The hall Patrick would be living in would be 11 other people. It was a tiny orange-brick building built in the 1970s which housed the 12 inhabitants across two floors. A communal bathroom per floor, a kitchen, and a common room, being by far the cheapest accommodation on campus.

Doubting 12 people could live in such a comically tiny building, Patrick spent his ample free time looking at the floor plan before coming to uni.

There were some oddities with how the building was constructed. Somehow, not a single room was the same shape, presumably in an attempt to make them all the same size while fitting a corridor wide enough for 2, or one particularly hefty person. Second of all, all the radiators were linearly connected. If someone decided to turn on the radiator, then heat would flow through them all.

Patrick may be doing a maths and not an engineering degree, but even he could see the design problems from 35 miles away.

Since the pipes were built into the walls, it would be cheaper to just demolish and rebuild the building than to rewire the central heating. It would at least explain why the buildings were half a century standing despite being flanked and shadowed by modern structures.

It’s tiny size would also explain why he had such a hard time finding it.

“Where is it?” Patrick squinted his eyes at a campus map plaque. The high noon sun painted a fat white reflection across the board, making it hard to make anything out. Even if the map was labelled, which it wasn’t, and if it showed where he was relative to everything, which it didn’t, it wasn’t going to save him.

It wasn’t helpful that he was completely disoriented from the warp earlier. Apparently, he and his luggage were taken to the other side of campus, ridding any positional intuition he had built getting lost the first time. At least the director gave him his keys along with his pamphlet of instructions, so he wouldn’t have to go back to the collection site, but unless this key doubled as a divination stick, he was still lost.

He wished he memorized the campus map instead of the stupid floor plans.

Looking towards the centre of campus once again, he saw the arts building. This was the newest building, and it towered above everything else. It looked beautiful from every angle. Fitting for an arts building, he thought.

If his memory was correct, he could see the arts building near the background of one of the photos of the hall. Trusting his gut, he tugged his luggage and walked.

And walked.

And… walked.

And… still walking?

His sweat was beginning to run out, as objects distant in his vision began to merge. With his pace slowing without his knowledge, the wheel was beginning to get caught by rocks in the pavement, slowing him further.

He didn’t notice the crossing lights up ahead.

He couldn’t even notice someone walking past him wondering why he was staggering.

He looked up at the building. Being closer, it looked much taller than before.

Then suddenly, the building shot upwards, as he fell forwards into the asphalt road.

“Oww…my head…”

From behind him, he heard a thunderous yell.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?”

Patrick felt his shirt partially rip, as he was manhandled backwards off the road just in time to see a car screeching to a stop over where he fell over, knocking his luggage into a nearby ditch.

The dude who pulled him aside was not amused, but upon seeing dilated eyes, he grabbed a bottle of water from his backpack and gave it to him to drink.

“How did you get a heat stroke in Autumn?” He asked himself.

Resting Patrick to the side for a moment, he waved an apology to the car and collected his luggage.

Kneeling down in front of him, he asks. “Hey man, can you hear me?”

Patrick nodded. His dehydration that was suppressing the near-death adrenaline response was beginning to waiver.

“What’s your name?”

“P-Pat-Patrick.”

“Name’s Ben. Nice to meet you.” His short black hair framed his smile perfectly, though his six-foot frame spoke for itself. Being able to lift a person backwards with one hand was no easy feat.

He reaches out a hand to pull Patrick back on his feet, but when he stood up his legs jellified from the residual adrenaline.

“That’s alright. Take your time.” He took another plastic bottle of water out for him. “Deep breaths.”

As Patrick’s brain capacity returned, he realised the full magnitude of his stupidity. His face slowly pushed itself into his clattering knees in embarrassment. It was getting a little awkward.

“So… where did you get your fancy necklace?”

“Erm… I mean… n-nowhere?”

“Mate, I saved your life. A straight answer would be nice.”

