Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?

November, 478 IC, Odin

“Hey, Reuenthal, let me in,” Yang said, knocking on Reuenthal’s dorm door in the senior residence hall. Mittermeyer leaned against the wall a few steps away, watching this with an amused expression.

“He’s in a mood,” Mittermeyer said, quietly enough that Reuenthal on the other side of the door wouldn’t be able to hear.

“Reuenthal!” Yang said again, and knocked harder. “I know you’re in there.”

“Can a man not nap in peace?” Reuenthal called from inside his room.

“You don’t take naps. Open the door.”

“I have no desire to see or be seen by anyone at this hour.”

“It’s six,” Yang said. “Come on, don’t ruin your night with moping.”

“I’m not ‘moping’.”

“I’m not sure what you’d call this, then,” Yang said. “Come on.”

Mittermeyer rolled his eyes. “Reuenthal, open the door.”

There was silence from the other side. Mittermeyer smiled, then fished around in his pocket for a second, delicately balancing the package he was carrying. He pulled out his keychain, fiddled around with it until he found the key that he was looking for, then stuck it in Reuenthal’s door, unlocking it.

“Why do you even have that?” Yang whispered before Mittermeyer pushed the door open. Mittermeyer just grinned at him.

They entered Reuenthal’s room. “Happy birthday!” Yang said. “How does it feel to be twenty?”

Reuenthal was sitting on his bed, in his white dress shirt and cadet pants, with a book open on his lap and a tumbler of some amber beverage on his windowsill. He looked at his friends as they came in with an expression that approached but did not quite make it to annoyance.

“I don’t celebrate,” Reuenthal said.

“We do,” Mittermeyer said. “We brought you some things, and then we’re going to take you out to have some fun.”

“Fun.” Reuenthal didn’t sound thrilled, but the lack of serious objections on his part seemed like as much of an admission that he was glad to see his friends as Yang and Mittermeyer were about to get.

Yang handed Reuenthal the long, skinny package that he was carrying. Reuenthal held it on his lap for a second, then swung his legs around to perch on his bed rather than lay across it. “You really should not have gotten me anything.”

“I make some money now for TA’ing for Staden, and it’s not like I have anything better to spend it on,” Yang said. “Open it.”

“I’m certain you could spend it on something other than me,” Reuenthal said, but he opened the package anyway, peeling apart the taped cardboard to reveal a rapier in a scabbard. Reuenthal picked it up and turned it over in his hands a couple times.

“Just in case you ever get in a duel,” Yang said, scratching the back of his head. “You’ll just have to ask for swords rather than pistols.”

“Do you expect me to get into a duel?” Reuenthal asked. He unsheathed the sword and tested the blade against his thumb.

“Better to be prepared than not. And even if you don’t, you can hang it on your wall or something.”

Reuenthal held the sword out, the tip of it ending up underneath Yang’s chin. He flushed a little at the action, but didn’t step back. “Thanks,” Reuenthal said, tapped the underside of Yang’s chin with the sword gently, then returned it to its sheath. Yang rubbed his chin, just to make sure that he hadn’t actually been cut, but he was fine.

“My gift is less lethal to others, but probably more lethal to yourself,” Mittermeyer said. He passed Reuenthal what was very clearly a bottle wrapped in paper.

Reuenthal smiled at him. “Probably more useful on a day to day basis,” he said as he unwrapped Mittermeyer’s whiskey bottle. “Good stuff. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Did you want to open this now?” Reuenthal asked.

“I would be a pretty poor gift-giver if I demanded to immediately drink away my gift,” Mittermeyer said. “Let’s go out. My treat.”

“You’re really testing me with this,” Reuenthal said.

“If it being your birthday really bothers you that much, pretend like we’re going out like it was any other day,” Mittermeyer said.

Reuenthal stood and stretched. “How did you find out it was my birthday, anyway?”

“I have access to student records as Staden’s TA,” Yang said. “Can’t keep a secret like that from me now.”

“That seems like a security oversight,” Reuenthal said. He tugged on his uniform jacket.

“Perhaps,” Yang said. “But what would I actually do with that information?”

“Send birthday cards to the entire freshman class,” Mittermeyer said. “You ready to go?”

“Where are we headed?” Reuenthal asked.

“Joseph’s,” Mittermeyer said, naming a bar off campus that was often frequented by IOA students.

