"Um, Lía. Would you maybe help me braid my hair? It's so long that doing the bottoms is hard."
For a second, I seriously consider taking the words back and stuffing them into my mouth with the last piece of toast. They're already out there, though, hanging in the air between us like a flagged request in a queue. I stand beside my barstool, fingers curled in the hem of my Forge jacket, hair still damp and heavy down my back.
Lía pauses with a plate in her hands. Her eyes flick up to mine, then down to the curtain of curls over my shoulders, then back again. I can see the exact moment she files the request under grooming assistance – precision task – high trust.
"Yes," she says simply. "Of course."
Leo makes a tiny choked sound. "Wow, okay, she didn't even hesitate."
Diana kicks him lightly under the island. "Shut up, this is a tender moment," she hisses, already grinning.
I pretend not to hear either of them. My cheeks are doing their usual "let's be a space heater" routine. "Thank you," I mumble. "I just—if I try to do the backs fast, they tangle and I end up with… knots and swearing."
"That is suboptimal," Lía says, dead serious. "Come. The loft has better light."
She sets the plate down, wipes her hands, and gestures toward the stairs. I follow her up to the loft, suddenly very aware of how my socks whisper on the steps, how absurdly domestic this all feels.
Upstairs, morning light spills through the big windows, painting the bed and the small sitting area in pale gold. She steers me toward the edge of the bed with a little nod. "Sit," she says. "Back toward me."
I obey, perching on the edge, feeling like a kid at a sleepover I accidentally wandered into. My hair hangs down my back in a damp, wavy sheet; I tug it all over one shoulder out of habit, then remember what I asked and push it back again, ears burning.
"Sorry," I mutter. "Automatic."
"It is fine," she says quietly. "May I touch?"
The question lands like a soft weight. I swallow and nod. "Yeah. You can."
Her fingers slide gently into my hair, separating it from the top down, not the yanking, impatient way I'm used to doing on myself but slow and methodical. She sections it with clinical precision, combing through each portion with her fingers first to find tangles before they turn into knots.
"Your curls are dense," she murmurs, half to herself. "And long. No wonder braiding the ends is difficult."
"Yeah, they kind of… multiply overnight," I say. "Like Tribbles. Or Hydra heads."
She makes an amused little noise, barely there. "Metaphor: acceptable."
Behind us, footsteps pad up the stairs. Leo and Diana appear at the top, clearly incapable of not being where things are happening.
"We're just observing," Leo says quickly, hands up. "For… team bonding purposes."
Diana flops into the armchair like a queen claiming territory. "I am absolutely taking pictures in my brain," she says. "This is going in the invisible scrapbook."
"Pictures in your what?" I squeak.
"In my heart," she corrects sweetly. "Calm down."
Lía ignores them both with the full force of eldest-sibling focus. She finishes smoothing the top section, then starts a neat three-strand braid just behind my ear, fingers confident and surprisingly gentle. Every so often she pauses, checks tension, then continues, working her way down with the kind of concentration she usually reserves for complex equations.
"You're… really good at this," I say after a moment.
"It is just pattern repetition with fine motor tasks," she replies. "I practiced on Leo when we were younger."
"She did," he confirms mournfully. "I used to be her doll. Little Radiant pigtails. Mother has photos."
"I would pay actual money to see those," I say, grinning.
"You will not," he says, horrified.
"Anyway," Lía cuts in, a little sharper than usual. "You said the bottoms are difficult?"
"Yeah," I say. "My arms get tired, and I can't see what I'm doing, so I either under-braid and it falls out or over-braid and it knots."
"Mm." She reaches the midpoint of the braid and adjusts her hold, switching to a different angle so the strands don't twist. "If you want, I can show you a method later. For now, I will finish."
Her hands work steadily, the pull at my scalp just enough to be grounding. It's… oddly soothing, being turned into a pattern by someone else. The dampener hums quietly on my wrist; her fingers never brush my skin, always careful, always on the hair itself, like she's respecting invisible boundaries she's mapped out in her head.
