Chapter 22: Chapter 22: The First Real Lesson

Chapter 22: The First Real Lesson

Owen Keats lowered his voice even more, though the classroom had already emptied enough that nobody would have heard him unless they were trying.

"Did you hear about the body they found in that alley near school?"

He did not wait for Cyrus to answer before continuing.

"I heard the people who called it in were a couple from the next advisory. They cut through that alley after school, and the body was bad enough that both of them freaked out. One of the teachers had to stay with them until their parents came."

The word body settled in Cyrus’s head with an unpleasant weight.

His mind went, uninvited, to the two women he had seen in the alley a few nights earlier. The dim brick walls, the shadowed space away from the street, the flash of unnatural pink hair, the way one of them had seemed to notice him even after he had turned away.

Could it really be that much of a coincidence, or had the human world simply decided to become troublesome in a new direction?

Cyrus shook his head, keeping his expression blank. "I only heard it from you right now."

Owen studied him, then accepted the answer. "That makes sense. You sleep through half the day, so gossip has to fight for its life to reach you."

"That sounds like gossip’s problem."

Owen almost laughed, but the mood in the room kept him from letting it get loud.

Cyrus glanced toward the classroom door. The strange pressure he had felt that morning finally had an explanation. It was not a bad grade, a breakup, or some ordinary student drama spreading through the school. Something had happened close enough to St. Alder that everyone was pretending not to be scared.

So the human world was not guaranteed to be safe either.

That lesson could go beside crossing busy streets, checking food prices before ordering, and never assuming a beautiful woman wanted anything harmless.

The afternoon moved on after that, though the story lingered under every ordinary sound. Students still took notes. Teachers still wrote on the board. Chairs still scraped the floor. The school still behaved like school because that was what schools did, even when something ugly had brushed against the edge of campus.

Cyrus did what he could.

For classes he could follow, he listened. For classes that moved too far ahead of him, he opened the notebook Audra had given him and worked through the marked examples. She had even added sticky notes with extra problems and explanations in the margins. The points she wanted him to notice were written with almost irritating precision.

It was his first real taste of studying as something other than punishment.

The feeling was not bad.

It also made the distance between him and the current pace of class much clearer. The problem on the page sat close enough for his pencil to touch, but the moment he tried to solve it, the answer drifted away like food in a dream right after waking.

By the time the final bell rang, the room loosened with the relief of a Friday afternoon.

Students started to pack up.

Before anyone could fully escape, the math teacher appeared at the classroom door and sent everyone back to their seats.

A groan moved through the room, but it died quickly under the teacher’s face. He was also their advisory teacher, and he wore the serious expression of an adult who had been told to say something official.

Once the class settled, he braced both hands on the lectern.

"For the next few days, I want everyone to be sensible. Go home after school, stay with friends if you have to be out, and do not wander around at night unless there is a real reason."

The room went still.

The teacher’s gaze moved over them.

"As for why, I think most of you have seen the news or heard enough by now. The police are handling it. The school is asking you to use common sense, keep your phones charged, and avoid cutting through alleys or quiet side streets. I would like everyone to have a quiet weekend and come back on Monday without making this harder for your families or for us. Is that understood?"

"Yes, we understand," the class answered, mostly together.

"That is good to hear. Head home, and do not turn this into a game."

The warning lasted less than a minute, but it changed the way the students left.

They still moved in groups. They still talked about weekend plans. A few even joked too loudly, the way people did when they wanted fear to sound like entertainment. But most of the plans Cyrus overheard had shifted toward daylight, crowded places, or staying at someone’s house.

One by one, the classroom emptied.

When only a few students remained, Cyrus gathered the papers on his desk and prepared to stand.

Audra reached him first.

She sat in the chair in front of him and turned it around so she faced his desk. Without wasting time, she opened her notebook, found the section she had prepared, and laid out a textbook and a workbook beside it.

The seriousness on her face made one thing obvious. She genuinely intended to teach him.

She checked the problems he had worked through, circled the weak spots, then started the day’s tutoring properly.

This was, strictly speaking, their first real session. The first day had been more of an agreement. The second had been a test to see where he stood. Today, Audra had enough information to begin.

"For this one, you can change the method," she said, tapping the page with the end of her pen. "Start by writing the formula first. Do not try to hold everything in your head. If the structure is on paper, you can see which part is missing."

Her voice was cool and clear, but not distant in the way people at school often described her. She explained the steps with patience, then gave him a similar problem and waited while he tried it.

Cyrus lowered his head and listened.

Audra noticed the direction of his attention almost immediately.

His hair covered most of his eyes, so she could not fully see where he was looking unless she leaned closer. Even so, she could tell his focus stayed on the notebook, the formula, the pencil, and the problem. Not on her face. Not on her hands. Not on the small distance between them.

To him, this seemed to be exactly what she had offered.

