Chapter 53: Chapter 53: A Love Letter Appears

Chapter 53: A Love Letter Appears

Mondays at St. Alder Academy always had a special kind of misery.

The halls filled early, but nobody looked fully awake. Students dragged themselves past the lockers with iced coffee, half-zipped backpacks, and the dead-eyed grief of people who had been forced to admit the weekend was over. A few complained about homework they had remembered too late Sunday night. A few stared at their phones like the screen might produce a sick note if they believed hard enough.

Faye Larkin was already in her seat when Cyrus entered homeroom.

Her posture was straight, her uniform was neat, and her notebook sat at the same tidy angle as usual. She did not look like someone who had spent part of the weekend cooking, cleaning, managing two younger siblings, and making a house feel calmer than most adults ever managed.

Cyrus had thought that Monday’s complicated mood had nothing to do with him.

Then he sat down, propped his cheek on one hand, and looked out the window at the students crossing the courtyard below. His mind went straight back to Faye’s living room.

That game had not been beaten yet.

The thought bothered him more than it should have. Miles had said there were more games on the console too. Racing games, fighting games, building games, boss fights, exploration, the kind of list that made a person realize human happiness had a price tag attached to every version of it.

Summer heat still had plenty of time left. If Cyrus wanted somewhere to spend the day without standing around under the sun and risking exposure, a cool room with a couch and a controller was not a bad answer. Losing repeatedly to a monster on a screen had turned out to be more fun than winning at most ordinary things.

Only one thing ruined the fantasy: he did not own the screen, the console, or the games.

Miles had mentioned the price of the television and equipment with the casual tone of someone talking about normal household stuff. Cyrus had listened, done the math, and realized that even the Most Improved Student Award would not make that purchase reasonable.

He needed money, a stable life, or a willingness to sell something he should not sell.

The first two were absent, and the third was not on the table unless the buyer had an insultingly large amount of cash.

Cyrus let out a low sigh.

Owen Keats arrived beside his desk at exactly the wrong time and heard it. "Why are you sighing this early? Did Monday personally come after you already?"

Cyrus kept his attention on the window. "I was thinking about the distance between me and my dreams."

Owen paused with his backpack in one hand. "That sounds serious."

"It is financially serious."

"Then I definitely cannot help." Owen laughed, dropped his bag by his chair, and turned toward a small group nearby when one of the boys called him over.

Cyrus accepted the lack of help with dignity.

Money remained where it always remained, standing between him and whatever he wanted.

The first class of the day was math.

Cyrus stayed awake through all of it.

That deserved recognition. The lesson did not pass through his head like rain through a broken gutter this time. Some parts still looked hostile, but other parts had started to connect. A formula that would have looked like a curse last week now resembled something a person could beat into submission with enough patience.

When the bell rang, Cyrus went into the hallway.

He usually did not bother, but surviving first-period math without putting his head down seemed worthy of a little movement. Warm air drifted in from the windows cracked along the corridor. September had reached its middle stretch, yet the heat behaved like summer had signed a lease and refused to leave.

The warmth touched his face and made his body sharpen with discomfort.

Other people washed up at the bathroom sink when they wanted to feel awake. Cyrus could use heat instead. It was unpleasant, but it worked.

Owen came to stand beside him after a while, leaning near the window frame. "Did something good happen lately?"

Cyrus glanced over. "You could say that."

"You look way less dead in class," Owen said. "I figured something had to be going on."

Cyrus nodded.

The answer was simple. He had slept more. His body was less wrecked. His head could follow lessons for longer before shutting down. Even the hot wind from outside bothered him less than it would have before.

A few minutes later, the warning bell rang.

Cyrus returned to homeroom and stopped beside his desk.

The inside was empty.

His books were gone.

For several seconds, he stared into the space where his textbooks and workbooks should have been. Faye had only now returned with her water bottle. Owen had been in the hallway with him. Asking either of them would be pointless.

The second bell had not rung yet, so Cyrus checked the nearby desks, the windowsill, the back counter, and the floor around his chair.

He found the books in the classroom trash can near the back.

The can was mostly empty because the day had barely started. A few scraps of paper sat at the bottom, along with pencil shavings and dust. His books had landed on top, which meant they were dirty but not ruined.

Cyrus did not pick them up right away.

He turned and let his attention pass over the room.

Most students were getting ready for the next class. Someone was copying homework in a hurry. Someone else complained about a missing charger. Faye had returned to her seat. Owen was already frowning from beside Cyrus’s desk.