"You know," Diana says from the chair, voice softer now, "most people don't get 'top student braids your hair in her off-hours' as part of their scholarship package."
"Well," Leo says, "most people aren't S-class Archive Echoes with matching brain OS."
"True," Diana concedes.
Lía finishes the first braid, tying off the end with a small, clear band she fished from some internal Lía pocket. She lets it drop gently against my back, then starts on the second section on the other side, symmetrical and clean.
"Does this hurt?" she checks.
"No," I say. "Feels… nice, actually."
She's quiet for a second. "Good," she says. "Tell me if the tension changes."
"I will," I promise.
By the time she's done, my hair is in two long, even braids, heavy against my shoulders in a way that feels… secure. Less like "wild lightning cloud," more like "person who did not just roll out of a hospital bed."
"Okay," she says. "You can look."
I stand and move to the mirror by the wardrobe. Two neat braids frame my face, the ends tied off evenly. My curls behave, for once, instead of trying to escape orbit. I look like… me, but a little more put together. Less chaos, more intention.
"Oh," I breathe. "They're… really pretty."
"Data," Lía says from behind me. "Not drama."
I turn back to her, grinning. "Thank you," I say. "Seriously. This would have taken me half an hour and three existential crises."
She looks away for a moment, a faint pink at the tips of her ears again. "It is a simple task," she says, but there's a quiet pleased note under it. "We can make it… routine. If you want. Before assemblies or big events. It will be efficient."
My heart stumbles. "I'd like that," I say. "Very much."
"Adorable," Diana mutters under her breath.
Leo claps his hands once. "All right, braids: achieved. Next step: you put on your 'I definitely did not almost blow up the hallway yesterday' face for the assembly, and we go impress a thousand people."
I roll my eyes. "I don't have that face."
"You do now," he says. "It's the one with the braids."
I laugh, the sound bright in the loft. "Fine. But if I survive this assembly without frying the sound system, I'm cashing in on that In-N-Out clause."
"Deal," Leo says immediately.
"And I," Lía adds, "will continue testing seasonal beverage protocols."
Diana stands, stretching. "God, I love this team," she says. "Let's go traumatize the auditorium—purely metaphorically," she adds, catching my look. "Data, not drama."
I smooth my Forge jacket, fingers brushing the ends of my braids one more time, grounding in the neatness, the pattern, the evidence of someone else's care woven into my hair.
"Okay," I say, taking a breath. "Let's go be… whatever we are."
"Iconic," Leo offers.
"Statistically anomalous," Lía suggests.
"Media poison and media gold at the same time," Diana decides.
I just smile, feeling the braids brush my shoulders as I move. "Together," I say.
That part, at least, we don't argue about.
Lía slips off the bed with that smooth, contained grace of hers, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle from her shirt. "I will change and pin my hair," she says. "Meet you downstairs in ten."
"Copy," Diana chirps.
Lía disappears through the connecting door, and the suite feels weirdly louder the second it closes. Leo immediately leans back on his hands and starts idly making lights.
It starts small—just a warm glow simmering in his palm, like he's cupping a tiny sun. Then it stretches into a lazy ribbon of gold, curling up around his wrist, wrapping his forearm in soft Radiant shine. It reflects off the navy accents of my loft, painting everything with little flickers.
I stare. "Do you ever… not do that?"
He glances down, realizes what he's doing, and actually looks sheepish. "Oh. Sorry. Fidget," he says. The light flickers, dims, then strengthens again as his fingers twitch. "Less bad than bouncing my knee, more bad than a stress ball. Mother's still undecided."
"It's like a living fidget cube," Diana says approvingly from the armchair. "But brighter."
She hops up in one smooth movement, sets her tablet on the coffee table, and rolls her shoulders. "Okay, speaking of fidgets…"
She vanishes.
One second: Diana standing in front of the sofa. Next: a soft pop of displaced air and she's by the kitchen island, the tray from earlier miraculously rescued from teetering near the edge.
