A little exhausted after the long tour, Norman set off to find his room in the student hall of residence. The place where he would probably spend a lot of time over the next few years. Conveniently, he had already left his suitcases at the university a week ago. At the time, he hadn't understood this procedure and had thought it was a joke when the porter said it would be irresponsible for all the students to not only turn up here at once, but also to lug all their equipment around with them. He didn't even want to think about what his fellow students had with them. Buying a Geiger counter was probably not the worst investment. And a smoke detector. Maybe a few of the protective amulets that the salesman had tried to talk him into. But he would wait until someone had explained to him whether they actually worked.

Finding the building did not prove difficult. In this corner of the grounds, the map was sufficiently accurate. The sun was already beginning to cast deep shadows as he walked past a few figures loitering on the stairs up to the entrance. After a brief search, he had also found his room number in his documents. Fourth floor, room no. 349. He took another look at the building. Even if the individual apartments were considerably smaller than the 30 square meters promised in the brochure at the time, there would never be room for more than 120 apartments here. As he walked in, he took a quick look at the first sign: No. 1, which put paid to his theory that all the buildings were numbered consecutively. Ignoring the elevator, he jogged up the stairs to the fourth floor. Room no. 317, 331, 337... Strange system. Taking the elevator this time, he went down to the first floor and looked around. Room no. 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11... He wasn't a mathematician, but he wasn't completely stupid either. The pranksters had just numbered the rooms with prime numbers. Very funny. He shrugged his shoulders and went back up the elevator. However, a surprise awaited him outside his room. Instead of being in the room as expected, his two suitcases were right next to the door in the corridor. The nameplate, on which two names had probably been pinned to strips of paper, as on all the other doors he had passed so far, had been removed. Instead, there was an ostentatious brass plate with "Odwin" simply engraved on it in Nordic-looking letters.

He scratched his head in confusion for a moment and then tried the card reader with his room card. The door opened. He entered cautiously.

Where there had previously been roughcast walls and a cream-colored industrial carpet, as in all the other rooms and corridors, there were now dark wooden walls and a matching parquet floor. If it hadn't been for the large four-poster bed that took up most of the open space and the discreetly scattered designer furniture, he would have thought it was a Finnish sauna at first glance. There were half-open suitcases everywhere, which had probably just been unpacked. The open cupboard was also only half full. In the middle of the room stood a muscular figure with a naked upper body and expensive designer jeans, holding two shirts in slightly different shades of red outstretched in front of him and looking at himself in a ceiling-high wall mirror. He was obviously finding it difficult to make up his mind. Norman remembered him well. After all, only a few hours ago he had watched him step out of a bright light to say goodbye to a powerful disembodied voice. Definitely one of the best performances he had seen so far. Before he could say anything, the demigod turned around and carelessly threw the shirts on the bed: "That took forever. I'm not used to waiting this long when I order a snack." He took a closer look. "You're not from room service!"

"No. I'm Norman Zimmermann. And this should actually be my room."

The demigod waved her off uninterestedly: "I don't have room for a roommate. I guess you'll have to find something else."

Norman didn't usually get upset this easily, but something about the way this guy just dismissed him as unimportant made his blood boil.

"Hello? Who the hell do you think you are? The rooms here are allocated by the university and you can't just take this place for yourself and put my suitcases outside the door. And then just have the interior remodeled." He took a closer look at the wall next to the door. "At least you can see how it could be done so quickly. Prefabricated components that you just have to screw to the wall. And click parquet flooring with parts already measured and cut to size, otherwise it would never have been done so quickly. If you'd been planning all this for so long, you could have taken care of laying the flooring in the room next door. It doesn't look as if you couldn't easily afford to pay a supplement for a single room..."

His interlocutor let the tirade pass unmoved, his arms casually folded in front of his torso. "Money doesn't matter here. You'll learn that too. And who am I, do you want to know? Worm! I am Odwin, son of Loki. And now lift yourself away!"

"I'm not thinking about it. You can start taking this huge bed apart again right now. I hope it's from Ikea and you've kept your Allen key."

"Make me." The giant just grinned snidely and concentrated for a second. Probably in response, the air directly around him began to glow slightly golden. "Go on, give me your worst."

The architecture student needed no further prompting. He promptly clenched his fists, hardened by years of masonry work, and thundered a powerful swing towards his opponent's diaphragm. A hand's breadth from his target, however, his fist was jerkily, but not painfully, stopped. Astonished, he followed up with a left hook, with the same result.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

The demigod looked at him, visibly astonished: "Is that all? If that's supposed to be a ki adept's power, it's very puny. You should practice it for a while."

"Kie what?!? You don't need much training to throw a punch."

"Ah, now I understand! Strong, but without mystical powers. You must be that brilliant mathematician I've heard about. An intuitive understanding of mathematics is not the worst gift fate could have given you." He made a patronizingly shooing motion towards the door. "But now go, before you hurt yourself."