Near the side of the room, two classmates watched him with thin amusement on their faces.

They did not even hide it well.

Cyrus understood what had happened.

He reached into the trash can and pulled out the books one by one, brushing dust from the covers with slow, controlled movements.

Owen came closer, his brows drawn together. "Cyrus, did someone throw your stuff away?"

Cyrus shook his head once, warning him not to push it here. "Leave it alone for now."

Owen did not look convinced.

Cyrus carried the books back to his desk and set them in place.

The malice itself was new enough to be interesting.

He had read about this kind of thing in books about school life. Students picked targets, hid things, laughed from the side, and waited for the target to give them a reaction worth feeding on. Seeing it happen to him made the whole performance feel smaller than he had imagined.

Was this what people did when they lacked real options?

A few dirty books in a mostly empty trash can. A couple of smug faces across the room. Apparently, that counted as an attack.

Cyrus opened his notebook for the next class and decided the two little bastards should hope he never caught a cleaner opportunity.

For the rest of the morning, Cyrus did not leave his seat.

The two classmates found no second opening, and Cyrus doubted they would repeat the same trick so soon. Even stupid people usually wanted variety when they were trying to entertain themselves.

At lunch, he went to the fourth floor classroom where Audra Sloane was already waiting.

She had the worksheets ready, of course. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

The twenty problems from the day before had cost Cyrus a painful number of brain cells, but he had finished them. More importantly, solving them had given him a small, irritating rush of satisfaction. Difficult problems had a strange quality. They made him suffer, then offered a tiny reward when they finally collapsed.

That reward was probably how humans trapped themselves into studying on purpose.

Tutoring went the same way it usually did. Audra corrected his work, explained the parts he missed, and gave him new problems with the calm precision of someone who had never considered mercy a useful teaching method.

Compared with the period before tutoring began, Cyrus could feel the difference.

He was improving.

Audra deserved some credit.

Not too much, because too much credit would become dangerous, but some.

While she marked his work, Cyrus silently adjusted the balance sheet between them. Audra had used tutoring as a reason to approach him, and that was suspicious. She was also genuinely helping him chase prize money, which made the suspicion useful for now.

He had helped her once too, and that help had carried the risk of exposing himself.

That made them nearly even.

Once the award money arrived, he could buy her a few hot breakfast sandwiches as thanks.

The idea felt fair enough.

When lunch tutoring ended, Cyrus stepped out of the classroom and immediately noticed two figures near the far end of the hall.

The same two classmates.

They turned away too quickly.

By the time Audra came out behind him, the two had disappeared around the corner.

Audra noticed that he had paused. "What is it?"

Cyrus looked back at her. "There is nothing you need to worry about."

She studied him for another breath, but he had already started walking.

The situation had probably begun because of Audra. Anyone with eyes could misunderstand the time he spent with her. Even so, she had been working hard to tutor him, and Cyrus had no need to involve her yet.

Some debts should not be mixed together too early.

By the time Cyrus returned to homeroom, only the last stretch of lunch remained.

He used it the best way he knew how. He folded his arms on the desk, lowered his head, and tried to recover some energy before the afternoon began.

The bell rang.

At the front of the room, Iris Wexley stood with a sheet from the office in her hand. As class president, she always looked like she had been born prepared to announce other people’s inconvenience.

"The teacher is out this period," Iris said. "We are using the block as study hall. Keep the noise reasonable, and make sure you have something out to work on."

Several students cheered under their breath.

Cyrus lowered his head again with sincere gratitude.

Official permission had given him forty more minutes of rest.

He had barely settled when the room began to fill with sound. Study hall at St. Alder had a special kind of noise. It was never loud enough for anyone to call it chaos, but never quiet enough to become peace. Pages turned, chairs scraped, whispers spread, and small conversations overlapped until no single sentence could be understood.

The blur almost helped.

Cyrus rested for a while without fully falling asleep. After about twenty minutes, the noise stopped being useful. His head had cleared enough, and the desk felt less comfortable than it had at first.

He pushed himself upright.

A folded piece of paper slid from the top of his desk and drifted to the floor.

Cyrus had not placed it there.

Before he could reach for it, a boy who had moved to the desk in front of Owen during study hall bent down and snatched it up.

The timing was too fast.

The boy opened the folded paper with a performance of clumsy innocence. His eyes skimmed whatever had been written inside, and his voice shot across the room, loud enough to cut through every conversation at once.

"A love letter? Is this a confession?!"