I physically jolt. "What—"
She's gone again—pop—and now she's by the windows, leaning her hip against the glass, grinning like she didn't just rewrite my understanding of space in my own living room.
"First time seeing teleporting?" Leo asks, amused, light still curling absently around his fingers.
"Y-yeah," I manage. My heart is hammering. "My town had, like… one guy who could do small winds and a lady who made tomatoes grow faster. This is—this is a lot."
Diana wiggles her fingers and then blinks out of existence again—pop—reappearing on the loft stairs, halfway up. "Short-range temporal displacement," she says cheerfully. "Technically classified as 'Blink.' Limited mass, line-of-sight only, cooldown if I chain too many, do not ask me to go through walls, I will throw up."
Pop. She's at my side now, uncomfortably close to my personal space in the way only cousins and chaos gremlins dare to be. "Great for dodging," she adds. "Terrible for sneaking snacks if someone is actively watching the pantry. Ask me how I know."
My brain is pinging hard—every appearance, every disappearance leaving a kind of conceptual afterimage in my head. Like my Archive is trying to catalog it even through the dampener, taste it, slot it next to "electricity arcs," "telekinesis," "telepathy," the little list that's already started to form whether I wanted it to or not.
"Does it—" I swallow. "Does it hurt?"
"Only if I overdo it," she says. "Think of it like… holding your breath and jumping sideways through a crack in reality. Do it once, fun. Do it twelve times in a row, your inner ear writes a complaint."
"That's a terrible explanation," Leo says. He flicks his fingers and a little orb of light detaches from his hand, drifting up toward the ceiling like a lazy firefly. Another follows, then another, until there's a whole slow constellation pulsing overhead. "It's like clipping through the map in a game. But, like, legally."
"That's worse," I say.
I can't look away from the lights and the blinking. Part of me wants to reach out and grab one; another part wants to slap my own hands away.
Diana eyes me sideways. "Archive brain's humming, huh?"
I grimace. "Yes? No? Maybe? Good news, the dampener makes it feel like a podcast in the other room instead of someone screaming in my ear."
"Okay, we are absolutely not turning my Blink into a background ringtone," she says. "You can Echo it later, in a padded room, with supervision."
"And barf bags," Leo adds.
"Rude but accurate," she admits.
She pops back to the armchair—pop—sits down properly this time, then limits herself to bouncing one leg instead of space. Leo, now that he has an audience, turns the light show up a notch. The orbs overhead spiral lazily, then flatten into a shimmering sheet, then collapse back into his palm.
"See, this is why I'm mad about the super suits," he says. "You cannot tell me this wouldn't look cool woven into a coat."
"Very disco ball," I say faintly. "In a good way."
"That's the Radiant brand," he says. He flicks one last spark into the air; it fades, leaving little afterimages on my retinas. "Light, spectacle, and poor impulse control."
"You forgot 'protective instincts,'" Diana says.
"That's implied," he replies.
My comm band vibrates on my wrist, the haptic buzz cutting through the moment. A soft chime pings from Leo's and Diana's too.
ASSEMBLY REMINDER: 20 MINUTES. ATTENDANCE MANDATORY.
"Welp," Diana says, levering herself up again without teleport this time. "Showtime. No more space-hopping; I promised Mom I wouldn't throw your vestibular system off right before you have to walk in a straight line."
"Appreciated," I say fervently, still a little dazzled.
Footsteps sound on the other side of the connecting door. A second later, it slides open and Lía steps in, now fully in House mode—Forge jacket on, hair pinned up in that precise twist I'm already recognizing, expression back to calm, public-facing neutral. Her eyes skim the fading traces of light in the air, then me, then Diana sitting very pointedly on the ground and not several feet to the left where she just was.
"You were teleporting inside the suite again," Lía says.
"Only a little," Diana protests. "And no one threw up."
Lía sighs, but there's the faintest hint of amusement tugging at her mouth. "As long as Sol is not dizzy," she says. Then, to me: "Are you?"
