Cecily sat on a bench beside the beach, staring at the evening sky. She’d been there for a while now. Exactly how long, she had no idea. But it was long enough for her to have seen a blue horizon turn pink.

The can in her hand was lukewarm now. She looked at it for several moments. Then, on a whim, she pulled the tab.

She took a sip of her coffee.

Better than alcohol? She looked at the can of beer beside her. It was open, but she’d had no more than a taste. She took another sip of coffee. It tasted so much better when it was cold, but still, she thought, Better than alcohol.

She grabbed her can of beer and threw it into the bin nearby. Fuck that.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. You know what, I don’t have the fucking time to waste moping about. I’m behind Raine in Ephrian. I’m behind Livia in archery and shooting. I’m behind the Johns Hopkins guy in math. How the fuck can I expect to win next time if I sit around doing jackshit while everyone else keeps getting further ahead of me?

She finished her coffee and threw the can away. Fuck this shit. It’s time to get to work. I can’t waste anymore time.

. . . .

“Wow,” June said, pressing her phone against her ear. “She picked herself up. She threw away the beer after just a sip.”

“Really?” Song Hyun-woo asked. “That’s surprising.”

“She just sat on the bench for almost an hour. I have no idea what was going through her mind, but she somehow fired herself up the end.”

“Huh. That’s good,” Song Hyun-woo said. “Do you know why?”

“I can’t be sure, but I think she managed to motivate herself after some time to calm down and think.” June got on her bike as she spoke. “She should be fine on her own now, right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Good work.”

I already said I didn’t do anything, but thanks.

“How about Roberts?” June asked. She hoped she wasn’t going to be the one responsible for Edgar.

“Roberts doesn’t seem to be as tough as Caraway. He’s at the Ocean Bar with a half-empty bottle of tequila for company. But he should be fine. I spoke with him for a while.”

June’s brows rose. “Hm? I thought he wasn’t that important?”

“He isn’t. I just had nothing to do.”

Sounds like bullshit to me. Oh, wait. She smiled. Did he know I didn’t want to deal with Edgar? Damn, what a great boss.

“Thank you,” she said.

“It wasn’t any trouble,” he said calmly. “In any case, some of us at the office are going to play pool at the game room. Do you want to join?”

“Of course,” she said. Then they said goodbye and hung up.

Ah, working in the Old World is so much nicer, even with the lower pay, she thought as she cycled back to the office. One last trip to the New World and I’m done. Screw goblin hunting.

. . . .

“It’s like boxing,” Ava said. “If you’re going forward, your front foot moves first.”

She demonstrated. Her left foot moved first, then her right foot.

“Like this?” Max asked, trying to copy her.

“Don’t put your feet so close together when you step. And hello?” she said, turning to Grant and Arnett. “Copy.”

“Alright, alright,” Arnett said. He and Grant copied her movement.

I can’t believe we’re actually learning this. Raine sighed. Is Hopkins just full of crazy people, or is there really more to it?

He was sitting on a bench, watching from the side as his teammates stood under the morning sun and learned how to use a sword. No one had anything in their hands yet, but there was a basket full of wooden swords next to the bench.

“Okay, that’s good,” Ava said. “Keep doing that.”

Some of them, like Kayden and Max, moved more smoothly than the others, but all of them seemed to be doing it right, at least to Raine’s untrained eyes.

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After about five minutes of that, Ava stopped them and showed them something else. She stood in front of them in her stance, with her right foot forward and her left foot back. Her left foot stepped forward, and her right foot pivoted.

“Now I’m in the opposite stance,” Ava said. “This is the passing step. It’s basic shit that you need to know. And lift your right heel and pivot on the ball of your foot if you don’t want to fuck up your knee.”

Raine’s teammates went forward and backward using the passing step. Several of them had trouble with it, but after about ten minutes, Ava got them to do it right.

“And finally, the off-line step,” she said. She strode to the basket of swords and picked up two swords. “This is the fun stuff.”

She passed one sword to Reo and had him stand still.

“I’m not going to hit you, so don’t freak out. Keep your sword still,” she said. Reo nodded. Then she stood right in front of him with her sword resting on her back shoulder. “If I throw a strike right now, he can block it easily.”

She stepped forward with her back foot and slowly moved her sword toward Reo and stopped it a foot from his shoulder.

“Look at that shit. He just needs to move his sword a small distance and he’s safe,” she said. She stepped back and returned to her stance. “Then you step off the center.”

Her back foot stepped diagonally to Reo, and her sword slowly approached his shoulder again. This time, she wasn’t straight in front of him.

“This angle makes all the difference,” she said. “I can cut him before he even has a chance to respond.”

She put the two swords back in the basket. Then she had Raine’s teammates practice the off-line step over and over for the next fifteen minutes.

