[October 3, 2042]

Over the years, the library at the university had been converted more and more into a hybrid social-gathering room. Comfy couches for students to lounge on and computers to work at replaced the rows of shelves. The decor became non-formal and colorful, built for comfort over academic concentration. There were bean-bag chairs and water fountains and vending machines in the corner, meant to facilitate a casual, lay-back atmosphere. Two of the four walls were big windows that allowed a copious amount of natural light, and every wall surface seemed to be smooth and white, as was the style of mid-21st-century architecture, renovated from its original wooden design that had been built at the beginning of the last century.

Cal was between classes. His lectures in the morning had dragged on and exhausted him, so he had gone to the university library for the first time since the beginning of the semester, looking for a quiet place where he could decompress. However, it was louder here than he had anticipated. Groups of students huddled around, talking loudly and eating their lunch. Cal strolled past them, moving past the common area to the back of the library, where there were still shelves of books that carved out quieter corners where students could study. He was tired and a little irritable, and so it came as a complete surprise when he turned the corner of a shelf to find Ram sitting at a small table, her nose buried in a comic book.

“Oh,” Cal said, sincerely surprised, “Hey Ram.”

When she looked up, Ram made a noise somewhere between a gasp of panic and a deflating balloon. She instantly blushed upon seeing Cal’s face and hid the comic under the table, her voice stuttering. “O-oh, hi. You- I mean, I wasn’t really expecting to see you, Cal.”

“Likewise.” Cal took a seat across from Ram, which made her seem to shrink away from him. “It’s rare to see you at the university. You take online classes, right?”

Ram nodded rapidly, making her blond curls bounce. “Y-yeah. I sometimes come here to get out of the house. It’s a little loud these days, not like when it was just me and Ellie and Mr. Frost sometimes checking in…”

Then she covered her mouth as if horrified at what she had said. “Oh! I don’t mean to complain!” Her voice sounded anxious and her brown eyes were wide. “It’s great having Aina and Bridget and that ghost around… and you… but…”

She trailed off, seemingly unsure of how to finish her thought in a way that appeared inoffensive.

“It’s hard getting used to it?” offered Cal, propping his elbow on the table and leaning his head against his hand.

Ram nodded again. “Everyone is very nice, though Aina can be a little pushy sometimes… oh! She’s nice too, of course. I think she’s just, you know-”

“I know what you mean,” Cal responded, his eyes hovering on Ram’s face as if trying to study it. “You don’t need to add amendments to every statement you say, Ram. It’s as if you expect me to interpret every word in the worst possible way.”

Ram lowered her eyes. “Sorry…”

‘You… you don’t have to apologize for that.”

There was a silence between them that was a little awkward. Cal was beginning to regret disturbing Ram in the first place. His bad mood had intensified, making him more blunt than he usually was.

“Can I ask you a question, Ram?”

Ram looked up. Cal’s voice was a little different than she was used to. She associated his voice with gentleness and patience, which was why she felt she was able to relax around him during their conversations, at least compared to others. Now there was a sliver of coldness to it. She looked at him directly and was surprised by how his eyes looked. The deep dark blue of his eyes, which had always resembled to her a calming ocean at night, solidified into something unfamiliar.

“Of course,” Ram breathed, nervous for a reason she couldn’t quite understand.

Cal’s eyes bore into her. “Do you… dislike talking with me?”

Ram’s throat tightened, making her voice even quieter and fragile than it typically was. “What?”

Cal sighed and rubbed a finger aimlessly along the wooden table that separated them. “It’s fine if that’s the case, I won’t be offended. I only ask because you always seem uncomfortable around me, like you’re being cornered. If I’m bothering you, I'll leave.”

“No!” Ram put her hands adamantly on the table, laying down flat the comic book she had been hiding. Her voice was more solid and impassioned than Cal had heard before. “No! …I mean, it’s not that. I like talking with you, really. I just… don’t know how…”

“How to talk?”

“How to be… human.”

There was another awkward pause. The laughter of the students in the common area floated through the air, punctuating the silence.

“What do you mean?” Cal asked at last.

“Talking with others…” Ram said, uncertainly. “Being with others, that sort of thing. It’s not that I don’t want to do both but… I just don’t know how. I never… got an opportunity.”

Ram shook her head, admonishing herself. “No, sorry. I’m being weird again. It’s just… I care about what others think of me, I suppose. I think about that sort of thing all the time.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“And that’s why you’re always so timid and nervous?” asked Cal.

Ram looped a blond curl around her finger subconsciously. “I think so. I’m scared that people will see right through me if I say the wrong thing, the strange thing. They’ll see the real me. And that makes every conversation, every interaction… a sort of test. I’m not good at tests. I flake under pressure.”

“What do you think people will see when they see the real you?”

Ram’s eyes narrowed in distress. “Weakness. A… a person who never had enough strength to learn about and be relied on by others.”

Cal digested this.

“We’re the same, I think,” he said slowly.

“No,” insisted Ram, “that’s not true. You’re comfortable with everyone — you get along with everyone. Everyone at Otter Manor is so different and vibrant… but you sort of accept it all… You make it work. You learn how to deal with them. I’ve watched you… N-not watched you, but saw you… now and again… Me, on the other hand-”

“I don’t…” Cal interrupted, despite himself. He held up a palm in apology and began again. “I don’t mean we are the same in manner. I mean we’re the same in type. We don’t know how to interact with others — how to be human, as you put it. The only difference is that you care too much about what others think of you, while I couldn’t care less.”

