At this point, I couldn’t help but wonder what was going to happen next after this convoluted lecture.

"Selene, perhaps you might be confusing Kairi. She probably didn’t get it."

Wait—don’t tell me she’s reading my expression again.

"Oh, you think so? I thought that was quite understandable."

Don’t you read my mind the whole time? This is why you suck at teaching.

Seriously, just stick to theorizing without turning everything into a dissertation.

This is also why I hate science—even if I’ve never struggled this much before.

"Maybe we missed the part where the process actually happened," Helena offered.

Selene didn’t answer. Instead, she walked up to Helena and started... sniffing her clothes.

"Eh?"

Naturally, Helena was startled. So were Azalea and I.

"W-w-what did you do, Senior Selene?!"

She didn’t hold back this time—finally expressing herself after dulling her presence for so long.

"Oh? This is something I’d normally do."

"What exactly are you sniffing this time, hmm?"

"Did you cook something again?"

"Uh, no...?"

"Then why does it smell like ash?"

"As if something’s burning..."

Is this a bad sign or what?

"Burning?" I repeated, my gaze flicking between Selene and Helena.

Selene tilted her head, thoughtful. "It’s faint. But there’s a trace of elemental combustion in your fibers. Unintentional... or unstable."

"You mean my clothes are burning?" Helena asked, voice pitching up.

"I didn’t say that," Selene replied, a little too casually. "But they might be."

Azalea made a strangled sound. "That’s a problem, right?!"

"No, no," Selene said, waving it off.

"They’re not combusting now. Probably. But there was a chain reaction. Just minor. Maybe some misaligned magical traces... residual volatile particles..."

"Do not say spontaneous combustion," I warned.

Selene’s eyes twitched with excitement. "Well—"

"Nope. We’re not doing that today."

"I wasn’t going to say that." She turned, arms folding behind her back like a schoolgirl caught with a firecracker. "But it does suggest some cross-boundary contamination. Maybe from the Space Splitter-Converter."

Oh great. The converter again. That ridiculous pocket-space invention where logic and physics went to die.

"So you’re saying," I began slowly, "that the dimensional containment field might have... leaked?"

Selene tapped her chin. "Not leaked. More like... transposed a few energetic filaments. The converter works by fragmenting physical ingredients into quasi-particles and suspending them in fluxed stasis using the caster’s magic boundary. It should be airtight—metaphorically speaking. But if Helena’s magic wasn’t stable..."

"My magic is stable!" Helena protested. "I even reinforced my seals this morning!"

"Then it’s reacting to something else," Selene muttered, pacing now. "Something ambient. Or emotional."

"Wait," I interjected. "You’re saying her feelings contaminated an experimental pocket-dimension of liquefied alchemical ingredients?"

"Magical boundaries are semi-sentient," Selene replied, as if I was the idiot. "They respond to intention. Emotion is merely a form of intention unspoken."

I stared at her. "That’s the kind of line people say right before the lab explodes."

"I don’t explode things," Selene said indignantly.

Azalea coughed.

"You set the library on fire last semester," Helena said.

Selene frowned. "That wasn’t me. That was the resonance between unstable ink runes and a badly-aligned moon phase."

"You drew the runes," I deadpanned.

"And I apologized."

"No you didn’t."

"I meant to."

"Oh my gods," Azalea groaned, hands in her hair. "Can we please focus on the part where Helena might be carrying volatile... magical... bomb ash or whatever?"

Helena’s eyes went wide. "Is it going to spread?! Am I contagious?!"

"No," Selene said, but her tone lacked conviction.

"I knew it," I muttered.

Selene crouched beside Helena now, examining her boots, then her sleeves, then the lining of her belt. "Mm. Traces are localized. It looks like the ash-pattern was absorbed by your mana sheath. Fascinating."

"Fascinating?" Helena squeaked. "I’m soaked in magical residue and you think it’s fascinating?"

"You’ll be fine," Selene assured her. "Probably. Just avoid open flame. Or rapid movement. Or water."

"Why water?" Azalea asked.

"If the ingredients mixed inside the converter were heat-reactive," Selene said with a small smile, "then the opposing reaction would be rapid cooling—aka, magical implosion. Water triggers thermal inversion. It’s just chemistry."

"This is not chemistry," I hissed. "This is sorcerous terrorism."

Selene blinked at me. "You’re so dramatic."

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "So what now? Is there any way to neutralize it?"

"Well... maybe." She paused. "I could re-open the converter and try to reset the particle arrangement. But it might recognize Helena’s mana imprint and reject it as interference."

"Wait, so the pocket-space knows who touched it?" Azalea said.

"Of course," Selene replied brightly. "It’s an artificially sentient construct. The containment field has imprint memory. That’s how it knows whose ingredients to keep separate in simultaneous layering protocols."

"What happens if it rejects her?" I asked.

"Oh, probably nothing catastrophic," Selene said. "It might just... purge."

"Purge what?"

"Anything it doesn’t recognize as native structure."

"Like... her clothes?"

"Maybe her limbs."

"SELENE."

"I’m joking."

I wasn’t sure if she was.

Helena clutched her sleeves tighter. "Can we not joke about me losing body parts, please?"

"Right," Selene said, serious now. "You’ll need to wear containment gloves. And stand exactly within the triangulated dispersal ring I’ll draw. Kairi, I’ll need your help with the secondary rune lattice."

"Fine," I said, already regretting everything.

Azalea raised her hand. "And what do I do?"

"Just... stay back and document it in case we die," I muttered.

She saluted sarcastically. "On it."

Selene opened her bag again and pulled out the small brass capsule containing the converter—a sleek, etched device about the size of a plum. It pulsed faintly with inner light, runes crawling across the surface like inked veins.

"I’m going to activate it," she said. "Helena, don’t move. Don’t think panicked thoughts. And above all, don’t sneeze."

"Why would I sneeze?!"

Selene gave her a look. "Your allergies. You know they trigger when you’re anxious."

"That’s not—okay maybe—but still!"

I stood beside the circle as Selene carved sigils into the ground using a blade of silver-tipped chalk. The magic hummed. Energy stirred in the air like a pressure drop before a storm.

Then she twisted the converter open with a soft click.

And for a split second, everything went still.

No noise. No breath. Not even time moved.

Then—

A ripple tore through the air.

Light bent.

The converter shuddered.

And Helena’s shoes caught fire.

"AAAAHHHH—!!"

"STEP IN THE CIRCLE! NOW!"

"I’M TRYING—!!"

"WHY ARE HER SHOES BURNING?!"

"I DON’T KNOW!"

"Kairi! Transcription! Now!"

"Got it—!!"