"No," I say. "Just… wow."
"Wow is acceptable," she says. Her gaze flicks briefly to my braids, neat and even, and something soft passes over her face before she looks away. "We should go. Better to arrive early than to walk in during the President's speech."
"Translation," Leo stage-whispers, "she wants a good vantage point in case anyone misbehaves so she can judge them."
"I want to sit near an aisle in case Sol needs to leave quickly," Lía corrects. "Noise and crowds can be overwhelming."
My throat tightens again. "Thank you," I say quietly. "For… thinking of that."
She just nods, like it's obvious. "Diana will sit on your other side. Radiant can hover nearby and look threatening."
"I excel at hovering and looking threatening," Leo says. He snaps his fingers; the last of the ambient light winks out. "C'mon, Archive. Time to go impress a thousand of your new closest strangers by… sitting quietly and listening."
"Oh good," I say dryly. "My favorite."
Diana snorts, then moves to my side, giving me a quick once-over—jacket straight, braids tidy, comm band synced. "Team," she says, satisfied. "We've got hair, we've got dampener, we've got snacks lined up for after. Let's go survive an assembly."
We file out together—Lía in front, already in efficient-navigation mode; me just behind her, acutely aware of the weight of my braids and the hum of the dampener; Leo at my back, light and warmth close enough to feel; Diana to my side, fingers twitching like she's resisting the urge to Blink us all there in one chaotic move.
First teleport witnessed. First light show overhead. First assembly as an S-class Archive with a tiny, ridiculous found family bracketing me like parentheses.
I take a breath and step into the hallway. "Okay," I murmur. "Let's go be statistically anomalous."
"Data," Lía says.
"Drama," Leo adds.
"Both," Diana decides.
And the four of us head for the auditorium.
I stare at the doors for a second, the swell of voices on the other side starting to buzz against my skin. The dampener helps, but it doesn't erase the part of my brain that's already running through worst-case scenarios in surround sound.
Before I can overthink it, I act. I step half a pace closer to Lía and hold my hand out toward her, palm up between us.
She blinks, thrown off-script for once. "Yes?"
My face is already heating, but I commit. "Thoughts on pressure-related contact," I say, "to avoid potential overstimulation and provide tactical comfort?"
All three of them blink this time.
Diana's mouth drops open, delighted. "You just… asked to hold hands in PowerPoint," she says. "I love you."
Leo chokes on a laugh. "That was the most Forge-brained way to ask for a hand I've ever heard."
I start to yank my hand back, mortified. "I can phrase it normal, I just—"
Lía's fingers close gently around mine before I can retreat. "Pressure-related contact is acceptable," she says, voice very even. "As long as you tell me if the input becomes too much."
The world narrows for a second to the feel of her hand: cool, steady, firm enough to be grounding but not trapping. No sudden squeeze, no surprise tug—just a constant, measured weight. My shoulders drop about an inch.
"Okay," I breathe. "Yeah. This is… good data."
Her thumb brushes once against the back of my hand, an almost absent-minded gesture, like she's confirming the sensory feedback loop. "Deep pressure can counteract sensory overload," she says, slipping into lecture cadence to hide the softness. "It gives the nervous system a point of focus. If you need to drop contact, squeeze twice."
"I—okay," I say. "Same goes for you. If my hand gets annoying, two squeezes and I'll retreat."
Her mouth twitches. "Noted."
Behind us, Leo is making a face like he's watching his favorite show. "I feel so betrayed," he stage-whispers to Diana. "She never offered me 'tactical comfort hand-holding' before duels."
"You get hard-light cages," Diana whispers back. "This is clearly a different package."
"We can trial sibling pressure contact later," Lía says without looking back. "Right now, Sol is the priority."
My brain does a little blue-screen at Sol is the priority, but the part of me that wanted exactly this—anchoring, predictable contact, a literal point to focus on—just hums in relief.
Diana falls in step on my other side, bumping her shoulder lightly against mine. "For the record," she says, "that phrasing? Ten out of ten. 'Pressure-related contact to avoid potential overstimulation' is going on a T-shirt."
