a tiny vibration, a memory of heat. Kori lengthened her stride by half a pace. Nobody asked. The afternoon had thickened a little, the sun’s shade slightly darker. The sea threw light up the cliff and pretended it was sky. Somewhere, a tram sighed along a rail and the sound folded into the city’s breathing.
Tomorrow, the real lessons would start - and the floors under those lessons would, eventually, give way to something else. Everyone went in separate directions, only the original 4 – 5 with Kori silently walked on Neoshima’s streets.