Instructor Yam always prioritized safety above all else. For the first lesson, they weren’t allowed to work with a volume of lava larger than a marble. Yam’s vacuum trick protected them in the aura plane, but it did nothing about radiated heat, which remained a problem in the physical plane. Lava could reach up to around 1500 Kelvin, and radiated energy was proportional to the fourth power of temperature, so it was very much a problem indeed, and as a result, they needed to start very small.
Normally, a small drop of lava would cool to solid rock pretty quickly, but Instructor Yam had enchanted the lava so it would stay heated. That sounded really dangerous to Myra, but it would have been impossible to practice otherwise, she supposed.
By the end of the class, Myra had her marble zooming around the training room. I don’t know if I can protect myself when Ralkenon blows its top, Myra thought.
But…
◆
Of all the theories for how she’d gotten involved in this time mess, her favorite was still the idea that she’d accidentally touched some kind of artifact in Ben’s room. She’d been hanging out with a time-traveler, and then she had time-traveled. That couldn’t be a coincidence; there had to be a causal connection there.
And if that was the case… she needed to find the artifact and touch it again.
It was easy for her to break into Ben’s room now that she knew of a glaring security hole: ceilings and walls could be made incorporeal without any issue. She wasn’t sure if she would get caught by some kind of sensor, though, so she waited until the day of the eruption to enter.
She brought Shera along, of course. The pair turned his bedroom upside-down, but they didn’t find anything remotely of interest. Everything was pretty much where she’d expected it to be based on the first time she’d been in here. Even the Spy Wyvern series was there on his bookshelf. (Myra had half-expected to find that was something he didn’t usually have around, and that he’d only added it to attract her attention.)
Shera carefully investigated the vents and the hole at the top of his window that the cord for the window blinds came out of. Myra searched his drawers and picked through his recent mail. Come on, where’s his Invitation to the Super Secret League of Time-Travelers or whatever?
“Ugh, nothing,” Myra muttered. “This was worthless to begin with. Even if the artifact was there last time, it probably wasn’t here at the beginning of the month. And on the off chance it was, he probably took it with him!”
“We had to t-try anyway.”
“Yeah, I know, I know. Is there anywhere we didn’t look?”
“Actually, I wanted to check his mattress. You said you fell through it, right?”
“Yeah. When I made the bed incorporeal… Oh! You think there could have been something hidden in the mattress, and I touched it when I fell through?”
“I mean. It’s a good place to hide something, and if you really think you touched something without noticing, somehow…”
“Yeah, yeah! That’s a great idea!”
Myra yanked the sheets off, looked under the mattress, and finally opened it up to look it. There was nothing of interest. She was out of fucks to give, so she shredded the whole bed frame down in search of any kind of hidden compartment.
Still, nothing.
“Well,” Myra said, trying to find a bright side. “Even if the artifact theory is right, it’s possible I don’t actually need to touch it again. I mean, I’m sure Ben will reset time again, right?” And if I don’t come back with him, the fate of the city is in his hands.
Shera leaned back against the desk, her eyes downcast from within their deep sockets. She heaved a heavy sigh.
“You okay?”
“Whatever happens, it looks like I’m not going to enter.”
“Did you… want to?” Shera didn’t say anything. “I mean, surely you don’t envy my position.” She tried to speak casually, scratching the back of her neck. “I mean, who knows how long this is going to go on.”
“I-I don’t want to forget all this,” she finally said. “Well… I-I kind of want to forget about Z-Z-ZK-1034. But I don’t want to forget about y-you. These are the only nice m-memories I have of y-you.”
That kind of stung, but it was true. And the reverse was true as well. These were the only nice memories she had of Shera.
“Well, I’ll recruit you again, and we can make more nice memories.”
“When y-you looked at me like y-you were… happy to see me…” She twitched, then started speaking really quickly, her stutter worsening by several degrees. “It was a n-nice memory. And then y-y-you s-said y-you al-almost h-hugged me. Y-you never d-d-did though.”
Myra blinked. “A hug? You want a hug?”
She opened her mouth but no sound came out. Still, the answer was pretty clear. Myra wrapped her arms around the frail girl and pulled her in. She squeaked out a high-pitched “eep.”
“Shera, this month would have been unbearable if I hadn’t been able to talk to you. Thank you.”