A tutoring session, and nothing more.

Anyone could have been sitting in her chair as long as they explained the problem well.

The thought sat wrong in Audra’s mind, though she kept her voice steady.

Most of her childhood had been spent around books, private lessons, and her grandfather’s study. People at school called her graceful, distant, serious, impossible to approach. Some called her an ice queen when they thought she could not hear.

She did not mind those labels much. They were clumsy, but they proved a point. She stood out. People noticed. People wanted something from her, even if all they wanted was a look, a rumor, or the right to say they had spoken to her.

Cyrus Calder did not behave like that.

He barely reacted to her.

He avoided her when he could. When he did not avoid her, he treated her with the same low-energy caution he gave everything else. Even now, while she sat close enough that most boys in their class would have lost their train of thought, Cyrus only watched the problem like it had personally offended him.

Audra thought of the boys in class who loudly declared fictional characters their ideal girlfriends and then turned red the second an actual girl spoke to them. Cyrus did not feel exactly like that either. Those boys still reacted. They ran away with their eyes first.

Cyrus did not run from her beauty.

He worked around it like it was furniture.

When he finished the problem, she checked it.

"Your setup is right," she said. "The mistake starts here. You changed the sign without noticing."

Cyrus leaned slightly forward. "So this step should stay negative?"

"Yes, keep it negative. Try rewriting it from that line."

He took the paper back and corrected it without complaint.

Audra watched the pencil move.

A thought from the office conversation returned to her. Their teacher had mentioned Cyrus living alone. At the time, she had only caught part of it. Now, after seeing him sleep through class, survive on campus-store lunches, and work through math like someone trying to rebuild a missing staircase one board at a time, the pieces pressed closer together.

She waited until he finished the correction.

"Cyrus."

He lifted his head. "What is it?"

The brief shift of his hair revealed part of his eyes. They were calm, almost too calm, and then the curtain of dark strands fell back into place.

Audra kept her voice casual. "Earlier, when the teacher said you lived alone, what did he mean by that?"

"It means what it sounds like."

"That is all you are going to say?"

"There is not much to add."

She watched him return his attention to the paper.

"Do you sleep through the day because you work at night?"

"Yes, I work nights."

He answered without much hesitation, which meant it was not a secret he cared about hiding. Or at least, it was not the secret he cared about hiding most.

Cyrus did not look up.

If she asked more, he could always bring out the fake amnesia story. It worked well enough at the lounge. It should work at school too, especially if he wrapped it in a sad enough tone. He could mention a person he remembered only vaguely, someone he could not forget even without clear memories. That usually stopped strange romantic developments before they grew legs.

Audra did not ask that far.

Instead, she went quiet.

For the past few days, the version of Cyrus in her mind had been incomplete: the boy who slept in class, ignored her, ate cheap food, and seemed unbothered by things that should have embarrassed him. Now the outline sharpened a little.

He lived alone.

He worked nights.

He slept during class because he had to keep his life running somehow.

She still did not know the exact reason, but the shape of it was enough to change the feeling in her chest. His indifference might not be arrogance, and his strange calm might not be entirely a pose. Life may have pushed him until he had learned not to waste energy reacting.

If that was true, helping him a little was not unreasonable.

She was capable. He needed help. The logic was simple enough.

Cyrus finished the next problem and slid the paper toward her.

"Can you check whether this one is right?"

"I can check it."

As Audra lowered her head to read, Cyrus caught her expression.

Something had changed.

The competitive edge he had noticed in her before had not vanished, but another emotion had settled beside it. Softer. More troublesome.

It looked like pity, which immediately made him suspicious.

Cyrus stared at her for a little longer than he meant to.

What had this attractive, stubborn human imagined now?

Audra marked the problem and explained the next correction. The session continued until the half hour after school had slipped away faster than Cyrus expected.

By the end, his head felt full, but not uselessly full. The formulas did not magically become friendly, yet some of them looked less like an unknown language.

That counted as progress.

Cyrus closed the notebook. "We can continue on Monday."

Audra gave a small nod, then paused before he could put everything away.

"Give me your number."

Cyrus looked at her.

"I mean for tutoring," she added. "If I prepare something and you do not understand it, I can tell you what to focus on before we meet. That is easier than waiting until Monday."

That was a reasonable explanation.

It was also an access point.

Cyrus knew that. He was not stupid. A phone number meant Audra could reach him outside school, and once someone had a path, they tended to use it.

Still, this particular path had a clear purpose. She was helping him with math, and math was currently one of the enemies standing between him and a future that did not require depending on the lounge forever.

Besides, refusing would make the situation more conspicuous than accepting.

He took out his phone.

They exchanged numbers without ceremony.

After saying goodbye, Cyrus packed the notebook carefully into his bag and left St. Alder for The Full Moon Lounge.