“Were you expecting the competition for the showers to be the highest drama part of gym class?” Alden asked Haoyu as the two of them headed down a broad avenue toward North of North gym. It was a ten minute walk from the MPE building, right on the edge of campus, and apparently, they had both had the same idea when they discovered they were going to have to wait for their turns anyway.

Haoyu was gulping from a water bottle. “I’m glad my group was getting along well. I think the one with the speedsters in it had some kind of issue. They seemed tense.”

Finlay had looked pretty mad. It was the first time Alden had seen the Scottish boy in anything but a cheerful mood.

“I didn’t have the attention span to watch them and run from Snake’s tennis ball pitches.”

“How many hits did you take?”

“Eighteen. It somehow adds insult to injury that he makes you chase the balls down after they hit you.”

When they reached the airy glass building that Alden thought of as the main gym, the same girl in lime green yoga pants who’d been protecting the entrance from riffraff and gawkers on his first visit greeted them both warmly. She was giving out cups of some of the liquefied salads that the spa upstairs bottled and sold as drinks.

They both took one.

As they headed toward the showers, Haoyu sipped the black pepper beet juice he’d chosen and wrinkled his nose. “I don’t think I’m old enough to drink this.”

Alden raised an eyebrow at him.

“I’m trying!” Haoyu said. “Being friends with Lexi’s hard. He got really serious about nutrition in the past year or two. I saw him cut a single piece of chocolate in half once. And there I was stuffing six in my mouth at a time. I want to eat healthy, but I like candy so much. And anything fried.”

“Is that why you bought the slow cooker?”

Haoyu nodded. “That, and because my mom kept telling me I shouldn’t buy it because I wouldn’t ever use it. I’m going to use it every day. And send her pictures. Starting tonight. The bouncing oatmeal was just a temporary setback. It didn’t even taste that bad.”

He looked curiously at a man casting spells on a section of the climbing wall as they passed it. “I’m so glad you’ve got a membership here, too. I really wanted one, and my parents wanted me to have it. But I almost told them not to buy it for me because it’s so…um…”

“Richy?”

“Yes. Mom and Dad both come here, but they have to. They need the facilities in the heavy gym. I could probably have used the school equipment until I was halfway through uni. But everything here is so much nicer, and I used to play on the rock wall in the onsite daycare and just imagine how great it was going to be when I was finally fifteen and I could use the real one. They can set it to have high winds, floods, and earthquakes! I went for it. And you’re here, too! We’ll both look richy together, and it won’t be as awkward when we leave school to use the better stuff.”

“Happy to spoil myself with you.”

They walked past an attendant into the room with the big rainfall showers and the ridiculously fluffy scented towels.

Haoyu beamed at him. “Soooo, since you’re here with me, and you’re not going to freak out about it…I’ll confess that I actually already have potion therapy sauna slots booked for a few days a week until the end of term. I was always planning to come here instead of using the student showers.”

Alden blinked at him. The potions saunas had been a part of his facilities tour. For a hundred argold—or more depending on which sauna you chose—you could sweat and inhale magical substances that did rather out-there sounding things.

“Are you having your spirit waxed or…?”

“No!” Haoyu laughed. “Is that even real? I’m using the recovery sauna. Potions aren’t as good as healers, obviously, but if I sit in there for ninety minutes or so, I don’t really need to rest on my rest days, and I don’t get too sore. I’m just going to do my homework in there instead of sitting through study halls. My mom did sauna homework her whole last year of uni. It was her idea, and since I wasn’t saying no to the gym membership I wasn’t going to say no to something like this.”

He’s basically turning the two hour study hall into recovery time. Alden wondered if Mrs. Zhang-Demir had been attempting to balance out Haoyu’s lifestyle when she tried to set a dorm decorating budget.

“That’s very efficient,” said Alden.

“I’m telling you so you can book a slot tonight, if you want to do homework together. And so you’re not like, ‘Where did Haoyu go? Is he trying to get away from me?’ when I jump straight out of the shower and run off to the sauna instead of heading back to the dorms with you.”

“Gotcha.”