Shera melted into it, so Myra decided to stand with her for a while. Had Shera been hoping for a hug all month, or something? Myra vaguely remembered joking about almost hugging her back when she was trying to dodge the subject of time travel.
To be honest, she’d sort of thought Shera might have some kind of OCD thing against hugs, but then again, it was always sort of hard to guess what would set off her neuroses.
“I’m sorry we weren’t able to find a way for you to get into the loop,” Myra said. “I didn’t realize it was important to you.”
“It’s okay. I-I didn’t really expect us to find anything.”
“Well, I’m going to figure out what the fuck’s going on, and when I do, I’ll help you get in on this time travel.”
Assuming I even loop back again.
◆
What would even happen if Ben looped back again but she didn’t? Which version of Myra would he even find, the original Myra or the Myra that remembered a previous loop? She hadn’t really considered it until now, but it was possible that this wasn’t actually the loop after the one she remembered. Maybe Ben had looped hundreds of times since then, each time with Myra carrying out some investigations that she would only forget at the end of the loop.
It wasn’t good to dwell on these possibilities.
Instead, it was time to straighten out what the rest of her friends would be doing for the night. Hopefully, they would not be going to the party where she expected Iz to get hurt. Hopefully, they would agree to a night out in town instead, specifically, the part of the town at the very far, opposite end from the Ralkanon Volcano. Myra would have to find a way to sneak away since she did have plans to be on campus when everything went down, but she would cross that bridge when she came to it.
“You too?” That was Cynthia’s response when Myra suggested they skip.
“What do you mean ‘me too’?” Myra asked. “Who else is skipping?”
“Nathan’s skipping out,” Tazhin explained. “Cynthia spent all day badgering him about it.”
“It was too much,” Iz said. “I wouldn’t be in the mood for a party either if someone close to me had been missing all month.”
“Y’all are acting like I don’t know what he’s going through!” Cynthia protested. “I thought an event could get his mind off things. Socialization would do him some good!”
“Yeah, but who knows how crazy this party is gonna get?”
Myra took this chance to jump back in. “And that’s why we should go for a more low-key night out on the town!”
Cynthia grimaced. “I mean, we can try to do that tomorrow. I do want to go to the party. We all do, right?”
Tazhin and Iz both nodded along. “Yes, I want to go, too…” Iz sounded a bit ashamed of it, though. She probably worried she was being selfish.
“Do you all really want to see the princess that badly? I mean, c’mon, she’s probably an entitled b—person.”
“Well, I don’t want to see her because I’m a fan of hers, or anything,” Iz said. “But I am kind of curious.”
“She probably ain’t gonna show up, anyway,” Cynthia said. “I just want to go to the party. I hope they have a trampoline like last time.” She propped a finger against her cheek and smirked at Myra. “Remember that rule, after midnight?”
Myra had no idea if they would have the trampoline with the midnight rule (which was that you had to be topless). There hadn’t been a trampoline last time, but the fact was, the entire month had seemed to be subject to a ripple effect. Social events especially seemed to be all shuffled around, and not just in her friend group. She was also pretty sure people were sitting in different places during class. So it was impossible for Myra to say what was going to be at the party. At the moment, all she knew was that it was at the same time and place as she expected.
“Yeah, I remember.” At the last party with the trampoline, the one Cynthia was referring to, Myra had almost participated but had gotten cold feet at the last minute. For a bunch of reasons, this was not what she wanted to think about right now, and she intended to be gone from the party by midnight anyway. “I don’t think there’s gonna be a trampoline this time.”
“Oh? And what do you know about it?”
“It’s just a feeling. Besides, I found a burger place with a limited-time sushi burger special.”
“That does sound kind of good,” Tazhin said. “Maybe we could tomorrow.”
Cynthia nodded. “Sorry, Myra… I really wanna go to the party.” Her tone was final.
“All right, fine. You all still have those teleport sticks I gave you, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, we have ‘em.” Cynthia rolled her eyes, humoring Myra. Iz quietly frowned at her, her expression worried.
◆
The party, actually, was set up pretty much exactly as Myra remembered it. Maybe that’s not so surprising. Melaney might have been planning her next party in her head for some time now. There was a rock climbing ring just as before. Maybe she’d get a chance to try it this time.
Now that I think about it, Ben had been inspecting it last time, too. Oh, was that just because he knew there was a chance I’d come try it out before the show started?
