Aaron walked down the hallway of his new apartment somewhere in Upper Manhattan — where exactly, he wasn’t sure; he didn’t know the city well enough. The first doorway in the hall didn’t actually have a door, but was an opening between the living room to the hall. The second door in the hallway opened into a small bedroom.
Past the bedroom, the hall turned right. A door at the end of the hall led to a guest bathroom and, unless this place was wildly bigger than Aaron thought, the door on the left opened to the master bedroom. It turned out he was right, only the design of the master suite tricked him into thinking he wasn’t. Rather than opening right onto the bedroom, the door from the hallway opened onto another, smaller hallway.
This small passage was about six feet long and led into the master bedroom. A door on the right led to the master bath and Aaron learned that the mini hall had been created by the wall of a large closet that was at least six feet by six feet. The closet had a vertical double rod arrangement, a shelf above the upper rod, and several sets of wide, low drawers built against the walls.
Is this big enough to qualify as a walk-in? Aaron wondered. It’s pretty big, even if not.
The bedroom itself was twice as long as it was wide, which provided enough room for a queen-size bed in one corner with a couple feet of space on the side and even more beyond the foot of the bed. A window above the bed took up half the rear wall and looked out on an alley and a larger space between the row of townhouses and two other, larger buildings on the block.
Aaron set his luggage down in the closet and went back to the hallway door. He quietly closed and locked it, then returned to the closet. Setting the small black suitcase — the one that had occupied his thoughts so often recently — on top of one of the stacks of drawers, he slowly unzipped and opened it. After pulling out the hodge podge of old, faded t-shirts he’d haphazardly tossed in, he placed them in a pile next to the suitcase. Finally, he removed his most precious possession from the suitcase, laying it on the impromptu cushion of t-shirts. Gently, he laid a hand on it and closed his eyes for a second. Only for a second, though. After the last few harrowing days, Aaron had decided he would comfort himself with the contents of the suitcase. But that was for later, when he went to bed.
He opened the topmost drawer and gently placed the bundle inside, sliding it closed with a whisper, then went to the ensuite bathroom. It was time for a much-needed shower; the lingering feeling of vermin crawling all over him was making each passing minute a little less bearable.
The bathroom was spacious and luxuriously equipped. A soaking tub made of glossy black stone rested against the wall to the left of the door and a large shower filled the other end of the room. Towel racks, with several rods lined up vertically, hung on either side of the door near the tub and shower. A long counter with a double sink ran most of the length of the rear wall, stopped from running the full length by a toilet next to the tub. The room was ten feet wide, at least, though not as deep.
The most impressive thing about the opulent bathroom, however, was that the building had an amazing water heater. The shower was warm as soon as Aaron turned it on and hot in seconds. After checking the towels to make sure they were fresh and fluffy, Aaron tossed his clothes on the floor by the door and stepped into the shower to wash away the echo of tiny, chitinous feet.
I’ll need to get a laundry hamper, he thought. I guess no one thought of that when they were furnishing this place with bland Swedish placeholder stuff.
Half an hour later, Aaron was bathed, wearing clean clothes, and standing in the empty door frame between the hallway and living room. Tia was sitting on the couch, opening one app after another on the television.
“Whatcha up to?” he asked.
“The DS provides us with secure accounts that can’t be tracked back to the individual user or address,” she said. “I was just making sure each of them loads.”
“What’s the DS?”
“Drakon Society. Oh, and the accounts won’t know your preferences yet, so you might get some weird suggestions.”
Aaron sighed, leaning heavily into the door frame. “A new account? So I’ll have to subscribe to all Murky Ort’s channels, again?”
Tia shot him a dirty look. “You watch that dipshit? I thought you were cool, man.”
“What’s wrong with Ort? He tells it like it is,” Aaron said, lifting his chin slightly.
“He- you- that piece of human fucking shit is-”
Tia didn’t get farther into her tirade than that before Aaron couldn’t keep a straight face anymore and started laughing. She looked like she was in shock for a moment, or maybe she was getting her brain in gear to really let him have it, but Aaron held his hands up in a sign of peace.
“I never watched that dillbag, even before he got outed as an asshole. It’s nice to know you think I’m cool, though.”
Before Tia could finish chewing on that — and Aaron suspected she was deciding whether to continue lambasting the controversial internet celebrity or start a whole new thread putting him on blast — a chime sounded from the front door. Looking over, Aaron saw there was some kind of high-end video intercom panel he hadn’t noticed before. Someone in a ball cap was standing on the stoop outside, holding several big plastic bags.
Tia hopped to her feet. “That’ll be the food.”
