I sat, well, sank into my throne-like chair sitting in the control room beneath the Aetherium, but only because it was the only chair large enough to stop me from sliding off onto the floor. The control room around me glowed softly, filled with dozens of floating smoke-mana screens that displayed the students scattered across the testing grounds, as well as more professors and staff members jotting down notes on their laptops and notebooks.

Technically, I was supposed to be monitoring them.

Realistically…I was trying not to fall off my own chair.

The nearest screen flickered, and I squinted at it.

"Oh," I murmured. "That's… a student fighting a deer. Or, wait. Is that a tree? No, no, it moved. Unless the tree moved. Do trees move? I feel like trees shouldn't move."

Beside me stood Alectra Nekros Sebastian's older sister, top student, the student council president, and someone who had suffered in silence every time I opened my mouth since the day she joined the academy.

Her voice was crisp.

Sharp.

Professional.

"Team 12 is engaged with D-rank horned stags. They're maintaining proper formation. Team 38 has successfully created a defensible riverside shelter and—"

I nodded sharply as if absorbing every word.

I absolutely wasn't.

"What if trees can move?" I whispered to myself. "I've seen worse. Last year, that cursed oak tried to bite me."

Alectra paused for half a second. Then resumed.

"Team 23 is projecting total point dominance for the first night. Their coordination exceeds the faculty's estimates. Additionally—"

"Mhm," I hummed, eyes drifting toward a snack tray I'd left somewhere. "Coordination. Yes. Very pointy."

Alectra continued her report, unfazed. "Noble students are handling resource distribution better than anticipated. Their survival..."

My brain wandered again.

Not unusual.

I had a very active mind.

Full of extremely important… thoughts...like where I put my snack.

Or why the smoke screens were shaped like rectangles. Wouldn't circles be prettier?

But mostly:

Sebastian.

The smoke screen that usually tracked him wasn't showing him at the moment.

It was showing a very boring rock.

A rock I assumed was not him.

Though, knowing him, he could be behind it doing something catastrophically stupid.

I leaned forward.

"Where is my—where is Sebastian?" I asked the air.

Then Alectra.

Then the air again, just in case it answered.

Alectra tapped her wristband and redirected one of the screens.

"His location is being updated," she said calmly.

"Good. Good… he tends to wander." I paused. "Or explode things. Or get chased. Or oh! Did he create a fire again? He likes fire. He shouldn't, but he does. Poor him, he has such self-destructive hobbies."

Alectra inhaled deeply. The kind of inhale reserved for a person praying for patience.

She resumed, still in her perfect professional tone:

"Other teams are encountering low-rank monsters or standard wilderness challenges. Some students are demonstrating mild panic, but no serious injuries. All expected—"

I tilted my head.

Expected.

Normal.

Predictable.

Right, it's all good.

But I wanted...

Sebastian.

"Is he safe?" I asked abruptly, poking the nearest screen with a finger. "He is the type to get eaten by a slime. Or fall into a hole. Or talk to a bear."

"He is not talking to a bear," Alectra said, with the weary conviction of someone who had personally watched her brother do the bear thing before.

"Oh. Good."

Pause.

"But he could be."

"Big sis bel—"

"Oh! There he is!"

The cloud screen flickered, shifting into view.

Sebastian appeared.

Running.

Or walking.

Or probably doing something that would make me worry if I had the energy for it.

I lit up instantly.

Alectra did not look.

But I saw her eye twitch again.

Only a little.

Just a tiny betrayal of emotion.

I pretended I didn't see it.

Instead, I leaned so close to the screen my forehead nearly passed through the smoke.

"Aw, look at him. He's upright and walking! That's always a good sign."

Alectra waited.

I waited.

Then she asked, with the calm tone of someone who has accepted her cruel fate:

"In what capacity would you like a status update on my brother, Big sis?"

"Oh." I smiled brightly. "Everything. All of it. What he's doing. Where he's going. What trouble he's about to walk headfirst into."

Because knowing Sebastian?

It wasn't just trouble.

It was cosmic trouble, the kind you only got after offending every god in existence.

And I wanted to watch.

I flicked my fingers, and the cloud-screens shuffled like startled birds, drifting into a neater formation around me. Alectra kept talking beside me, clear voice, perfect posture, student council president elegance, but I had already lost the thread somewhere around "group C has successfully killed the goblin pack."

I nodded anyway.

Professional.

Very professional.

…Probably.

My attention slid from one screen to another until...Oh.

There it was.

A ripple in the mist.

A flash of hair.

Sebastian.

My spine straightened so abruptly I almost launched myself out of the throne-chair. Alectra didn't seem to notice. She was still reading through lists, calm and steady, like a beautiful black-haired metronome.

I, meanwhile, had the focus of a squirrel juggling knives.