Ram tilted her head, not understanding his meaning.

Cal’s eyes darkened. “I gave up trying to do that a long time ago. How to please others, how to make them like you… I never got it right.”

“That’s not true!” Ram said again, eyes shining with determination, almost challenging Cal. “The other girls at the manor… they like you a lot — Mel and Bridget. Anyone can see that… even me. Ellie thinks highly of you, too. Aina, well… s-she’s different, but I think she doesn’t dislike you as much as she pretends. They’ve… accepted you, there.”

“Because I accepted them, as you said.” Cal’s voice was strangely distant. He seemed to be looking at something above Ram’s head. “I’m good at that — accepting, I mean. Taking stock of what’s in front of me, that’s my talent. My primary personality cornerstone. But it’s not the same thing as understanding.”

Cal paused. He looked into Ram’s eyes, which were narrowed in anxiety. He tried to smile, to put her a little at ease, so she would understand more of what he was trying to say.

Aren’t you scared of anything?

For some reason, Mel’s indignant words from long ago came to Cal’s mind at this moment, as he searched for what to say to Ram.

“I can tell you that Mel is sadder than she pretends,” he began. “I can tell you that Ellie hides a lot from all of us, despite how open she appears to be. That Bridget is the kindest out of everyone and that the so-called princess is mostly constructed out of a tiresome act. But for what they think of me, and what I think of them…”

Cal shrugged. “I couldn’t say. I don’t know.”

Then he smiled, though to Ram it seemed to have no sincere warmth in it. “Bridget likes me? That’s good to know. I wasn’t sure, since she’s so polite to everyone by nature.”

Ram’s mouth was gaping open in indignation. “You… didn’t notice anything? I thought… it was so obvious… she’s always so affectionate towards you.”

“I noticed,” Cal said shortly, “but I didn’t understand.”

His dark blue eyes seemed lost in some memory. Ram had the impression that he was thinking about something long ago, that he would hold to his chest and never tell her.

“Human emotions…” Cal said quietly. “They are strange and incomprehensible things, aren’t they?”

Ram looked at him for a moment, trying to see the person he truly was for the first time — not just the gentle person she had built up in her head who had made delicious food and passed her encouraging notes from behind a door. “Y-yeah,” she said at last, finally removing her hands from the table. “Yeah, they really are.”

Another silence. More laughter from the distance — the indifference of the world.

“What’s this?” Cal said, flipping over the comic book that Ram had left on the table.

“O-oh,” Ram was still trying to process the unexpected conversation she had had with Cal, and therefore forgot to even blush when the subject of her embarrassment was brought up. “It’s a comic book, a superhero comic book. They have a wide collection here at the library.”

“Hmm,” said Cal, flipping the comic open. Inside were bright and passionate illustrations of a superhero team (all in different colored outfits) fighting aliens from space with their bravery and the power of their bonds. “You like this sort of thing?”

Ram allowed herself a toothy smile. Her brown eyes lit up. “Yeah, I do. I like stories about good versus evil, where the heroes have iron-clad ideals and never give up. It’s simple and unrealistic… b-but I like it. When I read about people like that, it gives me courage.”

“Hmm,” said Cal again. He was studying a certain panel: the hero in the red outfit was posing on top of a building, ready to descend upon the bad guys below. Then he flipped back to the front. “What’s this comic called?”

“Are you trying to get to know me?” said Ram. The words came out before she could help herself, and she was surprised at their boldness. “Or is that just words? Something you noticed but don’t… understand?”

Cal looked up. He was taken aback, and then he sighed. “Maybe. But that’s never stopped me from trying.”

A little while later, Cal was outside, in the center of the university campus. He tapped on the shoulder of a tall guy with long dark hair who was sitting on the rim of a fountain.

The guy looked up. “Hey. You’re late, man.”

“Sorry, Sirius.” said Cal, “still want to get poutine from the food truck?”

“Sure, sure,” said Sirius, straightening up to his full height. He was a lanky sort of person, with mischievous green eyes and straight black hair that fell past his shoulders. “What kept you?”

“Ran into one of my tenants at the library, and kinda lost track of time.”

“That’s unusual for you,” commented Sirius, “who? The- um, the tall girl, with the dreadlocks? I’ve seen her around. What’s her name, Ellie?”

“No, it was Ram,” responded Cal, “I don’t think you know her, she only takes online classes-”

“Short, big blond curly hair, pretty?” Sirius cut in.

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

“Seen her at the library, sometimes,” Sirius said, not elaborating. “Hey, you're going to bring me around like you promised, aren’t you? You said the place is like authentic 19th-century architecture, right? You gotta let me check it out. We’ve got nothing like that in this ‘modern’ city.”

“I know, I know.” said Cal, “it’s just hard to coordinate. How are you with ghosts and princesses from other worlds?”

“Depends,” said the other boy, who had begun to tie his long hair in a ponytail to keep it out of his eyes. “Are we talking like a Casper ghost or one from The Shining? Because I don’t do creepy twins.”

“...You know, you might get along with her. You two have similar taste in movies.”

“Seriously?”