She jogged around the counter that separated the kitchen and living room and pressed a button on the intercom. The delivery person opened the front door, picked up even more plastic bags from the stoop, and went inside. Aaron tried to remember if Kiara had said anything about having things delivered, but if she had Aaron had lost track of it while he was dedicating all his attention to not dedicating all his attention to how soft Tia’s hands were while she’d performed the ritual to bind that magic rock to him.
“Is that, uh, are we okay to let delivery people in? Couldn’t they be assassins or something?”
Tia waved a hand at him dismissively. “Pfft. It’s fine. This building has more safeguards than you’d think and the security people will make sure to check them out, too.”
“How do they manage that without making the building look suspicious?”
“Simple stuff. Someone pretends to be checking their mail, another carries a load of laundry, stuff like that.”
When the delivery guy got to the door, Aaron saw that Tia had ordered a lot of food. Like, a lot a lot.
Aaron had to ferry several bags with at least twenty big cartons and containers from the door to the kitchen counters while Tia paid. She had just handed the delivery person a $20 tip and closed the door when the intercom buzzed again.
The video showed a different person on the stoop, this time with one of those big heated bags for carrying pizza. She had, Aaron learned when this delivery person got to their door, also ordered three extra large pizzas, a large order of bread knots, and six different big bottles of soda.
Aaron hauled all over that over to the table in the dinette, where there was more room. Tia tipped the pizza guy $20 and closed the door.
“I can eat, but this seems like way too much. Are we going to invite the security folks over for a dinner party or something? Barrett might have a fit about fraternizing with the help or however he put it.”
She laughed. “Nah. Drakus can literally eat more than a horse. I also didn’t know what you’d like. And you’ll need the energy after doing two Tribulations in less than twelve hours. Which is insane, by the way.”
“I’ll definitely need to give my secretary an earful for overbooking.”
Tia wagged a finger at Aaron. “Don’t you be sassin’ me, ‘Lizard Jesus.’”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Aaron held up his hand, the thumb and forefinger just millimeters apart. “It’s just a little sass.”
“Well, as long as it’s only a little,” Tia graciously allowed.
They unpacked everything she’d ordered — Chinese food and pizza, how quintessentially New York of her — and sat down to eat, having a nice conversation and getting to know each other.
Tia didn’t push talk about magic or any of the dragon stuff for the most part, which was good. Aaron was curious, but he wanted to get his mind off it for the moment. Instead, they learned about each other as people. He’d never admit it, but it was nice in another way — it almost felt a date. With the added benefit that Tia was someone way, way, way out of his league.
He learned that she was a student at Columbia University, which was less than a mile from the apartment building. Tia was a step (or two) above your average genius. She wasn’t at the point of intuiting higher mathematics before she could form full sentences, but she wasn’t far from it either. She’d skipped a bunch of grades and attended some elite private school in the city. After she graduated, she started at Columbia and received undergraduate degrees in physics and psychology.
“Now I’m working on a double doctorate, but I switched over to anthropology and philosophy,” she said.
“You can switch like that?” Aaron asked. “Well, it’s amazing, anyhow, even if you’re kinda all over the place.”
Tia ostentatiously brushed some imaginary lint off her shoulder. “You can do anything with a brilliant mind.” She leaned over the table and whispered conspiratorially. “And with basically unlimited money.”
“Did you choose each field of study because they’re all about how people perceive and interact with the world?”
Tia’s eyes widened slightly. “I did! It’s cool that you got that. Most people don’t see the connection. Do you know where the physics fits into it?”
Aaron shook his head, uncertain, but he was thinking and might have had the start of an idea. “I could see it if you were studying the bleeding edge of quantum mechanics, which has something to do with perception changing the state of the universe… but that doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you’d be doing as an undergrad.”
“You’re on the right track, but coming from the wrong angle; it’s all about magic,” she said, waving a pair of chopsticks like a magic wand. “Zeke gave me that spiel about dark matter and dark energy when I joined the Drakon, so I thought I should understand physics to understand magic.”
It was only a matter of time until the talk turned to dragons and magic, Aaron figured, and he was curious about, well, everything.
“How old were you when you, uh, ‘awakened to your power’ as a dragon? I mean, as a drakus.”
“Seven, I think. Maybe six,” she said with a shrug.
“What the hell? Am I some kind of late bloomer?”
“I’m the youngest we have a record of, maybe ever, but it happens at all ages,” Tia said. “Anyway, I knew a lot about magic by the time I finished high school and I realized magic has rules governing it, just like the universe has physical laws.”
The fundamental laws of magic didn’t sound like something that was taught at universities — even in the Ivy League — but what the hell did Aaron know about magic or the Ivy League? Moreover, he was fascinated by Tia’s perspective and approach, trying to bridge the gap by using mundane knowledge.
It’s like a meta-analysis of the metaphysical, he realized. Looking at everything and trying to synthesize it into a coherent whole.
