The system, as if personally offended by being summoned like a genie, delivered.
It’s almost sad how predictable you are. I could set my clock by how fast you start fishing for objectives the second there’s drama nearby.
A new window bloomed beneath the insult.
Quest Issued: Defend Kai Fell from his tormentors.
Reward: Unlocks ’Kai Route’.
Cane read that twice. Kai Route? he thought, his lip curling in disgust. Whatever the fuck that is, I want no part of it. I am not interested in unlocking a romance option with my own roommate, no matter how good the femboy’s ass looks in those uniform shorts
But the quest itself, minus the creepy unlockable it came bundled with, wasn’t a bad deal. Free loyalty from a guy who apparently had no one else in his corner was worth more long-term than most rewards the system had handed him so far. A devoted roommate who owed him one? That was a decent investment for a man with as few allies as he currently had.
So he stepped in. He didn’t rush it. He didn’t make a scene. He just walked into the loose circle like he belonged there and planted himself directly between Kai and the blond one, close enough that it was unmistakably a choice.
The blond’s face shifted from amused to annoyed in about half a second. "What the hell do you think you’re doing? This isn’t your business."
"Lives with the kid," Cane said, his tone mild. "Technically makes it my business. I’d appreciate it if you stopped narrating his future funeral before breakfast."
The blond one, Herold, stepped closer. He was close enough that Cane could smell the stale ale on his breath from the night before. "I don’t care whose reputation you’re carrying around. I don’t care what family you come from or what rumors follow you. You back off right now, or I’m going to beat your ass right here in front of everyone."
This was an unusually aggressive reaction, Cane thought. Genuinely violent, disproportionate even by bully standards. Whatever was driving that level of hostility was worth exploiting.
That’s when his eyes dropped to the crest stitched into the corner of the guy’s jacket. It was small, easy to miss. But Cane recognised it. House Yel.
His expression shifted into something slow and entirely too pleased with itself.
"Well, well," he said, his voice laced with mock wonder. "I had no idea House Yel raised its sons on street-corner threats. I thought the Yel name stood for something a little more refined than this."
The blond’s face went tight. "I am Herold Yel. Son of Gerold Yel." He announced it like the weight of the lineage alone should make Cane reconsider his life choices.
Cane just tilted his head. "Didn’t realize the Yel family had gotten so desperate they let their heirs run around bullying children half their size in public hallways. Is that a new house tradition, or something you came up with all on your own, Herold?"
Herold’s followers shifted uncomfortably behind him. They could sense the exact moment the exchange had stopped being one-sided. Herold’s jaw worked, grinding like he was trying to find a comeback that wasn’t just noise.
Cane didn’t let him find one. He leaned in, dropping his voice into a theatrically confidential tone.
"I’m just thinking out loud here, but I think my own family would find this whole scene fascinating. The son of a respected house cornering an unarmed underclassman before breakfast. Families do so love hearing about that sort of thing over dinner, don’t they? Especially the kind of families who sit on the same councils. And attend the same functions. And absolutely, definitely talk."
Herold’s face went from red to a deeper, blotchier red. Embarrassment finally outpaced his anger.
"This isn’t worth my time," he spat, the words fast and clipped. He needed to be the one who ended the conversation, even though everyone present knew exactly who had ended it. He stomped off through the crowd, his three followers falling in behind him, none of them looking back.
Cane watched him go, filing the name away. Herold Yel. House Yel. He couldn’t help wondering, entirely idle, whether a family that self-important had any daughters worth knowing about. If there was one thing noble houses reliably produced alongside overcompensating sons, it was overcompensating sons’ sisters with something to prove.
A voice, warm and amused, broke his train of thought. "That was quite the performance."
He turned. Aria Vale crossed toward him, her hips swaying with a deliberateness that suggested she knew exactly how the motion read. The white blouse of her uniform clung to a chest that was anything but uniform, and the dark skirt rippled over an ass that promised a perfect handful. She was genuinely impressed, despite herself.
Cane opened his mouth, a line about private showings and encores already forming, when Vincent appeared at the edge of his vision. The momentum died instantly. Aria’s expression shifted, a flicker of apology in her eyes.
"I’ll catch you later." She was already turning before he could get a word out, hurrying toward Vincent with an urgency that didn’t match the easy warmth she’d walked over with.
Vincent’s whole posture was wrong. His jaw was tight, his shoulders locked, the specific stillness of a man holding something in. Aria was talking fast at him, her hands moving, clearly trying to smooth over something that had started before either of them reached the hall. Cane watched long enough to clock it as a real fight, not a passing mood. He filed it away as something worth finding out about later.
Kai’s voice pulled his attention back. He sounded quiet, genuinely bewildered.
"Why did you do that? Step in. Say all that. You put yourself between me and four guys twice your size."
Cane shrugged, affecting a casualness he didn’t feel. "We’re roommates. You’re my friend." He delivered the line so offhandedly it barely sounded like a real answer.
Kai’s whole face changed. His eyes went wide and a little too bright. He actually bounced on the balls of his feet once, a small, excited motion.
"I’m not going to forget this," he said, his voice cracking with an emotion that sounded embarrassingly close to devotion. "Not ever. You can count on me from now on. By my family name. Fell means something, and I intend to prove it."
Cane pinched the bridge of his nose, looking pointedly toward the front of the hall. He already regretted the whole thing. He knew exactly what that expression on Kai’s face meant, and he knew exactly where a look like that eventually led. He was absolutely not equipped to deal with whatever devoted, starry-eyed nonsense was about to start happening downstairs in that boy’s uniform trousers.
Before he had to figure out how to respond, the crowd noise shifted, dropping into a more attentive silence. Cane looked up. The headmaster, robes billowing, was finally making his way to the front of the hall, ready to explain exactly what this morning’s exam was going to demand of them all.
The headmaster finally reached the front of the hall. He was a slab of a man, tall enough that his head cleared most of the crowd even from a distance. A rough, greying beard did nothing to soften the set of his jaw, a face that looked like it had broken up more student brawls than it had given lectures. He waited, his silence more commanding than any shout. The murmuring died on its own, a slow fade into attentiveness born from decades of students learning he didn’t need to raise his voice.
"This morning’s exercise was decided upon at the last minute." His voice was a low rumble, carrying easily across the vast space. "A deviation from the usual academy calendar."
A fresh ripple of whispers went through the crowd, which he promptly ignored, talking right over it.
"We’re calling it Capture the Flag."
The announcement was met with a collective, disappointed groan.
"The entire student body will be split into four large groups. Each of those groups will be further divided into three smaller teams. The contest will play out as a series of three-way skirmishes within each of the academy’s four quarters. Every team will hunt the flags of the other two while guarding their own. The winning team from each bracket advances to a final round. The four winning teams will then face off in a single, deciding match." He paused, letting the scale of it sink in. "The rewards for the victors will be... significant."
He didn’t specify what they were. He didn’t have to. The posture of the entire hall straightened, a thousand spines snapping to attention.
He added, almost as an aside, "This exercise will lean more on strategy and cunning than on raw strength." He let that hang for a beat before clarifying, his lip curling in a slight, humourless smile. "Though I can assure you, raw strength will still matter plenty. Flags don’t defend themselves. Neither do the people guarding them."