They walked out of the dorm and were immediately hit with the whipping cold winter wind. The sun had set over an hour ago, and light flakes of snow were drifting down. All three of them pulled their uniform jackets up over their mouths and noses and their black winter beanies down over their ears, hands jammed deep into their pockets for the walk. Mittermeyer jogged backwards ahead of Yang and Reuenthal, often half-falling off the sidewalk into the street as he didn’t look where he was going, his rosy cheeks glowing whenever he stepped into the hard glare of a streetlight.

Joseph’s itself was a kind of dark and dingy place, almost always full to bursting with students on weekends (though today was a Thursday), decorated with the kind of kitschy memorabilia that could be found in any bar across the Empire: animal head trophies, old photographs, fake looking swords, and the like. The trio slid into a booth in the back, with Reuenthal and Mittermeyer next to each other. Yang sat across from them and used the extra space to his advantage, sitting sideways, leaning against the wall with his feet up on the cushioned bench.

The waitress, an older woman in a dress that could best be described as “workmanlike”, came up to them. “What can I get for you boys?”

Mittermeyer leaned forward, elbow on the table, and grinned. “Fraulein, we’re here to celebrate this man’s birthday.” He shoved Reuenthal’s shoulder. Reuenthal put on a grim smile for the waitress, then ordered a round of beers.

“And can I have a plate of fries?” Yang asked.

“Of course.” The waitress vanished, then returned a minute later with the first round of drinks and fries, which Yang pushed to the center of the table for them all to share.

They talked for a long time about just mundane things, mostly Mittermeyer trying to egg Yang into complaining about how bad it was to grade SW postmortems.

“They’re not that bad,” Yang said. “They’re freshmen. They’ll improve, I’m sure.”

“No, they won’t,” Reuenthal said.

“You don’t have to be mean. Besides, most of what I grade is the engineering group. They don’t need to have that much SW practice.”

“What he’s saying is that you dodged a bullet by being put in our SW class,” Reuenthal said to Mittermeyer.

“Think the history cohort is any better?”

“They at least might have a better grasp of the imperial language,” Yang said dryly, allowing his biggest criticism to slip out.

Mittermeyer laughed. “It’s true that doing too much math rots the functional language part of the brain.”

“I think that might be drinking too much,” Yang said, eyeing Mittermeyer’s second empty glass.

“No such thing.”

Reuenthal and Mittermeyer were sitting very close to each other, certainly with their legs pressed together under the table. Reuenthal casually had his arms stretched out across the top of the back of the bench, and when Mittermeyer leaned back, this allowed his fingers to gently brush Mittermeyer’s shoulder. Yang astutely did not look at this, but did watch the room from his sideways vantage point, and whenever he stiffened like the waitress was coming over, Reuenthal’s hands miraculously took up a much less precarious position.

After some length of sustained drinking, Yang and Mittermeyer were moderately drunk and Reuenthal was very drunk. It wasn’t that he was a lightweight, he was just faster at downing beer than they were, and he seemed to have an endless appetite for it.

“Say, Reuenthal, why don’t you like birthdays? This is fun, isn’t it?” Mittermeyer asked.

“Nothing good has ever happened on my birthday,” Reuenthal said. “And tomorrow I am going to wake up with a headache.”

“Drink some water when you get back,” Yang mumbled.

“I think something good happened on your birthday,” Mittermeyer said.

Reuenthal turned slightly and looked at him. “What?”

“You were born.”

Reuenthal snorted in outright derision. “That is objectively the worst thing that could have happened.”

Mittermeyer flinched back. “Don’t say things like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not true.”

“Oh?”

“Stop fishing for compliments,” Yang said.

“That’s the last thing that I’m doing.” Reuenthal stared out across the bar.

“Then what are you doing?” Mittermeyer demanded.

“Stating the facts.”

A pall fell over the conversation then, and Mittermeyer glanced across the table at Yang, who shrugged helplessly. Whenever Reuenthal got into a mood, there wasn’t much that could be done to relieve him of it, other than get him drunk (which, in this case, he already was) or wait it out.

“I think you and I have a different idea of what a fact is,” Mittermeyer said finally. He leaned back in his seat, enough for his head to brush Reuenthal’s extended arm. Absently, Reuenthal’s fingers twirled a lock of Mittermeyer’s hair.