Actually, the rocks also played a role in the duel between Ben and Princess Mala. Was he preparing for the duel somehow? If I were him, and I had known that Mala was going to use them in the duel, I’d sabotage them.
There wasn’t any indication he’d done anything like that, though.
How many times had he actually iterated on that duel?
Myra didn’t have long for her musings. It was only a few minutes before their main guest arrived.
It all went just about as it had before. Princess Mala strutted into the field, with her maid and Violet Penrilla in tow. She singled out Iz before anyone else could approach her. She challenged Iz, Iz demanded the pendant, and Vi was chosen to adjudicate.
“Are there any objections to the terms?”
“I have no objections,” said the princess, popping her knuckles.
“I have no objections,” said Iz.
Myra watched closely.
The most important thing to understand in mages’ duels, or in any situations where magic would be used against another person, was the concept of the “personal domain.”
The personal domain was a region of space that extended about half a meter off one’s person. Activating the personal domain was always the first thing any mage trainee learned to do, and even most non-mages learned how to do it since it was such an important protection. Myra had been taught to do it at the age of nine, years before she’d learned a single spell, and it had been enabled continuously since that point, even while she slept.
It was impossible for a mage to initiate any spell within another person’s personal domain. The protection was absolute: the greatest mage in the world couldn’t break through the personal domain of the weakest mage. A personal domain could also terminate existing enchantments on objects that moved into its space, though it was usually selective about this, generally acting in a way as to benefit its owner. Mages were taught to imagine that the owner “unconsciously” makes a choice, though this wasn’t strictly correct.
Anyway, this was why duels tended to center around projectiles. A personal domain protected against magic, but it did nothing against an object with momentum. Still, there were other ways around it if you really needed to do magic directly against somebody. If two people stood close together, their personal domains would “squish” against each other and shrink down. (This made it possible to perform most healing spells, for example.)
Princess Mala stood about six meters from Iz in the dueling ring, so there was no squishing in effect. On the surface of it, it should be impossible for Princess Mala to psychically knock Iz back or cut directly into her skin. Not without some kind of nasty trick.
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Myra watched the Princess’s hands closely.
“Then let us enjoy a fair fight, and may the best mage win. 3… 2… 1… Begin.”
Just as she remembered, Iz was struck backward while blood sprayed out and two gashes appeared in her stomach.
Fuck! What the hell? I didn’t catch anything!
The most well-known trick for getting into a foreign personal domain was something usually called ‘tunneling,’ although the legal term was some overly verbose descriptor like ‘domain override by noncontiguous body element’ if Myra remembered correctly. The idea was to break something off your body, usually a fingernail, and send it into the personal domain of your opponent. You could emanate your own personal domain through the detached body part.
Two things about this. First, it was supposed to be really hard. Actually learning to project your personal domain through a detached body part wasn’t a skill that came naturally. Secondly, it was illegal. Not, like, disallowed in the Prerarian Code of Duels or anything. It was just completely illegal.
Last time, Myra was certain that the princess had used a tunneler. This time… she scrutinized her hands; from where she stood, it looked like her fingernails were all intact.
Huh…
The crowd erupted the way she remembered it. Cynthia rushed in to administer first aid. The princess grabbed her dress clothes and marched off with her companions. Last time, this was the point when Myra had confronted her and vaguely threatened her about the tunneling. This time, she wanted to keep a low profile so she could tail them. She wanted to see where they went after the party.
She felt bad about leaving Iz, but the princess walked very quickly, and she had to leave before she lost them. Trailing a good distance behind, she followed them as they made their way towards the center of campus. Vi seemed to be the navigator. Every now and then, they would stop at some intersection, and Vi would hurry on in some direction while the others were still getting their bearings.
Unfortunately, Myra was too far back to hear their conversation. Is there some kind of trick to tailing people? How am I supposed to close the distance between us without them hearing my footsteps?
Although… I have every right to walk this way. And I didn’t stand out at the party, either. Would they even pay me mind if I walked close to them?
Eventually, the group’s breakneck pace came to a halt near the main intersection, where they found a little spot secluded by some trees for the princess to change back into her dress. Myra finally managed to find a spot around the corner where she could eavesdrop on them, out of sight.
“When are they going to invent a way to teleport into a dress?” the princess grumbled. “It can’t be that hard. You just need a spell to hold it up in the right shape so you can teleport in.”
