Chapter 16: First Rally

At lunch, Cyrus went to the campus store and chose a packaged pastry he had not tried before.

The shelves at St. Alder offered too many things that looked almost identical from a distance: muffins sealed in plastic, soft rolls with frosting stripes, square sandwiches, protein bars that tasted like cardboard, and cookies large enough to pretend they counted as lunch. Cyrus stood in front of the shelf longer than necessary, weighing price against curiosity with the seriousness of someone making an investment.

The pastry won because it was on sale and because the wrapper promised apple filling.

The promise turned out to be slightly exaggerated. There was apple somewhere inside it, though not in the amount the picture suggested. Cyrus accepted this as a normal human-world deception and ate it anyway.

Afterward, he used the rest of lunch the way lunch was meant to be used. He found a shaded place, folded his arms on the desk, and slept until the warning bell dragged him back into the school day.

The afternoon classes were not complicated. Most of the time went into going over another worksheet from the previous week, and Cyrus was reasonably satisfied with that one. The score was not embarrassing, at least. In that subject, he could likely rank somewhere near the top ten of the class if no one asked too many questions.

His overall average was another matter.

One decent score did not save him from the red fourteen sitting in his recent math history like evidence in a trial.

Proof still mattered. He was not actually stupid. He was only stupid in selected areas, which felt less insulting.

By the time gym period came around, the sleep he had stolen during the morning had done enough work to keep him upright. He did not feel energetic, but he also did not feel like his skull had been packed with wet paper. He considered that meaningful improvement.

Gym had been moved to the afternoon because of a schedule change. The weather, unfortunately, had decided to become a problem.

The sky over St. Alder was clean and bright, without a single cloud to break the sun. The athletic field shimmered at the edges, the blacktop courts held heat like a grudge, and the air above the track smelled faintly of rubber, grass, and sunscreen. It was perfect weather for students who liked moving around under direct sunlight.

Cyrus found a shaded spot near the side of the courts and sat there without guilt.

From that angle, he could see most of the outdoor setup. Students scattered across the athletic area in loose groups. The basketball court had drawn a crowd of boys, though a few girls had joined in with enough confidence to make the boys guard them seriously. The badminton nets had more girls than boys, with some students actually playing and others using rackets as an excuse to talk. A few people stood near the fence drinking water. Others had claimed patches of shade and were pretending rest was a sport.

Cyrus watched them for a while.

Being too used to doing things alone had disadvantages.

He had only read about several of these sports. Books explained rules well enough, but they did not explain the small things: how much force felt right, how fast a ball crossed a court, how people moved before they understood why they were moving. Even badminton required a second person. Basketball needed more than that, unless someone only wanted to bounce the ball around and look busy.

He was not desperate to play today.

The sun made that decision easier.

If he ran around for too long under this heat, his body would overheat. Overheating was no longer an abstract concern after the weekend. He had already learned that his Frostborn body had an embarrassing emergency mode, and transforming into a child in the middle of gym class would be difficult to explain.

There was no version of that situation that ended well.

If he shrank in front of half the class, he might as well grab the coach’s whistle and announce that he was a rare-blood with a body problem. He could try claiming some shadowy agency had dosed him with an experimental capsule from a conspiracy thriller, but even humans probably had limits to what they would believe.

For all their impressive technology, Cyrus doubted they had invented a pill that could turn a senior into a small child without killing him first.

Even if someone invited him to play, he would have to stop early and cool down. That would ruin the game for everyone else.

A sudden burst of noise rose from the badminton courts.

Cyrus turned his head.

Audra stood on one side of the net, racket lowered, her posture calm enough to make the whole thing look effortless. Across from her, a boy from their class bent slightly with one hand on his knee, laughing in the helpless way people laughed when defeat had become too obvious to pretend otherwise.

Cyrus recognized him. The boy was friendly, popular, and usually surrounded by people. He seemed like the type who did fine at most games because confidence carried him through the first half.

Against Audra, confidence had apparently met a wall.

Students near the court reacted with a mixture of amusement and sympathy. Audra did not gloat. She only stood there with the same composed expression she wore in class, which somehow made the difference in skill feel worse.

