Trafalgar continued without moving from where he stood.

"Could you stop pointing that bow at me? I don’t enjoy it nearly as much as you seem to."

Cynthia drew in a deep breath, held it, and let it go through her nose. The mana around her hand thinned. A moment later, the bow dissolved into particles of light and disappeared.

Trafalgar lowered his shoulders a fraction.

"Thanks. So, I thought this was Bartholomew’s room. At least that’s what I was told."

Cynthia kept one hand on the towel, as if refusing to trust the world for even a second longer. "It is. This is my brother’s room."

Trafalgar glanced around once, partly to make the point, partly because he preferred looking anywhere but directly at the disaster the last minute had become. "Good. That confirms I haven’t lost the ability to follow numbers."

Cynthia narrowed her eyes at him, color still lingering across her face. "Would you like to explain why you’re inside my brother’s room?"

"I could ask what you’re doing in your brother’s room first."

That earned him a sharper expression.

"What do you want from Bartholomew?"

"I need to ask him something." Trafalgar inclined his head toward the door. "So I was going to wait here." His eyes moved to the still slightly open entrance. "Though you should be more careful. The room was left open."

Cynthia snapped back at once. "Barth left it open, not me. I forgot my clothes in my own room, so he went to get them. The shower in my room isn’t working. I assume he left in a hurry and didn’t notice."

That did sound painfully plausible.

Bartholomew forgetting the door while trying not to keep his sister waiting fit him so well that Trafalgar almost felt bad for suspecting the room had simply been surrendered to fate.

Almost.

Before he could say anything else, the main door opened again.

"Si-sister, I’m back with your clothes—"

Bartholomew stepped inside carrying a folded set of clothes in both hands.

His voice died instantly.

He had not expected to see Trafalgar standing off to one side, nor Cynthia in front of him wrapped only in a towel, cheeks flushed and damp hair falling over her shoulders after the bath. His entire body locked so abruptly that it looked as though someone had replaced his skeleton with wood.

"Ex-excuse me for interrupting," he said.

Trafalgar raised a hand at once.

"Stop right there, Barth. Give her the clothes. This is a complete misunderstanding, so don’t let your imagination start doing laps. I came because I wanted to see you. I’ve got something to show you."

That was too much information and not enough information, but it was better than letting Bartholomew invent his own version, which would almost certainly be worse.

Cynthia crossed the space between them, snatched the clothes from her brother’s hands, and disappeared into the bathroom without another word, though the look she sent Trafalgar on the way there suggested she had not forgiven him for continuing to exist.

The door closed.

Bartholomew remained where he was, staring at Trafalgar with the hollow shock of a man who had returned to his room and found his life under renovation.

Trafalgar spared him the trouble of asking.

"You left the door open when you went to get your sister’s clothes. I came in because I thought you were out and decided I’d teach you a lesson for being careless. None of what happened after that was intentional." He gave him a flat look. "I need your help with something."

That last part, at least, reached him.

Bartholomew swallowed and blinked twice. "Wh-what do you need, Trafalgar?"

Trafalgar opened the case quickly, took out one of the pages, and held it toward him.

"Do these letters look familiar?"

Bartholomew leaned in.

The change in him was immediate.

The embarrassment, the timid awkwardness, the remnants of panic from the room he had just walked into—all of it receded under a brighter instinct. His eyes sharpened. His whole face woke up in a way Trafalgar had seen before, usually when old texts, obscure records, or half-rotten histories were involved.

Trafalgar almost smiled.

"You remember the two notebooks I gave you," he said. "This is similar. I need help working through it."

Bartholomew took the sheet carefully, as if it were something sacred and brittle. "Y-yes," he said at once. "Yes, I remember. This really does look close to that." His voice gained strength without asking his permission. "The structure, the characters, the way the lines break... yes, yes, I can help with this."

"Careful," Trafalgar said. "I don’t want it damaged."

Bartholomew nodded so quickly it looked dangerous. "I won’t damage it, I swear."

Trafalgar watched the excitement taking over him and finally let a small smile show. "So? What do you say?"

Bartholomew lifted his head with the kind of expression other people reserved for being offered wealth or divine revelation.

"Yes. Of course. Let’s go to your room and start right away."

That enthusiasm was almost absurd.

It also made things easier.

"Good," Trafalgar said. "We can go now."

The bathroom door opened again.

Cynthia stepped back out, dressed this time in casual clothes, hair still damp from the bath. The white cloth was gone, the color in her face had mostly faded, and the room instantly became more survivable.

She glanced between them. "What were you talking about?"

Trafalgar answered before Bartholomew could.

"Men’s business. Right, Barth?"

Bartholomew understood much less than Trafalgar was giving him credit for, but fear and instinct carried him through. He nodded quickly. "R-right."

Cynthia looked unconvinced. She also looked too tired to start a second battle.

"Well, I’m leaving," she said. "I came to do what I needed." She turned to Bartholomew first. "See you later, Barth." Her gaze shifted to Trafalgar and narrowed. "And you. Forget what you saw."

Trafalgar inclined his head once in agreement.

Bartholomew, unfortunately, chose that moment to speak.

"Wh-what did you see?"

Cynthia went red all over again.

"N-nothing," she snapped.

This time she was the one stammering. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

Trafalgar watched her for a brief instant with something dangerously close to amusement.

’She’s completely different like this.’

Usually Cynthia carried herself like a drawn blade, all directness and edge, with enough confidence to make people step aside without realizing they were doing it. Watching that same girl struggle through her own embarrassment was disorienting in a way he had not expected.

He decided, out of mercy and self-preservation, not to say any of that out loud.

Instead he turned to Bartholomew.

"Well, are we going?"

Bartholomew nodded at once.

Trafalgar picked up the case and stepped out into the corridor while Bartholomew lingered a second longer to say goodbye to his sister. By the time he joined him outside, Trafalgar was already standing by the wall waiting.

He gave Bartholomew a long look.

"Close the door."

Bartholomew blinked, turned, and found the entrance still open.

"T-true," he muttered. "I got too excited and forgot."

"Yeah, I can see that."

Bartholomew shut the door properly this time, checked it again with his hand as if trying to recover a little dignity, and finally turned back.

Together, they started toward Trafalgar’s room.