"I think you mean Horst. I'm not good at math, but I'm not stupid. If you could just get away with something like that here, I'm sure you would have made sure I got another room. That is, if I just go to the nearest office and complain..."

"You don't understand. Of course I could have organized it. But, what for?" He held his hand palm up in front of his chest, as if he were holding a tray there. The hand closed, opened again and before Norman could react, he blew lightly on it. A whitish mist flowed unnaturally fast towards Norman. Although he reacted reflexively, covering his mouth and nose and exhaling, he caught some of it. He staggered back. Dizziness overcame him, like the waves of an entire ocean crashing over him. Barely able to hold himself upright, he couldn't defend himself as he was pushed out of the door by his "roommate".

*

"My roommate stinks of sulphur..."

"... guitar music. All through last night! If he could at least play..."

"...methane gas atmosphere. And the air conditioning barely manages to keep the room temperature at 30 degrees! How am I supposed to sleep in the cold..."

In the student secretariat, which Norman had found after some searching, all hell was breaking loose. Dozens of students were crowded around the three desks, trying to drown each other out. Three good-looking blonde secretaries worked through the complaints with a calmness that was almost inhuman. Their imperturbable equanimity and constant friendly smiles were enough to send many a student into a fit of rage. But completely in vain.

Instead of joining the queue, he first stood in a relatively quiet corner. Close enough to the desks to see how the requests and complaints were dealt with, but far enough away so as not to be suspected of trying to jump the queue. After all, he himself hated pushers.

After a short time, he realized that they were obviously making a great effort to help. But there was one immovable rule that had to be explained again and again by the secretaries. Patiently and without being disturbed by threats and shouting. Everyone could swap rooms with whoever they wanted, but they had to bring their new roommate with them. There were no single rooms. No matter for whom and why. Occasionally they also explained that this was important to promote a sense of togetherness and problem-solving skills among the students. They didn't mention exactly how this was supposed to work.

After realizing that he could not be helped here, he went to a bulletin board at the other end of the room like many of the others.

Most of it was specially reserved for exchange requests. However, not a single note could be found on the entire board. Presumably other seekers had already taken them.

He cursed quietly to himself and was just turning to leave when he almost tripped over a student whom he towered over by almost a head and a half. Light blue, shy eyes shone at him from beneath a thick head of reddish-blonde curls. "They haven't assigned you a roommate yet either?"

"I wouldn't put it like that." Norman had to smile involuntarily.

"Everyone else has a roommate, but I of all people didn't get one. The secretary is going through the documents again to check where the mistake is. Since we have an even number of students this year, it should actually work out. It's funny enough that they only ever put two people in a room here. At my old university, we always had ten people per room."

"Well, if you really need company, I'm Norman Zimmermann." He held out his hand. His counterpart kept his hands clasped behind his back, as he had done throughout the conversation. "We don't know each other that well yet." He smiled apologetically. "My name is Cerebrantis. Cerebrantis Sheldorn of the Movers' Guild."

Norman lowered his hand and shrugged his shoulders. He knew a few people who didn't like to shake hands: "Guild of Movers? What exactly is that?"

"Well, as far as I know it's generally referred to as telekinesis here. I still find it hard to believe that everyone here doesn't have psi powers too."

"Here? That means you're not from Earth?"

"Of course, but there are practically no people on my Earth who don't have at least rudimentary psi powers." His face took on a slightly dreamy expression as he remembered his home: "There's no place where you can't hear the thoughts of others. It's like a warm whisper, a feeling of security and safety... Not like here..." He shuddered.

Norman looked at him worriedly: "Are you okay?"

"That's all right. I've been here for a few weeks. I'm sure you get used to it over time. This earth here is so... quiet and... cold. It's hard to describe, but knowing that you could get hurt here and no one would notice... No one to come to your aid immediately..." The telekinetic had unconsciously wrapped his arms around himself, as if to comfort himself. Suddenly he seemed very vulnerable and alone. Norman didn't know what to say at first. Then, suddenly grinning, he took a small device with buttons and a display out of his side pocket: "Of course, we don't have an omnipresent telepathic network, but we do have this!"

"A calculator?"

"No, a cell phone. You can reach anyone with one from anywhere. We can get you one tomorrow if you want. They're not really expensive."

Cerebrantis looked at the device doubtfully: "That's not quite the same as telepathy..."

"But it has Bluetooth, an MP3 player and lots of games!"

"I think I'll take a look at that.

Norman gave him a quick pat on the shoulder. "Well, let's go and get your luggage."

When they arrived at Cerebranti's room on the fifth floor, Norman immediately noticed the missing card reader. Where there was a brass cover on all the other doors in the corridor, here there was a hole that had been hastily sealed with tape. "Is he repairing it right now?"

"I had it removed. The strange thing only let me in with my key card. Completely pointless system. The janitor removed it for me."

"And how do you lock the door now?"

"Lock it?" Cerebrantis just looked at him uncomprehendingly and pushed the door open inwards, which offered him no resistance. Norman looked up at the ceiling for a moment, resigned to his fate, then followed his new friend.