“When I was a kid, on my birthday, my father would always take me out to my mother’s grave,” Reuenthal said after a long moment of silence. “‘This is your fault, I wish you’d never been born,’ et cetera.”

“Did she die when you were born?” Mittermeyer asked.

“Not of childbirth, no.” Reuenthal laughed a little. “She killed herself.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” Reuenthal said. “Did Mariendorf tell you that?” He looked at Yang.

“No, she didn’t tell me anything,” Yang said. “Aside from telling me that I should trust my wife, when I got one.”

“Hah. There’s no such thing as a woman you can trust.”

“What do you mean?” Mittermeyer asked.

“My mother was a young woman. My father was an older man. He had money that she wanted, so they got married.” Reuenthal closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat, a posture he had adopted from Yang. Yang watched his throat move as he spoke, listening to the strain in Reuenthal’s voice. “Both of my parents had blue eyes. When I was born, everyone knew that my mother had some black eyed lover.”

“I don’t think--” Yang began, but Mittermeyer shook his head to shut him up.

“She tried to carve out my eye so that no one would see it,” Reuenthal said. “Someone stopped her before she could, obviously. And then she killed herself later, because she couldn’t bear to look at what she’d brought into the world.”

There was silence around the table. Mittermeyer stared down into his beer. Yang stared at Reuenthal across the table.

“Who told you that story?” Yang asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

“My father loved to tell it. In great detail.”

“And you believe him?” Yang asked. He leaned forward over the table pushing his beer glass to the side.

“It’s the truth.”

“It is not the truth,” Yang said. “It is not the truth.” He shook his head, feeling dizzy-drunk but sure about this.

Reuenthal cracked his eyes open and looked at Yang. “You weren’t there.”

“And you can’t possibly remember,” Yang said.

“But my father does.”

“And what reason does he have to tell you that story? What is there for him to gain?”

“He’s miserable, and wants to make me understand what I did.”

“You didn’t do anything,” Mittermeyer interjected. “You were a baby.”

Yang’s tongue was clumsy in his mouth, but he needed to say his piece. “Listen, Reuenthal. Here’s a different story,” he said. “There’s a man who’s obsessed with the idea that his wife is cheating on him, he thinks about it all the time, he makes her feel guilty and hated for something that she might not even be doing, she can’t leave him because she’s his wife, and she’s pregnant. When the baby is born, he has two different colored eyes. It happens! But the man takes that as proof that she’s been unfaithful. He gets drunk, he tells her to her face, she can’t bear it, she kills herself. The man doesn’t want to believe that it’s his fault, so he blames it on her, he blames it on his son, he tells a story to make that feel true.” Yang felt out of breath by the time he finished speaking. “That might not be true either, but it’s more right than the other story is.”

“You don’t know anything,” Reuenthal said. For the first time, Yang heard real malice in Reuenthal’s tone, but he didn’t back off.

“Neither do you,” Yang said.

“I know my father.”

“And I know you shouldn’t listen to people who hate you.”

“Who else am I supposed to listen to?”

“Listen to Mittermeyer, if you won’t listen to me,” Yang said, slouching back against the wall.

“And do you want to tell me a fantastical story about my birth?” Reuenthal asked, turning to Mittermeyer.

“I think it’s a good thing you were born,” Mittermeyer said, shaking his head. “That’s all that matters.”

“That is a fantastical story.”

“It’s not,” Yang said.

“Oh, I have a good one,” Reuenthal said, mood suddenly changing into something more menacing than sad. “Since we’re all making up fake stories about our births, here’s one about our good friend, Hank von Leigh.”

“Reuenthal,” Mittermeyer said, a warning tone in his voice.

“No, go ahead,” Yang said. “I’d love to hear the truth.”

“I combed through Phezzan newspapers, you know,” Reuenthal said. “For our game. I was mostly looking for economics stuff. When you invaded through the Phezzan corridor, Eisenach had me compile a list of merchant vessels operating off the planet.”

“What are you talking about?” Mittermeyer asked, genuinely confused.

“I had to go back a couple years, to get a good idea of the ships. It’s not like every one’s manifest shows up in every paper,” Reuenthal continued. “And I saw something that caught my eye.” He looked at Yang, staring straight at him. “A very familiar name.”

