10 Minutes Later

"Okay how long was I actually gone for...? I swear it felt like half an hour or so."

Jaq stared at Aaron blankly.

Or more specifically, at the weird set of goggles strapped to his face like he was about to go deep sea diving in the middle of their hotel room. They were bulky, tinted, and looked absolutely ridiculous on a grown man standing casually in the corner of the room with a backpack slung over one shoulder.

She had only stepped out for what felt like thirty minutes. Maybe a little more.

An hour. Apparently.

"It was actually an hour," Lia mentioned from the side, her voice distracted, her gaze fixed somewhere far more interesting than the conversation.

Specifically, at Aaron’s hands.

They were... glowing. Just faintly. Like someone had rubbed a little bit of bioluminescent paint across his knuckles and called it a day. It wasn’t blinding or dramatic. It was just enough to make a person do a double take and quietly question their own sanity.

Was it her imagination?

Lia squinted.

No. Definitely glowing.

She decided not to comment on it for now.

"Are we really missing the elephant in the room?"

Katie’s voice cut through the strange quiet that had settled, her face scrunched up in what could only be described as barely-contained irritation. The depressed cloud that had been hanging over her earlier had apparently packed its bags and left, replaced by something much more familiar — annoyance.

"I get it that Aaron decided to uhm... change," she continued, waving her hand vaguely in his direction, "and the noises coming from that room were quite uhh... violent. Violent enough that even the soundproofing couldn’t really hold it back. But still! Can we focus? The topic is what to do about the guilds!"

A fair point.

An incredibly fair point that the room collectively agreed with internally, even if nobody was rushing to say so out loud.

"Ah, didn’t we already decide?"

Jaq reached over and plucked a cigarette from somewhere, lighting it with the casual grace of someone who had absolutely zero interest in engaging with any conversation that didn’t go her way. She took a slow drag and exhaled, waving her hand dismissively toward Katie and Lia.

"We’re cutting you two weaklings off. Shoo. Get off the cool gang and go socialize at a frat party or something."

Lia blinked. Then she looked down at the thing currently burning between Jaq’s fingers.

"You’re smoking what now?"

Because it wasn’t a cigarette.

It was a pencil joint.

"I don’t think I need to answer the deserters," Jaq said simply, taking another drag of her burning pencil with complete and utter dignity.

"Okay, listen here, you dagger trap master." Katie stepped forward with the energy of someone who had been biting their tongue for way too long. "Make up your mind. Are we deserters, or are you throwing us out of the group? There can’t be both, right?"

Jaq raised her head slowly, the expression on her face so profoundly bored that it circled back around to being impressive. She seemed to genuinely consider the question for a moment, turning it over in her head like she was solving a philosophical puzzle.

"Okay," she said finally, "made up my mind. You both deserted us first, and we decided to throw you out of the group before you could actually desert us. Fair enough?"

Katie stared at her.

"Well," she said, in the sweetest, most painfully fake smile she could manufacture, "thanks for the sweet explanation. I am sure we both really appreciate that."

"Wait wait wait—"

Claire stepped in before the two of them could build up enough momentum to knock another piece of furniture over. One destroyed room was already one too many for their collective wallet. She held up a hand, redirecting the energy of the room like a crossing guard standing in front of an oncoming train.

Then she turned to Jaq.

"And ’we’?"

Jaq stared back. "What? Are you not going to side with me?" Her eyes went wide with theatrical horror. "Don’t tell me you’re one of the deserters! Oh my god!" She opened her mouth in a perfect, exaggerated O, the picture of mock betrayal.

From the bed, Eva let out a long, suffering groan and leaned back until she was staring at the ceiling.

"Haah," she exhaled. "This reunion is really so heart touching."

"Indeed," Aaron agreed.

Their sarcasm was dry, flat, and utterly without effort.

It was also immediately detected by the room’s self-appointed leader, who turned the full weight of her glare onto both of them with the precision of a woman who had extensive experience in making people feel like they’d made a terrible life decision.

Both Aaron and Eva went very quiet, very fast.

Smart.

The actual conversation that followed was not quick.

It took nearly forty-five minutes.

Forty-five long, winding, occasionally heated minutes of back and forth between Katie and Lia before the two of them finally arrived at a decision that had probably been forming in the back of their minds for longer than they were willing to admit.

