He typed Ficus protocol and sent it.
The screen threw a tiny delivered check. No confetti. No flourish. Just the small satisfaction of a joke that knew its job.
[Mode: Do Not Disturb - ON][Public visibility: LOW - maintained]
He placed the phone face down and let the room return to the hum it had before the day started pretending to happen early. Dylan breathed into his pillow like a man negotiating with sleep. Jack turned one more page and did the courtesy of not announcing that he had reached a chapter break.
Alex lay on his back and let the ceiling be a ceiling. The flyer he had slid under the laptop made a hard line on the desk edge like a ruler against a messy draft. He pictured morning in layers - door, stairs, the hill that always felt taller when you were late, the library doors and their smudged glass, a blue backpack and a quick exchange, the six minute walk to Atrium, ferns behind glass, window light that could make anybody look like they had a plan.
He watched the clock on his lock screen crawl when he tapped it awake - 11:57, 12:08, 12:23. Somewhere down the hall a toilet flushed and then considered its decisions. The building adjusted itself with small creaks. A car outside washed its headlights across the blinds, making the room blink.
Dylan rolled and muttered, "Science demands a cookie," then went inert again. Jack's breath stayed even. The world did not need him for a while, which was its own kind of invitation.
He did not close his eyes so much as let them rest while the numbers turned from late to later. 01:12 became 02:03. The fan on Dylan's laptop cycled down and then up again like weather. He thought of the app in his periphery, the neat pale panels that did not ask to be worshiped - just used.
[Reminder: 09:25 wake; 09:55 final call] sat quiet in the corner of his mind like a meeting that would keep itself.
When sleep came it came sideways, a drift instead of a surrender. He did not mark the handoff. The ceiling was the last thing that made a claim.
His alarm found him where he had left himself - not deep, not sore, just ready to move.
[Alarm: 09:25 - wake]
He tapped it off before it could try again. The room still wore the thin light that belongs to people who get up on a day by choice. Dylan blinked at the ceiling like a man surprised that ceilings persist. Jack was already propped on an elbow, hair disciplined by instinct.
"Morning," Jack said, which he said the same way no matter how he actually felt about it.
"Morning," Alex said. He swung out of bed, folded the blanket back on itself because he believed in not leaving the day a mess, and pulled on the black crewneck. The jeans admitted they were jeans and that was respectable. He checked the wallet - Visa front slot, backup card behind, two fives, two ones, ID - and the backpack - book, a folded note with Maya's name in case signals failed, a pen that worked.
[Public visibility: LOW - maintained][Reminder: 10:15 Library - bring book + ID][Reminder: depart dorm 10:25 → updated: depart 09:52 for early arrival]
He did the math on the walk and read the correction in his head. Early was better than arriving like a man who expected the world to bend.
Dylan sat up and performed a yawn. "Would you like me to craft a speech you can deliver to the ficus in case of emergency?"
"No speeches," Jack said from the sink where he was performing a face wash with the efficiency of a field medic.
"No speeches," Alex said, pleased to be on a team about something. He lifted the backpack. "Back in a bit."
"Return with tales of commerce," Dylan said. "Bring also a cookie if fate rains."
"Weather behaves without your opinions," Jack said, which somehow sounded like both a threat and a blessing.
The hallway had become a corridor people trusted again - no shouting, just shoes. He took the stairs, because that is what you do when elevators are a rumor or a compromise. The second floor landing still held the scuff of a longboard story that belonged to last semester. Outside, the air had that college-town clean that means night had scrubbed what it could and morning would smudge it back on.
He cut the corner by the hedge he had seen a hundred times and saw anew because he was paying attention. The quad worked on the problem of becoming day. A grounds crew cart murmured past, the driver nodding in the way people nod at anyone carrying a backpack like a purpose. A jogger negotiated with her ankles and won. The library sat up the slope like a glass box that understood why people believed in knowledge as a thing you could walk into.
He checked the time without making a show of it.
[09:57]
Early enough to be early without looking like a person who did not have other places to be. He took the hill at a rate that told his heart it would not be surprised. The doors threw back a reflection of a young man in a black crewneck who had decided to be the kind of person who got ahead of paperwork.