No matter how interesting it was at first, Raine grew bored watching them do the same thing over and over. He sighed. Fuck, it really sucks to be injured.

The swordsmanship lesson lasted another 30 minutes, during which Ava showed them how to hold a long sword, how to throw a strike, and how to counter that strike.

“Well, shit,” Arnett said, putting his sword in the basket after the lesson. “Maybe we really are going to fight monsters.”

“No, we aren’t,” Grant said. “But it was pretty fun.”

The others agreed.

The team walked for a few minutes to the Lexus LX parked on the curbside and headed back to the Gilman Tower.

They’d gotten the keys to the car and their new rooms on Sunday. Raine thought it felt a bit odd to walk around his apartment and not see at least one or two people lounging in the living room.

His room wasn’t big, but it felt huge to him after sharing his last one with three people.

I’m living in luxury, he thought, falling onto his bed. But if we’re leaving the island in a week, then bye-bye to the one-person room. Right?

He checked the time on his phone. It was almost noon. He had about 40 minutes before he had to go to the Costas Hall for an hour-long Ephrian lesson. The other team leaders were probably already there. Raine’s performance in the team competition was the only reason he didn’t have to join them for the first 30 minutes.

He grabbed lunch and read articles on the New York Times in his free time. Then he got an iced latte from the Hopkins Cafe and slowly made his way to the Costas Hall.

The door to one of the rooms was open. Hugh came out of it.

“Oh, Raine,” he said. He checked his watch. “Right on time. Follow me.”

Raine did just that. Julia and Cecily came out of the room as well, keeping a good distance from each other.

“Hey,” Julia said to Raine, clapping his shoulder.

Cecily gave him a small nod as she passed by. He nodded back. She didn’t look depressed or hungover, so maybe he’d done some good by keeping her from drinking vodka on Saturday.

Then again, I basically did nothing. He shrugged and followed them.

They entered a small room with five seats and a white board, the place that Hugh had first taught Raine and Cecily about the Ephrian writing system. Half a dozen huge books were on the table in front of Hugh.

Damn, this is where we had an Ephrian lesson while everyone else learned how to drift. He glanced at Cecily. She was shaking her head in frustration as she took her seat, probably thinking the same thing as him.

“You three are a lot further ahead than the rest,” Hugh said. Then his eyes went to Raine. “And you’re way ahead of these two. To be honest, this kind of knowledge disparity is really unusual. I’m going to have to give you more advanced material than what the others will study.”

He picked up half of the books on his table and dropped them in front of Raine.

“You don’t have to come to any more Ephrian classes. Just finish these before Friday.”

Raine blinked. “Wait,” he said, staring at the three giant books in front of him. “All of them?”

“All of them,” Hugh said with a nod. “I’ll admit that this one—” he tapped the book on top, titled Intermediate Ephrian, “—is a damn dry read, but the other two are interesting. One is a memoir, and the other is a book on swordsmanship. I imagine you’ll need plenty of caffeine to get through all of this by Friday.” He glanced at the cup of coffee in Raine’s hand. “Maybe two of those every day.”

Raine flipped open the first book to check how many pages it had. It was over 600 pages long, and the font size wasn’t that large. Goddamn, what’s even inside this monstrous book? Is it just packed with example after example of every grammatical rule that exists in Ephrian?

“Oh, you’ll also need this dictionary,” Hugh said. He grabbed another book from his table and passed it to Raine. “There. That’s it. If you need somewhere to study in silence, the next room is going to be empty all day.”

Well, shit. Time to get working.

“I recommend you work your ass off for this,” Hugh said. “It’s not your fault, but that leg is going to be a real hindrance after training.”

“So will getting better at Ephrian get me some work while I’m recovering?” Raine asked.

“If you progress at anywhere near the rate I’m expecting, with just translation work, you’ll probably make more than the average new employee.”

“And if I do even better than that?”

“I’m warning you that I’m expecting a lot from you. Those books are no piece of cake. But if you do manage to progress at an inhuman speed...well, that’s going to open a lot of doors. If you spend two or three months after training on continuing to improve your Ephrian and learning about Karlisian law, you’ll be able to make over 140,000 in your first year with work that’s far safer than what most of your peers will be doing.”

“Got it. Thanks,” Raine said, getting up. He was ready to work like he was back at Allison Flynn. “I’ll head to the other room now, but do you mind if you help me carry the books there?”

He had his latte in one hand and his crutch in the other.

Cecily glanced at him with a strange look on her face, but she said nothing.

Julia and Hugh helped him put the books in the next room. He thanked them and grabbed a seat there.

When they closed the door, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

Let’s fucking do this. He opened his eyes, drank his latte, and opened Intermediate Ephrian.

And so began his week of intense studying.