Saturday was supposed to be quiet.
That was the deal Max had made with himself.
No uniforms. No committee rooms. No Ryo. No Reina. No rumor currents dragging him where they wanted.
Just four walls, a ceiling, and the sound of his own breathing.
The safe-house apartment Justice had arranged looked like every fake catalog photo ever taken: bed made too neatly, neutral walls, a small desk pressed under the window, a plant that refused to die. It was the kind of room people imagined when they thought of "normal."
Max sat on the floor instead of the bed, back against the side of the mattress, a book open in his hands that he hadn't turned a page of in ten minutes.
It was almost peaceful.
Almost.
The quiet wasn't really quiet. It carried ghosts. Reina's laugh curling around a clipboard. Ryo's hand on his shoulder. Envy in his chest, low and amused, beating like a second heart.
Max shut the book with his thumb still in the middle.
He should have gone running. Or to the gym. Or anywhere else that wasn't a room that reminded him of the cell he'd woken up in months ago, dressed up in softer lighting.
Instead, he stared at the dust motes turning in the strip of sunlight near the window.
Someone knocked.
Three sharp taps. Not the hesitant kind. Not the angry kind either. Just… impatient.
Max didn't move at first. No one knocked on his door. Ever.
The second round came a beat later.
"Max. Open up."
His stomach dipped.
It was Sera.
He pushed to his feet, opened the lock, and pulled the door halfway. The hallway beyond was washed in dull afternoon light.
She stood there in casual clothes, not the academy blazer, not the "Akane Emi" costume. A pale hoodie with sleeves shoved up to her elbows, pleated skirt swapped for black shorts, legs bare, sneakers loosely tied. Her hair was up in a messy tie, strands falling around her face.
Without the uniform, she looked less like a rumour and more like a person.
"You've been hard to find," she said.
"That's a good thing," he replied automatically.
She frowned at him for exactly half a second, then pushed the door wider with her palm and stepped past him into the room like the concept of permission was optional.
Max just… froze.
His brain stuttered on the image of her in his space. Sera. Here. Inside the one place that was supposed to be disconnected from all of it.
She glanced back at him. "You gonna stand there and breathe suspiciously, or close the door?"
He shut it. Slowly.
Sera turned in a small circle, taking the room in.
"No posters," she muttered. "No photos. No clutter. No snacks. No dust, even. Wow."
She looked at him over her shoulder.
"You live like a crime documentary."
"I live like someone who doesn't want to leave evidence."
"Same thing," she said, but her mouth quirked.
She wandered further in, inspecting the shelves, the plain dresser, the too-neat desk. She touched nothing, but her eyes moved more or less than Cael's did.
he said. "Why are you here?"
She stopped moving.
For a beat, she said nothing. Then, because she was Sera, she deflected.
"what, I'm not allowed to check on the guy who keeps accidentally causing drama wherever he goes?"
She crossed to his bed and — before he could process — sat down on the edge of it, bouncing once, testing the springs. Like it was nothing.
Max's brain promptly forgot how to exist.
No one had ever sat on his bed before. Not like this. Not casually, not while wearing a hoodie and half an attitude.
He stayed standing, which only made him feel more awkward.
"…do you want water?" he asked.
She blinked at him. "Is that your way of saying 'you're trespassing, please leave'?"
"I don't know," he admitted.
She huffed a laugh. "Wow. Your too honest."
Her attention drifted to the book on the floor. "What were you reading?"
He followed her gaze. "Nothing important."
"Liar."
"It's just a book."
"You don't stare at 'just a book' like it owes you something," she said.
He didn't answer.
Something in her posture softened. Her shoulders dropped a little, hoodie creasing around her.
"Okay," she said. "I'll go first, since you're allergic to starting conversations."
"Is it that obvious?"
"Yes," she said simply. "More than you think."
She leaned back on her hands, looking up at the ceiling for a moment before speaking.
"You disappeared after classes yesterday," she said. "Didn't answer the chat. Didn't respond to my message."
"I didn't see it."
"I know," she said. "You didn't open it. That's the point."
He looked away.
She turned her head, watching him now instead of the ceiling.
"I heard about you and Reina," she added. "Again."
"There is no 'me and Reina,'" he said, a little too fast.
"Tell that to everyone else," she said. "They've already got your entire wedding planned out."
He exhaled, tension tightening across his shoulders.
Sera noticed. Of course she did.
She shifted further back on the bed and patted the space beside her. "Sit. You're making the room look like an interrogation."
He hesitated.
"I'm not going to bite," she said.
He crossed the room and sat, careful to leave a small gap between them. Not touching. Not quite comfortable. Not running away either.
He'd taken hits from monsters bigger than cars, yet this felt harder.
For a while they didn't talk. Outside, someone laughed in the distance. A car passed. A bird landed on the window railing and flew off again.
"You know what the annoying part is?" Sera said finally.
He glanced at her. "What."
Sera's expression softened.
"I get why everyone's talking," she continued. "You working with Reina… it fits the image people want from you. You look mysterious. Quiet. Easy to project things onto."