Cyrus could not see the score clearly from the shade, but the boy’s face suggested it was not close.

He watched until the next serve.

Audra moved cleanly. There was no wasted drama in it. She sent the shuttlecock where the boy was not, then waited while he stumbled after it. Her white shirt was tucked neatly into light blue jeans, and the simple outfit did not stop half the nearby students from noticing her. It was hard not to notice someone who could make a gym-class badminton match look like a private demonstration.

Cyrus leaned back against the fence support and decided the boy was having a bad afternoon.

The gym period was almost half over when a shadow fell across the edge of his shoes.

"Cyrus, do you want to play?" Owen asked.

Cyrus looked up.

Owen had come over from the basketball court, his hair damp at the temples and his uniform shirt untucked from actual effort. He held one hand out in invitation, the kind of gesture that assumed friendship before it asked permission.

Cyrus looked at the hand, then at Owen’s face.

"I have never played basketball."

"Badminton works too," Owen said. "You were watching the courts."

"I have never played badminton either. I might stop after a few minutes if it gets annoying."

"That is still better than sitting here melting in the shade," Owen said. "Come on. We only have part of the period left anyway."

Cyrus considered the sun again.

The period really was almost over. If he paid attention to his body and stopped before it became a problem, he could manage.

More importantly, the game looked interesting.

Reading about something was not the same as trying it. He had come to the human world for food, rent, sleep, work, and freedom, but there were other things in it too. Machines that washed clothes. Stores that sold apple pastries with misleading labels. Courts where students hit feathered things back and forth for no reason except enjoyment.

Cyrus stood and brushed dust from his clothes.

"I can try for a little while."

Owen grinned and pulled his hand back without making a big deal out of Cyrus not taking it. "That is the spirit. I grabbed an extra racket already."

They walked toward the edge of the badminton courts. Owen stopped by the equipment bin and picked up a racket, then led Cyrus to a court near the side, where fewer people were watching.

As they passed, Cyrus finally saw the score on Audra’s court.

Twenty-one to three.

The boy across from her was worse than Cyrus expected.

Either that, or Audra was better than she looked.

Standing outside the shade made the heat settle over Cyrus’s shoulders at once. The sunlight touched the back of his neck, bright and persistent. He loosened his grip on the racket and made a quick calculation.

A few minutes would be safe enough.

Owen took the other side of the net and bounced the shuttlecock lightly against his strings. "You know the basic rules, right?"

"I know enough to start."

"Great, then I will not smash it at your face immediately."

"That is considerate of you."

"I am a generous opponent."

Owen served gently, sending the shuttlecock in a high, easy arc.

Cyrus watched it cross the net. The speed was slower than he expected, but the drop was less forgiving. He stepped under it, lifted the racket, and returned it without much difficulty.

Owen’s brows rose.

He sent another easy shot back. Cyrus returned that one too.

After a few exchanges, Owen stopped treating him like someone who might injure himself with the racket. The shots came higher, then lower, then angled farther to the side. Owen did not have to run much at first. Cyrus was the one moving, adjusting, reaching, learning the distance between what his eyes understood and what his arm could actually do.

The first few misses annoyed him.

Then the misses began to shrink.

His body found the rhythm faster than his mind found the terminology. Step, turn, lift, recover. Keep the racket ready. Do not chase the shuttlecock after it has already won. Watch the angle of Owen’s wrist. Move before the shot becomes obvious.

The court was hot. His hair stuck more heavily near his temples, though no sweat came. Each quick movement brought the sun closer to being a problem. Even so, Cyrus felt the corner of his mouth lift before he noticed he was enjoying himself.

Badminton was better than the books made it sound.

Owen noticed too.

During a pause to pick up the shuttlecock, he called across the net, "Are you sure this is your first time playing?"

"Yes, this is my first time."

"You are picking it up fast."

"I read the rules before."

"Reading the rules does not usually make people good at the game."

Cyrus pretended to wipe sweat from his forehead, because that was what other students did when they moved around in the sun. "Maybe the book was unusually helpful."

Owen laughed under his breath and served again.