“Stop it, Reuenthal,” Mittermeyer said, slapping the table hard enough to jangle the glasses. “That’s enough.”

Reuenthal looked over at him. “Oh, you don’t want to know?”

“No,” Mittermeyer said. “I don’t.”

“Fine,” Reuenthal said, and stopped talking. There was a new, awkward silence around the table. Yang looked at Mittermeyer and gave a kind of apologetic shrug. He wasn’t angry at Reuenthal-- he probably shouldn’t have provoked him by talking about his past. Yang knew it was a touchy subject, and today was a touchy day.

“Should we go?” Mittermeyer asked. “It’s getting late.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” Yang said.

Reuenthal was silent. Mittermeyer flagged the waitress down and paid their tab.

The three walked with varying degrees of unsteadiness out of the bar and onto the street. Reuenthal swayed on his feet so much that Mittermeyer was compelled to wedge himself up next to him, which made Yang take Reuenthal’s other side for moral support. The snow was falling much more heavily now, their footprints disappearing from the sidewalk almost as soon as they lifted their feet.

“Cold as shit,” Mittermeyer muttered under his breath.

“Little further,” Yang said. “Come on.”

They hauled Reuenthal up to his dorm, and, again, Mittermeyer used his key to unlock the room. Reuenthal entered without a word, then closed the door in their faces, scowling. Yang and Mittermeyer stood in the hallway awkwardly for a moment.

“I’ll walk you back to the junior dorms,” Yang said.

“Why?”

“We should talk.”

Mittermeyer frowned, but nodded, and Yang followed him out, back into the cold. They stood outside the junior dorms for a minute, in the entryway shielded from the wind and snow that blew past in great white gusts illuminated by the dorm door light.

“Are you upset at Reuenthal?” Mittermeyer asked. “I’m sorry on his behalf.”

“No, it’s fine,” Yang said. “If he remembers any of this, he’ll apologize in the morning.”

Mittermeyer nodded. “Sucks about his mom.”

Yang pulled his beanie off his head and scrunched it in his hands, snowflakes landing then melting in his black hair. “Yeah. Look, Mittermeyer, I guess you should know--”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“No, it’s better if I do. I warned you I would get drunk one night and tell you.” Yang shrugged and stared out at the white snow that faded into sheer black nothingness about thirty paces from where they stood. His voice was flat as he recited the list of facts. “My name’s not Hank von Leigh. It’s Yang Wen-li. I’m not from Phezzan. I’m from Heinessen. My father was a merchant operating between there and Phezzan. When his ship was destroyed, he left a lot of debt. You know, on Phezzan, the law is that anyone who benefited from a loan is responsible for paying it back. I benefitted by living in comfort as my father’s son for years-- they were going to hold me responsible. There’s a warrant out for my arrest. So I ran away.” Yang shrugged. “That’s the whole story. It’s not that exciting.”

Mittermeyer looked at him with something that might have been pity. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s fine. I trust you. And Reuenthal.”

“Even though he just tried to…?”

“He wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been you he was telling it to,” Yang said. “He can be mean, but he’s not stupid. But thank you for trying to protect me, I guess.”

“What a mess.”

Yang didn’t know exactly what Mittermeyer was referring to, but he said, “Yeah.”

“I’m going to have the worst headache tomorrow.”

“Drink some water,” Yang said again.

“I think it’s too late for that.” Mittermeyer shook his head, then his face changed as though he had remembered something. “Oh, Leigh, I was going to ask you--”

“What?” Yang asked.

“Do you want to come to my house over winter break?”

“I think the Mariendorfs were going to invite me,” Yang said.

“I know, that’s why I’m asking first.”

“Why?”

Mittermeyer frowned at the ground and kicked at a snowdrift near the door. “It would be a big favor to me. Please?”

Yang stared at him, not really understanding. “Can you explain?”

Mittermeyer sighed. “My parents have this girl living in my house. I just need someone else to be like, a distraction. Can you?”

Yang ran his hand through his hair. “A distraction?”

“A buffer. You know. Something to talk about other than paying attention to me.”

“Why can’t you ask Reuenthal?”

“He’d say no. And I don’t think--” Mittermeyer shook his head again. “It wouldn’t look good.”

“And I would?”

“Yeah. You know.”

“Can I think about it? I do like the Mariendorfs.”

“They keep you over the summer, though.”