“Do you want to come?”

“…isn’t it a lot of famous people sitting around in towels together, talking about superhero stuff?”

That sounded like a high pressure environment to do homework in unless your parents were famous superheroes and you were used to them.

“I’ve only used it a few times so far. It’s not that many people, and they’re all zoned out watching videos or working on their interfaces. They don’t talk and interrupt my studying, so it’s good.”

“Let me think about it.”

******

Alden had a couple of minutes to debate it while they both rinsed off.

Pro: doing homework with Haoyu was in line with his mission to be a great roommate.

Con: shirtlessness.

Pro: trying the new magic thing with someone his own age for backup instead of facing down a bunch of forty-year-olds who could create waterspouts and pitch railcars by himself.

Con: money.

Pro: feeling good tomorrow instead of feeling ouch tomorrow.

The cons aren’t really cons.

He didn’t want to be shy about the tattoo forever with the people he actually lived with. And as for the money…

Alden had given half of it to Boe so that his family and friends would be taken care of no matter where he was. He’d be spending half of what he had left on supplies, gear, and calling fees to make himself the most absurdly well-equipped and well-connected Rabbit on the Triplanets the next time he was summoned.

A little would be set aside in his backup backup emergency fund.

But all the rest of it…

He’d just about talked himself into spending a million dollars however he wanted. As fast as he felt like. When the mood struck him.

Neha had told him to save it for a downpayment on his future immortality, and everything on the internet was about preparing for retirement. Meanwhile, the tiny remnants of the person he’d been in January kept shouting that this much money should last him until he was a wrinkly old man.

He thought all of them were overconfident in his ability to make it to the wrinkly stage of life.

Besides, even if he did live to a ripe old age, two or three short summonings a year would make for a decent salary by his standards. He’d be absolutely floored if he only got summoned twice a year.

Mind made up, he flicked through his interface and booked a recovery sauna slot. Then he quickly checked the North of North website to make sure he actually understood what you were supposed to do in potion saunas.

Just sit there. No clothes or shoes. Towels. Shower first. No noisy, bright, or smelly spells. No food. Respect the tranquility of the environment.

Gee they don’t tell you where to hide your auriad. That’s an oversight.

He could go with under the wrist cuff or on a thigh. The auriad was getting more and more helpful every day about staying put comfortably wherever he wanted it to.

A couple of minutes later, towel around his waist, he was stepping into the sauna.

It was hot and spacious with soft lighting and steam. Five women, three men, and Haoyu each had plenty of room to themselves on the two tiers of pale wood benches. Alden assumed it was all normal enough…for Apex anyway. The adults mostly had that fit-and-flawless look about them that was so common in this gym he hardly ever noticed it anymore. And there was a little bitty cauldron on a pedestal in the middle of the floor. The clear substance inside was blub-blubbing, and he thought it was the source of the watermelonish scent.

Haoyu smiled brightly and waved him over. “I’m going to watch all the drone footage of my rescues first,” he said quietly. “And then we have that reading assignment on ‘outsmarting enemies’ for offense.”

Alden sat down beside him. By the time he’d started to sweat, he’d gotten over the inherent oddness of doing homework in such an uncommon environment—mostly because Haoyu was a dedicated student. Alden couldn’t stay hung up on towel etiquette while they were having a serious texting conversation about whether saving two of the sandbags at once would increase rescue speed enough to justify the difficulty, risk, and/or talent strain.

The time went by quickly. A gym employee brought water for them and a refill potion for the tiny cauldron just as he finished up the reading for Instructor Klein. It had already been an hour. His homework was half done. He felt tired, but a little less so than when he’d sat down. Either his body liked saunas or it liked inhaling magic steam.

Most of the people who’d been here to start with were gone. There was just one woman wearing cucumbers over her eyes while she lounged on the top bench…which was technically having food in the sauna, wasn’t it?

He glanced over at Haoyu. His dark hair was stuck to his forehead, and his mouth was moving slightly. He was one of those people who did that even when they were reading silently.

Alden kept at his own homework.

