Chapter 522 | Table Security Service

Chapter 522: 522 | Table Security Service

I dragged myself off the mat around eight-fifteen and made it back to Building C on legs that had died and resurrected four times in the last three hours. My uniform stank of blood and sweat and the specific chemical funk of a body that had been broken and rebuilt on repeat like a bad save file. The stairs no longer registered as a threat. That felt like a win, or at least a thing I could tell myself was a win while every muscle group filed formal grievances.

The apartment was empty. Hikaru’s door sat closed with her mug already dry on the rack, which meant she’d woken before me, trained somewhere, and left without a trace. The manga she’d flagged still sat on my nightstand where I’d put it, yellow tabs sticking out like little flags of surrender.

I showered until the water ran cold, which took a while because Building C had the kind of water heater that guild kids never thought about and lottery kids treated like a minor miracle. Steam fogged the mirror. I wiped it clear with my palm and looked at what stared back.

The face had kept changing on me. Six weeks ago I’d been two hundred forty pounds of regret with a jaw buried under a double chin and eyes that carried eighteen months of somebody else’s bad decisions.

Now the jaw had edges. The shoulders filled out the frame in a way that made the reflection look like it belonged to someone who might survive the next thing that tried to kill him. Four pale scars ran from my collarbone to my hip, courtesy of a leopard the size of a motorcycle.

A bite mark from Addison sat high on my throat. A fading hickey from Belle rode my collarbone. Scratch lines crossed my back from three different sets of nails, and Peterson had refused to heal a single one of them out of professional spite.

I looked like a man who had a lot of opinions being formed about him in dark rooms. Which was accurate.

My phone buzzed against the sink.

Naomi: breakfast? I saved you a seat. and Belle already stole your bacon so hurry

Naomi: she says she’s holding it hostage

Belle: I am not holding anything hostage that is defamation. also there’s four strips left. was six. math is math

I typed back that I was on my way and pulled on a fresh uniform, the one Aurora had bought, the one that fit like it had been cut for someone who wanted to be looked at. Which, apparently, it had.

The walk to the dining hall used to be a survival exercise. Now it was a gauntlet of a different kind. A second-year with Ruby trim clapped me on the shoulder and told me the burger video had crossed forty-four million.

A first-year girl asked if the gold light had been an aspect manifestation and I told her it was mostly poor life choices. Someone shouted "Milk Man" from across the quad, which meant Vale’s little nickname had escaped containment and was now roaming free.

I found the table by the windows. Same as always. Naomi in her seat, pink and black hair braided, shell necklace at her collarbone, that specific smile she saved for me appearing the second I came into view. Belle at the far end with her laptop open, blue combat braid, a spreadsheet glowing on the screen and my bacon arranged on a napkin like evidence at a trial. Jordan facedown on the table. Javier with three notebooks and a look of manic joy that meant he’d found a new hunter fight to catalog.

I dropped into the chair between Naomi and the empty spot Blair usually claimed and reached for my bacon.

Belle’s hand landed on my wrist. "Toll first."

"It’s my bacon."

"It’s my table security service. Two strips or I renegotiate the whole arrangement."

Naomi bumped my knee under the table. Her hand settled on my thigh, warm and steady, the kind of contact that had stopped feeling like a decision weeks ago and started feeling like gravity. "She’s been guarding it for ten minutes. Give her one."

I gave Belle one strip. She took it with the satisfaction of a customs official who’d just seized contraband and went back to her spreadsheet.

Jordan lifted his head enough to speak into the wood. "I hate mornings. I hate gates. I hate that Misato scheduled a simulator run at six after Vale already broke you." He turned his head to squint at me. "You look like you fought a war and lost. Repeatedly."

"I fought Vale. Same thing."

"He hit you?"

"He broke my nose, dislocated my arm, and cracked my ribs three times." I picked up my remaining bacon. "Then he handed me a cup of milk and we did it again."

Javier’s pen stopped mid-word. "He put you through complete muscular failure and reset your recovery with essence?" His eyes lit up like I’d handed him a research paper.

"That’s an accelerated hypertrophy protocol under stress conditions. The gains from something like that would be exponential if the healing prevents microtear accumulation across sessions. You could theoretically compress months of adaptation into hours." He was already scribbling. "Do you feel the difference?"

"I ranked up Endurance mid-session."

Javier made a sound like a man witnessing something holy.

"That’s not fair," Jordan said to the table. "None of that is fair. I ran four hours of formations and got tired. You got beaten unconscious twice and came out stronger. This is why I’m quitting."

"You quit every morning."

"And every morning I’m right to."

Naomi laughed, soft, and the sound did something warm and stupid to my chest that I chose not to examine before nine AM.

Blair arrived then. She came from the drink station with a bottle of that overpriced French mineral water her family probably manufactured, red hair catching the overhead light and turning copper at the edges, burn scar visible above her collar where the scarf had slipped. She sat in her chair across from me with the posture of someone who had decided the seat was hers by right of conquest and glanced at my face.

Something flickered behind those frost-blue eyes. "You look terrible."

"You keep saying that. I’m starting to think you notice how I look a lot."

The water bottle cap cracked in her grip. A hiss of steam curled off the plastic. "I notice you look like a corpse that hasn’t accepted the news. That’s basic observation."

"Basic observation with a temperature component."

"Monroe."

"Davenport."

Belle didn’t look up from her laptop. "If you two set the table on fire again I’m billing House Obsidian for the replacement and putting your names on the incident report. Both of you. In bold."

Naomi’s hand tightened on my thigh. Not a warning. Something closer to amusement.

I let it go. Blair drank her water and pretended the char mark on the cap didn’t exist, and the temperature in her corner slowly climbed back down to something a human could survive.