“We’re going into service as soon as we graduate at the end of the year.”

“If you can’t do it, I understand.”

“Just let me think about it, okay?”

December, 478 IC, Odin

In the end, Yang did end up respectfully declining the Mariendorfs’ invitation to stay with them over winter break, though he expressed his sincere regret while doing so, and said that he would spend at least a day visiting with them. He did like the count, and he adored the now nine year old Hildegarde, though he couldn’t understand what either of them saw in him to make them continue to invite him around for summer and winter breaks. But Mittermeyer had asked him so pleadingly that Yang couldn’t help but acquiesce to his friend’s demand.

He knocked on Mittermeyer’s dorm door, holding his lightly packed travel bag in his hand. There was a minor sound of movement from inside the room, Mittermeyer’s muffled voice called out, “One second,” though Yang waited about thirty seconds before a rather mussed looking Mittermeyer pulled the door open. Reuenthal was sitting at the desk, looking as cool and collected as ever.

Yang stepped inside and shut the door behind himself. “Saying your goodbyes?” he asked, with the particular sardonic twist in his voice he used whenever he thought that Reuenthal and Mittermeyer weren’t being discreet enough.

“Just packing,” Mittermeyer said, and cleared his throat.

Yang tossed his own bag on the bed, then sat down on it. “When are you leaving, Reuenthal?” he asked.

“After you,” Reuenthal said, and provided no further detail. This didn’t surprise Yang, who just nodded.

“If you do decide to come back here early, let me know. I at least can probably make some kind of excuse to join you.”

“You’d abandon me?” Mittermeyer asked.

“Don’t say you wouldn’t do the same, if you had the opportunity,” Yang said.

“We’ll see about when I get back here,” Reuenthal said. “I will make an attempt to enjoy what is possibly the last vacation of my life.”

“You could make such a thing sound less like a death sentence,” Mittermeyer said. He returned to actually packing, taking clothes out of his closet and folding them neatly into his travel bag. He packed even lighter than Yang had, since they were going to his house, where most of his non-uniform clothes were stored.

Mittermeyer’s phone, sitting on his bedside table, rang, and Yang looked at the caller and tossed the phone to Mittermeyer, who adeptly caught and answered it. This left Reuenthal and Yang in the rather awkward position of listening to their friend’s half of the phone call. They glanced at each other, Reuenthal with a slight smile.

“Hey, Dad,” Mittermeyer said. “Yeah, I’m just finishing packing. Yes, he’s ready. Uh, how far away are you? Okay, yeah. Give me a minute. There’s room in the car, right?” A slight pause, then Mittermeyer laughed, a sound that rang false even to Yang. “No, I didn’t-- Okay. Yeah. I’ll be there in a second. See you. Bye.” He hung up and put his phone in his pocket. “My dad’s parked outside.”

“I gathered,” Reuenthal said.

“Want to meet him?” he asked.

“I have no desire to do so,” Reuenthal said. “That pleasure, as it were, can belong to Leigh.” Reuenthal stood. “I should make my quick exit, before I get drawn into something against my will.” He put his hand on Mittermeyer’s shoulder, and they turned towards each other, Mittermeyer looking up, Reuenthal looking down, and they kissed, very briefly. Yang had mastered the art of looking and not looking at the same time.

“Have a good break,” Mittermeyer said.

Reuenthal just nodded. “See you in a bit.”

“Take care of yourself,” Yang said, meeting Reuenthal’s eyes.

“I will.” And with that, he was out the door and gone.

Mittermeyer sighed, placed his hands on his cheeks, and examined himself in the wall mirror. “Do I look normal?” he asked Yang.

“Er. Yes?” Yang said. “Brush your hair.”

Mittermeyer, whose comb was already packed away in his bag, ran his hands through his hair. Yang picked up a hair tie from his desk and passed it to him, and Mittermeyer tied his hair back into a ponytail. “My dad will probably tell me to get a haircut,” he said.

Yang didn’t really have a response to that. His own father, when he had been alive, could not possibly have cared less how Yang had worn his hair—hence his perpetual shaggy mop that Yang occasionally took a pair of scissors to when it got too annoying.

“You ready?” Yang asked, when it seemed like Mittermeyer was glancing around his room for whatever last objects he needed to stick in his bag.