The maid muttered something. Myra couldn’t make it out, and maybe the princess couldn’t either.
“What was that?” the princess snapped.
“This whole detour was unnecessary and irresponsible,” the maid said, louder this time.
“What are you going on about? I’m going to get cleaned up and go to the summit as planned. What is irresponsible about that? Vi, what do you think?”
“About your responsibility or lack thereof?”
“No, about the fucking teleporting.”
“Language,” said the maid.
“Well, there’s definitely spells for that,” Vi said. “Fabric shape manipulation is a whole field. It’s used in performances all the time, like when actors need to change really quickly.”
Come on… talk about the duel or something!
“It’s how all this works, too.”
“There,” the maid said. “We should go back to the changing room so I can fix your hair.”
Wait, ‘all this’? What was Violet referring to? What did I miss there?
“I’m going to teleport back to the hotel,” Violet said. “I don’t want to hang around this place any more than I have to.”
“Oh. I ruined your night, didn’t I?” the princess asked.
“What, you thought tonight was about me?”
“I thought coming here—”
“No.” Vi cut her off decisively. “I’m going to get going, though.”
So the group split, with the princess and her maid heading into a nearby building. Myra wanted to catch Vi and see if she could strike up a conversation without the princess around, but she was already gone. She hadn’t wasted any time in teleporting out, apparently.
She’s pretty skilled, too. The rumor was that they were staying at Hotel Caldera, a swanky upscale hotel on the far side of town. If that was true, she was teleporting quite a distance.
◆
Myra was annoyed that she hadn’t managed to catch Vi. On the whole, following the princess’s group had been a thorough waste of time, so Myra set her sights on the next steps. She was supposed to meet with Shera soon to observe the collapsing of the buildings, but first, she wanted to check on Iz.
What she didn’t account for was running into Nathan outside the infirmary.
He looked by far the worst she had ever seen him. Thick shadows adorned his bloodshot eyes, and his lanky arms dragged his shoulders down in a slouch that shaped him like a triangle.
“Oh, Nathan. I heard you were staying in. Did you come to visit Iz?”
He shook his head. “I was looking for you, actually. I looked at the party first, and learned about what happened, so I thought I’d check out the infirmary. Why weren’t you here?” His voice was icy, accusatory.
“What do you mean? I just got here.”
“By the way,” he cut her off abruptly, not really interested in his own question. “I was talking to Kristof.”
“Kristof? Kristof…” Myra tried to recall the name, but she came up blank.
“Kristof Armendel. He’s the one who saw Ben rushing out of the building that morning.”
“Oh, right.” He must have been someone in Ben’s year.
“Yeah. Him. Anyway, you said you saw Ben earlier that night, so I thought I’d ask him about it.”
Myra tensed up. Nathan seemed to notice, and his eyes narrowed. It had been a whole month since they’d had this discussion, and Myra wasn’t expecting it to come up again. Why now of all times?
“Apparently, he was up all night and never saw him. Strange, huh?”
“It’s not that strange.” Myra tried to sound casual. “He could have missed him.”
“No, the dorm kitchen is right by Ben’s room. Kristof says he was there all night.”
“I mean, it was a month ago. Maybe he forgot. Or maybe I got confused about what day it was.”
“How could you get confused? When we talked, it was only a couple of nights before.”
I don’t know, people get confused about things all the time! “Well, maybe Kristof forgot,” Myra pointed out again.
“Myra.” Nathan took several steps towards her.
“I mean, when did you ask him? Just now?”
“Myra, If Kristof had seen Ben in the middle of the night, he would have noted it a month ago, when I first spoke to him.” He took a few more steps. Myra took a small step back.
“Maybe Ben took a strange way out of his room? Uh—” As Nathan’s inexorable advance neared its completion, she felt she had to say something. “Maybe he teleported out? I dunno how he does it, but he can break through the dorm’s disruption scheme.”
Nathan lunged out and grabbed Myra’s shoulder. “What do you mean, he can break the fucking disruption scheme? How the fuck would he do that? How do you know that?”
“I, I don’t—”
“Why didn’t you mention something like this before? What the fuck are you hiding, Myra? Is any of your story true?”
“I swear to God, he really can break the dorm’s disruption scheme! I saw him do it when he—he—”
“He what? What did Ben do?”