Unable to cringe any further, Patrick caved. “T-the university. They gave it to me.”

“Nice. An interdim student.”

“I-interdim?”

“Short for interdimensional. It’s quite a mouthful. It could have been shortened further to inter, but that would be confused with international. Shortening it to dim wouldn’t work either. Imagine if we were all calling each other dim.”

Ben chuckled at his own joke, which tickled a hic from Patrick.

“I… I’m not actually from another dimension. I’m from England.”

“Oh? Why the perception crystal then?”

“I… don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s fine if you don’t. I’ll fill in the blanks myself.”

The two of them steeped in the silence once again, letting the roaring of car engines and the occasional crossing lights fill the ambience. The rolling clouds were still passing overhead, but the shallower angle of the afternoon sun cast itself through the trees behind them, softening the harsh rays. A squirrel even ran up to the two of them, to which Ben made a funny face and it ran away.

“Are you nice and calm now?”

“I-I think so.”

Ben reached out his hand, but Patrick’s legs still thoroughly crippled from adrenaline.

“We can’t just stay here all day. Do you mind me picking you up?”

“No? What do you mean by Ah!”

By just one arm, Ben scooped Patrick up and put him over his shoulder.

“Are you alright there?”

A silent scream squeezed its way out of Patrick’s mouth, as his face flushed red like a tomato. Moving his entire body so effortlessly made his already weak legs completely limp. He was so glad he was put over his shoulder, as he couldn’t see his embarrassment.

“Are you alright? Let me adjust you a little bit.”

Ben hoisted him further up to find a better position on his shoulder, not that there was any softness to be found when they were this well built.

His weight didn’t seem to faze him, as he quickly grabbed his luggage and began heading through campus. Everyone from students, staff, to security stared at a big man carrying a baby man over his shoulder. No amount of face covering could shield Patrick from embarrassment. At this point, he’d wished the car had hit him.

By the time they got to the accommodation hall, Patrick’s heart was in shambles.

“Here we are. Are you able to stand now?”

His words meeped out between his lips. “Y-yes.”

Ben picked him up by the abdomen, and planted him in front of the building. It was a little larger than in the photos, but still akin to a clown car in its surprising storing capacity.

“It’s a surprisingly small building…”

“It’s not so bad on the inside,” Ben comforted.

Recomposing himself, he braced himself for what was going to happen.

Having come to campus on the last day before classes start, everyone else should have already moved in. If the director was telling the truth, the son of Death himself would be in this building. Patrick’s adrenal glands squeezed out their last drops, as he took a breather.

Then, a thought flashed through his mind. How did Ben know which hall he would be in?

His grin sharpened. "Well, a caretaker like you has to live with his ‘master’, right? It's my hall too."

Patrick snapped his head to his left to see Ben leaning over him and herding him into a wall. “How did you…”

“Look, no human is going to have a perception crystal. Note for the future, don’t go telling people about the presence crystal. The university doesn’t like it when their highly secret money making monopoly gets leaked. If they gave a perception crystal to someone like you, then the staff must be desperate indeed.”

Patrick’s vision was filled with more and more of Ben, as the full-head height difference began blocking out the sun.

“I don’t know who in my parent’s prestigious group of idiots decided to pressure the university into assigning someone to me. Especially someone with this little constitution.”

“B-but, the university asked… told me to keep an eye on…”

Ben slammed his palm into the wall behind him, slicing the end of the sentence early. “Look. I don’t need a caretaker, alright? I don’t know who decided on this, but I can take care of myself okay?”

Seeing Patrick at the end of his wits, he gives him a light tap on the nose to push him over.

“Leave me alone, and I won’t report you. Deal?”

The director’s words came rushing back. Reporting… to… Death…

Ben released him from his grip, collapsing him to the floor. “I’ll see you around.”

With that he entered the building and slammed the door behind him. Patrick found himself knees weak and on his arse twice in one day.