“Yeah. I guess.” The reluctance in his voice was palpable. The pair left Mittermeyer’s dorm, bracing themselves against the weather outside. It was one of those winter days that was crystal clear for its coldness, each detail of the brick dorm buildings looking sharper than they ever had before. As they walked across the shoveled path through the snow-covered green, Mittermeyer glanced to his left, towards the senior dorm building, perhaps hoping to catch a last glimpse of Reuenthal before they headed out. Reuenthal’s room window was just as inscrutably dark as all the rest, though.

There was one car idling in the parking lot at the rear of the building and, when the two students approached, the front door opened. A mustached older man who bore little resemblance to Mittermeyer stepped out and smiled. “Wolf, glad you finally made it out,” he said. “Is this your friend?”

“Hah. Yeah. Dad, this is my friend, Hank von Leigh, Leigh, this is my dad.”

Yang dropped his bag on the ground unceremoniously to shake hands with Mittermeyer’s father. He had a crushing and heavily calloused grip. “Nice to meet you, Herr Mittermeyer.”

“Where are you from, von Leigh?”

“I told you, dad,” Mittermeyer said, looking at Yang with a pained expression.

“Phezzan, sir,” Yang said. He was very used to that question after almost four years of living in the Empire. It bothered Mittermeyer much more than it bothered him.

“Ah, no wonder you don’t go home for break. That’s a long way.”

Yang just nodded. There was no reason to say that he didn’t even really have a home on Phezzan. “Thank you for having me, sir.”

“No need to thank me. A friend of Wolf’s is a friend of mine. Here, let’s not stand out in the weather any more than we need to.” He popped open the trunk and took Yang and his son’s bags, tossing them in. “It’s a bit of a drive, unfortunately.”

“I’m not in a hurry,” Yang said, and let himself into the back seat of the car. He was intending to sleep through the drive, but Mittermeyer’s father seemed insistent on filling up any speck of silence with questions towards his son or Yang. Yang got the impression that he and Mittermeyer were both being tested somehow, and Yang had no idea if he was passing the test or not. His natural instinct, as the questions became more grating, was to lean his head on the window and answer in monosyllables, but he tried to squash that instinct for Mittermeyer’s sake.

Along the way, Yang learned a lot about Mittermeyer’s father (an environmental engineer with a passion for gardening), Mittermeyer’s mother (a teacher and an apparently excellent cook), and the girl who was living in Mittermeyer’s house-- a very distant maternal relative named Evangeline who was two years younger than Mittermeyer himself. Yang also learned exactly how uncomfortable he could get, as Mittermeyer’s father asked about every aspect of the engineering classes at the IOA, and Mittermeyer answered with less and less passion as time went on. Mittermeyer’s father hadn’t lied when he had said it was a long drive. It took them about five hours to get from the IOA to Mittermeyer’s house, a nice little plot of land in the very outskirts of the suburbs, several districts away.

They got out of the car, and Yang busied himself with getting the bags from the trunk, as Mittermeyer and his father went into the house. “Mom, I’m home!” Mittermeyer yelled.

There was a veritable trampling of feet, then a woman’s voice, “Wolf!”

Yang turned and saw a petite blonde woman throw herself on Mittermeyer, who flinched back as though she were about to hit him. She embraced him. “Er, hi Evangeline,” Mittermeyer said. “How have you been?”

“Good,” she said. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Just for a little while,” Mittermeyer said. “Oh, Evangeline, this is my friend, Hank von Leigh.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Fraulein,” Yang said, then wasn’t quite sure what to do with his hands. If Evangeline had been a man, they would have shook, or if Yang had been Reuenthal, he probably would have kissed her hand, but Yang instead was frozen in a kind of stasis. He couldn’t remember the last time he had interacted with a woman even close to his own age. Luckily, Evangeline seemed to accept that he was holding a bag in both his hands.

“Do you want me to take that for you? I set up the guest bedroom,” she asked.

“Oh, er, thank you,” Yang said. He passed her his bag, and then handed Mittermeyer his. Evangeline smiled up at Mittermeyer for another moment, then ran off into the house, bare feet pounding on the wooden floor.

“She’s a sweet girl,” Mittermeyer’s father said. “Thinks the world of you, Wolf.”