Cucumber lady left about fifteen minutes later. Alden was busy watching a video, so he wouldn’t have noticed. But as soon as she closed the door behind her, Haoyu said, “Why can she wear food, but we can’t eat food?”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

Haoyu looked over at him. “Thanks for studying with me. I didn’t beg too much, did I? I know it’s expensive. I just got excited to have a gym buddy. The only other people I know of who are even close to our age here are a couple of uni first years.”

“This is fun. I probably wouldn’t ever have tried it if you hadn’t asked, so I’m glad you did,” Alden said. “I was more worried about wearing my towel backwards than the money.”

Haoyu looked thoughtful. “I don’t think you can wear a towel backward.”

“What if I got here and everyone else had turned theirs into a toga? Or they were supposed to be for our heads instead of our waists?”

Haoyu snorted.

“It could happen. You Anesidorans have weird customs. Spas have weird customs. Magic has weird customs. All three combined in one location? If I’d walked in and found out we all had to remove our towels and bow to the cauldron, I wouldn’t have been very surprised.”

“You were supposed to do that.”

Alden stared at him.

The other boy’s expression was sincere. “It’s all right that you didn’t do it. Since it was your first time, nobody expected you to know—”

“Lexi’s right about you! You do deliver jokes in the exact same tone as serious material.”

Haoyu grinned.

“What if you do that to someone…you can’t do that! Someone like Jeffy will totally get naked and worship a wizard soup pot!”

“Jokes are funnier when they’re subtle.” He lifted an arm up and over his head to start a shoulder stretch. “I’m glad you wanted to try it. I was a lot more focused knowing someone else was doing the same assignments.”

Haoyu’s not going to mention it. Alden was gratified but not really surprised. He’s so good-natured. And his mom…

Alden decided he wasn’t going to get a better chance to bring it up himself. “Do you think our classmates will make a big deal about the tattoo when they see it?”

Arm still bent behind his head, Haoyu cut his eyes toward him. “It’s real, right?”

“Yes.”

“You just have to ignore them,” Haoyu said. “You’re rooming with me and Lexi and Lute… Plus everyone’s already talking about how something crazy happened to you. And you’re a Rabbit. The purity people have already slotted you in with the rest of us. They’re stupid and they just repeat whatever their parents say, so who cares?”

Alden felt like he was missing at least a couple of social factors that Haoyu was treating as obvious. “The purity people?”

“You know, the ones who are like, ‘Anyone who wants to work for the Artonans is an alien bumkisser. Anyone who gets summoned all the time cares more about money than human pride.’ Those people. I think there are only one or two in our whole class who are seriously that way.”

He dropped his arm and shrugged.

“I haven’t noticed,” said Alden.

“Sometimes it’s someone who’s lost a family member to an emergency summons, and then, I understand. They’re grieving and angry. But usually it’s just the kids of Contract refusers, or people who’ve never been called at all for some reason, and they want to act like not being a part of that aspect of Avowed life somehow makes them better than everyone else.”

“So they’re assholes?”

“Mostly. Those people are going to be terrible no matter what, so I say don’t worry about them. Everyone else…”

Haoyu’s brows suddenly lowered. “Oh. Maybe I wouldn’t flash it around the locker room, after all? Even if most of them don’t really have a problem with private contracts, they’re still going to say stupid things and gossip about it. It’s the same reason I don’t tell most people when my parents are doing something dangerous.”

He nodded once, as if to settle the matter, then added, “And obviously don’t worry about me. Or any mature people. Mom and dad both have tattoos. From Triplanets work and from the demon suppression. Everyone who helps with that gets a secrecy one. And Lexi’s little sister has eight now!”

“Half of them are turtles,” said Alden.

Haoyu laughed. “Lexi won’t admit it, but he’s super worried that his parents are wrong and they won’t actually wash off. I think he’s already planning to murder anyone who says anything about the fact that Irina is blue.”

******

They headed back to the dorm in the dark, and they met a rolling cafeteria delivery drone on the way that had half of Haoyu’s supper in it.

