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“You can start, now,” Mister Caldwell adds dryly.

We skim the packet together.

“This guy’s lying,” Hayzel whispers, pointing at a guy.

“No,” I murmur. “He’s rehearsed, watch the way he pauses.”

She watches, blinks and smiles, “Okay, that’s unsettling.”

“I warned you.”

She nudges me just after that and asks, “Hey. I forgot to ask, have you seen Ethan at all today?”

“Nope. He’s probably stuck in another class.”

“That’s why it’s so relaxing to be here today,” she says.

“You’re mean today, I like it,” I reply, laughing.

We all worked on his exercise for an hour, then he checked everyone’s report before clapping with his hands to signal that the class was over.

The room filled with noise as everyone started to leave. Chairs scrape, people talk over each other. And I stay seated, gathering my things when Hayzel leans close. “Just saying… he’s still looking at ‘your notes’.” She smiles and winks at me at the last word.

“Drop it,” I mutter, standing and grabbing her arm to get out.

He’s standing near the entrance, talking to another instructor when he looks up. Somehow, across the noise, the bodies moving between us, our eyes still find each other. It lasts a heartbeat. Long enough to make me hope, but short enough to deny it.

Then we leave.

The rest of the day passes the way it always does. Classes bleed into one another, eating with Hayzel and Blue in my dorm then going back to it, drills, lectures, case studies.

By the time I get back to my dorm at the end of this long day, my brain feels overworked and under-stimulated at the same time. The door barely closes behind me before something skids across the floor.

“Hey—”

My cat darts toward me, tail flicking, something clenched between his teeth. Paper.

I drop my bag and crouch to kiss him. “What do you have here?”

He growls lightly when I reach for it, then relents, letting me pull the crumpled note free.

Library.

00:00.

-D

I exhale slowly.

Blue jumps onto my bed, completely unconcerned, and stretches like he didn’t just intercept a professionally inconvenient message. I follow him, sitting beside him and scratching behind his ears. “I know,” I tell him, “You missed me, didn’t you?”

He lies across the bed, claws scrabbling for traction, then flops dramatically onto his side like he’s been abandoned for weeks.

“I was gone for six hours,” I tell him. “You survived.”

He answers by biting my fingers as I reach for him. I lean down, laughing quietly, and untangle him, and he immediately grabs my sleeve with both paws, teeth grazing my wrist, but still purring softly. “Violence isn’t communication,” I inform him.

He blinks, rubs his head against my chin, then jumps on the floor, and I sit with him, back against the bed.