“Yeah,” Mittermeyer said. He showed Yang inside. The house was warm and there was the smell of something delicious cooking. Down the hall, a thin faced blonde woman wearing an apron emerged from the lit kitchen. She smiled and came forward, hugging Mittermeyer, who reciprocated this time. Yang stood awkwardly back as Mittermeyer’s mother smoothed her hands down Mittermeyer’s arms and examined him.

“You look healthy, Wolf,” she said. “You didn’t get caught in traffic on the way, did you?”

“No, it was an easy drive,” Mittermeyer’s father said, hanging up his coat. He kissed his wife briefly. “Dinner soon?”

“Fifteen minutes,” she said. “I’ll have Eva set the table.” She turned to Yang. “And you must be Herr von Leigh,” she said with a smile. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Nice to meet you, Frau Mittermeyer,” Yang said. “I hope Mittermeyer, er, Wolfgang, only tells you the good parts.”

She laughed. “Of course. Please, let me take your coat. Make yourself at home.”

“Thank you for having me over,” Yang said.

“It’s my pleasure. I couldn’t let one of Wolf’s friends stay in that dreary old school alone over winter break.” Yang smiled and did not mention the fact that he usually went to the Mariendorfs’ house.

“You have a lovely home,” Yang said.

“Thank you, thank you.”

Yang had provided enough of a distraction to allow Mittermeyer to escape upstairs, and though he counted that as a success, that meant that Yang was now trapped in the awkward social situation of being shown into the living room and sat down. He had to mentally reframe his way of processing all his interactions in this space: he wasn’t going to be able to beat a tactical retreat-- he had to be ready to take up rear guard manoeuvers for Mittermeyer to do so. So he smiled and made yet more friendly yet awkward conversation as he stared into the roaring hearth.

At dinner, Mittermeyer’s mother pressed Mittermeyer into sitting next to Evangeline. When no one was looking, Yang gave Mittermeyer an apologetic smile. There was only so much he could help with. But he tried to keep the dinner conversation light, and told everyone the now amusing story about how Staden eventually decided to let Yang, his most infuriating student, TA his class. He could be a gracious dinner guest, so long as the topics stayed on things that he was familiar with discussing.

Afterwards, everyone moved into the living room, and when Yang saw that Evangeline was about ten seconds away from sitting uncomfortably close to Mittermeyer on the couch, Yang took the initiative and the seat that she was aiming for. There was a large, decorative mirror hung above the fireplace, and in it, Yang caught the reflection of Mittermeyer’s mother behind him, frowning at Yang’s maneuver, probably thinking that Yang couldn’t see her expression.

When it got late, Mittermeyer showed Yang to the guest bedroom, and loitered in his doorway for a minute as Yang fished around in his bag for his pyjamas. He kept the door open, so they couldn’t talk very freely.

“Thanks for coming,” Mittermeyer said. “I mean it.”

“You’re welcome,” Yang said. They shared a look, and Yang tried to communicate to Mittermeyer that he understood the stifling atmosphere of the place, the weight of expectations that his parents pressed upon him, and the secret that perhaps his mother already seemed to fear.

“Let’s go ice skating tomorrow,” Mittermeyer said. “You can borrow my dad’s skates.”

“I’ve never--” Yang said, but Mittermeyer just smiled broadly and walked away.

They did go ice skating the next day, on a frozen lake about a kilometer away from Mittermeyer’s house. Yang accessorized his warmest outfit (his cadet uniform) with a borrowed red scarf. He ended up borrowing Mittermeyer’s skates (since they wore the same size shoe), and Mittermeyer wore his dad’s, stuffing an extra pair of socks down in the too-long toes.

“I’ll make that sacrifice,” Mittermeyer said. “Since you’ve apparently never been skating before.”

“When would I have even had the opportunity?” Yang asked as he sat down in the snow to pull the skates on.

Evangeline had come with them, upon the urging of Mittermeyer’s mother, and she giggled a little as Yang took his first hesitant, wobbly steps out onto the ice. His feet slipped out from under him, and he fell immediately, crashing his tailbone into the ice.

“Ow,” he said with as flat of a voice as he could muster, disguising how much the fall had actually hurt.

“Come on, old man,” Mittermeyer said and helped him back up. Yang held heavily onto Mittermeyer’s steady arm, with Evangeline darting a few steps ahead of them, until Yang had some of the movement down and Mittermeyer could let him be free.

