"Finally out of your shell, kid. Heard it from your mother. Sorry, a little busy right now. Wait a few more days."
Atiya read the message, snorted once, and tossed the phone onto the bed.
He didn't reply right away. He just leaned back against the wall of his room and stared outside the window.
The reason he had come all the way out to the 49th belt's Ansep branch was simple enough. Inteja wanted him to get tutored in mathematics by Cornelius Correl.
That was the whole of it.
However a problem appeared.
It had been a full month without a single new formula being coded in his circuit. Every time he opened his circuit and pulled up the incomplete code blocks for the second skill, it felt like staring at a wall that had no interest in moving.
Portal Creation worked fine in practice. He could pop small portals, redirect incoming objects.
But when it came to actually writing the theory behind the next skill, nothing came.
He had to create the question himself, answer it himself solely based on his understanding of the skill.
So he packed, got on the ship, and showed up at Correl's quarters. But he have been busy with something else.
Cornelius was not a stranger. He had tutored Atiya once before, years ago, when Atiya was still a kid and Inteja had decided he needed proper groundwork.
You need proper foundations, she had said, every single time. Cornelius would set up the holo-boards and start talking about curves and mathematical theory and advanced Yai circuit designs, and Atiya would mostly zone out or doodle in place of whatever notes he was supposed to be taking.
He and Zelaine had skipped nearly every session. Not occasionally. Nearly all of them.
They would slip out the side door before the second topic, hit the lower decks for arcade games, burn through credits on gacha pulls, or just find an empty corridor somewhere and sit there talking nonsense while telling themselves it counted as independent study.
Cornelius never made a scene about it. He would look mildly put out when they eventually wandered back in, if they wandered back at all, and then simply pick up from wherever he had stopped.
Atiya had zero regrets about any of that. Those were genuinely good times. He got to spend the hours with Zelaine, got additional copies of waifus of gacha games.
Skipping had been the right call. He stood by it completely.
But now the math actually mattered. The code was not moving and no amount of real-world portal practice was filling the gap on the theory side. So here he was. Waiting for Cornelius to clear his schedule.
He picked the phone back up, reread the message, and typed back without overthinking it.
"Cool, Professor. No rush. I'll be around whenever you're free. Won't skip this time. Maybe."
He hit send, set the phone beside him, and stretched out flat on the bed with his arms behind his head.
A few more days. That was fine. He could sit with a few more days.
He got up and headed out to find a vending machine. He had spotted one around the corner earlier and saw a can of lime juice which he like there.
It took five minutes longer than it should have. The corridors in this branch were unnecessarily twisty and every turn looked identical to the last one.
He found the machine eventually.
And someone was already emptying it.
'This fucking glutton.'
Zelaine had a massive bag slung over one shoulder, already straining at the seams, and she was still going.
Chips packets, energy bars, sodas, protein shakes in flavors. She was punching buttons and collecting her haul as if she was a bank robber and was stuffing money inside the bag.
"Spare me something, babe," Atiya said, walking up behind her with his hands in his pockets.
"No can do. I'm starving." She didn't turn around. "This won't even count as a starter."
"A lime juice will do."
She paused, finger hovering over the screen. Seemed to weigh it up for a moment. Then she reached into the bag without looking and tossed something back over her shoulder.
Atiya caught it one-handed and looked at the label.
"It's mango."
"Be grateful," Zelaine finally turned, the bag now so full it looked like a structural hazard, a smirk already sitting on her face. "Anyway, come with me to the room."
She started walking like the matter was settled, bag swinging at her side, already tearing a chip packet open with her teeth.
Atiya looked at the mango can in his hand.
'Of course it's mango. She likes lime. Why did I even ask.'
He cracked it open, took a sip, and jogged to catch up. It was aggressively sweet.
"Next time I'm getting here first. You're going to leave the whole branch with nothing."
Zelaine laughed through a mouthful of chips, not slowing down. "Too slow, too slow. Keep up—"
A sharp chime cut through the corridor.
Atiya glanced at his phone and his eyes lit up.
"A message just came in." He was already turning back the way they came. "Proffessor will take class from today onwards."
****
Professor Cornelius Correl was alone in his office. He leaned back in his chair, let his eyes close, and allowed himself one of his rare naps.
Fifteen minutes passed in quiet.
Then a sharp beep cut through it.
Correl opened one eye. Reached for his phone without sitting up. The screen glowed with a single notification and he looked at it for a moment.
'It's already that time again.'
He exhaled slowly, pushed himself upright, and stood. It had etched to his muscle memories.
He stopped by the small adjoining washroom, ran cold water over his face, combed his hair, and then walked the familiar corridor and took a lift down to the restricted lab.
The lab was quieter here. Fewer people had access and reason to come this way.
At the end of it stood a large octagonal gate, matte black and seamless, with a narrow screen mounted to one side displaying a string of numbers.