"Please don't," I groan.
"Too late," Leo says. "I already heard her designing it."
We join the line filtering into the auditorium. The noise gets louder, the lights brighter—but my hand is held, my exits are mapped, and every time my anxiety spikes, I feel Lía's fingers wrap just a fraction more securely around mine, like she's quietly adjusting the pressure in real time.
"Data?" she murmurs as we step through the doors.
"Definitely data," I say. "Minimal drama."
"Give it time," Diana says. "The assembly hasn't started yet."
Leo snorts, but he edges just a little closer to our flank, like he's expanding the invisible bubble around us. We move down the aisle—S-plus twins, S-plus Archive, one Blink gremlin—and for the first time, the idea of walking into a packed room full of staring people doesn't make my skin want to crawl off my bones.
Tactical comfort: achieved.
The assembly is… a lot.
The lights dim, the school crest blooms across the screen, and a woman in a navy suit with Forge-blue accents takes the stage—President something, I forget the exact name halfway through her opening "welcome to a new year at Aeternum" speech. It's all standard school stuff, just… scaled up. Enrollment stats, campus upgrades, "we are honored to welcome promising young supers from around the world."
There's a part about "updated Echo safety protocols" that makes the back of my neck prickle. The wording is very careful: no blame, just "continuous improvement" and "the unique challenges of emerging Echo-Blooded students." I feel a couple of sideways glances slide over me like static; my hand tightens around Lía's under the armrest.
She doesn't pull away. Doesn't squeeze, either—just holds steady, letting me ride the little jolt out.
Then it's her turn.
A roar of applause goes up when they call her name: "House Forge's top student, S-class Radiant, Lía Aranda." She stands, smooth and composed, gently extracting her hand from mine with a quick, reassuring brush of her thumb.
"I will be back," she whispers, then heads down the aisle.
Her speech is peak Forge: precise, efficient, somehow inspiring without a single wasted word. She talks about responsibility, about data and growth and how being powerful doesn't make you special, what you do with it does. She thanks the staff, nods to the support programs, somehow manages to mention "mental health and accessibility" in a way that doesn't sound like brochure filler.
When she says "we will adjust systems to our students, not force our students to break themselves to fit the system," my throat gets tight. Diana glances at me sideways, like she's checking whether I caught it.
I did.
Applause. A few more speakers. House heads, a safety officer, some guy from Facilities talking about fire drills.
By the time it ends, my brain feels like someone put it in a blender on low speed.
"Okay," Diana murmurs as the lights come back up. "Mission 'Sit Through Assembly Without Spontaneous Combustion': success."
"Debatable," I mumble, but I am, in fact, not on fire.
We stand with the herd, shuffling out of the row. As soon as we hit the aisle, Lía reappears beside me like she was summoned, sliding naturally back into position at my left.
"Hero Foundations next," she says. "We can walk you there."
Something unclenches in my chest; I didn't even realize I'd been bracing for "welp, see you later, good luck." I nod, a little dizzy with relief. We get swept along with the stream of students toward the doors. Once we're in the relative open of the hallway, the crowd thins enough that our little cluster reforms. Diana peels off slightly to check something on her tablet. Leo stretches, arms over his head, then drops back into step with us, eyes flicking between my face and Lía's.
There's a tiny pause, like the universe is waiting to see who talks first.
Lía breaks it. "Your first class is in the East Wing," she says. "Radiant and Forge share that block for fundamentals. I can walk you there." She hesitates just a fraction, then adds, "If you want."
She holds her hand out again between us—calm, matter-of-fact, like we've already established this protocol. My heart does a stupid little flip. I'm already moving to take it when Leo steps in.
"Or I could," he says quickly.
He moves around Diana, into my other side, and—for the first time—holds his hand out to me too. Same angle, palm up, like he's trying to mirror what worked before.
I don't think. My whole body just… jerks. I flinch back hard, like someone swung a fist instead of offering fingers. My free hand snaps to my chest; my spine hits air.
