Chapter 116: 116. Meeting Those Bullies Just To Tell Them To F-Off From Tyler

Mike looked at her.

"I don’t care if you solve your problem," he said. "I just have an investment in hearing it correctly."

She stared at him for a moment before saying, "That’s a very strange thing to say, yet it’s exactly right."

"I know," Mike said.

She turned back to the window. The train passed through another stop, causing the car to shift slightly as people got on and off, while the morning gray outside began to show the first signs of turning into something warmer.

After several stops, she remarked, still not looking up, "You have a cut on your cheek."

"I do."

"It’s been cleaned properly."

"It has."

She looked up then. "Do I want to know?"

He thought for a moment. "Someone else asked me something similar recently about a different situation. The answer is likely the same."

She stared at him for a moment. "Which is?"

"Probably not," he said. "But you’ll think about it anyway."

She held his gaze for a second, and then something in her expression moved, a brief flicker of something she did not name, and she looked back at her phone.

"You’re very strange," she said.

"I know."

"I say that as someone who finds strange people interesting," she added and then seemed to feel that this required qualification and added nothing further.

[DESIRE: 46/100.]

[SHE QUALIFIED HERSELF. SHE DIDN’T NEED TO.]

...

The campus on a Friday morning had a different energy from the rest of the week, slightly looser, the way a sentence feels when you remove one word from it and the remaining ones spread out to fill the space.

Mike walked through the main entrance at half past nine, later than his usual time because he had slept four hours and taken twenty minutes over coffee at the kitchen counter, doing nothing in particular, which was a thing he almost never did and had decided to permit himself once.

He had a seminar at eleven. Between now and then, he had something to handle.

Tyler had mentioned the south terrace in passing during their first canteen meeting, not as a specific piece of intelligence but in the way that people mention geography they have learned to navigate around.

He had said the business students used the outdoor tables near the south building on weekday mornings and said it in the same tone he used for all of his logistical observations, which was the tone of someone who had mapped his environment with the particular thoroughness of a person who cannot afford to be surprised by it.

Mike crossed the central quad and took the path that ran along the east side of the arts building, which opened out onto the south terrace from the left.

He wanted to approach the tables from an angle that would provide him with the widest view of them before anyone seated there could see him clearly, as he needed to identify exactly who was sitting where and in what configuration without being noticed.

He stopped at the corner of the arts building and looked.

He immediately saw the three of them, outdoor tables, and coffee cups. Cody had his back mostly to Mike, which was consistent with the broad-shouldered posture Mike had catalogued in the alley.

Jay was facing partially left, and Tobin was talking, which was also consistent with everything Mike had observed about Tobin in approximately four minutes of total interaction.

Mike adjusted the collar of his jacket and walked out onto the terrace.

He found them where Tyler had said they usually were, which was the outdoor tables on the south terrace near the business building, the kind of spot that people select when they want to be visible without being formally present anywhere.

Cody saw him first, which was fitting because Cody had been the one to pull the knife first, and he had the particular wariness of someone who had now permanently factored Mike into his threat assessment.

He nudged Jay with his elbow without saying anything, and Jay looked up from his food, and Tobin followed Jay’s line of sight.

The conversation stopped.

Mike crossed the terrace at an unhurried pace, which was its own kind of statement, and stopped at the edge of their table. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out Jay’s phone, set it face-down on the table between them, and withdrew his hand.

"What the fuck...?" Jay stared at it. "How did you—"

"You dropped it when you left," Mike said. "You were moving fast, and you don’t even notice that your phone fell."

He delivered the words in a tone devoid of accusation and warmth, merely presenting information.

Jay picked up the phone slowly, like a man who wasn’t sure if it was going to do something unexpected. He turned the phone over, checked the screen, examined the back, and then looked up at Mike with the expression of someone who has just confirmed something they were uncertain about.

He looked at Mike. Jay was probably twenty or twenty-one, the kind of person whose anger was genuine rather than performed, with the particular restlessness of someone who was physically capable and often bored.

He had been the hardest one to put down last night, and he had not enjoyed it, and he had not forgotten it, and both of those things were visible in the way he was currently looking at Mike.

"You could’ve just kept it," Cody remarked, observing Mike with a keen sense of caution that Mike found commendable. It was a more intelligent response.

"Why would I keep it?" Mike said. "I have a phone, and it’s pricier than that one."

Tobin laughed, which was a small concession of social territory that the other two noted without acknowledging. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Mike pulled out a chair and sat down without being invited, making a statement in the process. None of them attempted to stop him.

He settled in, directing a casual look at the three of them, akin to how one might watch a mildly intriguing television program.

"You unlocked it," Jay stated flatly.

"I found it on the ground," Mike said. "I wanted to know whose it was."

Jay’s jaw moved slightly. He understood what this meant, and he was deciding how much of a problem it was, which told Mike something about what was on the phone that was useful to know.

He filed it and moved on.

"We should talk about Tyler Schmith," he said.

"Oh my god, this shit again..." Jay said. "What about him?"

"From now on, you’re done with him." Mike stated it as if he were announcing a schedule or a weather report. It wasn’t a negotiation or a threat; it was simply a new reality. "No coincidences, no passing interactions, no accidental encounters."

"All completely done."

Jay’s jaw moved. "Or."

"Or the footage, plus everything I collected when I walked him home, gets distributed in a way that makes your academic record significantly less clean than it currently is." He kept his voice entirely pleasant. "I’m not interested in your scholarships."

"I’m not interested in your majors or your extracurriculars or whatever your parents expect from this degree." He looked at each of them in turn. "I’m interested in Tyler being left alone."

"That’s all, and it’s a very small thing to ask."

Silence lingered for a moment.

"You did all that for a nerd," Cody said, and despite himself, there was a note of genuine confusion in it. "What’s the angle?"

"Oh, there’s always an angle," Mike said pleasantly.

He paused just long enough to let them wonder if he was going to continue, and then he said, "His mother is remarkably attractive, and she appreciates people who take care of things."

"W-What...? Mother...?"