I wake up breathing heavily. I’m surprised to find a veritable blanket of Death energy draped over my torso and immediately dispel it. This is the kind of thing that I need to be wary of, I think to myself. Nobody with a middling 30% Death affinity would be able to condense energy like this.

As soon as the energy mantle is gone, a slight gnawing sensation returns to my stomach. It’s been like this ever since I stopped constantly using decemancy. Back in Menocht, I used it freely, not worrying if others noticed. Now I don’t have that luxury if I want to keep myself hidden.

If I had to describe the sensation, I’d say it’s like withdrawal, as though I’ve grown dependent on having Death energy around me. Still, it’s nothing I can’t handle: I’d rather face a bit of discomfort than return to Menocht.

After a period of breathing slowly in and out, I lean over and check the time: 9:34 am. I rub my eyes and turn in on my side, curling into the fetal position.

I’m not on a boat, I tell myself. Not on a boat, not in the middle of the ocean, not in a dilation loop.

“What the hell happened to you?” Xander asks. I sit up and look over my shoulder.

“What?”

He looks at me with concern. “You kept talking in your sleep,” he says. “You’ve never done that before,” he adds quietly.

I laugh dismissively. “I have a lot on my mind with exams and everything.”

He narrows his eyes. “Ian.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I couldn’t sleep for hours because you were saying the word ’why’. Repeatedly.” Then he starts to show me what it sounded like. “Why why why...why why!?”

“Stop, please, Xander, that’s enough. I’m sorry you couldn’t sleep.”

“What happened to you? You’re suddenly so...different.”

I suppose it was going to come out sooner or later. “I had a...death-defying experience, the details of which I’m not going to share.”

“...Oh.”

I give him a small smile. “Hence the nightmares...”

“...Right.”

I better tell him about the affinity bump, though. That’s the kind of thing I don’t want him finding out later from someone else.

“Also...the experience raised my Death affinity.”

He recoils slightly. “To what?”

99%, Xander. Worried? “29.91%.”

“Well...congratulations, right? Any affinity is better than no affinity.” He hops off his bed and walks over to me, pulling me into a side-hug. As I’m half-under the bedsheets, the gesture is awkward at best. “You’re going to start taking classes in the Arts?”

“Yeah...the Dean actually just placed me into Death Affinity I, if you can believe it.”

“This late in the semester?”

“Right? That’s what I said. Apparently the Arts classes function more like independent studies than anything else, so he said it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Xander steps away and we stare at each other for an uncomfortable moment. I can tell he wants to ask something...

“What’s it like?” he asks.

“What’s what like?”

He rolls his eyes. “Does anything feel different now that you have an affinity above 20%?” I can tell that he’s genuinely curious.

“I don’t know...it’s hard to explain. Not really.” I grin. “Though I’ll try to find a way to let you see the way I see now, just you wait.” Cue the soulstone eyes.

Xander freezes. “Wait! You just said there’s no real change, so what d’you mean you’re gonna find a way to make me see differently?”

“I can kind of see the vitality of people and objects,” I explain. “You and I, we’re both alive, so we’re white. It looks like we’re glowing a little bit. Everything else in this room is dead, and appears in various shades of gray. Except for the stuff glowing black.”

He looks spooked. “What glows black?”

I laugh at his expression. “The flowers in the trash.”

He laughs along with me. “Understood. Well, let me know if it’s possible to let me, um, see too.”

“Hey Xander,” I begin. “Did I say anything else besides ’why’?”

“You said ’Mother’ once.”

Of course I did.

“Thanks for checking in on me.”

He beams. “Of course. You’d do the same for me.”

I pause as I let his words sink in. No, I think, I really wouldn’t. Not before the loop, and not now.

—

I go to my reg classes and desperately try to pay attention. Because they’re all higher-level classes, though, the subject matter is technical and difficult to follow without adequate background.

How long was I stuck in the time loop? I ask myself. I can still generally remember people’s names, and still remember how to navigate the school...but remembering how to make a distributed glossY algorithm feels akin to waging a one-man war on Menocht Bay with a 90% infection level. Even looking at my past notes and going through old code doesn’t help.

Mondays, I have two glossprog classes; only the first deals with algorithms. The second deals with networks, but goes about as well as the first.

As I sit down to lunch in the Regular College dining hall and think about how I’m going to keep myself from failing out of my classes, a few familiar faces sit down around me.

“Ugh, I need to do so well on the next algo exam.”

“Baxter’s a terrible lecturer, but the TAs are decent.”

My eyes snap up. Right, there are TAs. “When are the TAs meeting this week?”

My five classmates give me amused looks. “The same time as every week,” one of them says. Jaime, I think.

Laura laughs. “It’s every Tuesday and Thursday from 7 to 9,” she says. “Why, you need help?”

“I should probably make sure I understand everything with the exams coming up,” I retort.

“Hoo,” a few people intone.

I give them dirty looks. “Why, do none of you use the TAs?”

Laura rolls her eyes. “We’re messing with you ’cause you’re the only one who doesn’t use them.”

Oh, right. I vaguely remember this being true, though I’m pretty sure the only reason I originally avoided the TAs was because of social anxiety.

“What do you need on this final, anyway? I thought you were doing fine.”

While I wasn’t very productive last night, I did do some final grade calculations. To get an 80% flat in the class, I need to get a 40% on the final. The problem is that I actually don’t think I can do that. Of course, nobody’s going to take me seriously if I say that I’m aiming for a 40% on the exam. To get a 90% in the class, however, I need to get a 73%. That’s a more believable target.