It's not him, it's not personal, it's just: hands. other people's hands. skin. germs. control. One giant neon sign in my brain going NOPE NOPE NOPE.
A couple of nearby students glance over. One of them actually stops mid-sentence. I hear my own breathing spike, too loud in my ears. Leo's face does a full crash from hopeful to horrified in about half a second.
"Oh—shit, I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"
"No, no, I'm sorry," I blurt, words tripping over themselves. "I'm sorry, that was—oh my God, I didn't mean to—"
I realize at the same time that I've hopped half a step closer to Lía, my fingers clamped around her hand in a death grip. She's solid at my side, arm a warm line against mine, not flinching, not moving.
Diana's eyes flick down. Hand in hand on one side, recoil on the other. Her eyebrows go up just slightly as the pattern registers.
Leo sees it too. "But—" he starts, then cuts himself off, cheeks going pink. "I didn't— I wasn't trying to—"
I shake my head hard, trying to untangle my tongue from my panic. "I have this—" I wave my free hand uselessly. "This OCD thing with hands. Contamination stuff. Skin contact is… really hard. Especially fingers. Especially if I'm not expecting it." I wince, feeling uselessly exposed. "You didn't do anything wrong. My brain just decided to freak out."
There's a beat where I'm braced for weird looks or jokes or annoyance.
None of that happens.
Leo's expression shifts from hurt to oh so fast it almost hurts to watch. "Oh," he says, quietly. "Okay. That's… that's on the list now. No surprise hand contact. Got it." He tucks his offered hand awkwardly back into his pocket. "Sorry I… jumped in."
"You're fine," I insist, heat climbing my neck. "Really. I just—should have said something earlier."
"It's useful data," Lía says, and she's not even pretending to tease. Her voice has gone into that calm, clinical register she used when we talked about allergies. "Location-specific. Fingers are more triggering than… say, shoulder pressure?"
"Yeah," I say, grateful for the frame. "Arm is usually okay. Shoulder's okay. Hands are… complicated."
Diana nods slowly, tapping something into her tablet one-handed. "'Hand contact: high contamination risk, request verbal check-in before initiating,'" she murmurs. "We'll bake it into the protocols."
Then she glances meaningfully at our joined hands.
"But Lía is okay?" Leo asks, a little helpless.
I follow his gaze down. Our fingers are fully intertwined, knuckles pale where I'm squeezing too tight. There's probably a faint imprint on her skin where my nails press. She hasn't complained. I didn't even notice grabbing her that way until now. My brain kind of… stutters.
"Oh," I say. "Huh."
"Pain?" Lía asks mildly, looking down as if she's evaluating a lab sample. "Overload?"
I shake my head, slow. "No. It's… fine. I didn't even—" I swallow. "I didn't log this as 'hand contact.' I logged it as 'grounding device.'"
Diana's grin goes sharp and soft all at once. "Oh, that's interesting."
"I dunno," I say honestly, staring at our joined hands like they might give me the answer. "This data is unprecedented."
Lía's mouth twitches at the edge. "We can treat it as an outlier," she says. "Monitor it. See if the effect persists."
"That's one way to say 'you get a special exception,'" Diana mutters.
Lía ignores her. "For now," she says, looking at me, "if this contact feels safe, we will keep it. If at any point it does not, you squeeze twice and we stop. Yes?"
"Yes," I say. My voice comes out smaller than I want, but steady.
Leo exhales, shoulders finally losing some of that tight set. "Okay," he says. "Good. Cool. No hands for me unless verbally scheduled. I can live with that. I've got… elbows. And light shows."
I let out a strangled little laugh. "Light shows are very low-contamination," I agree.
"Perfect," Diana says. "We've successfully navigated our first accidental boundary violation with minimal drama and maximal data. Ten out of ten, would debrief again."
"Please don't," I groan.
She beams. "Too late, I've already started a section in the Team Doc labeled 'Hand Stuff.'"