"That's not a compliment, is it?."
"It is to them," she said. "To the committee. To the Tribunal. To anyone who wants a clean narrative they can wrap you in."
He didn't respond.
Her voice lowered, gentler now.
"But it's not the version that matters."
She swung her legs lightly, heels bumping the side of the bed.
"The thing is," she went on, "you're letting them choose the version of you that works best for them. The school's 'quiet handsome transfer.' Reina's 'mysterious helper.' The Tribunal's 'containment success story.'"
"You forgot the Virtue's 'walking weapon,'" he said.
"Didn't forget," she murmured. "Just didn't want to lead with the worst one."
He turned that over in his head.
When he didn't respond, she sighed.
"Look, I'm not here to yell at you," she said. "I just… you went from zero social ties to being the center of three different rumor storms in, what, a week?"
"I didn't ask for any of that."
"I know," she said. "That's why I came."
That made him look up.
"You came because…" Max hesitated, eyes drifting toward the window instead of her. "…I don't really know what I'm supposed to do when people start showing up."
Sera didn't interrupt. That alone made him keep going.
"When someone talks to me, I can handle that," he said. "One person. Clear words. Clear intent. But when it's more than that—when it's rumors, or expectations, or people deciding things about me before I even open my mouth—I don't know how to react."
He exhaled slowly, like he was admitting something he'd never put into words before.
"I don't know when I'm supposed to speak. Or what I'm supposed to say. Or whether staying quiet makes things worse or better. So I just… wait. And hope it passes."
Sera shifted slightly on the bed, her expression unreadable.
"And when it doesn't pass?" she asked.
Max's jaw tightened. "Then I feel like I'm already behind. Like everyone else got a manual I didn't."
He glanced at her, then away again, embarrassed by how much he'd already said.
"You walked in here," he continued, quieter now, "and my first thought wasn't 'why are you here.' It was 'what am I doing wrong.'"
That made her look at him properly.
"I'm not used to people choosing to be around me," he said. "Not without a reason. Not without an angle. So when someone does, I don't know how to act normal about it."
There was a beat of silence.
Then Sera said, gently, "Max… that's not you being bad at this."
He frowned. "It feels like it is."
"No," she said. "That's you trying to navigate something you were never allowed to practice."
He didn't respond, but something in his shoulders eased—just a little.
"And for the record," she added, nudging him lightly with her elbow, "if a girl shows up unannounced, sits on your bed, and starts asking questions about your life, being thrown off is the correct response."
He let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh.
"…Okay," he admitted. "That helps."
She smiled, small but real.
The silence between them felt different now — not heavy, not sharp. Just there. Shared. The room felt less like a staged photo and more like somewhere two people had actually been.
After a while, Sera checked her phone.
"I should go," she said, standing. "If I stay too long, Elias is going to assume I compromised the mission and Cael will have a panic spreadsheet ready."
She slung her bag over her shoulder and headed for the door. Max stood too, automatically.
At the threshold, she paused with her hand on the knob.
"And Max?" she said.
He looked up.
"You don't have to do all of this alone," she said, eyes on the door. "The pretending. The blending. The… not knowing what to do with people."
He didn't speak.
"If you disappear again," she added, "I'm coming back. This time uninvited "
"…this was invited?" he asked.
She turned just enough to glare at him over her shoulder. "Shut up."
There was no heat in it.
She opened the door, stepped into the hallway light, and then she was gone. The door clicked shut behind her.
The room felt different.
Nothing had changed. The bed was still too neat. The desk still perfectly arranged. The plant still defiantly alive.
But the air held something it hadn't before — the echo of her voice, the warmth where she'd sat, the faint trace of citrus and shampoo.
Max sat back down on the bed, the cushion she'd hit him with tipped over beside him.
He stared at the door for a long moment.
Then he lay back, eyes on the ceiling, listening to the distant noise of the building.
He'd told someone the truth. Not all of it. Not the monstrous parts. But enough.
Enough to feel like a crack had opened in the shell he'd been wearing.
"You're not bad," she'd said. "You're new."
He didn't know if he believed her yet.
But as the afternoon stretched on and the room settled into a different kind of quiet,
he realized something:
For the first time since coming to this place, since the Tribunal, since the rooftop—
The silence didn't feel like it was trying to swallow him.
It just… sat with him.
Like it wasn't his only company anymore.
Chapter 34: Sunday
Sunday didn't feel like a day off.
It felt like a pause someone forgot to explain.
Max woke up later than usual, light already cutting across the wall in a sharp rectangle that said he'd missed the early hours. For a few seconds, he didn't move. He lay there, staring at the ceiling, counting breaths the way he used to when sleep came hard.
No alarms.
No messages lighting up his phone.
No voices outside his door.
The apartment building was quieter on Sundays. Even the city seemed to lower its volume, like it was waiting to see what people would do with the space it gave them.
Max sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
He told himself he'd do something today.
That was as far as the plan went.
He showered, dressed in clothes that didn't belong to any version of him anyone else knew—plain shirt, dark pants, nothing that looked like a uniform or a role. When he stepped back into the room, it still looked staged. Too clean. Too intentional.
