The sound of rain faded into the hum of fluorescent lights. Kaine sat at a back-row desk, his black hood down, his posture rigid. The classroom buzzed faintly with low chatter and pencil scratches, but he barely registered it. His focus was the notebook — open wide across the desk, its pages already a cartographer's nightmare.
Red dots bled together in clusters across a hand-sketched grid of New York's boroughs. Orange flared around them like an infection, green patches sparse and fading. The city's pulse reduced to data, patterns, probability. He turned the page, then the next, flipping through a dozen attempts — all the same. Every page spoke the same truth: improvement, yes, but never perfection.
Kaine's handwriting was surgical, his notations written in mechanical shorthand. Margins were filled with short strings of logic, reminders to himself. "Pattern confirmation > emotional bias." "Empathy = inefficiency (verify)." "Eliminate variables at root → reduce chaos."
He was halfway through marking an area around Harlem when something wet and papery hit his cheek with a faint smack.
A spitball.
He blinked, slow and deliberate. His eyes flicked sideways.
A grinning face stared back — sharp-featured, mop of blond hair, smug in that easy, well-fed way that only a few could manage.
"Dude," the boy whispered, tapping his pen against his desk, "I get that you're all artistic and mysterious, but study period's supposed to be used to, y'know… study?"
Kaine's fingers paused above his notebook. His brain switched gears — not confusion, just recalibration. He processed the new variable. Persistent noise source: Osborn, Harold Theopolis. Known quantity. Low threat. High interference rate.
"…I've got things to do," Kaine said softly, eyes still on the map. "Do you mind bothering someone else, Osborn?"
Harry leaned back in his chair, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Wow. You're seriously cold, man. But you promised, remember?"
Kaine finally looked up. His eyes were dark, tired, analytical. The promise — right. The "study help." It wasn't an agreement made from compassion; it was an exchange of resources. Kaine had needed an excuse to leave class two days ago and, lacking a guaranteed method to fabricate one, he had calculated the socially acceptable route: ask for help from someone known for talking their way out of anything.
Harry Osborn had fit the criteria perfectly.
Kaine exhaled, closing the notebook with clinical precision. "…Understood. What subject shall we discuss?"
"Awesome!" Harry said, spinning his pencil between his fingers. "So I'm not dumb. Just… not built for trigonometry. I preferred the probability unit. At least that made sense, you know?"
Kaine tilted his head slightly. "Probability is only logical if one accepts uncertainty. You seem… uncomfortable with that."
Harry grinned. "Hey, we can't all be number geniuses, Kaine. I'm more of a… 'big picture' guy. Business major, not mathlete."
Kaine's gaze drifted, observing the boy's expensive wristwatch, the neat uniform, the slight swagger that came from knowing every problem in life could be negotiated with wealth. His mind formed quiet conclusions. Osborn. Resource access: extensive. Cognitive type: intuitive, emotionally adaptive. Potential success in social systems: high.
"You'd do well in material sciences," Kaine murmured.
Harry blinked. "Wait, what?"
"Nothing."
There was a short silence — not awkward, just empty. Kaine turned the notebook back toward him, brushing off the small wet spot from the spitball, and began erasing a red cluster near Queens. His eraser left faint ghosts behind — traces of violence he couldn't quite scrub out.
He didn't notice Harry watching him, eyes darting between the strange map of crime and the boy's expressionless face.
"You really think about this city a lot, huh?" Harry asked.
Kaine didn't look up. "Thinking is preparation."
"For what?"
Kaine paused for half a second, pencil hovering above the paper. Then, softly —
"Correction."
The bell rang, sharp and metallic. Students stood, voices rising into chaos. Kaine closed his notebook, sliding it into his bag with silent efficiency. He stood, zipped his jacket, and looked out the window. Rain again. Always rain.
Harry caught up beside him, still smiling, though his curiosity lingered. "Man, you're intense. You know that?"
"I'm efficient," Kaine said, walking out into the hall.
And for just a moment, under the flickering lights, Harry thought he saw a faint red glint reflect in Kaine's eyes — gone as quickly as it appeared.
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[Auther: I'll post Kaine's picture in the next chapter...I might actually do that for every character, just so I can remember them.]