"Don't call it that," Leo and I say at the same time, horrified.
Lía's shoulders shake once—just once—in what might be the tiniest laugh.
We start walking again, the crowd flowing around us. My hand stays in hers, grip slowly loosening from "panic clamp" to "okay, this is just how we're moving now." My OCD is still there, humming at the edges, muttering about germs and skin and risk. But somehow, for reasons my brain hasn't caught up to yet, it files this contact in a different folder.
Same anxiety. Same contamination rules. One quiet, impossible exception.
Unprecedented data, like I said.
We're almost to the Hero Foundations hallway when the traffic thins out enough that we're not shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers. The noise drops from "beehive" to "busy café," and my nervous system finally stops screaming quite so loudly.
That's when Lía slows. She doesn't stop walking completely—just eases our pace until we're a few steps behind the main flow. Then she lifts our joined hands up between us, like she's inspecting a particularly interesting lab sample. Her fingers turn mine slightly, studying the point of contact with the same focus she gave my braids earlier.
"I understand your confusion about the data anomaly," she says.
I blink. "My… what?"
"Our hands," she clarifies, very matter-of-fact. "Your OCD, your contamination triggers, your reaction to Radiant's attempt." Her gaze flicks briefly past me toward Leo, then returns to our fingers. "And yet… this."
My face starts heating again. "Yeah. That. I don't— it doesn't make sense. I should be freaking out more."
Her mouth does that tiny almost-smile, gone as soon as it appears. "For the record," she says quietly, "I am also confused."
I stare. "You are?"
She nods once. "I have never been one for contact my entire life. Hugging relatives, crowded transit, even casual shoulder taps—I tolerate them, but I do not seek them out. Mother jokes that my 'personal space radius' is classified information."
Behind us, Leo snorts softly. "It is," he mutters.
"I prefer clear boundaries," she continues, ignoring him. "Predictable proximity. Minimal unexpected touch." Her thumb brushes lightly over the back of my hand, as if to demonstrate. "This is… unprecedented."
The word lands with a weird little echo—same one I used, mirrored back at me with her usual precision.
"You don't… hate it?" I ask, trying not to sound as small as I feel.
She holds my gaze, dark eyes steady. "I do not hate it," she says. "If I did, you would know. I would have withdrawn."
I think back—every moment since the hospital, every time our hands found each other. She could have pulled away any time. Instead, she kept adjusting—pressure, angle, duration—like she was tuning an instrument.
"So we're both just… letting an exception exist," I say. "Against all known rules."
"Yes," she says simply. "For now. We will continue to monitor the anomaly. If it begins to cause distress for either of us, we will revise the protocol."
"Of course you turned this into a joint research project," Diana murmurs, delighted. "Physical contact, but make it peer-reviewed."
"Data or drama?" Leo asks quietly.
"Data," Lía says.
"Definitely data," I echo.
"Minimal drama," Diana adds. "Just enough for character development."
I roll my eyes, but my chest feels… weirdly light. Like some part of me that's always been braced for a slap on the wrist—too sensitive, too picky, too much—has just watched someone take my weirdest rule and go, cool, we'll work with it.
Up ahead, I can see the doorway marked HERO FOUNDATIONS – EAST WING, ROOM 2.14. Students are still trickling in, chatting, jostling. Normal school energy, just with a higher chance of someone accidentally lighting their backpack on fire.
We start walking again. Just before we reach the door, Lía lowers our hands, but doesn't let go. She tilts her head, studying me one last time.
"For clarity," she says softly, "you do not owe anyone contact. Not me. Not Leo. Not Diana. This anomaly is… a privilege, not an expectation."
My throat tightens. "Same goes for you," I manage. "If you ever decide it's too much, you don't have to… keep humoring me."
"I am not humoring you," she says, like the idea itself is wrong data. "I am… choosing this."
Something in my chest does a full system reboot.
Behind us, Leo mutters, "Yeah, okay, ND telepathy has got to be a thing," and Diana makes a quiet, satisfied little "mm-hmm" noise that sounds suspiciously like she's just watched her favorite ship go canon in episode one.
