The library stretched upward in quiet tiers, each terrace rising just enough above the last to give a clear line of sight over the room and out through the wall of glass that defined the entire far side of the building. Floor-to-ceiling windows ran unbroken from one end to the other, letting in the late November light at a low angle that painted long, soft rectangles across the study tables and the polished floor.
Outside, the grounds sat under a thin layer of snow, the pale surface catching what remained of the afternoon and reflecting it back in a muted glow. Inside, the air carried that steady, institutional quiet of a place built for focus, a low hum of pages turning, pens moving, and the occasional chair shifting across the tiers below.
Adam sat at one of the long tables on the second-to-top terrace, a spread of books, notes, and loose papers fanned out in front of him in a pattern that only made sense if you had watched it build over the last few hours.
The table held the evidence of effort, not organization, sections marked, pages folded, diagrams half-understood and circled for later that had already become now. The temperature sat in that middle ground the school always aimed for, warm enough to stay without thinking about it, cool enough that most people kept a layer on and the thermostat bill wouldn't get too high.
Bryce sat across from him in exactly that, a sweater pulled over a t-shirt, beanie low on his head, posture slouched in the way of someone who had settled into the long stretch of a study session hours ago.
Bryce's phone lit up in his hand, and he glanced down at it before letting out a quiet breath that sounded like a decision.
"It's already Four," he said, turning the screen briefly toward Adam like the number needed confirmation. "Yeah, I'm done. If I keep going, I'm just gonna start forgetting things I already know."
Adam didn't look up right away, eyes still moving across the page in front of him, tracking a paragraph that had stopped making sense two sentences ago.
"You can't just… stop," he said, flipping back a page like the answer might have been there the first time.
"I absolutely can," Bryce replied, already starting to gather his things into a loose pile. "That's how this works. There's a line. You cross it, and now you're actively getting dumber."
Adam leaned back slightly, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes for a second before letting them drop again.
I don't know this. I should know this. I thought I knew this.
He looked down at his notes, at the sections he'd marked earlier in the day with the confidence of someone who believed marking something meant understanding it.
Oh, this is bad, I'm probably fucked.
"I'm staying," he said, more to himself than to Bryce. "I can't skip anything. Every time I read something, it turns out there's another thing under it I also don't know, and now I'm pretty sure the entire subject is just things I don't know stacked on top of each other."
Bryce laughed, the sound low enough not to carry but easy in the way it landed between them.
"That's because you actually studied," he said, slinging his bag over one shoulder. "You're not supposed to look too close. That's the trick."
Adam gave him a look that didn't quite commit to annoyance, something softer underneath it that matched the tone of the laugh.
"That's not a trick," he said. "That's just failing with confidence."
"Exactly," Bryce said, already stepping back from the table. "See, you get it."
"Says the person in class A"
"Don't worry, if you work hard, maybe you'll make it to class B" Bryce teased
The both laughed
He paused for a second, adjusting the strap on his shoulder before nodding toward Adam's side of the table.
"Wake me up for dinner before you leave," he added. "If I don't get up, just assume I died and move on."
"Yeah, I'll put that in the report," Adam said.
Bryce grinned, gave a quick two-finger salute that barely lifted past chest level, and turned, heading down the terrace steps without looking back.
Adam watched him go for a second, then looked back down at the spread in front of him.
The library felt bigger with one less person at the table.
He exhaled quietly and leaned forward again, pen in hand, eyes tracking the same paragraph he'd been on before Bryce had checked his phone. It made slightly more sense this time, or maybe he was just better at pretending it did.
A notification buzzed against the wood of the table, sharp enough in the quiet to pull his attention whether he wanted it to or not.
He reached for his phone without thinking, expecting something that mattered enough to interrupt him.
Unknown number.
A photo attached. A girl he didn't recognize, angled selfie, lighting chosen on purpose.
'Hi, is this Adam?'
He stared at the screen for a second longer than it took to read.
Yeah. Of course. Another one.
Since Friday, they'd been coming in waves that never quite formed a pattern, enough to notice, not enough to predict. Different numbers, different names, same shape. Some started like this, casual, neutral, like there was a version of the conversation where they already knew each other. Others skipped straight to something else, less subtle, less interested in pretending there was anything to discover first.
You're six-two. You're on the list. You play basketball. You're—
He stopped the thought before it finished itself, not because it wasn't accurate, but because he already knew where it went.
They're not asking about me.
It sat the same way every time, a quiet shift under the surface of something that was supposed to feel good. Being wanted. Being noticed. It didn't land there. It landed somewhere adjacent to the court, to the way people had looked at him when the list went up, when his name moved from one category to another in a system he hadn't asked to be part of.
Different tone. Same math.
Oh, that makes sense. That explains it. That's what you are.
He turned the phone over, face-down against the table, and picked his pen back up.
The paragraph didn't wait for him. It was still there, still incomplete.
He forced his focus back onto the page, underlining a sentence that felt important even if he couldn't explain why.
From somewhere a few terraces down, a chair scraped lightly against the floor. A page turned. Someone coughed and then didn't do it again.
Then, closer.
A different kind of noise.
Soft at first, then not trying very hard to be.
A quiet burst of giggling, cut short, followed by a whisper that wasn't actually a whisper.
"Go. Just go."
"I'm not just going to—"
"Just go, oh my god."