They were going to withdraw from the group.

Not because they wanted to. Not because anything had gone wrong between them, not really. But because the math was simple and neither of them was naive enough to pretend otherwise. The better guilds had standards, and those standards weren’t built around sentiment. They were built around ability, around what a person could bring to the table on the worst day imaginable.

And in no world was everyone equally gifted. That was just how things worked.

Someone who was brilliant at one thing could be completely useless at another. Recognizing that wasn’t weakness. Pretending otherwise was.

Jaq was still pissed about it, which was obvious from the way her taunts kept slipping out at irregular intervals like she couldn’t quite help herself. But even she didn’t push back hard enough to try and change their minds.

It was their lives. Their choices.

"Yeah so, well..." Claire sighed, rubbing the back of her neck as she looked at the two of them. "I am glad that you’re taking the news well." She paused. "I can’t believe this is really happening. Though I am not really opposed to the buzznet plan if it means we can stay as a group and grow together, you know?"

"It’s okay, Clay."

Lia smiled, warm and genuine, the kind of smile that made it harder to be sad about something even when you really wanted to be. "We decided to open up a business in Snombi together using our uhh, savings."

"Well, that’s nice." Jaq shrugged, exhaling slowly. For just a second, something that might have been sincerity crossed her face before she buried it under a layer of casual indifference. "I am sure you two will figure out what to do in the future."

Then she turned to Katie specifically, waving a hand in her direction with the easy confidence of someone who knew exactly what she was about to say and had no regrets about it.

"What I can do is not something you can do," she said lightly, "and what you can do, who wants to do that, yuck."

Katie’s eyelid twitched.

Just once. Just slightly.

She kept the smile going through sheer force of will, nodding her head slowly in a way that radiated pure, concentrated, barely-leashed restraint.

She was definitely cursing her in her mind.

"So I guess it’s final?" Eva said, her tone quieter than usual, the kind of quiet that came from actually feeling something rather than performing it. She looked at the two of them — girls she’d called best friends long enough that the word didn’t even feel like enough anymore.

"Guess so." Katie’s smile turned real for the first time in a while, small and a little crooked. "We’re still going to be here for a while though. Don’t want to miss Jaq’s expression when the interviewer says ’I am sorry but your experience isn’t up to par with our elites’."

Jaq stifled something that was absolutely a scoff, pretending it was a sigh instead. She leaned back in her chair and took a long, contemplative drag of her burning pencil.

The room settled after that.

Not in a bad way, exactly. But not entirely comfortable either. It was that particular brand of awkward silence that comes after something real has been said — the kind where everyone is feeling the same thing and nobody quite knows what to do with it.

Jaq swept her eyes around the room, caught the mood, and decided immediately that she hated it.

Her gaze landed on Aaron. Backpack. Shades. Dimly lit room. Faintly glowing hands hidden underneath his sleeves.

"So..." she began, eyes bouncing between him and Claire with the slow, deliberate energy of someone loading a catapult. "Mind explaining about the glasses? Uhh, aggressive sex or something? She punched too hard or what?"

The room exploded.

Katie wheezed. Eva buried her face in a pillow. Even Lia, who had been doing a reasonable job of maintaining dignity, completely abandoned the effort.

The mood evaporated. The tension went with it, replaced by laughter and overlapping voices and the occasional taunt lobbed back and forth between Katie and Jaq like they were playing some kind of verbal tennis that neither of them was willing to lose.

It was loud. It was chaotic.

It felt, strangely, exactly like them.

Nobody noticed when fourteen minutes slipped by.

The room’s bell rang.

The noise dropped off instantly, the way it does when something unexpected interrupts a crowd mid-sentence. Claire cleared her throat, smoothing down her expression into something diplomatic.

"It could be the house cleaning," she said. "Be positive, guys."

She crossed to the door and pulled it open.

One look.

Just one single look at whatever was standing on the other side. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

She shut it again immediately. Firmly. With the quiet decisiveness of a woman making a very deliberate choice.

Then she turned around.

The smile she had on was bright. Extremely bright. The kind of bright that has absolutely nothing to do with happiness.

"Definitely not the house cleaning."