[ LYSANDER ]
Elyra's conditions were specific and non-negotiable.
No sword work. No training of any kind. No ranking challenges. Classes only — attend, sit, listen, leave. If anything hurt more than it should he was to come back immediately and not decide for himself whether it was serious. She delivered all of this with the same even tone she used for everything, looking at him over the assessment notes she'd been keeping, and then looked up and waited for him to confirm he'd understood.
"Understood," he said.
"I mean it about the sword."
"I know."
She held his gaze for a moment with the specific expression of someone who had patched up enough students to know exactly how seriously they took medical instructions. Then she signed the release and handed it to him.
"Two weeks minimum before I reassess the arm," she said. "Don't make me come find you."
He took the release. "Thank you."
She was already moving to her next task. "Don't do anything that sends you back here."
He left.
The academy hit him differently after a week away.
Not dramatically — just the specific adjustment of someone returning to a space after absence, the details that familiarity usually smoothed over suddenly present again. The scale of the main courtyard. The specific quality of the light through the stone archways in the morning. The noise — students moving between buildings, training ground sounds from the east wing, the layered rhythm of a place that ran on schedule regardless of who was or wasn't in it.
His ribs registered the cold air immediately. Not sharply — just present, a reminder that deep breaths were still a negotiation.
The left arm was in its binding under his jacket. He'd learned in the infirmary that if it wasn't visible people treated him normally. If it was visible they either stared or went carefully around him in the way people went carefully around things they didn't know how to address. He preferred normal.
He walked at a measured pace. Not slow exactly — just considered. His body was still presenting the bill for everything he'd asked of it and it was going to keep doing that for a while. He'd learned to work with it rather than against it.
The ranking board was visible from the main path.
He glanced at it without stopping.
His name was still there. Rank forty-nine — the position he'd held before the infirmary. Someone had defended it for over a week against challenges from students who had presumably thought an absent holder was an easy target.
He kept walking.
The dormitory tower came into view. He took the stairs carefully — one hand on the rail, the left arm kept still, each step deliberate. The ribs had opinions about stairs but manageable ones.
He pushed open the door to room 317.
Taro was sitting on his bed. He had clearly been sitting there for a while — his posture had the specific quality of someone who had stopped doing other things and was just waiting. His ears came forward the moment the door opened.
He looked at Lysander.
Then at the jacket.
Then back at Lysander.
"You're walking," he said.
"Yes."
"Good." He stood. "Hungry?"
Lysander considered his body's current position on food. It had gone from absent appetite to something more insistent over the past two days. "Yes."
Taro nodded once with the satisfied expression of someone whose plan had just confirmed itself. He picked up a cloth-wrapped package from the desk — something that smelled like it had come from somewhere significantly better than the academy dining hall — and held it out.
"Brought it this morning," he said. "Figured you'd be out today."
Lysander took it with his right hand. It was still warm.
"How did you know it would be today?"
Taro shrugged. "Elyra mentioned you were close to being cleared. And you've been awake for three days." His tail moved once. "You're not the type to stay somewhere longer than you have to."
That was accurate.
Lysander sat on the edge of his own bed — carefully, ribs registering the movement — and unwrapped the package. Something from the market district outside the academy gates, the kind of food the dining hall wouldn't serve. He ate without rushing.
Taro sat back down on his own bed and didn't talk.
That was the thing about Taro that Lysander had noticed somewhere around the third week of sharing a room — he could fill silence when he wanted to and he could leave it alone when he wanted to. Most people only had one setting. Taro seemed to read which one the moment required and respond accordingly.
He didn't have a category for that either.
He was still building the category.
He finished eating. Set the wrapping aside. Looked at the room — his desk, his things exactly where he'd left them, Kagekiri leaning against the wall where Taro had apparently returned it from the infirmary at some point.
"Classes start again tomorrow?" he said.
"Your schedule hasn't changed," Taro said. "Professor Seris asked where you were, for the record."
"What did you say?"
"Illness." A beat. "She looked like she didn't believe me."
Lysander looked at the ceiling briefly. "She wouldn't."
"No." Taro tilted his head slightly, ears adjusting. "She asked if you'd be back for the Seven Wars unit."
"When does it start?"
"Next week."
He filed that. Professor Seris teaching the Seven Wars while he was sitting in her class knowing things about those wars that the official curriculum didn't cover — that was going to be an interesting few sessions.
"I'll be there," he said.
Taro nodded. He looked like he was going to say something else, then didn't. Then:
"It's good that you're back," he said.
Simple. Direct. No performance around it.
Lysander looked at him.
He didn't know what the right response was. His previous life hadn't built one. But he was starting to think that maybe the right response wasn't always a response — sometimes the right thing was just to receive it without deflecting it into something smaller than it was.
"Yeah," he said.
Taro's ears relaxed. His tail moved once.
That was enough.