“I need a 73% to get an A,” I reply. Groans erupt around me. “But I haven’t reviewed the material in weeks, and I don’t remember a lot of it from the beginning of the year.”

We all finish our meals and get up. Before I leave the dining hall, however, Laura comes up to me.

“You feeling okay?” she asks.

This again? “Why?”

She bites her lip. “You just seem kind of out of it...and you haven’t been answering your texts.”

How does she...? Oh. I vaguely remember her sending me a message to meet up, but I didn’t respond. I’m no longer used to having a glossY around after going without one for so long.

“Thanks for asking,” I say. “I’m actually fine. Just got a lot on my mind.”

“Well...I’d still like to meet up sometime. Maybe see a movie?”

The way she’s looking at me...is she asking me out? I think of the winter formal. It’s just in four days, right? I cock my head.

“Laura,” I begin. “Are you going with anyone to the winter formal?”

Her expression lights up. “No; are you?”

My heart thumps as I smile back. “Want to go together?”

“Sure.”

What do I do now? After a short pause, I say, “Well, it was nice talking with you.” Y’jeni, I’m so awkward.

“See you around. And don’t ignore my texts!”

“Right.”

She’s gone, and I’m left standing by the card swipe.

“Smooth,” Octavia says, cocking an eyebrow.

I turn around. “How are you, Octavia?”

She cackles. “I’m fine, hon. That the first time you’ve ever asked a girl to a dance?”

“I asked a girl once back in high school, but we were friends.” And if I recall correctly, I’d only done it after Germaine–my older sister–took my glossY and asked her out for me.

“Well good on you,” she says.

“Have a nice day, Octavia.”

—

The rest of the day passes quickly. I spend most of my time going over old notes, lecture slides, and problem sets. Things are starting to come back when I go from the beginning and work my way toward newer material, which is a relief. It also probably helps that I’m well-rested.

Eventually, the time comes for Death Affinity I. The meeting space for the class is, unfortunately and unsurprisingly, located on the Arts campus around fifteen minutes away. I don snow boots, a jacket (a real, waterproof one), a hat, and gloves before setting off.

Except for the moon and the occasional street light, it’s pitch black outside. It’s a change from Menocht and the ocean...I’m used to seeing the white flits that signal the movements of insects and small mammals, but here, in the heart of winter, I see very little vitality at all.

I arrive at the classroom building five minutes early, only to find it locked. I knock on the door.

“Hello?” I call out.

“One moment,” a female voice responds. I step back just as the door swings inward. “Come inside, Ignatius.”

The woman is dressed in a robe identical to my own with the exception of its color: pure black. It reminds me of the black clothes I wore in the time loop. Is she trying to live up to a stereotype?

I go inside and take off my jacket. She looks somewhat disapprovingly at my shoes–not dress shoes, I know–but doesn’t say anything.

“So,” she says after clearing her throat. “I’ve been informed that you recently had a near-death experience that increased your Death affinity.”

“Yeah. And I prefer to go by Ian, by the way.”

“Well, Ian, the nature of the experience often affects the way your affinity will manifest itself. For instance, a person who is almost crushed to death–“

I hold out a hand. “My experience is private,” I say, “but I’m sure it won’t matter that much. My affinity is only 29.91%.”

She shakes her head. “That’s just your base affinity. You know the saying, you have to have money to make money? It’s the same with affinity. The more you have to start with, the better, but in the end, affinity is like a muscle.”

I smile knowingly. “The more I practice, the greater my affinity will become?”

She smiles at me. “Exactly. And the more powerful your Art, as a result.”

Just then, another knock comes at the door. As Durning turns to get the door, I take a moment to inspect my surroundings. The room is small, with oddly high ceilings and gray stone walls. I peer into the room beyond an open archway, noting that the large Shibarian carpet is hiding all sorts of odd stains in its whorling patterns.

When Professor Durning comes back, she’s followed by four other students. Did they all come together? Their dress loafers are covered in a dusting of snow, suggesting that they walked maybe fifty feet out in the open to get here. That’s a fairly long distance considering that most people never need to go outside to enter their classes on the Arts campus.

They all seem surprised to see me, and give Durning questioning looks.

“Class, this is our newest addition, Ian Dunai.”

They continue to give me blank stares.

What? I want to ask them, feeling conspicuous. They shouldn’t see anything suspicious.

“Hello,” I say. “Nice to meet all of you.”

“Do you really have Death affinity?” a guy with red hair asks.

I smile pleasantly, suppressing the urge to roll my eyes. “Why else would I be here?”

Professor Durning chooses this time to step in. “Ian only recently had an experience that caused his affinity to increase,” she explains. “He hasn’t had any formal training yet.”

Hercates’ grimoire described a basic circulating exercise that had only taken me a few hours to master in the loop. I reckon it’s believable that I looked up a decemancy manual on the distributed network and started practicing.

“I’ve been experimenting a bit on my own,” I interject. I circulate a small bit of the ambient energy in the room, distilling it onto my palm. Accompanying the energy is a sensation of profound release, as though I’ve received a glass of water after trekking through a bone-dry desert. I hadn’t realized the gnawing sensation in my stomach had grown so severe.

Redhead snorts. “So you are a practitioner, then.”

Why else would I be here?

“Oh, good, you do have an understanding of the basics,” Durning says. “That’ll make things easier. Does anyone want to work with Ian today?”

“On what?” the brunette asks, her demeanor relaxed.

“Whatever you think he should learn for a first lesson in the Art.”

She shrugs. “Fine.” She looks at me and smiles.

“Everyone else should know what they’re working on,” the professor says. “I’ll be walking around to check on your progress.”