They spread everything across Ori's desk.
Kael takes the laptop. Ori has the interface open on the mission board, the FLARE subquest visible with its twenty-six day countdown. Between the two of them they work through the available information with the systematic thoroughness of people who have decided that understanding the thing fully is better than approaching it partially informed.
Kael pulls up the official FLARE website first.
"Third national season," he reads. "Open auditions in six cities. Vaelmund is audition site four." He scrolls. "Fifty contestants selected nationally for broadcast rounds. That's not fifty per city. That's fifty total."
"I know," Ori says.
"From six cities."
"I know."
Kael looks at him. "So roughly eight or nine from Vaelmund if the distribution is even. Which it probably isn't because the larger cities will produce stronger fields." He turns back to the screen. "How many people typically audition at each site."
Ori checks the interface. The system has anticipated this question.
(Previous season data: Vaelmund site, 340 auditionees. Selected for broadcast rounds from Vaelmund: 7.)
"Three hundred and forty auditioned last season," Ori says. "Seven made it through."
Kael is quiet for a moment. He does the arithmetic without writing it down. "Two percent," he says.
"Roughly."
"And the system wants you to clear the first elimination round. Not win. Not make the broadcast rounds. Just clear round one."
"Correct."
Kael nods slowly, processing this. He turns back to the laptop and navigates to the contestant profiles from the previous two seasons. He scrolls through them with the focused attention of someone building a picture. Ori watches him read, watching Kael's expression shift as the profile of the typical FLARE contestant assembles itself.
Conservatory training. Performing arts high schools. Years of local competition experience. Social media audiences built on demonstrated public talent. Regional awards. Performance credits listed with the specificity of resumes designed for exactly this kind of evaluation.
Kael scrolls to the exceptions. There are four across two seasons, contestants who came from outside the expected background. He reads each one carefully.
"These four," he says. "What do they have in common."
Ori looks at the profiles. He reads them with the pattern recognition the system has already named and filed. He takes his time.
"They all did something in their audition that the judges didn't expect," he says. "Not technically surprising. Emotionally surprising. The judges' comments all use words like immediate and unguarded and present." He pauses. "They weren't the most prepared people in the room. They were the most honest."
Kael looks at him.
"The system knows this," Ori adds. "That's why the first unlockable performance skill comes from competing, not from studying. It can't be purchased."
Kael closes the laptop. He leans back in the desk chair and looks at the ceiling with the expression of someone organizing a large amount of information into a usable shape. Ori waits. He has learned to wait for Kael's ceilingward thinking to complete itself.
After a while Kael says: "The system isn't preparing you to be the best person in the room at FLARE."
"No."
"It's preparing you to be the most yourself."
Ori looks at him.
"Because that's the thing you already have that the conservatory people don't," Kael continues. "They've been trained. Training does something to the unguarded quality. It doesn't remove it but it covers it. You haven't been trained. You're all unguarded right now." He pauses. "That's actually an asset with a very short shelf life. The longer you train, the more it costs you."
Ori thinks about this. The system has given him twenty-six days of preparation tasks, theory modules and vocal exercises and writing assignments, but the subquest requirement is not to be the most technically prepared contestant. It is to complete the first round. To show up and do something real in front of people who are paid to identify when something real is happening.
"So the training is scaffolding," Ori says. "Enough structure to hold the honesty up. Not enough to replace it."
"Yes," Kael says. "Exactly that."
They sit with this for a moment.
Kael picks up the page with VAEL written on it in his large handwriting. He looks at it. "What category will you audition in."
"FLARE accepts mixed format auditions in the first round. Any combination of music and performance. The panel decides categorization after the first cut."
"So you could do what you did in the module. The thing you wrote yesterday."
"It's not finished."
"You have twenty-six days."
"It's also not good."
"You have twenty-six days," Kael says again, with the patient repetition of someone who considers this the complete answer to both objections.
Ori looks at the desk. He looks at his notebook, closed, the unfinished verse and chorus inside it. He thinks about what he wrote, the structure it has found through two days of theory and one day of vocal work, the frame that the feeling is beginning to hang from.
He thinks about the four exceptions in the FLARE profiles. The immediate and unguarded and present.
He picks up his notebook.
"Twenty-six days," he says.
"Twenty-six days," Kael confirms. He uncaps his pen and adds to the page: What we know. What we need. What we do. He draws a line under each heading and looks at Ori expectantly.
They spend the next two hours filling in the columns.
What they know: the audition format, the typical contestant profile, the two percent selection rate, the four exceptions and what they had in common, the system's requirement of first round completion only, Ori's current skill level which is foundational at best, and the fact that the most valuable thing Ori currently possesses has a short shelf life and needs to be used before training covers it over.
What they need: a finished audition piece, enough vocal and music theory foundation to execute it with basic competence, a stage name registration confirmed, and someone to be in the building on audition day.
Kael writes his own name next to the last item without being asked.
What they do: continue the system's daily task chain, finish the audition piece within ten days to leave time for refinement, and spend the remaining sixteen days doing what the system assigns plus whatever Kael can identify as useful from his own research.
When they finish, Kael looks at the three columns.
"This is manageable," he says.
"Two percent," Ori says.
"Two percent to make the broadcast rounds. The system isn't asking for the broadcast rounds. The system is asking for round one clearance, which is a different rate." Kael taps the page. "And the system wouldn't assign the task if it weren't achievable."
Ori looks at him. "You trust the system."
"I trust the system's logic," Kael says. "I've read the same profiles you've read. The exceptions made it through on something you currently have in abundance. The system knows that. That's why it pointed you here." He pauses. "It's not random, Ori. None of this is random."
Ori looks at the interface, the mission board sitting patiently behind the skill tree, the primary mission at nine thousand four hundred and twelve, the FLARE subquest with its twenty-six day counter.
(Reconnaissance task logged. Strategic planning with support network node: complete. 25 SP awarded. Total: 70 SP.)
He blinks.
"The system just gave me points for this conversation," he says.
Kael looks deeply satisfied by this. "The system gave me points."
"It gave me points for having the conversation. You don't have points."
"I contributed to the conversation."
"You don't have a system."
"I have adjacent points," Kael says firmly, and writes +25 (adjacent) next to his name on the page.
Ori looks at this.
Something shifts in his chest, small and specific, the particular lightness of a person who has laughed at something without planning to, the feeling arriving before the expression does. He does not fully laugh. But it is close, closer than anything in the last three weeks, and the closeness of it is its own kind of information.
Kael sees it and says nothing about it, which is the correct response.
He caps his pen.
"Task list," he says. "What's next."
Ori looks at the interface.
(Next task: Music Theory Fundamentals, Part Two. Duration: two hours. Reward: 35 SP.)
He opens the module.
Kael pulls his own notes from his bag and settles into the desk chair with the comfortable ease of someone who has found his correct position and intends to stay in it.
Outside, Vaelmund does its morning.
Twenty-six days.