“Listen,” Haoyu said, walking backward while he pleaded with the slowly trundling box, “that’s my vegetable rice. I’m Haoyu Zhang-Demir, Garden Hall, Suite 208. That’s me! My name’s on your lid display. Give it to me, and I’ll get to eat it sooner and you’ll get to go back to the cafeteria sooner. It makes sense!”

Beeeeep, the drone said angrily when Haoyu moved to block its way again.

“Not beep! Rice. My rice. I want it!”

Alden was trying not to lose it. “I don’t think it understands you. It probably can’t give it to you until it reaches the room.”

“It’s such a slow, dumb one! Why does CNH have slow, dumb drones?”

Alden coughed. “You want me to pick it up?”

“They make a huge racket and report you to drone operations if you interfere with their delivery for more than a second or two, and then an operator scolds you,” said Haoyu, stepping out of the drone’s path and rolling his eyes.

“No, I mean…tell me to pick it up.”

Haoyu blinked. “You mean with your skill?”

“I recover from fatigue quickly, so it will work for this. And the drone can’t beep or report if it’s preserved, right? We’re just going to help it get to our room faster.”

“That’s crazy. Drone operations is going to think it learned to teleport…let’s do it! Pick it up!”

Alden swooped down on the drone.

A few minutes later, laughing like dumbasses, they set the rolling box down in front of the doors to Garden Hall then hid behind a planter watching it.

“It’s so freaked out,” Haoyu whispered, watching the box sit there silently.

“How did I get here?” Alden whispered back. “Where am I? I am full of rice and confusion.”

“You’re so weird.”

“Shut up. You’re hiding behind a pepper plant with me.”

“Peppers! Are these ones we can take? Oh, it’s figured it out. I’m getting a delivery notice.”

He bounced over to the drone, and it’s lid popped open.

“You two look happy,” Lute said when they stepped into the room shortly after that. He was lying on the chesterfield, reading one of Haoyu’s Chinese comic books. “Downright vibrant compared to Lexi. He staggered in, ate some of the food in the cooker, and he’s been in the tub ever since. Does he bathe with his whip?”

“Maybe. He’s a Meister. They do things like that,” said Haoyu, setting his container of rice on the counter and lifting the lid on the chicken-onion dish he’d concocted. “This doesn’t look bad!”

“It’s really good with ramen,” said Lute.

“It is?! I have to call my mom!”

Alden told himself he was content with the liquid salad he’d bought on the way out of the gym and the bean burgers he was microwaving. He carried his plate into the living room and took Lexi’s favorite armchair.

“The self-mastery wordchain was fantastic,” he told Lute between bites of burger.

Lute dropped the comic book on the ottoman and rolled over to look at him. “It’s cool, right?”

“I don’t think I’d want to use it every day, since this shirt now has a hole burned into the back of it that seemed like a completely reasonable thing to do at the time. But it was so good in the gym. It ran out about the time Big Snake started pelting me with deathballs.”

“Deathballs?”

“Tennis balls at deadly speeds!” Haoyu called.

“I know I was only my normal self again, and my normal self is pretty good at running around and ducking. But I felt so awkward all of the sudden. Like my limbs got stupider.”

“Yeah, I’m always disappointed in my natural state of being when it fizzles out, too. Do you still want to learn it?”

“I need to pay the debt. Can we do that tonight?”

Lute looked at the plate on Alden’s lap. “Sure. But not while you’re eating. I bit my own finger doing that once.”

Haoyu sat down with them a minute later, with a pile of food he’d very obviously tried to make photogenic. “We’ve done it. Our first official day of school.”

“You cute little first years,” said Lute.

“You’re a first year, too!” said Haoyu.

“Yeah, but I’m a grizzled old veteran first year. I bet you two don’t even know which of the toilets on campus have spells and gag flushes on them.”

Haoyu and Alden exchanged looks.

“I feel like we need more details,” said Alden.

“Absolutely not. It’s a right of passage to figure it out yourself.” He looked at Alden’s plate again. “You finished your burgers. How much fun can Haoyu and I have at your expense?”

“What do you mean?”

