The Citadel had a thousand small rules.
Don't run in the corridors.
Keep your uniform neat.
Never, under any circumstances, mix the training rations without approval.
Royushi Kairo had already broken the third one.
He stood in a corner of the cadet mess with a plastic bowl in his hands and a face that said: "This was a bad idea, but also kinda necessary." Steam rose in a disappointing spiral from the mess's curry. It smelled like regret and overambition.
"Dude, you're making soup again?" a cadet called, laughing.
Royushi blinked. "It's not soup. It's a strategic calorie consolidation."
The cadet snorted and wandered off.
Of course, Ishara Veyl would find him.
She appeared like the sensible punctuation mark he needed—arms crossed, hair tied back, expression that read Do the thing you didn't know you needed to do, but also stop being an idiot about it. She smelled faintly of training oil and something less definable—book pages? Mint? It made him want to apologize for being alive.
"You're not supposed to do that," she said.
"I know." He smiled like the confession was meant to be charming. "But dinner schedules are villains."
"You did not bring a villain to life," she corrected. "You manufactured a crime."
"You and I have very different definitions of crime."
She laughed—soft, quick, like a lid being put on a boiling pot. "Yes. Society does not approve of your crimes."
"You think I care what society thinks?" he asked, play-acting defiance.
She raised an eyebrow. "Clearly not."
He stirred his misbegotten mash. It squelched in ways that could only be called artisanal disaster. He offered her a spoon, because despite the rules and the steam and the strange way his stomach was a bottomless pit, he wanted someone to be witness to this minor rebellion.
Ishara took the spoon like a judge sampling a dubious cake. She tasted. Her face remained neutral.
"It tastes like effort," she said.
"That's my brand," Royushi replied.
She didn't smile this time, but there was warmth in the way she let her guard down for a fraction of a second. "You're reckless," she said, "and not in the fun way."
"Noted."
They ate in near silence after that. Silence that is not empty, because there was the small rhythm of shared activity: chewing, breathing, the scrape of plastic on plastic. It was the kind of comfortable quiet that makes people later call scenes "important" and "pivotal" when in reality it was just two people quietly existing in the same place.
When they left the mess, the Citadel sun slid afternoon shadows across the courtyard. Cadets moved like tidy ants. Royushi and Ishara walked side by side because it was convenient and because it meant their steps matched for a while.
"So," Ishara said in a tone that tried to make the question sound casual, "why are you doing this… the hiding thing? Not asking you to explain everything. That would be emotional burglary. I'm just—curious."
Royushi shrugged, fingering the strap of his bag. "I don't like people setting terms for me. If I'm good, they push. If I'm bad, they forget. Either way, my life becomes a thing they manage."
"That's not a strategy," she said. "It's a shelter."
"It's safer." He laughed, a small sound somewhere between truth and joke. "Mostly because it requires less social planning."
She stopped walking to throw him a look that was part exasperation and part something that looked dangerously close to fondness. "You're very lazy at the things that would help you," she said.
"Name one."
"Opening up. Saying when you're scared. Being straightforward. Admitting when you want something."
He considered each, then shrugged. "Those are high-effort options. I am a budget hero."
"That's pathetic and adorable at the same time," she said, and the insult was packaged in such a way that it almost felt like flattery.
They passed a training yard where instructors clapped and shouted motivational phrases. A trainee fell while attempting a complicated move and laughed at himself for being clumsy. Royushi watched him and thought, for an odd second, about what it meant to fall and then get up without expecting the world to applaud.
"You get to do that, you know," Ishara said suddenly. "Falling without a plan but getting up anyway. Some people never learn."
"I'll get right on that," Royushi said dryly.
She elbowed him lightly. "Seriously. Try not to make every failure into a theatre piece."
"It's my art form," he said.
She did laugh this time. A small, honest sound that made his chest feel warm and somehow light. There's a strange power in someone laughing with you and not at you. It's tiny. It is also a kind of permission.
Later, they sat on the training hall steps watching dusk pool into the city. Around the m life moved—footsteps, distant laughter, the low hum of machines. In that quiet, conversation drifted into easier territory.
"I don't know why I noticed you at first," Ishara admitted. "Maybe because you move differently. Or because a blank spot in everyone else's pattern looks like a question."
Royushi considered it. "And you noticed me?"
"I noticed the way you don't try to be better for anyone," she said. "And I found it… unfair."
"Unfair how?" he asked.
"Like someone had hidden a painting behind a sheet. Not because the painting is bad—because they didn't know how to hang it."
He blinked, not sure if she meant the painting metaphor as a compliment, a critique, or a sleepy hunger. "I feel judged," he said.
"You are judged," she replied. "But I don't think everyone else is right."
He didn't say anything for a long moment. The sky smudged from blue to the color of tired paper.
Then Royushi did something he rarely did: he spoke plainly.
"I don't want to be chosen because it means giving up the chance to choose." It sounded clumsy, even to his own ears. He looked at Ishara and saw her expression shift into something that might have been understanding.
"That's reasonable," she said. "Also boring."
"Boring is underrated," he muttered.
"Noted. Also unhelpful in practice."
He laughed. "You're very practical."
"And you're endearingly impractical," she snapped back. "We balance each other."
"Like a defective scale."
"Exactly."
They walked back toward the dorms together. The mood was easy. Both of them were aware—mutely—of that taut line that ran just under everything: Sevran's shadow had touched the Citadel. People were watching. But for the moment, it was like trying not to step on a sleeping animal—gentle, careful, and with a strange kind of hope.