Adam didn't look up.
Here we go.
The chair across from him shifted.
He lifted his eyes.
Tiffany slid into the seat Bryce had left, her movements smooth in a way that suggested she'd already decided how this was going to look from the outside. She looked exactly like he remembered, which was to say he didn't remember anything specific, just the category she fit into. Class A. Everything intentional. Hair, makeup, the way she held herself like the space around her was something she managed rather than occupied.
"Hey," she said, voice pitched low enough for the setting but still carrying. "You're Adam, right?"
He nodded once, setting his pen down.
"Yeah."
"I thought so," she said, glancing briefly at the books in front of him before looking back up. "I've... seen you around."
I'm sure you have.
"Yeah, thanks for that... I guess," he said again, neutral, not offering anything for her to build on.
She leaned forward slightly, just enough to look at the open page in front of him.
"What are you working on?" she asked.
He turned the book a fraction in her direction, more out of reflex than invitation.
"Geography," he said. "Final's tomorrow."
She scanned the page for a second, then smiled in a way that didn't quite land.
"Oh, that's easy," she said. "Like, that section's pretty basic."
His expression didn't change much, but something in it was enough.
Her smile faltered for half a second.
"I mean, not basic," she corrected quickly. "Just, I'm pretty good at it."
There it is.
"I could help you," she continued, settling back into the seat like she'd recovered the rhythm. "I'm in Class A, so I've already covered most of this. You'd be in good hands if you want."
Adam closed the book gently, keeping his hand on the cover for a second before moving it away.
"I'm okay," he said, voice even, not dismissive. "I've got it."
She tilted her head slightly, not quite accepting that.
"It wouldn't take long," she said. "We could go over it, and then maybe take a break or something. Get a drink. Do something that isn't…" she gestured vaguely at the table, "…this."
The way she said it filled in the rest.
Yeah. I know what 'something' is.
"I appreciate it," he said, and he did, at least in the abstract. "I'm just trying to get through this on my own."
She held his gaze for a second longer, like she was waiting for something to shift.
It didn't.
"You sure?" she asked, a little softer this time, a different angle. "You wouldn't regret it."
"I'm sure," he said.
He didn't add anything to it.
For a moment, it looked like she might try again anyway.
He reached for his things before she could.
The book closed fully this time, notes stacked, pen clipped without looking down. The motion was clean, practiced, the kind of movement that ended a conversation without making a point of it.
"I'm gonna head out," he said, standing.
"Oh," she said, sitting back slightly as the moment moved past her. "Okay."
He slung his bag over his shoulder, adjusting the strap as he stepped back from the table.
"You should text me," she added quickly, like the window hadn't closed yet.
"Yeah," he said, already turning away. "Sure."
He took a few steps before the thought caught up.
I don't even have her number… Sure hope she doesn't have mine.
The small humor of it landed, light enough to keep moving.
Under it, something else stayed.
When she'd first sat down, before any of the words, her eyes had flicked over him in that quick, assessing way people had started doing. Not just recognition. Cataloging. The t-shirt, the lack of anything over it, the way the air in the room sat just cool enough that most people had adjusted for it.
She'd said something about it, half a comment, half a question.
"Aren't you cold?"
Not concern.
Interest.
Huh.
He'd shrugged it off at the time, same as everything else.
It fit into the same space now as the texts, as the looks, as the way conversations tilted before they started.
Details, collected and turned into something more interesting than the person they belonged to.
He adjusted the strap on his bag again as he reached the corridor, the shift in space from the open terraces to the narrower hallway making the air feel different without actually changing it.
His locker clicked open with a familiar sound, the small metal space inside holding exactly what he'd left there earlier in the day. He slid his books in, stacking them with more care than he'd shown at the table, the act of putting things away carrying a different kind of order.
At the end of the corridor, something new caught his eye.
A notice board that hadn't been empty this morning now held a fresh sheet of paper pinned dead center, the heading bold enough to read from where he stood.
Updated Protocols for Supernatural Students.
He looked at it for a second.
Yeah. Nope, fuck that.
The locker door shut with a clean, final sound.
He didn't walk toward the board.
The corridor stretched ahead toward the café, the low hum of conversation growing slightly louder with each step as he moved away from the quiet of the library and into a space built for something else.
Food sounds good.
He adjusted his grip on the strap again, shoulders loosening just a fraction as the decision settled in.
He could go back to the room. Drop onto the bed. Let the day end there.
And wake up feeling like I didn't finish anything.
The thought didn't carry weight. It didn't need to.
The café sat at the end of the hall, light spilling out into the corridor in a way that felt warmer than the library had, even if the temperature wasn't actually different. People moved in and out of it in small clusters, voices overlapping in a way that blurred into something easy to exist around without being part of.
Just an hour.
That was all he needed.
A drink. Maybe something to eat. Sit somewhere that didn't have pages in front of him or expectations attached to it. Just exist for a bit without anyone trying to figure him out or fit him into something he didn't recognize.
Normal. I need shit to just be normal for a bit.
The thought sat there, quiet and genuine in a way that didn't push for anything more than what it said.
He stepped forward, letting the sound of the café fill in the space ahead of him as the light shifted further toward evening behind him, the long lines from the library windows stretching out across the floors he'd left behind.
He kept walking, holding onto the small, ordinary shape of the next hour like it was enough.