"Aine." Tesni's voice shifted into something more serious. "What about the life you had here? What about Mendoza Textiles? You were supposed to be the heiress."
"You can carry that forward," Aine said simply.
"But Aine—"
"Do it for your sister." A pause. "At least do it for me."
Tesni was quiet for a moment. "I just wish we could see each other."
"Do not worry about that." Aine's voice softened just slightly at the edges. "We will. Bye, Tesni."
"Bye." The word came out small and reluctant, like something being let go before it was ready.
ek Aine came downstairs looking like someone who had decided to meet the day on her own terms. A simple shirt, blue jeans, her blonde hair braided neatly behind her. She held her bag with both hands and looked at Ravi with the particular expression she wore when she was trying not to show that something mattered to her.
"I thought I would be starting next semester," she said. "We are already halfway through this one and I am changing my course on top of that."
Ravi looked at her briefly. "You said you wanted to go. So I let Hayland handle it ." He paused. "Is this freedom a little much for you already?" The question carried no edge, just a dry observation. "Hayland arranged supplementary tuition with every one of your teachers so you will not fall behind on anything you have missed. You have nothing to worry about." He picked up his phone from the table. "Hayland will take you today. I have things to attend to."
He left the room without ceremony.
The car was quiet for most of the drive, the city moving past the windows in its usual indifferent way. Aine watched it for a while and then turned to the front.
"How did you arrange it so quickly?" she asked. "The enrollment, the tuition, all of it. It was done in days."
Hayland kept his eyes on the road. "My boss gave an instruction and I delivered it. He does not tolerate delays and I have learned not to offer him any."
Aine turned back to the window.
She thought about that for a moment. An instruction given and executed without question, an enrollment arranged overnight, teachers contacted and scheduled before she had even chosen her courses properly. The same machinery that had once been used to freeze bank accounts and burn down branches and surround a family car in the dark was now being quietly directed toward getting her to college on time.
She was not sure what to do with that.
The gates of Elite College appeared ahead of them through the windscreen, wide and unhurried, opening onto a campus that looked like it had been designed to make people feel they were exactly where they were supposed to be.
Aine straightened in her seat.
She was exactly where she was supposed to be.
The Park
The day had been long and full, hours of lectures and supplementary sessions stacked one after another until her head felt heavy with everything it had been asked to hold. When Aine finally stepped out into the afternoon air and made her way to the parking lot she stopped.
Ravi was leaning against the car.
She crossed to it and got in, taking the front seat without being directed to, which was its own small statement.
"I finished what I needed to handle earlier than expected," he said, pulling out of the lot. "I was passing this way so I came to get you."
Aine looked at him for a moment. "Do you have time to spare?"
He glanced at her. "Why?"
The recreational park spread out around them, wide and unhurried and full of the particular noise that only existed in places where people had come specifically to enjoy themselves. They paid at the entrance and walked in side by side.
Ravi looked around at the rides and the crowds and the children running between their parents' legs and wore the expression of a man who had walked into a situation he had not fully anticipated.
Then looked at one direction where they were waking to. With a slight frown. "What's this?" he asked.
Aine's eyes lit up with excitement. "Roller-coaster. Let's start riding."
Ravi raised an eyebrow, glancing at the families and children scattered around. "Riding here? I know you need it, but we can't go bare here. There are children everywhere."
Aine shot him a sharp "fuck you" look, her expression daring him to argue further.
"We are riding the roller-coaster," she said firmly. "Don't be a spoilt brat."
Something shifted at the corner of his mouth. He followed her.
They settled into the car together, the safety bar coming down across them both. The ride began its slow initial climb, the mechanism clicking steadily beneath them.
"Hold the handles," Aine said.
"I am holding them."
A pause.
"I always throw up after every ride," she said conversationally.
Ravi turned his head slowly to look at her. "You always—" He stopped. "Then why are we on it?"
The coaster crested the top of the first peak and tipped forward.
"Let us get off," Ravi said, already reaching for her arm as the ride slowed to its stop.
"That is exactly when my stubbornness kicks in," Aine said, unbuckling herself with complete calm. "You need to learn to be a little mulish sometimes."
"The mulish ones in my world get locked up and refused food for a week." He said it without any particular sympathy, as though he were describing the weather.
Aine looked at him. "The people who raised me only punished me when what I was doing could genuinely hurt me. That is the difference." She tilted her head. "Were you never stubborn as a child?"
"Every time I tried it I regretted it immediately." He walked beside her toward the exit of the ride. "Your childhood sounds like it belonged to a completely different world."
"It did," she said simply. "But stubbornness and consequences are normal for children. You will regret things one way or another growing up. That is just how it works."
"I was locked in a room without food for three days," he said, his voice carrying nothing, no bitterness, no performance. "Because I said I wanted to go to school. My father did not find that an acceptable ambition.