Myra jerked back, pulling out of his grasp. “It’s, I can’t explain—”
He socked her. A balled fist slammed into her jaw, propelled by a month of pent-up worry, helplessness, and confusion. She careened backward, lost her footing, and crashed her backside into the cobblestone pavement.
She tried to speak, but only bile and a guttural sound came out. Nathan looked shocked at what he’d done, gaping at his own fist in bewilderment as if it had moved on its own. She pushed herself back to her feet, using a bit of magic to give herself a nudge up. Nathan didn’t move to stop or help her. She took a couple of deep breaths to steady herself.
“Nathan—”
He ran.
“Nathan! Wait, fuck, Nathan! Do you have that—” Nathan vanished. “—emergency teleport… stick?” Damn. She’d given him one, the same as she’d given Iz and Cynthia earlier, but he vanished from thin air before she could get the question out, probably executing a normal, short-range teleport. Damn it.
Seems like everyone is teleporting away from me these days.
She rubbed at her throbbing jaw and felt a tender, bloody spot on her lip. Guy knows how to punch.
In a bit of a daze, she continued on to the infirmary. Iz was in a different room this time. That was mildly interesting.
Iz was sitting up in her bed. Cynthia was crammed in by her side, cradling her shoulders in her arms. They almost gasped when they saw her. She hadn’t checked a mirror, so she didn’t know how bad she actually looked.
“Myra, what the fuck happened?”
“What, this? I just fell.”
“Myra—”
“Really, it’s nothing.” Her voice was dry and dull, so it probably wasn’t very convincing.
She sat down at the foot of the bed where there was room. “You guys been watching over Nathan all month?”
“Cynthia has,” Iz said.
“Yeah, I’ve been staying over at his room.”
Myra blinked. “Oh, you have?”
“I mean, not like that.”
“I didn’t imply it was like anything.”
“I mean, he has a futon, right?” She thought for a moment. “Right, yeah. He’s got a futon. Anyway, after Ben went missing, like the third or fourth day, the day Ben was in the paper, it really hit Nathan that it wasn’t some weird misunderstanding, and Ben was, like, capital-M missing. I helped him cry himself to sleep—um, wait, don’t tell him I told you that.”
“Don’t worry.”
How close had Nathan and his brother been, really?
Was that how normal people reacted when it came to their family? Was that how she was supposed to react? To the idea that she’d never speak to her father without a small, barred window between them? She loved her father. Didn’t she? She thought she did. Yet it hadn’t occurred to her to cry at all. It hadn’t occurred to her to feel anything other than frustration at her own inconveniences.
“Myra… are you sure you’re ok?” Iz asked.
“Really, don’t worry about it. I should be asking you.”
“I’m fine. The cuts aren’t as deep as they looked.”
“No, they actually are pretty deep,” Cynthia said.
“Why’d you agree to it?” Myra asked. “The duel?”
Iz took a while to answer.
“I don’t know. How often will I get a chance to face someone from the imperial family? Even if I didn’t think I’d win… I was sure I’d regret it if I didn’t face her.”
“You know what Iz has been through.” Cynthia glared at Myra as if it had been insensitive to ask the question.
“It’s okay,” Iz said. “I don’t mind talking about it.”
“Why’d you ask for the pendant?”
She shrugged. “Thought it might get under her skin.”
“Did you know what it meant to her?”
“It was a shot in the dark. It wasn’t much of a stretch to think it was something personal, was it? And it was one of the only things she kept on when she teleported out of that dress. You know, I was worried I was being too nasty, demanding something like that.”
“You’re a sweet girl, Izzy,” Cynthia cooed, running a gentle hand down her curly brown hair. “Don’t say that about yourself.” She kissed Iz gently on her temple.
“She could have just said no, anyway,” Myra added. “You didn’t force her into anything. She accepted your proposal because she wanted to teach you a lesson.”
“Myra,” Iz said suddenly. “You knew something like this was going to happen, didn’t you?”
“Huh—? How did you—?”
Cynthia looked between the two of them in confusion. “What? How’d Myra know something?”
“The first day of class, remember? Myra asked if I knew the princess, if I had any kinda conflict with her. And that girl who was with her, Vi. You mentioned her too. She’s Violet Penrilla, right?”
“Oh. Yeah, I asked you about her.”
“And you’ve been acting so oddly all month, giving us these teleport sticks, and you didn’t want us to show up at the party, which was so unlike you. It’s like you have some kind of foreknowledge. Oh, and you knew there wouldn’t be a trampoline at the party.”
