Chapter 337: After Class

Chapter 337: After Class

The table did not fit through the kitchen door.

Arthur and the mover had it tipped on its side in the hallway of the Coldwell flat and had tried it three ways already. Arthur looked ready to explain why he’d warned them about it.

"Take the leaf out," Elena said from the kitchen.

"The leaf is out," Arthur said.

"Then take the legs off," Elena said.

There was a short silence in the hallway.

"The legs come off?" said the mover.

They did. Arthur had apparently known that all along and forgotten it in the heat of the argument. Four bolts later, the table went through the door with a centimeter to spare on each side, and Elena, standing in the middle of her new kitchen with her hands on her hips, said, "There," in the tone of a woman who had won something.

The freight company had brought the heavy boxes in that morning. Getting the furniture through the doors was taking longer.

Their belongings had come across from the old flat the week before in a single sealed container on the licensed freight convoy. Arthur had gone back on the escorted passenger run to watch it packed and sealed, and had returned two days later quieter than usual. He had brought back the old door key as well as the paperwork. Jin had seen him turn it over in his hand before putting it in the toolbox.

Elena decided where everything went. She walked from room to room with a roll of tape and a marker, labeling cupboards before anything was allowed near them, and when Arthur put the toolbox under the sink, she moved it to the hall cupboard without a word, and he let her.

Jin had been permitted to carry cushions.

He’d tried for a box of books near the door, and his mother had taken it out of his hands before he’d straightened up.

"Cushions," she said.

"It’s books, Mum. It’s not a fridge," Jin protested.

"It’s a box of books and you were in hospital six weeks ago," Elena said. "Cushions, or you can sit down and label things."

He carried cushions, lamp shades, and a crate of kitchen utensils his mother didn’t notice until too late. He stopped when his legs grew heavy, which took longer than it had two weeks ago, and was quietly pleased about that.

Elsa’s room was the smallest one, with the window.

She had spent most of the morning in it, and none of that time had gone on her own things. Her clothes were still in two bags on the floor. What had been set up, carefully, was Breeze’s corner: a low padded pen against the inside wall, away from the draft; the heat pad from Harlow & Pike under one half of it, so he could move off it if he got too warm; his water dish, his feed tin, a folded blanket that smelled of the guesthouse, and a laminated care schedule taped to the wall at Elsa’s eye level.

Breeze was in the pen, investigating the new smells with his nose down and his tail straight up. He was not quite two weeks old. His legs had stopped surprising him, mostly, and the crest on his forehead had started to show as a stiff little ridge of pale fur.

"Is it too close to the window?" Elsa asked.

Jin looked. The pen was a good two meters from the glass.

"It’s fine," Jin said.

"There’s a draft," Elsa insisted.

"I can’t feel one," he said.

She held her hand up, palm out, and the air around her fingers stirred briefly. "There’s a tiny draft."

"It’s two meters away," Jin said. "Ask Pike if you’re worried, but I wouldn’t move him nearer the heat."

Elsa moved the pen twenty centimeters farther from the window anyway.

They ate at seven, at the reassembled table in the kitchen, with the lights on and the boxes still stacked along the hallway wall.

It wasn’t anything special. Elena had found the pan and the pot and the rice cooker and nothing else, so it was rice, fried egg, greens from the hydroponics co-op down the street, and a jar of chili paste Arthur had carried across in his own coat pocket because he did not trust the convoy with it. The plates didn’t match, because half of the matching ones were still in a box labeled KITCHEN — Dad is wrong.

Four chairs.

Jin noticed that when he sat down. There had only ever been three at the old table, and a stool that was his, and the stool had gone to whoever sat nearest the stove. Now there were four proper chairs, and Arthur had put the fourth one on the side nearest the door, as if to make it easy for someone arriving late.

"I got it from the depot sale," Arthur said, when he saw Jin looking. "Two credits. The leg’s a bit short. Don’t lean back."

Jin didn’t lean back.

The talk was ordinary. Elena’s new shift started Monday, forty minutes shorter each way than the old one. Arthur’s depot had already sent him a rota. Elsa had walked past her new school that afternoon and reported that it had a proper field and nobody looked like they’d bite. The new brace, fitted on Tuesday, meant Arthur could sit through a meal without shifting his leg every few minutes. Jin noticed. Nobody mentioned it.

Breeze arrived halfway through dinner. He had climbed out of his pen, found the corridor, and followed the smell of fried egg with great determination. He sat down beside Elsa’s chair and looked up at her plate.

"No," Elsa said. "You have your own food." She got up, fetched his dish of hatchling paste, and set it down by her feet. Breeze sniffed it, looked at the egg one more time with deep longing, and settled for the paste.

"He’s learning," Elena said.

"He’s learning that I’ll get up," Elsa said darkly.

"So which evenings?" his mother asked, when the plates were empty.

Jin looked up. "What?"

"Which evenings are you free? You’ve got classes, and the stable, and your appointments. I want to know when to cook for four."

He hadn’t thought about it. He’d been so focused on the move that he had never followed it to the end.

The flat was two kilometers from the academy gate. He could leave the stable block after evening feed, walk here in half an hour — twenty-five, when he was back to full strength — eat at this table, and walk back. On a school night. On any night.

For a year, home had been a transit ride and a shelter boundary away. It had been somewhere he visited, planned for, and left.

I can just come, he thought. After class. Whenever.

"Tuesdays," Jin said. "And Fridays. And probably Sundays, if that’s okay."

"That’s okay," Elena said, and wrote it on the free co-op calendar, which had survived the move and was now pinned to the fridge. 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

"Bring Flicker on Sunday," Elsa said. "Breeze needs to see her again. And bring those games you said you’d give me. And your blue sweater, I’m keeping it."

"I never said you could keep it," Jin said.

"You’re going to," Elsa said.

He walked back to the academy just after nine.

It took thirty-four minutes. His legs were tired by the end, but nothing worse than tired.

On the way, he checked his notes. For two weeks, whenever he’d passed a licensed seller or had a free half hour, he’d kept looking. A dozen shops. A catalog of private listings. Breeze was excellent, and Elsa loved him. Jin still liked the idea of finding her a gift with potential nobody else had noticed. He had imagined the look on her face when he explained what he’d found.

There had been nothing. Every egg was exactly what its card said.

Finding Flicker had taken effort, and luck, and a lot of stubborn looking. This time, nothing had surprised him. Perhaps he had been luckier before than he’d thought. Still, looking through the notes, he had the nagging feeling that something was missing.

What am I missing?

He didn’t know. He put the thought away for later.

His phone buzzed as he reached the stable block.

[Meridian Medical Annex — Rehabilitation Plan: Glitch]

[Session 1 approved. Tomorrow, 08:00, covered exercise lane.]

[Drill: short approach, controlled turn, stop on command, return to position. Maximum six repetitions. Supervising: Dr. S. Alcott]

Jin read it twice.

After weeks of walks and straw, Glitch was going to do something again. Jin grinned.

He opened the stall door to find Glitch awake. At the sight of Jin’s grin, the lizard raised his head expectantly.

"Tomorrow," Jin told him. "A proper drill. Short, though."

Glitch began getting up.

"Tomorrow."

Jin helped him settle again, still smiling. He suspected getting started would be much easier than persuading him to finish.