I pretend not to hear either of them. Instead, I squeeze Lía's hand once, lighter this time, more question than panic.
"Ready?" she asks.
"No," I say honestly. "But also yes."
"Acceptable superposition," she says.
We step through the door to Hero Foundations together—me, an Archive S-plus with unprecedented hand data; her, a Spectrum S-plus who just broke a lifetime of no-contact habits; Leo and Diana at our backs, already bickering quietly about who gets the desk closest to the window.
Unprecedented or not, the numbers feel… good.
We both turn at the same time, staring at the bickering cousins like we've just discovered a new species. Leo's half-bent over, Diana has him in a headlock, and they're muttering:
"I get window, I run hot—"
"Yeah and I Blink, I need visual lines—"
Lía and I share a look.
"Uh, you're a third-year," I point out to Leo.
"And you a fourth-year," Lía adds, jabbing a finger at Diana. "Why are you debating over seats?" we say in unison.
They both freeze.
Leo blinks, still in the headlock. "Oh. Yeah."
Diana slowly releases him, eyes going wide. "Oh fuck," she says, glancing around the Hero Foundations doorframe like it just materialized. "I'm not even in this wing. I'm House Veil. I have, like, zero business being here unless I'm kidnapping you."
"Not during class hours," Lía says primly.
Diana digs her tablet out, flicking through her schedule. "Right. I have Advanced Field Logistics & Extraction IV in the Veil tower in—" she squints "—nine minutes. Then Blink Precision & Spatial Anchoring IV. And this afternoon is Covert Operations & Narrative Management IV with the PR gremlins."
"That sounds terrifying," I say.
"It is," she says proudly. "We weaponize teleport and media literacy. Anyway, I just came to see you to your first class." She boops my comm band. "I'll swing back after High-Risk Evac Practicum IV to walk you to lunch."
"You're naming your classes like boss fights," I mutter.
"Because they are," she calls over her shoulder as she jogs off. "Don't let Foundations fry your brain!"
Leo flops into the nearest empty desk like he does go here. I squint at him. "Don't you have your own class?"
He waves his comm band. "Relax, Hero Foundations shares the block with upper-year Radiant in this wing. I've got Radiant Applications III: Area Control & Crowd Safety across the hall in like ten. Then Thermal Output Management III and Team Tactics Lab III – Radiant/Forge Sync this afternoon."
"That last one is where he sets things on fire and I put them out," Lía says dryly.
"The fires are educational," he protests.
I look at her. "And you?"
"Third-year Forge track," she says. "Battlefield Architecture III: Hard-Light Constructs. Strategic Systems Design III. And the same Team Tactics Lab III with him. Plus Radiant Spectrum Analysis III as an elective." She hesitates, then adds, "And this year, Leadership & Mentorship Practicum III… for you."
My ears go hot. "That's—wow. No pressure."
"Lots of pressure," Leo says.
"Carefully calibrated pressure," Lía corrects.
The room starts to fill with first-years, bags dropping, chairs scraping. Lía gives my hand one last squeeze, then gently disentangles her fingers.
"I will go to my class," she says. "We are three doors down. If you need to leave, text Diana or me. We will retrieve you."
"Roger that," I say. "Have fun in… setting-things-on-fire lab."
"Area Control & Crowd Safety," she corrects, but there's amusement in her eyes.
She and Leo start backing toward the door.
"Don't stress," Leo says. "Survive Hero Foundations, and later we'll compare notes: Radiant III, Forge III, and Veil IV horror stories."
"And we will design better ones," Lía adds.
They slip out into the hallway, leaving me with a textbook, a notebook, and the echo of their schedules bouncing around in my head. Third-year Forge. Third-year Radiant. Fourth-year Veil. Advanced labs and boss-fight classes and whole towers I haven't even seen yet.
I glance at my own schedule on the band:
Hero Foundations I.
One step at a time, I guess.