[Countdown: 00:59:33 | Be alert.]

I looked at the number and felt the weight of it. The whole day it had been sitting in the corner of my vision, ticking down with the patience of something that didn’t need to hurry because it knew exactly when it was arriving. Less than an hour now.

Vince Vale was not coming to talk.

I sat on my bed with the folded page from the library in my hands. I had read it multiple times through the afternoon.

The words were beginning to blur at the edges from handling but I read it again anyway, because there was a difference between knowing something and knowing it well enough to use it in the dark under pressure.

"You seem deep in thought," Vapour said from his bed. "Thinking about Azure?"

"I’m good," I answered. The words came out flat, dead. I heard it and couldn’t summon the energy to fix the tone.

"Are you sure you’re—"

A sharp knock cut him off.

Vapour stopped mid-sentence and looked at me. "Are you expecting someone?"

The only person I was expecting tonight was Vince Vale. And Vince Vale would not knock.

Vapour got up in his yellow pants and opened the door. A female voice. A brief exchange. Then he turned, eyebrows raised.

"Bro, do you know any Ivy?"

I had completely forgotten.

Ivy had said she was sleeping over. She had said it at lunch in front of Sherry and had meant every word of it. I had noted it, the system had flagged it, and then the countdown had consumed every available corner of my brain.

"Let her in," I said, sliding the folded page deep into my pocket.

Ivy entered like someone who had decided exactly how she was going to enter before she reached the door. Square mini skirt cut high, jacket, boots. She settled on my bed with the ease of someone who had checked the room and approved of it.

"Nice room," she said, voice warm.

Vapour closed the door and retired to his side. "Do whatever you want. I won’t bother you at all."

Why do you have to announce it? I thought.

"Your roommate is a vibe," Ivy said.

Most of the time he’s exhausting, I thought. "Yes," I said. "He is." I looked at her. "You walked all the way from Vale 2 alone?"

"Yes." She smiled, but it faltered at the edges. "I was afraid though, Bram. There’s a really dark stretch around the junction."

[Countdown: 00:39:31]

The junction. Where the lights died. Where cold mist pooled between the buildings and Celestine moved like smoke given form.

"My heart is still going," Ivy said. She closed the distance, took my hand, and pressed my palm flat against her chest. The warmth of her skin, the quick, heavy thud of her heartbeat beneath the thin fabric, it was impossible to ignore. "Do you feel it?"

[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM]

[Excellent opportunity. Charge now.]

Are you fucking serious? I thought at the glowing notification. Right now? With thirty-nine minutes until a vampire comes looking for me and Vapour pretending to sleep four feet away?

I withdrew my hand slowly, gently. "Yeah... I feel it."

She was genuinely beautiful. Blue hair, large eyes, the specific warmth of someone who had made a decision and was comfortable with it. Under any other circumstances, with any other countdown, this would have been a very different evening.

"You’re off tonight," she murmured, studying my face. She leaned in closer, her breath brushing my ear. "I didn’t bother with pants."

Her fingers traced lightly up my shoulder, along my jaw. From Vapour’s side of the room came the loudest, most deliberate silence I had ever heard.

"Is it the roommate?" she whispered.

"I’m not hearing anything," Vapour chimed in immediately, from his bed.

"Bro!" I hissed, keeping my voice low but sharp.

Ivy pulled back slightly, searching my eyes. "You don’t find me attractive?"

"No—that’s not it at all," I said, meeting her gaze. "You’re genuinely beautiful, Ivy. Just... not tonight."

She went still, hands folding into her lap. The quiet recalibration of someone who had walked in expecting one thing and found another. It only lasted a moment.

"I was stupid," she said.

"You weren’t," I said. "Wrong timing. That’s all."

"Okay." She accepted it without making it complicated, which I noted and appreciated. "Another night then."

"I promise," I said.

[Countdown: 00:29:45]

Twenty nine minutes. And Ivy needed to get back through the dark stretch by the junction before Vince arrived and the campus became a different kind of place.

"Let me walk you back," I said.

She nodded and stood.

"Vapour," I said. "Don’t lock the door."

He heard the tone underneath it. He looked at me for a second, the first time I had seen him look at anything without immediately talking about it.

"Okay, bro," he said. Quiet.

We went out into the corridor.

[Countdown: 00:25:18]

The campus was calm. The kind of calm that comes before something decides it’s done being calm. I kept my pace easy, my hands loose, my eyes moving the way the plain had trained them to move. Every shadow. Every gap between buildings. Every place the light didn’t reach.

Ivy was talking beside me, something about the room, about Vapour, about lunch. I was listening with the part of my brain that wasn’t running calculations.

Because I knew this route.

Vale 2 to my hostel, the path cut through the junction, the same dark stretch Ivy had been afraid of on the way over.

The same stretch where the lights went out and the fog gathered and things that didn’t operate by normal rules moved freely.

And Vince Vale had twenty five minutes.

He’s going to meet me here, I thought, walking. Not in my room. Not in the corridor. Here, in the open, where his rules apply and mine are still being written.

I stayed beside Ivy and kept walking and let the countdown run.

Good, I thought. Let him come to me.