Mikey took his time crossing the courtyard, hands in his pockets, the same easy smile in place that he wore for pretty much everything — demonstrations, applause, apparently also walking.
From the balcony behind him, Kei watched him go, arms folded, her expression giving away nothing and everything at once.
Sani had already wandered off toward the dessert trays, oblivious.
She hadn’t asked him what he was doing.
She hadn’t needed to.
But she found herself tracking exactly which table he was walking toward, filing it away the way she filed away most things that didn’t quite make sense yet — not urgent, just unfinished.
*He doesn’t chase down first-years for fun,* she thought.
*Whatever he thinks he saw, he believes it enough to check.*
He stopped at the edge of a plain stone table near the wall.
“Hey,” he said, like he was greeting an old classmate rather than three first-years he’d never spoken to.
“Mind if I borrow a second?”
Gota froze with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth.
Kakame’s shadow bird, mid-flight around his shoulder, simply dissolved, like even it had lost focus.
“M—Mikey?” Gota’s whisper came out closer to a squeak.
“The AA-rank guy?”
“Why is the strongest student in the school talking to *us*,” Kakame muttered, not really a question so much as a fact he needed said out loud to believe it.
Nagi looked up from his rice bowl without much change in expression.
“Sure,” he said.
“What’s up?”
Mikey leaned against the table’s edge, casual, like he did this all the time.
“Quick question. What’s your magic, exactly? Saw your demo this morning — curious about the speed thing.”
Beside him, Gota looked like he might actually pass out.
“He’s asking *you*? Specifically?”
“This is huge,” Kakame breathed.
Nagi took another slow bite, chewed, swallowed, entirely unbothered by the attention gathering around the table.
“Why?”
Mikey went quiet for a beat — just long enough to notice, if you were looking for it — then rubbed the back of his neck with a sheepish little laugh.
“Mm. Nothing important. Just checking something.” He straightened up, gave a loose, friendly wave.
“Cool. Have a good one.”
And then he was walking away, hands back in his pockets, like the conversation had never really needed to happen in the first place.
Gota stared after him, mouth still open.
“He just — walked up, asked one thing, and *left*?”
“What was that about?” Kakame demanded, to no one in particular.
Nagi went back to his food.
“Dunno,” he said.
“Seemed chill enough.”
He didn’t mention the half-second Mikey’s eyes had spent on him before the question — longer than a stranger’s curiosity usually lasted.
He hadn’t quite decided yet whether it meant anything, and until it did, there wasn’t much point saying so.
Across the courtyard, at a table with better shade and finer trays, Yuji Kunagumi sat pushing food around his plate without eating much of it, attention drifting somewhere past his two friends entirely.
“You okay, Yuji-sama?” the wind-magic one ventured.
“You’ve been quiet since the showcase. Want to talk strategy for practical class?”
Yuji waved him off without looking over.
“Don’t talk to me right now.”
“Eh? But we were gonna—”
“Just leave it.”
The illusion-magic friend exchanged a glance with the other one and wisely said nothing further.
Yuji’s usual smirk had gone somewhere else entirely. The source of this chapter is g.com.
In its place was something quieter, softer around the edges, as his eyes tracked a group of students crossing the courtyard — laughing, loose, unbothered by rank or bloodline.
At the center of them walked a girl with warm eyes and an easy smile, waving at nobles and commoners alike like the distinction had simply never occurred to her.
*Nicolle,* he thought, and something in his chest did something he wasn’t prepared to examine too closely.
*The princess.
Actually here, actually walking these halls, and everyone just — likes her.
Because she lets them.*
Back at the plain table, Gota and Kakame were still trading disbelieving whispers about the strongest student in the school walking up out of nowhere, while Nagi ate in peace, apparently already finished thinking about it.
Across the courtyard, Yuji sat alone at a table full of untouched food, watching a princess laugh with people who had no idea he was watching at all.
And somewhere between the two tables, unnoticed by either of them, Mikey had stopped just long enough to glance back once over his shoulder — not at Nagi this time, but at the space around him, like he was checking whether the air itself looked any different now that he’d asked.
It didn’t.
That, somehow, bothered him more than an answer would have.
*Super speed,* he thought, turning the words over again like they might crack open and show him something new.
*That’s it.
That’s all it is.
So why does it still feel wrong?*
He almost laughed at himself.
Ten years of pushing his own limit past what anyone thought an AA-rank could do, and here he was, doubting a room full of witnesses over half a second nobody else had even noticed.
Maybe he’d imagined it.
Maybe the strain of holding a full stop that long had finally started playing tricks on his own eyes.
He wanted to believe that.
He almost managed it, for about as long as it took him to remember exactly where in the frozen room that flicker had been — not near the edges, where a trick of light might explain it, but dead center, in plain sight, impossible to mistake for anything but what it was.
Whatever he’d seen, he hadn’t imagined it.
He just didn’t yet have a shape to put around it.
*End of Chapter 8*