They hadn't moved much.
The chained book sat on the wobbling table like a patient animal. The eight of them ringed it in various states of collapse. Afternoon had slipped toward copper; their little city of rescued books listed around them.
The doors banged open.
Kori swept in with wind on her jacket and a muffin in her mouth. She took in the scene - ring of students, ring of books, ring of silence - and grinned like she'd walked into a surprise party she threw for herself.
"Look at you," she said. "Not dead under a dictionary. I owe myself another pretzel!"
"Where were you?" Lynea asked, flat.
"Spreading mercy and confusion," Kori said. "Meetings. Are we opening the scary thing or camping around it?"
"Why this one," Lynea pressed. "Of all books, why did you want this?"
"Because it isn't for you, it's for me" Kori replies, airy. "I was curious and too lazy to fetch it. Delegation is leadership. Don't quote me."
"Not for us," Hikari echoed, frowning.
"Mm." Kori planted both hands on the lock and smiled at it like it had insulted her shoes. "Let's ruin someone's day."
"Don't you need a- " Arashi began.
Kori ripped the lock open with her hands.
Metal squealed. Somewhere, a librarian said "ahem" by telepathy. The chain clinked off. Kori flicked it aside, hooked her fingers under the cover, and pulled. The leather groaned. The eight lean-in was audible. Air cooled.
First page: blank.
Second: blank.
Third. Fourth. Fifth. Blank, blank, blank.
Esen put his hands on his head. "No. Absolutely not."
Keahi leaned closer. "There's nothing!?"
Kori riffled ten more pages just to be rude to inevitability. Nothing. Paper like snowfield.
"Perhaps the author was minimalist," Arashi said, bone-dry.
Hikari didn't speak. The blank didn't feel loud; it felt near. Under the tiles, the faint hum Raizen had been pretending away rose again and tapped the soles of his shoese. He did the breath he did before a sprint - there, not there. Blank should be silly. It was.
"Right," Kori said briskly, closing the book. The air warmed a degree. "Educational. We learned some locks are for show and some books are empty. Valuable life lesson."
"That's it?" Esen demanded. "We sneeze ourselves inside out and the big secret is… nothing?"
"You carried a tree," Kori said, impressed. "Team building." She clapped once. "Next: suffering. Two weeks."
"For…?" Arashi asked, already slumping.
"These." She swept a hand at the towers of paper. "Every line. Every margin note. Those books are going to crawl into your bones and make furniture."
A zoo of noise escaped all eight.
"Two weeks!?" Keahi breathed, wounded.
"Alright, fine," Kori said, magnanimous. "I'll let you three."
"Three weeks," Esen repeated quickly. "Still extremely right, but coming from you, generous. We accept."
"Three weeks, not three months. Don't try me."
"How many are these?" Hikari asked honestly, glancing from pile to list to pile.
"Close to a hundred," Arashi guessed.
"Numbers are a social construct," Kori said sweetly. "More useful construct: groups. Split, rotate, teach each other, keep logs. If you skip the margins, the margins will obviously find me and yell."
Feris lifted a hand, gaze on the closed tome. "Why not the newer editions? They're thinner. Prettier."
"The new ones smell like cheap glue and successful committees," Kori said, leaning on the table like the chained book was furniture. "Their splinters are sanded off. They make you feel smart because the pages go down easy. Old ones are ugly and heavy and sometimes wrong in charming ways, but they were written by people who bled on the problems. They stick."
"That's why the Academy looks like a relic instead of a glass box," Raizen observed, gesturing at ribs of stone, wood and scarlet.
"Exactly. Put a building in a glass box and it forgets how to keep weather out. Put a mind in shiny covers and it forgets how to carry weight. Old has grip. New slides." She tapped the table. "I'm not carving your foundations out of dullness."
Lynea had already started arranging stacks by subject, then problem, then her sense of decency. She made a small approving sound and pretended she hadn't.
"Can we sleep?" Keahi asked - hopeful, painful.
"Sleep is great. Do it. You can come here every day until you finish them. The limit is three weeks. Finish soonder, we start training. And yes, I'll bring pastries if nobody calls them breakfast."
"Pastries aren't breakfast," Lynea said automatically.
"Correct," Kori said. "They are a lifestyle."
She scooped up the empty book again. She didn't bother re-chaining it; she tucked it under one arm like a pet that had chosen the worst owner and would be loved anyway.
"Where are you taking it," Raizen asked.
"My office," Kori said. "Which is also a kitchen and a laundry and a wall with a nail for medals I don't hang. If it sprouts words, I'll share."
"That's not how books work," Esen protested.
"Yeah, yeah." She tipped her head toward the door. "Move, disasters. The chandeliers are going to yawn, and I refuse to explain why we're still breathing on their clean floor."
They moved.
They chain-ganged the weight to the doors, staggered across the quad. Students slid aside without being asked. By the bridge, Neoshima had turned that shade of gold that makes beautiful things look illegal. Sea light elbowed up the cliffs; trams hummed like helpful insects.
They split at Crown Walk - two toward dorms, two back for another load, four toward Kori's because "shortest line between here and a couch" was now a survival skill.
Raizen and Hikari drifted together without discussion, the rhythm of tired feet making a conversation that didn't need words. He carried three books and the idea of a fourth. She carried two and kept almost taking his third, then not, because she'd decided he could.
He was still thinking about blank pages.
Funny, but not. Who chained a book and then erased it? Who wrote nothing and locked it up like a crime? He could taste the paper cool on his teeth like biting snow. In his chest: that pre-sprint breath, the world sharpening, promising things it never kept.
"Careful," Hikari said, breaking the thought with a touch to his sleeve, not the arm. His step had hit a crack. He hadn't noticed. "Step."
"Yeah," he said. Then, honestly: "Mostly."
"The book?" she askes.
"The book," he answered.
A short silence fell, until Hikari broke it again.
"We'll read the others," she said.
Kori's door sighed them in. Keahi nearly fell onto the couch, remembered its personality, and chose the floor. Arashi hung his jacket like it had feelings.
Kori came last, a few minutes later, holding a paper bag.
"Pastries," she announced, placing the bag like treasure and the book on a too-high shelf, out of easy reach. "Don't stare at that. Stare at these." She opened the bag. The room forgave her everything. Ah, yes. Pastries, again. Kori never seemed to get tired of them...
They ate with the stunned gratitude of athletes discovering sugar is a religion.
"Two - no, three weeks," Kori tried to say, with her mouth half full. "Start with the ugly ones."
"Which are the ugly ones?" Esen mumbled through crumbs.
"The ones that look like they'll outlive you," Kori said. "Sleep, for now. You still need energy."
They peeled off toward beds and blankets with the grace of fallen flags. In the attic, Raizen lay by the round tilted window and watched city lights argue with the sky. The blank pages tried to crawl back in. He didn't let them in this time. He had the sudden sense that tomorrow wouldn't be about opening doors so much as figuring out which doors were pretending to be doors at all.
Below, a spoon knocked a mug like a bell and Kori swore at it for whatever reason she could.
"Tomorrow we'll start the grind... Good night!" Raizen said into the dark, because someone had to say it.
"Good night" Hikari answered, already half asleep, letting out a small smile.