The boy with the piglet comment. The boy with the smile. The boy whose name I had definitely not been wondering about and whose presence I had definitely not been aware of for the entire lecture.
“Yes, Professor,” said a voice from behind me.
Warm. Amused. Familiar in a way that made me want to throw something or….
Perhaps I should throw him at something.
Yes.
That seemed reasonable.
If the grillides were here, I could simply offer him as tribute. They were particularly fond of loud, overconfident males. The smell of arrogance, if I remembered correctly, was considered a delicacy during their mating season.
He would be ideal. They would lift him.
Carry him away. Possibly devour him.
Justice.
I felt slightly better just imagining it.
Then I paused.
…There were no grillides.
Of course there were no grillides.
This was the human realm.
Deeply disappointing.
I grew angrier.
Because now not only had he called me a piglet—
But I had also been denied the opportunity to watch him get carried off into the sky by aggressively amorous creatures with poor decision-making instincts.
This day continued to decline.
“Minjae, Move up,” Professor Kang said. “Sit beside Sera. Help her catch up.”
I turned in my seat. I turned with the slowness of a celestial being who was absolutely not panicking, who was absolutely not about to have the boy who had pushed her and called her a piglet sitting beside her for the remainder of the lecture.
He was already standing. His bag was already on his shoulder. His face was already arranged in that expression of calm amusement that made me want to test whether mortal skin could withstand celestial fire.
He walked down the aisle.
He walked past the rows of students who were watching him with the kind of attention usually reserved for gladiators fight in the arena.
He stopped at my row.
He slid into the seat beside me.
He set his bag on the floor. He pulled out his book. He opened it to the correct page. He placed it on the desk between us, close enough that I could see the notes he had written in the margins—small, precise handwriting, the handwriting of someone who had learned to be neat because his thoughts moved too fast for messiness.
And then he leaned back in his seat and looked at me.
“Hi,” he said.
I stared at him.
“Seraphyne,” he added, saying it like he had been waiting for an opportunity, as though my name itself was something he intended to use against me.
“You,” I said slowly, my voice calm in the way that usually preceded destruction, “require a designation.”
His smile faltered. “A… what?”
“A name appropriate to your behaviour,” I clarified.
I studied him carefully, taking in the evidence before me: the unnecessary physical contact, the unwarranted confidence, and the deeply questionable decision to sit beside me without permission.
“You will be called Overeager Gate-Rammer.”
There was a pause.
“…I’m sorry, what?”
“You collided with me at the entrance,” I said. “Without warning. With force. And with no apparent strategy. This is consistent with the behaviour of a low-intelligence marsh creature known for charging at obstacles it does not understand.”
He blinked.
“Gate… Rammer.”
“Yes.”
“That’s what you’re going with.”
“For now.”
He stared at me for a moment longer, clearly attempting to decide whether I was serious.
I was.
“…Do you have other options?” he asked cautiously.
“If you insist.”
I tilted my head slightly, considering.
“I could call you Uninvited Proximity Initiator,” I said. “Or Surface-Dweller with Questionable Impulse Control.”
I paused.
Then added, thoughtfully, “Alternatively, The One Who Smiles Excessively Despite Demonstrating Poor Judgment.”
He stared at me.
Then he laughed.
It was not a loud laugh, nor was it mocking. It came from somewhere deeper, warm and unrestrained, as though he found the entire situation genuinely amusing.
“Gate-Rammer,” he repeated, still smiling. “Okay. I can work with that.”
“It is not a negotiation.”
“Gate-Rammer it is.”
Professor Kang cleared his throat. “Minjae. Sera. The lecture.”
Minjae—Gate-Rammer, I corrected internally, as I had already assigned the designation and saw no reason to retract it—shifted his attention forward. He slid his book slightly toward me, close enough that I could see the contents clearly.
Then, in a voice low enough that it would not carry beyond our seats, he said, “Supply is what people want to sell. Demand is what people want to buy. The curve is where they meet. That’s it. Everything else is just details.”
I looked at the page.
Lines. Symbols. Structured confusion.
“That’s it?” I asked quietly.
“That’s it.”
He pointed to a diagram. “See? Supply goes up, demand goes down. Unless something changes. Then the curves move. But the idea stays the same. People want things. People have things. The market is where they figure it out.”
I stared at the diagram, trying to reconcile this disturbingly simple explanation with the unnecessarily complex symbols surrounding it.
This was… unexpectedly reasonable.
I did not like it.
But I understood it.
Which, somehow, was worse.
For the first time, it made sense. Not all of it. Not the complicated parts with the formulas and the Greek letters and the things called “externalities” that apparently meant “problems caused by people doing things.” But the basic shape of it. The idea.
Supply. Demand. The point where they met.
It was almost like the Celestial Tribunal, I realized. The angels wanted order. The demons wanted chaos. The point where they met was the human world, caught between them, trying to figure out which one it wanted to be.
But I did not say this.
Instead, I said, “This is acceptable.”
Gate-Rammer made a sound that might have been a laugh, quickly suppressed. “High praise.”
I spent the rest of the lecture looking at his notes.
They were good notes. Clear. Organized. He had a way of explaining things that made complicated ideas seem simple, which was either a talent or a sign that he had been doing this for too long. When Professor Kang said something I didn’t understand, Gate-Rammer would write something in the margin, a small clarification, a simpler way of saying the same thing.
I did not thank him.
I did not look at him.
I definitely did not notice the way his hand moved when he wrote, or the fact that his elbow was very close to mine on the desk, or the smell of whatever soap he used, which was clean and simple and irritatingly pleasant.
I was a celestial being.
I noticed nothing.
A note from B.R.LEE
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