“Yeah… that’s right.”
“And on the first day of class… you said something about time travel, too.”
“Time travel?” Cynthia cried.
“So I want to know exactly what you’re so afraid of that you gave us all emergency teleport sticks.”
Myra let out a long, long sigh. “Yeah. I lived through this month before, starting the first day of class. Sorry, I—I really gotta go soon, and I don’t have time to explain the whole thing. I think time is repeating over and over, though I don’t really know how it works or why it’s happening. I only experienced it once, and I only have circumstantial evidence it’s a repeated thing—”
Despite Cynthia’s incredulous expression, Iz took in Myra’s explanation stoically.
“Anyway, the volcano is going to erupt, and I didn’t think you’d believe me, so I gave you the emergency sticks. But this building is probably going to collapse, so you need to get out as soon as you hear rumbling.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell us?” Cynthia snapped. “Why the fuck would you handle this on your own?”
“I didn’t know how to get you to believe me! And I haven’t been alone.”
“So that’s why you’ve been hanging out with Shera Marcrombie,” Iz realized, observant as ever. “And she’s right, Cynthia, we wouldn’t have believed her at the start of the month.”
“I would have!”
“No, you wouldn’t have,” Iz said sternly.
Cynthia deflated, then slowly let go of Iz and buried her face in her hands. “I’m a bad friend.”
“Cynthia, you’re not a bad friend,” Myra said. “I just… need to figure out the trick to convincing you all earlier.”
“Okay, well what can we do now?” Cynthia asked.
“Well… it would be nice to get more help looking for some saboteur bringing down the buildings,” Myra admitted. “But I’d rather know you two are safe.”
“I’m not in any shape to help,” Iz said quietly.
“And it’s probably best Cynthia stay with you.”
“Sorry,” Iz apologized, though it wasn’t necessary.
“Do you know when time is going to reset?” Iz asked.
“I have no idea. The last time it happened, I, um, died. The only one who might know more is, um, Benkoten. but I haven’t seen him at all this time around.”
Iz blinked. “Ben. Okay.” She turned to Cynthia. “We should probably get going. It sounds like Myra has something she wants to do.” Cynthia started scrambling around in her pockets for her emergency teleport sticks. “Oh—and Myra.”
“Yeah?”
“Um… I know you were trying to protect me when you were trying to get us to skip out on the party. I mean, you were trying to keep this from happening, right?” She patted her stomach.
“Of course.”
“Well, I just want you to know… the decisions I made today were all mine. And I’d make them again.”
“What, you… want me to watch you get hurt again and again?”
“You don’t have to watch.” Her voice was resolute and firm.
I don’t understand you sometimes…
“If you really want to help me…” She almost smirked. “Help me win.”
“Of course.”
Cynthia got the sticks ready, holding onto Iz so she would come along with her.
“Oh, actually, one last thing,” Myra said quickly. “Do you have any idea how she got past your domain?”
“Oh, that? She used a tunneler.”
“I thought it was something like that, but I didn’t catch it.”
“Oh, um, I think she snuck it through the grass so nobody would notice. Maybe it was her toenail.”
Her toenail? Oh, right, she’d been barefoot. It would be pretty difficult to catch her in the act if that was the case.
With that, they said quick goodbyes, and Cynthia snapped her stick, and the two of them vanished.
Once Myra was faced with looking upon the vacant bed where her friends had been sitting, something heavy welled up in her chest. She almost choked. Having them believe her, with so little time left… It was bittersweet.
She collected herself and left the infirmary.
According to her watch, it was now a bit after midnight. The peace talks should have already started. Last time, the Common Library had disappeared around half past midnight, though one of her plans for tonight was to get a more exact time.
She had missed the time she was supposed to meet Shera. They were supposed to do their final circuit looking for any saboteurs or hidden bombs, but she wasn’t at the meeting place outside the infirmary. Time was tight, so she might have decided to go ahead and meet up with Myra later at the event hall.
But not for the first time that night, Myra ran into someone unexpected. The incoming person appeared right in front of her, accompanied by the usual light bit of wind that resulted from the displaced air of a teleport. His eyes caught immediately on Myra, and his face lit up as if he’d been looking for her.
Standing with his shoulder bag, clean-shaven and hair combed, looking entirely presentable like he was heading to a student council meeting, was Benkoten.