“As a friend, I should tell you to go get in bed for the night before I drop the debt on you. But…as a friend…I think you should let us observe you a while instead.”

“Is he going to be funny?”

“He’s going to be so funny.”

Lute was grinning. Haoyu looked excited.

******

Alden Thorn was pretty sure he’d done it. He’d just become a great roommate.

Would a not great roommate let two teenage boys who were laughing like hyenas watch him try to wash dishes when he was in this state?

He didn’t think so.

The feet are more important, he told himself. Pay attention to your balance.

He stood firm.

The cup he’d been washing fell out of his hand into the small sink and sent soapy water splashing onto the floor. For the third time.

“What the hell?”

It came out sounding like “Whadell?”

His tongue now had a disturbing habit of skipping over sounds. He accessed their roommate group chat.

[Alden: Lute, did you somehow give me a triple dose of this shit!?]

Haoyu was on the floor mopping spills with a kitchen towel they only owned thanks to his mother and her assistant explaining that kitchen towels were a must-have item. Lute was lying on his back on the table, clutching his stomach. They were both howling.

[Alden: I can’t even talk! This can’t be normal.]

It wasn’t exactly that he couldn’t talk. With careful effort, he could talk, stand up safely, or move his hands the way he wanted to. But doing all three at once was suddenly rocket science.

Lute had even insisted on checking the water temperature before he put his hands in the sink. Apparently with this half of the wordchain, you could be minimally aware of the fact that you were boiling yourself.

“I p-promise it’s only one!” Lute gasped. “After you finish the dishes, let’s…let’s try brushing your teeth!”

[Alden: If there’s a fire tonight, I’ll die. I’ll never make it down the stairs.]

“We’d carry you!” Haoyu said from the floor as another stream of bubbles slopped over the edge toward him.

Lexi, scowling, stepped into the kitchen right then. He was in pajama pants. He crossed his arms over his bare chest. “Why are you three so loud, and what did you do to—?”

“Hi,” said Alden. “I’m fine.”

His arm overshot the drainboard by a mile, and a fork clattered across the tile counter.

“Don’t fall!” Haoyu shouted.

I’m not falling, thought Alden.

But Haoyu was on his feet suddenly and Alden was being caught and set upright, so he must have been falling.

Lexi walked over to the sink, his eyes wide. “Are you drunk?” he hissed in Alden’s ear. “Did you two get him drunk?!”

“Yeah that’s it,” said Lute. “Just look at all this booze we’ve got lying around.”

“I’mnah drunk! I’m jethnah master now.”

Probably “I’m just not the master of myself right now” was an overly ambitious sentence.

“He is drunk! He looks just like a drunk person on television! He sounds just like a drunk person.”

“He’s not drunk,” said Haoyu, trying to square Alden’s shoulders from behind like he was straightening an unruly shelf.

“Are niffing?” Alden asked as Lexi leaned toward him and inhaled.

[Alden: He’s sniffing me. Stop it, Lexi. I don’t have beer breath. ]

Lute started cackling again.

“It’s a clumsiness wordchain,” Haoyu said. “That’s why he sounds fine on the room chat but not with his mouth. It seems pretty strong. Lute gave it to him.”

“Pretty strong?” Lexi asked, staring as another tricky fork made a bid for freedom.

“We aren’t letting him wash knives.”

Lexi frowned. “Should you be letting him stand up?”

[Alden: I’m a good roommate. I’m washing all the dishes by myself!]

“Haoyu’s keeping you upright.”

[Alden: He’s a good roommate, too.]

[Haoyu: Thank you! That’s not a dish you’re washing though. It’s the pear you knocked in the sink earlier.]

Alden looked down to see himself scrubbing the peel off a green pear with the dish brush. He set the fruit aside with as much dignity as he could.

Lexi looked at them all, then he sighed and went to fetch the forks.

After the dishes, they all three followed Alden around while he attempted to go through his nighttime routine. Equal amounts of teasing and mother-henning were involved. They wouldn’t let him trip over the edges of the rugs—maybe he shouldn’t have bought quite such thick ones—and bust his face. But they absolutely all stood there snickering while he tried to get toothpaste out of the tube onto his brush.