He picked up his phone.
No new notifications.
He opened the group chat, scrolled without reading, then closed it again. He hovered over Sera's contact for half a second longer than he meant to, then locked the screen and set it facedown on the desk.
Not yet, he thought.
Not because he didn't want to talk to her—
because he didn't know what he'd say.
Max would go for a run on a day like this.
Instead, Max grabbed his wallet and keys and left the apartment.
The grocery store was only three blocks away. Close enough that Justice had called it "convenient." Far enough that Max still felt exposed walking there.
Sunday crowds were different from school crowds. Slower. Looser. Families, couples, people with baskets instead of phones. No one was looking for him. No one cared who he was.
That was a little comforting.
The automatic doors slid open with a soft chime, and the air inside smelled like bread, disinfectant, and something fried. Max took a basket from the stack and stood there for a second longer than necessary, watching people move around him like they had a rhythm he didn't.
He hadn't planned what to buy.
He wandered into the produce aisle and stared at the vegetables like they were a test he hadn't studied for. Tomatoes. Onions. Greens he didn't recognize. A woman nearby squeezed an avocado thoughtfully, then moved on.
Max picked up one too, turned it in his hand, then put it back. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to be looking for.
After a while, he ended up with basics. Rice. Eggs. Chicken. Bread. Things that didn't require creativity. Things that could be cooked without thinking too much.
As he moved through the aisles, he caught fragments of conversations.
"…The kids are bored already?"
"…no, I said low sugar."
"…we buy it next time."
Normal things.
At the end of one aisle, he paused in front of the spice rack. Rows of glass bottles, labels neat and colorful. He stared at them longer than he needed to.
Someone brushed past him, apologizing automatically. Max stepped aside just as automatic.
It struck him then — how many of these small movements he did without thinking in a place where nothing was trying to hurt him.
He didn't freeze. He didn't hesitate. He just… existed.
The realization sat strangely in his chest.
At the checkout, the cashier smiled at him. Not curious. Not suspicious. Just polite.
"Find everything good today?"
Max opened his mouth, then paused — just a fraction of a second too long.
"…yeah," he said. "Thanks."
The cashier nodded, rang him up, and that was it. No follow-up. No judgment. No expectations.
When Max stepped back outside, bags in hand, the sky had shifted. Clouds rolled in low and heavy, the air thick with the promise of rain.
He stood there for a moment, groceries cutting into his fingers, and let himself breathe.
It wasn't a revelation. It wasn't a breakthrough.
But it was proof.
He could move through the world without being watched. Without being needed. Without being defined.
As he walked back toward the apartment, he thought about what Sera had said.
You're not bad. You're new.
Maybe this was what being new looked like. Standing in a grocery store, unsure which food brands to choose. Learning the shape of ordinary days.
Back in the apartment, Max set the grocery bags on the counter and unpacked them one by one.
Rice in the cabinet. Eggs in the fridge. Bread on the counter. Chicken wrapped carefully, like it mattered if it touched anything else.
When he was done, he stood there with his hands on the counter, staring at nothing.
The quiet crept back in.
He crossed the room and picked up his notebook from the desk — the same one he carried to class, pages filled with half-notes, crossed-out thoughts, margins scribbled during lectures he barely remembered.
He flipped through it once.
Then, without overthinking it, he tore a page out.
The sound was sharper than he expected. Paper ripping clean.
He laid the page flat on the desk, smoothed it once with his palm, and picked up his pen.
For a long moment, he didn't write.
Then, at the top of the page, he wrote one word.
CHOICES
He stared at it. The word felt heavier on paper than it ever had in his head.
Slowly, deliberately, he started listing names.
Sera
He paused after writing it, pen hovering. He didn't add anything next to her name. Didn't need to. The space said enough.
Below it, he wrote:
Reina
Another pause. Longer this time.
Then:
Ryo
His grip tightened slightly as he finished the name. He underlined it once without meaning to.
He considered adding more. The Tribunal.
The Virtues. The school. The Vice inside him.
He didn't.
This wasn't about everything. Just the things that were pulling him right now.
He leaned back in the chair, studying the page like it might rearrange itself into something clearer.
Three names. Three paths. None of them clean.
He thought about Sera on his bed, voice softer than he expected. About Reina's certainty, the way she looked at him like he was already part of a story. About Ryo's calm pressure, the feeling that standing near him meant stepping into a line he couldn't see.
The pen moved again.
Next to Sera, he wrote:
Knows me.
Next to Reina:
Sees me.
Next to Ryo, after a longer hesitation:
Challenges me.
He stared at the page until the words blurred.
"None of these are choices," he muttered.
Max exhaled sharply and folded the page in half.
Then, after a second thought, he folded it again.
He didn't tear it up. He didn't throw it away.
He slid it into the back of the notebook, shut the cover, and set it aside.
Not decided. Not resolved.
But acknowledged.
He stood, washed his hands, and turned back toward the kitchen to cook something up.
Sunday wasn't about answers.
It was about admitting the questions were real.
And for now—
That was enough.