One of the screens zoomed in as I leaned forward, elbow accidentally knocking another screen away like a soap bubble.

I pretended that didn't happen.

Alectra pretended she didn't see it.

We were both doing great.

Sebastian and Nora were walking through a cave.

A cave full of wolves.

Not puppies.

Not the cute snuggly kind.

Real wolves. C-rank monsters. The kind that bite through armor and sometimes walls. And those ones in particular had… well. Alectra didn't need to know about that. Not yet. She'd worry. She already worried too much.

I picked at a loose thread on my sleeve as I leaned in closer.

They were talking.

Smiling, actually.

Why were they smiling?

Why was he smiling at her?

My brow scrunched before I even realized it, like it was acting on its own. Annoyance bubbled up in my chest in a soft, confusing fizz.

What? Why am I—

No. No, no. I wasn't annoyed. Definitely not. Why would I be annoyed? Seeing Sebastian walking with another woman wasn't… wasn't…

…Why was I annoyed?

I shook my head so hard one of the screens wobbled.

I wasn't jealous.

I didn't get jealous. I was completely, totally, absolutely immune to such useless emotions. I'd trained for years to not feel useless. Seen the world. Seen horrors. Seen miracles. Seen a man dance with his own reflection in the middle of a battlefield because he thought it was disrespectful to leave himself waiting.

So I didn't get surprised easily or flustered. Or annoyed.

Except apparently I did.

Nora said something.

Sebastian laughed.

His laugh was all movement, sharp shoulders, hand waving dramatically, full-body enthusiasm like he was acting out a monologue on stage.

I blinked behind my blindfold.

That… idiot.

Even without seeing properly, even with only outlines and hazy silhouettes, I could tell exactly what he was doing. Exaggerating everything. Flailing about. Probably telling some ridiculous story. Definitely doing something he absolutely should not be doing inside a cave full of monstrous wolves.

I leaned in closer, breath held.

Then Sebastian reached out.

And poked a wolf cub.

Right in the cheek.

My brain stopped.

Completely.

My thoughts tripped over themselves and collapsed into a pile of useless noise.

"He didn't…"

"He wouldn't…"

"But he did."

Alectra paused mid-sentence. "Belle? Is something wrong?"

"Yes," I breathed.

"No."

"Yes?"

"No."

I shook my head. "He's… he's doing things."

Alectra blinked at me slowly. "…I see."

She did not see. She absolutely did not see. But that wasn't her fault. No one could possibly have guessed the sheer level of chaos Sebastian carried inside him. Sometimes I wondered if he did it on purpose. Sometimes I wondered if the universe conspired to put him in the worst possible situations just to watch me react.

On the screen, the wolves rose.

Bones shifted.

Mana surged.

Massive silhouettes unfolded like nightmares stretching after a nap.

Ten meters tall.

Unstable mana leaking out like steam.

All of them forming a semicircle.

Alectra finally stopped flipping through her notes.

"Belle," she said carefully, "is Sebastian—"

"Yes," I said before she could finish.

"Doing something reckless?" she asked dryly.

"Yes," I repeated.

She sighed. "Of course he is."

Of course he was.

Of course I was already leaning so close I nearly fell out of the chair.

And yet, despite all the terrifying things I'd seen in my life, despite all the battles, all the monsters, all the disasters…

What Sebastian did next still managed to surprise me.

On the screen, Sebastian bent his knees, purple fire bursting under his feet, the ground bubbling like soup. And before my brain could process the physics of it, he scooped Nora up by the waist.

In a princess carry.

A princess carry.

"Oh no," I breathed.

He adjusted his grip.

Steady.

Confident.

Regal, like a prince handsome, rescuing her princess.

"Oh Sebastian," I wheezed, newly convinced he was trying to destroy me personally.

Alectra said something beside me, but it was just a muffled noise.

My heartbeat was too loud.

My skull was too empty.

My entire world shrank to the outline of his arms around that girl.

My disciple.

My newly adopted disciple who was very much in Sebastian's arms.

My eye twitched.

Something dark, sharp, and extremely illegal flickered across my mind like a passing shadow.

…Should I remove her?

Just remove and the entire problem will be solved.

Permanently.

I slapped the thought down so hard it practically yelped.

No. No no no no. Bad Belle.

You do not erase teenage girls because your… your student… your problem child…picked one up like a bridal bouquet. And you absolutely don't act like a yandere... am I slowly becoming a Yandere?

My face felt hot. My hands felt sweaty. My brain felt like someone had replaced it with wet bread.

Sebastian ran with Nora in his arms, dramatic as always, purple fire exploding behind him like he wanted style points.

My stomach flipped in the way it only ever did when I was about to fall off a cliff, or into feelings I didn't want to name.

I swallowed, tiny and horrified.

"…What is this?" I whispered to myself.

But I had an idea what it was, I just didn't want to admit it.

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