At 10:07, the glass on the right-hand door smudged differently. A blue backpack approached at the rate of a person choosing not to run because running makes you look late. MAYA H was smaller than the backpack and efficient about it. She scanned, found him, held up a student ID in a neat hand, and said, "Hi - sorry - Maya."
"Alex," he said. He smiled in the way cashiers smile, which is to say like a man who respects time. "Thanks for the shift to fifteen."
"Professor moved the start," she said. "He is deeply in love with his own punctuality."
"Then we will match it," Alex said. He unzipped and brought out the book. He put it spine-down on the stone bench and opened to a chapter with graphs because graphs looked like honesty. "Light pencil, erased where it mattered, post-it archaeology removed."
She ran a finger along the edge like a person who had spent a childhood being told to be gentle with spines. "Thank you." She looked up. "Balance now works. Transfer is fine."
He nodded. "Name again just to be sure."
She held the ID up like a ticket and then laughed at herself. "Right - redundant." She thumbed into her banking app with a speed that proved her fingers had learned exactly where numbers lived. "Forty to Alex Hale."
His phone vibrated with the minimized politeness he had chosen.
[Bank Text: Incoming transfer $40.00 - MAYA H.][TIER-1 MONEY PERK roll…][Result: ×2][Critical received: $40.00 bonus][Total credited: $80.00][Daily cap remaining: high]
He nodded at the screen as if the only news were that numbers add up. "Received. Thank you." He held the book out. She took it with both hands like a ceremony that had learned not to be dramatic.
"You saved me," she said. "He locks the roster if you don't have the exact edition and then pretends it is about rigor."
"Rigor loves props," Alex said. "Good luck at eight."
She laughed, once, a sound like relief that had remembered it could laugh. "You too - at whatever you're doing."
"Errands," he said. It was true and it was a legend and it did not have to be more than both.
She adjusted the blue backpack and went in, and the library swallowed her in the way good buildings swallow people - not like loss, like belonging.
He checked the time again.
[10:12]
He had margin and he intended to live in it. The walk to Atrium would take six minutes if you were honest and nine if you allowed for crosswalk drama.
He chose the path that let him watch windows. Campus in the late morning felt like a breathing animal - footsteps, muted voices, a skateboard test-firing bravado near the humanities building. He cut past the sculpture that had always insisted on being art and let it have the point for a day.
At the corner, Atrium Coffee presented itself the way places present themselves when they understand their job - glass frame, plant wall, light caught and tamed, people choosing to sit where the sun could find them. Today it had an extra layer - a folding table near the entrance with a blue cloth that matched the flyer, a polite foam board, a stack of cookies wearing plastic domes like helmets, and a person in a polo whose smile suggested he had been trained not to sell so much as reassure.
Alex stopped one door's width away and took the whole of it in. The rep adjusted a little clip-on mic and said to another rep, "Check check," as if the building needed to hear itself. The blue foam board said OFFERS WEEK in cheerful print. A QR code waited for people who liked squares that promised free.
Through the glass he saw Ivy at the window table, half-turned to the door and half-turned to a sketchbook that sat closed under her hand like a cat that might decide to be awake. She wore a denim jacket that had opinions about structure and a black top that did not try. The plant wall gave her a green frame and an alibi. She tapped a finger on the table in a rhythm that was not impatience but might have been readiness.
His phone hummed without apologizing for the timing.
[Text - IVY MONROE]: Window table. Ficus on standby. No mic contact yet.
He let a smile be a private thing. The rep at the folding table shuffled the stack of cookies so that abundance presented better. The clip-on mic hissed, then went quiet.
[Public visibility: LOW - maintained][Advisory: Consistency reduces scrutiny] floated in his periphery like a suggestion engraved on a coaster.
He set his hand to the door handle. The decision was not whether to go in. It was where to stand during the first thirty seconds so that the room learned the right story about him. Between the demo table and Ivy's line of sight lay three steps of stage.
He could go straight to the window and treat the table like weather, or he could pause at the demo and let the rep's smile confirm everything he had said by not meaning it personally. One path put his back to the polo. The other gave the legend an escort.
The rep glanced up at the same second the ficus's leaves caught a draft and nodded like a plant with opinions.
Alex tightened his fingers on the handle and chose where his feet would carry his face.