Finally graduating from highschool and starting college feels like standing in the middle of a shifting crowd and pretending you've always known the rhythm.
You're expected to figure things out fast.
Make friends. Get decent grades. Maybe find yourself if the vending machines don't eat you first.
But Here?
Here we play by different rules.
This morning, in the middle of Virelia Grind our on-campus café where the coffee tastes suspiciously like regret a boy collapsed.
No warning. No sound. Just... crumpled.
His body twisted sharply as if pulled by a string, his eyes wide and flashing with color that shouldn't exist in pupils, silence passed through the room, and then
A woman entered.
She wasn't in uniform, at least not one you'd recognize. Long coat, Low heel boots, Gloves like she'd never touched anything warm in her life. She didn't ask questions or offer help.
She placed something, flat and silver against his chest.
He became still and it felt like things had finally settled.
He didn't wake.
Within sixty seconds, two others came in through the back. No names. No stretchers. They took him the way you'd take out broken furniture. Efficiently, and without emotion.
And just like that, the café went back to normal.
Like it never happened.
They say university is where you figure out who you really are, That becomes a problem when you can't be found at all.
"There were three students missing before I arrived,
Now there are seven."
"Feels like It's only a matter of time before I vanish too,
Like I was never here."
I was still thinking that when Willy appeared or more accurately, slouched into existence in front of me.
"You've got that look again," he said, sliding into the seat across mine and nearly knocking over the sugar dispenser. His voice was muffled by the mouthful of something fried and probably illegal.
I didn't look up right away. I watched his tray land on the table, half-covered in crumbs and wrapped in thin paper marked with the café's red spiral crest. I finally raised my gaze.
Willy Cheng was a tangle of contradictions.
Tall, but somehow slouchy. Thin in a way that suggested fast metabolism and forgotten meals. His red blazer, the standard university wear, was wrinkled over a black hoodie, and his ID hung backward from a lanyard that had definitely seen better days.
Small, always-squinting eyes. Fluffy dark hair that never quite decided on a part. Half-Chinese. Full on chaos.
"I didn't know I had a look," I said, adjusting my black tie, as I sipped what passed for coffee in this place. The taste had long gone cold. "Thanks for noticing."
He stared at me. Then at my glove. Then at me again.
I wore a leather glove on my right hand, black, open-fingered, with a faint blue tiger emblem stitched across the back. It wasn't part of the uniform, but I had my excuses lined up.
Willy didn't ask. He never did.
"Tell me you're not still obsessing over the disappearances," he said.
I slid my holo-tab across the table in response.
The projection came to life between us, pale blue and glitchy around the edges. It played a clip: a security cam recording from the West Wing of Nicolo hall. Time-stamped. Motion tracked.
A student walks down the corridor.
Pauses. Looks to the side.
Takes a step, then...
Gone.
No flash. No fade. Just… absence.
Willy stopped chewing. "Could be he has a teleportation crest" he offered.
"Except that there's no teleportation crest registered on the transit board," I wailed, pointing at the shaved part of my black hair to make emphasis. "And no one's seen him since."
"Could've dropped out. Switched campuses. Or maybe he just didn't like his dorm furniture. I mean, the beds squeak."
I tilted my head. "That's your best explanation?"
"Hey," he shrugged, brushing off a fry crumb, "You're talking about a University with over ten thousand students. You're gonna lose a few. You know — natural selection and all that."
I didn't answer. My eyes tracked a movement at his shoulder.
A soft puff of wind coiled outward, shaped like a squirrel, with semi-transparent fur that sparkled faintly in the light. It twitched its tail and blinked at me, smug and sentient.
Wheeler.
Willy's shard construct.
A manifestation of his Crest. A creature made of air and personality.
"He's been wheezing," Willy said casually, as Wheeler floated up and looped around his head like a curious satellite. "I gotta take him to the vet."
"He's made of wind," I pointed out.
"Yeah, well. The wind's been looking a little pale round the edges lately."
He stood up, shouldering his tray like he was late to something, though Willy was never really on time or late, just in orbit.
As he turned to leave, he paused.
"You know… maybe step off campus this weekend. Go… reconnect or whatever. Might clear your head."
I didn't answer right away. He didn't wait for me to.
I watched him walk off, the blur of Wheeler dissolving slowly into the air behind him, and let my thoughts follow.
Spent a few minutes looking at the video,making my way out of the cafe when the air settled
Outside, the path back to the dorms winds through the central courtyard, a crossroad for most departments. Pillars of steel-glass stretch upward around me like watchtowers, each wing marked with its own crimson and cobalt banners etched with each departments logo.
The walk should naturally take three minutes. But I take pride in stretching it to fifteen.
The Rift Sciences Faculty building looms to my right, silverstone walls gliterring under sunlight, a faint vibration you can feel in your teeth. Behind it, the Combat Arena, shaped like a broken ring, glows faintly at its edges.
A group of students arguably possessing Aeon crests levitate six feet off the ground, practicing mid-air evasions. A girl with vines swirling around her wrist laughs as she floats upside down. Two guys pass me arguing over the way the rifts have affected economy.
"I'm telling you, delera conversion is tanking. analysts say the Azure Boom's a bubble."
Posters line the wall near the stairwell
FRESHMAN WEEK EVENTS:
Debate Tourney: Support vs. Combat
Crest Showcase
Buzztok Edit Contest
Rift Resource Relay
All sponsored by the Entertainment and Communications Faculty.
Someone's drawn mustaches on the Vice Chancellor's face.
"HI, HUEY!"
I look up. Across the yard, Marlo waves, grinning.
Small frame, thick braids pulled into a knot behind her head, law pad under one arm like it's attached to her spine. Her tie's perfectly knotted, heels clicking like power.
"You better not duck the debate next week!" she shouts.
Next to her, Tarran, all limbs and curly red hair, taps on his holo-pad. "Bro, we need your energy. That monotone murder stare? Intimidation value. At least stand behind Jonas."
I raise my hand in a lazy wave. "Nah, I'm gonna let y'all do the cooking with this one."
Marlo rolls her eyes. "You suck."
"I know," I call back.
They keep walking. So do I.
Up ahead, the dorm building comes into view. Galileo Hall
two stories of neat architecture with a personality crisis. The left wing's modern, glass-heavy. The right wing looks like a castle from an old video game.
I take the side stairs, fingers grazing the chipped marble railing as I reach my floor.
I pass by room twenty one and reach mine, I look beyond it at twenty three and can't help but wonder who's idea it was to make my room number into a course code.
"Room 202 huh" I said in a hushed tone
I stop outside the door. Frown.
The handle doesn't budge.
Right. Locked.
setting my bag down to dig for my key, Somewhere under my notes and then
FWOOSH.
Fire slices past my cheek, close enough to singe the air.
I duck instinctively as lightning crackles across the hallway from the opposite side.
Two seniors. Mid-argument.
Crests flaring like they forgot people actually live here.