Correl entered the code with the tapping partivular dates which he remembers as his birthday, quite an easy password one would say.
The gate parted without a sound, opening into a short antechamber lit only by strips lighting along the floor.
He stepped through. Behind him the door sealed again with a low pneumatic sigh.
A spiral staircase of dark metal descended from the antechamber into the chamber below.
The room at the bottom was vast and circular, and at its center stood the true heart of the branch, a tall cylindrical enclosure of glowing glass.
Correl descended without hurrying but with an excited look.
Inside the cylinder, suspended weightless roughly a meter above the base, hovered a perfectly smooth black box.
No visible explanation has been deduced and published by Correl all these years for the light that surrounded it.
"My masterpiece," Correl murmured, his voice dropping into something soft and private. "How beautiful you still are. Not a single radiance lost all this time."
He stood there a moment longer, then turned.
Beside the central enclosure sat a second smaller and reinforced containment unit. A white blanket lay crumpled inside it, bunched as though something had gathered it close for shelter and was inside it.
What made it unsettling were the eyes.
Protruded from the fabric at irregular intervals were dozens of human eyes.
Some pointed forward. Some drifted sideways. A few blinked slowly and out of sync with each other, following no pattern Correl had ever been able to identify.
He stepped closer to the glass and crouched slightly, bringing himself level with the nearest cluster.
"Eye Guy," he said, his voice easy and unhurried, as he addressed it as something he had grown genuinely fond of. "How's your day going. You can talk to me, you know. Tell me your stories. I promise I won't hurt you."
He tilted his head a little.
"Why hide in the blanket. Come on. Don't be shy."
The blanket shifted, just barely. A soft rustle of fabric, almost nothing.
One eye rotated slowly until it met his gaze and held it.
Correl smiled, small and patient.
"Hm."
Then the blanket made a movement, almost too slight to register.
"Aw, don't be shy," he said, keeping his voice warm and even. "I brought you something today. A new light spectrum filter. Thought it might feel nice on all those pretty little pupils of yours." He reached into his coat pocket and produced a small palm-sized disc, iridescent and faintly glowing at the edges.
He set the disc on the narrow ledge outside the glass, within reach if the creature chose to extend anything toward it.
Then he straightened, tucked his hands into his pockets, and simply stood there.
He had no demands or conditions and just quiet company offered without expectation.
For a long minute, nothing happened at all.
****
Atiya's face filled the holo-screen, grinning like he had just won something.
"I bet you've been hearing nothing but good things from Professor Correl. I solve all his questions almost instantly."
Inteja stared back at him through the call, her expression flat as a dead battery.
"Yes," she said. "He has been full of praise about how you manage to sleep fifty minutes out of every hour-long lecture."
Atiya's grin didn't move.
"Last time it was forty minutes of actual listening across the whole session," he clarified, with the tone of someone reporting genuine progress.
Inteja let out a long sigh. "Any progress on the coding."
Atiya leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms behind his head. "Not really. So I've decided to change the skill."
Inteja's eyes narrowed slightly. "You're currently coding position swap. What are you switching to. And please tell me it's not another one of those idiotic choices."
Her voice had gone but it wasn't calm.
"No," Atiya said, straightening up a little. "I'm going for spatial heal. The one you mentioned a while back."
Inteja's face hardened immediately.
"Don't."
She leaned closer to the camera, and her voice dropped.
"That skill is useless without several others to support it. Don't rush, or you will regret it. Your situation is already precarious enough."
Atiya frowned. "I'm confused though. The number of skills I can actually use is limited. I can't just pick randomly. You told me to ascend by choosing simpler skills and building them properly."
"I did say that," Inteja said tightly.
"Then why are you stopping me from picking spatial heal?"
"Because it does not fit the set of skills I am planning for you to build toward."
Her composure cracked through, sharp and unfiltered, just for a moment.
Atiya raised both hands. "Alright, alright. I get it."
He dropped his arms and exhaled through his nose. Inteja pressed two fingers to her temple, composure reassembling itself in pieces.
"Once you reach Ascension 3 the number of skills you can maintain increases considerably," she said, more measured now. "That is why I keep pushing you toward foundational ones first, rather than letting you reach for resource-heavy skills before the structure is there to hold them."
Atiya nodded slowly, saying nothing.
Inteja's gaze shifted for a brief moment to check something, then came back to him. "There will be visitors at the Ansep branch tomorrow. Joint research with Correl, running for a while. He will not have time to tutor you during that period. I suggest you come home."
Atiya tilted his head. "Professor didn't mention anything about visitors."
"He probably doesn't know yet. Or he is deliberately avoiding the topic because he has never enjoyed politics."
Inteja continued.
"Either way they are coming. High level delegation from another branch. Sensitive work. Correl will be completely occupied."
Atiya grumbled for a while and finally agreed.
"Fine," he said. "I'll pack up. But only because you asked nicely."