The game grew quicker. Owen had to move now, not constantly, but enough to stop looking comfortable. Cyrus still missed shots he should have reached, especially when Owen sent them short near the net, but the mistakes started becoming specific rather than random. He understood what he had done wrong. That alone made the game more satisfying.

For a brief stretch, he forgot to calculate anything.

He moved because the shuttlecock moved. His shoes scraped against the court. His bangs lifted now and then with the motion, giving Owen a clearer look at his face than school usually allowed. No one else paid much attention. The nearby students had their own games, their own conversations, their own small dramas in the heat.

Cyrus liked being able to enjoy something without becoming the center of it.

A whistle sounded faintly from another court. Someone cheered after a messy point. The sun kept pressing down.

Cyrus’s body warned him before the situation became serious. It started as a tightness under the skin, a trapped heat that did not belong there. He felt it in his chest first, then behind his eyes.

He stopped chasing the next shot.

The shuttlecock landed behind him.

"I need to stop now," Cyrus said.

Owen lowered his racket right away. "Are you feeling okay?"

"I am fine. I do not want to overdo it."

"That makes sense. It is brutal out here."

Cyrus turned to retrieve the shuttlecock and caught movement near the far court.

Audra was leaving with her racket at her side. She had already finished her match, and the boy she had beaten was busy accepting exaggerated comfort from his friends. As she walked past, her attention shifted, and for one brief second, she met Cyrus’s eyes across the courts.

She had seen him playing.

Cyrus kept his face neutral and bent to pick up the shuttlecock. The moment passed quickly. Audra looked away first and continued toward the rest area.

He straightened with the shuttlecock in hand and thought of the score again.

Twenty-one to three.

If he had played that boy instead of Owen, he might have been able to crush him too.

The thought improved his mood more than it should have.

After returning the rackets, Cyrus and Owen went to the outdoor sinks near the side of the gym building. The metal fixtures had been warmed by the air, but the water running through the underground pipes came out cool enough to matter.

Cyrus cupped both hands under the stream and pressed the water to his face.

The relief was immediate.

He kept his head lowered and let the water run over his fingers, careful not to breathe too deeply. Thin white mist slipped between his hands for a second, pale against the splash of water before vanishing near the basin.

Owen was beside him, splashing his own face and complaining about the heat, too busy to notice.

By the time Owen turned toward him, Cyrus had already dropped his hands. His bangs hung lower from the water, his expression had returned to its usual sleepy blankness, and the warning heat inside his body had eased.

They rejoined the class before the final bell.

After roll call and dismissal from the field, they walked back toward the classroom together. Owen had already taken out his phone and was typing something with the focused speed of someone reporting an event to a group chat. Cyrus did not ask. If Owen wanted to tell someone that he had discovered Cyrus could learn badminton faster than expected, that was harmless enough for now.

Cyrus sat down at his desk and rested his arm along the edge.

His mind drifted back to Audra’s offer.

His weakness in math was easy to identify. His foundation was full of holes. When the teacher wrote new material on the board, the lesson built on things Cyrus should have learned earlier, which meant each explanation stacked itself on missing pieces. No wonder math class made him sleepy. Listening to it felt like watching someone build stairs in the air and expecting him to climb.

If Audra could actually teach him, that would be impressive.

It would also cost her time.

Cyrus did not think she understood how much work he might require. A student with one bad test was one problem. A student with missing foundations was another. Tutoring him would not be a neat apology she could wrap up in one afternoon and file away under good deeds.

If she wanted to be stubborn, he could let her be stubborn for a while.

He looked across the room.

Audra was back at her desk, speaking to someone near her row. At some point, she glanced in his direction again. This time, Cyrus did not look away immediately.

He still could not read her clearly.

There was curiosity in her attention, and pride, and something competitive enough to make him cautious. What he did not see was the familiar kind of hunger that made his skin tighten. Audra did not look at him like Rhea at the lounge, or like the masked woman in his apartment, or like old memories he preferred not to sort through in daylight.

For now, that mattered.

Cyrus lowered his eyes to the edge of his notebook.

If Audra really could teach him math, he would admit she was capable.

More importantly, he wanted to see how stubborn she planned to be.