“Don’t waste it!” said Haoyu as Alden stared down at the tablespoonful of green paste oozing down the sides of the brush onto his hand. “Put it all in your mouth.”

“It’s not a mistake, you guys!” Lute said. “He wanted that much. You should have seen what he ate for lunch.”

“Anesidoran social dynamic,” said Lexi. “Spit goes in the sink.”

[Alden: Et tu, Lexi?]

“Why do we randomly say ‘Anesidoran social dynamic’ to Alden sometimes?” Lute asked as he finished brushing.

Alden glanced at them all in the mirror.

Lexi’s expression was neutral.

[Alden: Because I whined about Lexi keeping Anesidoran social dynamics to himself when he knew I was ignorant. I was being a dick.]

About Lute. He felt even worse about that now.

“Compared to Lexi?” Lute asked. .

[Alden: That time I was.]

Lute gasped in mock horror. “Cool! Anesidoran social dynamic—remember you have to pee before bed. For real.”

Lexi and Haoyu both looked startled.

“What kind of wordchain is this?” Lexi asked for the third time.

******

Alden wasn’t sure about the lack of bodily awareness being great for sleeping. He might just have been tired after the day he’d had. But he was drifting off easily, right on the brink of unconsciousness, when the notification came in:

[Video call from Twenty-seven Hundred and Sixty-third General Evul-art’h, Artona I. Connection fee waived.]

Alden stared at it.

Stuart was calling. Early. It shouldn’t have been much of a surprise. Alden was up in the middle of the night a lot, and Stuart knew that.

But I’m in bed. And my tongue is broken.

He reached up and slapped at the switch for the reading light over his bunk. When he finally got it on, he accepted the call with a thought.

Evul-art’h’s black hair and pale pink eyes appeared. She was in her cushioned window seat again.

“The human is very <<loosey-goosey>>today, Stu,” she reported. “He’s in bed.”

Loosey-goosey? Alden was going to have to look into the word that was being translated that way.

“Did we wake him up?” Stuart inserted his face between his sister and the tablet. “Did we wake you up? I’m sorry. I called as soon as I got home. I wasn’t thinking about the time as much as I should have been.”

Evul-art’h gave them both a curious look.

“It’s all right,” Alden said slowly in the least loosey-goosey Artonan he could manage. Think only about the tongue. Only the tongue. “I’m on the bad half of a wordchain now. Do you mind if we send text messages instead? Or talk in the morning? My mouth—”

Stuart smiled. “Go to sleep. I’ll call back later.”

“He means I’ll call back later,” his sister said dryly.

“Thank you. Both of you. We can talk all day tomorrow, Stuart. If you want. Night-night.”

******

“The human just said night-night and hung up on you. And me,” said Evul-art’h in an intrigued voice. “Mostly me, since it’s officially me calling.”

“He has a name.” Stu-art’h perched on the edge of the lounger beside her.

“I know. It’s your fault for naming your pet after him. Now I don’t know what to call either of them!”

“Alden. And…Other Alden.”

“The Ryeh-b’t and the other ryeh-b’t. Not confusing in the slightest.” She shoved herself back into her cushions. After a moment, she said, “Stu, are you all right these days?”

He sighed. “I would be much more all right if you would all stop wanting things for me that I don’t want for myself.”

She smiled. “Oh. You’re still angry with me. I don’t know why you thought I wouldn’t side with the others. It’s only the small matters I allow myself to be careless about. You are not a small matter.”

One of her hands rummaged under a golden yellow pillow and pulled out one of her lungsticks. She held the dark tube out to him, and he lit it with a flick of his fingers.

“You’ve always been such a beautiful caster, Stu.”

He stood.

“Thank you for calling Alden,” he said stiffly. “I would appreciate it if you did me the favor again when he has finished resting.”

“I’ll do all manner of favors for you, baby brother.” She drew on the stick and sent a cloud of blue smoke toward the ceiling. “Consider doing just one for me in return.”