The fire-track practical ran all morning. Do Yuna went last, because the list was alphabetical from the bottom and the school seemed to had a sense of humor about that too.
Yeju watched from the gallery with about forty other people who had nothing better to do. Below, in the casting pit, students took the line one at a time and threw a first-circle ignition at a target board. Doksu marked them. They left. It was not dramatic. That was the horror of it. Two months of somebody's life, one mark, next.
Three failed before Yuna. One of them cried at the line and was walked out by an instructor with a hand on her shoulder, the pit just kept going.
She had seen Yuna once that morning in the corridor outside and it had gone badly.
"Don't talk to me," Yuna had said, pacing around, hands opening and closing. "Sorry. That's rude. Don't. If you talk to me I'll think about it, and if I think about it I'll-" She had stopped. Her face had been the wrong color. "I threw up. Twice. Is that normal? Nobody tells you that part."
"It's normal."
"You've never taken a practical in your life, you're an F-core."
"It's still normal."
"Okay." Yuna had breathed. "Okay. Okay." Then, fast, not looking at her: "If I fail, don't be nice about it. I mean it. Everyone's going to be nice about it, and I'll have to be brave at them for an hour, I'll die. If I fail, just say I failed. Say the mean version. Please."
An instructor had called the fire track in before Yeju could answer.
"She's going to fail," said a boy behind Yeju, conversationally, to his friend. "Do Yuna. She's been failing since spring."
"Ten on it."
"I'm not taking that, it's not a bet, it's a forecast."
Yeju did not turn around. She gripped the rail and discovered she'd been gripping it for some time.
Yuna came to the line. From up here she looked small, and she looked, for the first time in eleven days, absolutely still. She rolled her shoulders once and raised her hand.
She rushed the third stroke.
The glyph wobbled at the release. Yeju saw it go, saw the whole month go, and the boy behind her said there it is with real satisfaction. But Yuna's hand kept moving.
She did not stop to fix it. That was the thing. She let the bad third stroke stand and drove the fourth through it anyway, ugly, uneven, a form no instructor would sign off on. The glyph caught crooked. It blew a hole through the target board and set the frame on fire.
The gallery made was in a buzz.
Doksu looked at the burning frame for a long moment. Then he made a mark.
"Pass," he said. "Barely. Someone put that out."
Yuna stood in the pit with her hand still up.
Then her knees went as she sat down hard on the casting floor with a burning board behind her, and she started laughing. Not a nice laugh. A wrecked, whooping laugh with both hands over her face. She was crying at the same time, hard with her whole body shaking, unable to stop doing either. Someone tried to help her up. She waved them off and stayed on the floor, laughing and sobbing into her palms with the frame crackling behind her. Sixty-third in the fire track. One exam from home, and not going home!
Yeju watched from the gallery.
That was the correct move. Her whole plan for this world was that she was not in scenes. She was the person who made sure the scene happened to the right people. Kim Do-hyun was three benches down the gallery. This was the moment, the eleven-days moment, and he was standing up.
He stopped.
Yeju saw the gold light around him do something she had never seen it do, a sort of stutter, arrows swinging to a target that wasn't there and swinging back. He put a hand on the rail. He frowned at the casting pit, at the crying laughing girl on the floor, with the specific blank confusion of a man who has walked into a room certain he was there for something and cannot, for the life of him, remember what.
He sat back down.
[ Huh ] said the panel.
Yeju did not have time to think about that. Yuna had gotten her face out of her hands and was scanning the gallery. She found Yeju in about a second and a half.
She pointed at her. From the floor. With one shaking hand.
Then she made a gesture that everyone in the building understood, which was two hands, patting an invisible head, aggressively.
"Oh no," said Yeju.
[ +2,400. ]
"Oh, absolutely not."
[ 'Do Yuna, Heroine One, has publicly attributed the best moment of her life to the wrong person, in front of witnesses, including the right person.' That's the ledger's phrasing. I've submitted it. It's very hard to unsubmit. ]
The gallery was looking at Yeju now. The boy behind her said, "Wait, is that the fire one?" His friend said something Yeju didn't catch. Down in the pit Doksu had turned around, and he was looking at her too, with the beginning of a very unwelcome question on his face.
"Han Yeju."
Doksu's voice, from the pit. He had not raised it. He did not have to; the gallery went obligingly quiet for him the way a room quiets for a man with a red pen.
"You tutored her," he said.
The whole gallery turned around.
"She needed it" Yeju defended.
Doksu looked at her for a long moment over the burning target frame. Then he made a mark on a different sheet, in a different color which Yeju could not see.
"Sixty-third in the track," he said, "Han Yeju. Do you know how many times a student's average has moved that far in eleven days?"
"No."
"Neither do I. I'm going to find out." He turned back to the pit. "Someone put that frame out. We have four more."
Yeju left the gallery at a speed that was not quite running.
Yuna caught her in the corridor outside, still wet-faced, and shaking as she hugged her so hard that Yeju's feet came off the floor. gosh she was tall.
"I passed!" she said, into Yeju's shoulder. "I passed! I passed,! I did the thing wrong and it worked, I did it wrong!"
"You did it wrong," Yeju agreed, muffled in between her chest..
"Don't put me down, I'm not done." She was crying again. "You know what I thought about? At the line? I thought, she said pick the first one. That's it. That's what was in my whole head. Pick the first one." She pulled back to arm's length, hands on Yeju's shoulders. Her eyes were red and enormous, about four inches away. "You're going to be so annoying about this forever, aren't you."
"Probably."
"Good," said Do Yuna. She let go, wiped her face with her sleeve, and went to find her aunt's address to write a letter. Yeju stood in the empty corridor with 2,400 points and a plan in pieces.
Do-hyun caught her at the stairs. He had his hands in his pockets and the puzzled, dogged look again.
"Hey. Han Yeju, right?" He fell into step. "Sorry. This is going to sound strange. Were you at the practicalc just now?"
"Yes."
"Right. Right." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I was in the gallery, and there was a moment where I..... I stood up. To go down there. And by the time I was standing I couldn't remember what for." He laughed, a little, at himself. "It's been happening. Twice this week. I get this feeling like there's somewhere I'm supposed to be, and then it just..." He made a small gesture with his hand, a thing letting go. "Goes. My grandmother would say that's a spirit walking over your grave."
Yeju's mouth was dry.
"That's a lot of spirits," she said.
"That's what I said!" He grinned at her, a boy grateful that a stranger hadn't told him he was being weird. "Anyway. Sorry. You looked like you knew that girl, the one who passed. Is she okay? She went down pretty hard."
"She's okay."
"Good. That's good." He nodded, satisfied, and peeled off toward the yard, the gold light around him swung its arrows after him, patient, waiting to be obeyed.
[ For the record, ] the panel offered, [ the boy never came down. He stood up and then sat back down and he doesn't know why. He'll think about it tonight for maybe ninety seconds before deciding he imagined it. ]
Yeju leaned her head against the cold wall.
[ You're going to tell yourself the tutoring was efficient. That you were only ever going to hand her to him, and you were making sure she survived long enough to be handed. ]
"Shut up."
[ I didn't say it was a lie. ] A pause. [ I said you were going to tell yourself. ]