He was impressed. More than impressed, actually. He might have even been a little intimidated. Maybe. Who could really say? Aaron definitely couldn’t have commented with any certainty.
“Magic works through intent, emotion, and can be influenced by our perception, but there’s an external force that we barely understand,” she continued. “I hoped learning more about physical reality would help me understand the metaphysical one.”
“Has it?”
Tia made a waffling gesture with one hand. “Magic is pretty inscrutable. It’s next to impossible to measure the variables involved, so I bailed on the hard sciences for post-grad and decided to look at the development of culture and thought, which also affect magic.”
Aaron’s eyebrows rose at that. “Really? How?”
“What people think is possible is what’s possible, more or less,” she said. “Magic can do the impossible, but it’s harder to do the impossible the less possible people think it is.”
At face value, that was an absurd statement and it took Aaron a moment to parse through it. Magic doing the impossible? Okay, he could get behind that. But the impossible being made, somehow, less impossible? Impossibility was basically a binary — a thing was either possible or it wasn’t. They were back in Law of Contradictions territory. Except…
“So, something like the four-minute mile,” Aaron muttered.
Not so long ago, it had been widely accepted that a human couldn’t run a mile in four minutes or less. For years, athletes, trainers, and scientists had said it was a hard, physical limit that prevented a human being running a mile that fast. Like much of popular science, the existence of greater nuance in the science didn’t really matter — most people accepted it as an impossible feat.
Until someone ran a mile a little more than half a second under the four minute mark in the 50s. Aaron couldn’t remember all the details, but he did remember a rough timeline. After someone broke the four minute mile, they held the previously-unbreakable world record for something like two months. And that record had only lasted a couple of years.
Could that have been a real biological limitation of human beings until someone did it and the belief changed? he wondered. Or maybe the first person to break the record used magic and that opened the door for everyone.
It might seem preposterous that people thinking a thing could be done was what made it possible, but Tia was suggesting that was exactly how magic worked — and why some things were harder than others.
“Anyways, I had to get at least one doctorate in something and I figured two would be better at getting my parents off my back,” Tia said. “They were already salty I wasn’t going into medicine, so I had to give them something. Plus, you know the old saying — ‘Asian without the As is just sin.’”
Aaron hadn’t actually heard that saying before, but he had to laugh. He’d grown up around a very different Asian community than the model minority stereotype Tia was describing, so that probably played a role.
Tia, as it turned out, wasn’t just a nerd when it came to academics and magic; she was a pop culture nerd, too. She and Aaron shared a lot of interests — comic books and superhero movies, manga and anime, video games and streamers — although Tia seemed much more passionate about them.
Probably a sign that I’m getting old, he thought ruefully.
Where they really connected was fondness for retro media and the much more trend of Korean pop music.
“I’m obligated to be into k-pop and k-dramas, though,” Tia explained, “since I’m a honyol. Generally, I prefer calling myself a double quarter-blood, but there’s no great translation for that.”
“Double quarter? Does that mean both your parents are half-Korean?”
Tia tapped her nose with her index finger. “Right in one.”
“Okay, Barrett,” Aaron said with a roll of his eyes.
She laughed at that and they continued to eat, chatting amiably with each other for several hours until the light coming in the windows had dimmed with early twilight.
Tia hadn’t been kidding — it was truly impressive how much each of them could eat. He hadn’t realized how much food they went through as they were eating, slowly accumulating empty cartons and pizza boxes. He didn’t even feel full, when he should be in stomach-rending agony after stuffing that much matter down his gullet.
She ate as much as he did, which should have been physically impossible given she was half a foot shorter and weighed probably less than half of what he did.
Finally, she stood up from the table.
“I’d love to keep hanging out, but I’ve got homework and you should probably get to sleep soon,” she said.
With only a few hours of sleep over the past three days, Aaron should have been completely exhausted and out of it. Instead, he only felt mildly fatigued. Still, a good night’s sleep sounded amazing. Plus, he had some comfort waiting for him back in his closet.
He yawned lightly at the thought of laying down. “You’re probably right; I’ve only slept a few hours since Friday.”
“Well, you are awakening to your power, after all,” Tia said, punching him on the arm lightly.
“Once again, I say, ‘Okay, Barrett.’”
They both chuckled again and Aaron walked her to the door.
When she was gone, Aaron moved the leftovers to the refrigerator. Despite how much they’d eaten, there was most of a pizza left and quite a bit of Chinese food.
It had been a long time since Aaron had company in his apartment back in California and almost as long since he’d gone to visit anyone socially. Even though he’d never had roommates and was used to solitude, the apartment suddenly felt empty with no one else in it.
At the very least, he could explore his new home a bit more fully and then, finally, go to bed.