Page 144 of Hollow Knife

“Stupid.”

“Both can be true.”

I snort, shifting my feet higher on the wall. “Oh, and get this—Mario is giving Lex Italian lessons.”

“Italian lessons.”

“Yes. That poor kid is being lied to. Lex has known Italian since he was like ten. He came back one day from Italy and studied it like a religion.”

Kento laughs, and I smile, seized by the selfish urge to steal that sound from the world and keep it somewhere only I can reach.

I keep talking. I tell him about the security guard who keeps side-eyeing me every time I enter the building. About the weather being unreasonably cold for this time of year, forcing me to wear a coat I hate because my favorite coat is being dry-cleaned after Dimitri spilled vodka on it during one of his dramatic rants.

“Is that so?” Kento asks. He sounds a bit irritated, but not at me.

“Yes. I’m mad at him now. I revoked his friendship privilege for a week.”

I shift again, pulling one knee up to my chest while keeping the other foot braced against the wall. I keep going, because I don’t want to hang up.

I complain about the academy’s new policy requiring student IDs to access the labs after hours, which is a blatant invasion of privacy and also completely ineffective because I bypassed it in under three minutes. About the guy in my advanced mathematics course who keeps trying to one-up me in front of the professor, as if I care about his fragile ego.

“Do you want me to handle him?” Kento asks, his tone casual.

“No. I want to handle him myself.”

“That’s my prince.”

I bite back a smile.

Eventually, I pause, chewing on my lower lip. “Oh, and I have something to tell you.”

“Yeah?”

“But I want to do it face-to-face. Because I need to scold you.”

“Did I do something?”

“Yes.”