Azrael left the amphitheater without looking back.
The gardens opened up ahead of him fountains, trimmed hedges, stone paths running in directions that all looked identical. Sunlight on the water. Birds in the trees. The kind of place that had been designed to feel peaceful and succeeded in a way that he found faintly irritating.
He walked for two minutes before accepting that he had no idea where he was going.
Where is Class V01? This place is a labyrinth built by people who knew where everything was and saw no reason to explain it to anyone else.
He rounded a corner. A group of students dispersing in the distance, no clear direction to follow. He scanned for someone to ask.
Then he saw her.
Selena. Alone. Standing in the garden path without guards, without aides, without the crowd that had surrounded her at the festival. Just standing. Her silver hair caught the light in a way that made it look like something other than hair. Eyes clear and sharp and looking at something in the middle distance with an expression he couldn't immediately read.
He was moving toward her to ask directions when a hand landed on his shoulder.
He spun. Fist up. Ready.
Azrael: "Don't touch me."
Violette looked at him with the particular expression of someone who has just done something deliberately and is enjoying the result.
He lowered his fist slowly. Looked at her. Then at the figure beside her.
Selena. Up close the effect was different from across an amphitheater. The silver hair and the sharp blue eyes and the posture that had never needed to announce itself. Her expression was composed and carried underneath it something that looked like mild disgust, though whether that was default or directed at him specifically he couldn't yet tell.
He began to lower his head. An old reflex something the old woman had taught him without making it a lesson, simply by modeling what respect looked like.
Violette's hands landed on his shoulders before the movement completed.
Violette: "Still unaware, aren't you?" She was smiling."Come closer. Look at her."
He looked. Selena looked back at him with those sharp blue eyes. The silence stretched for exactly as long as it needed to.
Selena: "If I see even the slightest desire or lust in your eyes, I will condemn you to death."
Azrael: "I would never get aroused by a woman. Let alone by you."
Selena: "What?!"
Violette rapped him lightly on the head.
Violette: "She's wearing the same black uniform as you." The smile in her voice was audible. "A small liberty I allowed myself."
He processed that. Looked at Selena's uniform. Then back at Violette.
Azrael: "You made me stop and waste my time for that?"
Selena: "Quite arrogant for a young man from the slums."
Azrael: "We're the same age. Call me Azrael."
Selena: "No need to introduce myself. You already know mine."
Violette: "To make it short I've taken the liberty of recruiting you both for my squad. We'll fight together, train together, and yes, sleep together eventually." She said the last part with the particular brightness of someone who knows exactly what they're doing. "For now the black uniform marks you as mine."
Azrael looked at her. Then at Selena. Then back at Violette.
He gave a single curt nod, turned, and began walking.
Violette's hand caught his collar.
Violette: "Where are you going?"
Azrael: "Class."
Violette: "Stay with me. We're finding the other students first."
He stopped.
Stood there for a moment.
She's my teacher?
He didn't say it out loud. He didn't need to. He simply stood in the garden with the fountains and the birds and the sunlight doing its thing, and accepted this information with the expression of someone adding it to a growing list of things this day had produced that he hadn't asked for.
He stayed.