Though Yang had to focus on his own clumsy movements, he still was able to look up and watch Mittermeyer. He seemed to be delighting in his own freedom of movement, swooping across the glittering surface of the lake, moving faster than Yang could have imagined, occasionally turning in tight circles, taking light little hops into the air, or skating backwards. Yang understood once again what Reuenthal saw in him-- his broad smile, the way every action he took conveyed his complete sincerity in taking it. He skated circles around Evangeline, not letting her catch up to him.

Mittermeyer was inexhaustible, but eventually Evangeline tired of trying to skate with him, and Yang tired of trying to skate, and both of them sat down on the lake edge. Yang retrieved his thermos from his bag and poured a cup of hot tea, which he handed to Evangeline.

“You skate very well,” he said.

“Thanks. You do, too.”

“You don’t have to lie to me,” Yang said. “I’m certainly not as good as he is.” As Yang said, this, Mittermeyer crouched low, racing across the ice as fast as possible.

“Nobody’s as good as Wolf.”

“Perhaps,” Yang said. “You like him?”

Evangeline flushed and looked down at the tea mug in her hands. “That’s a presumptuous thing to ask, Herr von Leigh,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Yang said. “I didn’t mean to offend.”

She laughed. “It’s fine. Yes. He’s very handsome, don’t you think?”

Yes, said Yang internally. “Sure, if you think so,” said Yang aloud.

“He’ll make a good husband for whoever gets him,” she said, her voice tinged with something odd. “He’s smart. He’ll have a good career.”

“You aren’t worried about marrying a soldier?” He remembered that she was a war orphan, of some sort.

“You think I have a chance with him?” she asked. “He doesn’t like me.”

“I’m sure he likes you fine, Fraulein,” Yang said.

“I’m having more of a conversation with you than I have had with him since I’ve lived here.”

“Then I’m not sure what basis you have to like him on,” Yang said, rather confused. He scratched his head. “Look, Fraulein…”

“You’re good friends with him, right?”

“Yeah,” Yang said.

“Does he have a girl at school?”

“What? Oh, no,” Yang said.

“What does he like? If you think I have a chance with him, what do you think I should do?”

“I don’t know.” He was feeling trapped in this intensely awkward conversation, and he unscrewed the lid from his thermos and drank straight out of it, burning his mouth. “I think if you just try to be his friend, talk to him like anybody else, you might have an easier time.”

“Hm.” She stared out at Mittermeyer, who turned so tightly on the ice that they could hear the scrape of the blades from a hundred yards away. “I think Frau Mittermeyer wants him to like me.”

“You live with him-- I’m sure that she just wants everyone to get along.”

Evangeline sighed and shook her head. “You’re funny, Herr von Leigh.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.” She turned to him and smiled. “It’s nice to have someone else to talk to.”

“Do you want my honest advice?” Yang asked, thinking that maybe he could do Mittermeyer a favor with this conversation.

“Sure.”

“I think if you push him less, he’ll probably be happier to talk to you. And wait to see if you actually like talking to him, before you decide that you want to marry him.”

“I like listening to him.”

“That’s not everything,” Yang said. “You’re seventeen?”

“Yeah.”

“If I were Mittermeyer-- Wolfgang-- I think… I’d be nervous that a stranger moved into my house and is expecting to be familiar with me. Just give him time and space, okay? Not everything has to be rushed into, and he has a lot on his mind.”

“And you think that will help?”

“I think it will help him feel more comfortable around you. Everything else?” Yang shrugged.

“You’re presumptuous, thinking you can give a lady advice,” Evangeline said, but she was smiling.

“Sorry,” Yang said.

“You can apologize after I take the advice and it all goes terribly wrong.”

“It could hardly go worse than it is,” Yang said. “It’s worth a try, and not having big expectations will probably make you less stressed about it.”

“Not all of us can let go of expectations like that. Can you?”

“Oh, I try.” Yang smiled. “But then again, I’m a deeply lazy man. Hoping that things will happen correctly seems like too much mental effort. Better to just deal with things as they come.”

“Is that the philosophy they teach you at the Officers’ school?”

“Absolutely not,” Yang said with a laugh. “Shall we skate again, Fraulein?”

“Sure, Herr von Leigh.” He tried to get to his feet in his skates, and ended up having to lean on her arm, which made her laugh.