[Day 02, Evening, My room]
"Young Master! Study time!"
I looked up from my book—some novel I'd found on the shelf, written by an author I'd never heard of about places that didn't exist. A perfect escape from reality.
Angy stood in the doorway, holding a stack of textbooks that reached her chin. The tower wobbled precariously as she tried to keep it balanced.
"No."
"Yes."
"I'm resting."
"You can rest AND study. Multitasking."
"That's not how resting works."
"It's exactly how resting works."
She crossed the room, the tower of books swaying dangerously with each step. By some miracle, she made it to my bed without incident. Dropped the stack with a heavy thump that shook the mattress.
I stared at the mountain of knowledge now occupying half my bed.
"You missed school." She stated it like a fact, which it was. "You have exams soon. Ergo—"
"You keep saying 'ergo.'"
"It's a smart word." She puffed up with pride. "Makes me sound intelligent."
Nothing makes you sound intelligent when you're holding seventeen books like that and wobbling across rooms.
"What are those?"
"Your textbooks! All of them!" She spread them out across my blanket with grand, theatrical gestures. History. Geography. Literature. Mathematics. Science. Philosophy. Economics. "We're going to catch you up on everything you missed."
"In one evening."
"Yes!"
"Angy."
"Yes, Young Master?"
"That's impossible."
"Nonsense!" She planted her hands on her hips. "I'm an excellent teacher. Shenhe says so."
Shenhe has never said anything positive about anyone's teaching abilities in her entire life.
Shenhe barely says anything at all.
This is going to be a disaster.
And,
It was a disaster.
"Okay, so history." Angy flipped open the first book, sending a small cloud of dust into the air. "The Great Ilas Treaty of 1672. Can you tell me what that is?"
"Trade routes. Peace between regions. Fishing rights, maybe."
"Correct! See, you already know stuff." She beamed like I'd just solved world peace.
"I studied that with Vjaret."
"Vjaret?" She squinted, the name processing in her brain. "Is that a friend?"
Friend.
Is Vjaret a friend?
We've eaten lunch together. Studied together. He came to check on me.
That sounds like friend behavior.
"...Maybe."
"Ooooh!" Angy's eyes went wide with delight. "Young Master has a FRIEND! A real, actual, living friend! Shenhe! Did you hear?!"
From somewhere in the house: "I heard."
"He has a FRIEND!"
"I said I heard."
Angy turned back to me, practically vibrating with excitement. "Tell me about him. What's he like? Is he cute? Does he make you laugh? Do you hold hands—"
"ANGY."
"What? I'm curious!" She leaned forward, completely unashamed. "This is important information. I need to know if he's worthy of our Young Master."
Worthy.
She's evaluating my friends like a job interview.
"We're not—" I stopped. Took a breath. Counted to five in my head. "We're classmates. That's it. We eat lunch together sometimes."
"For now." She winked. The most conspiratorial wink I'd ever seen. "But okay, okay, back to history. Where were we?"
"The Great Ilas Treaty."
"Right, right." She squinted at the book, running her finger along the text. "So the treaty established—" she paused, reading, "—something about fishing rights? Wait, no, that's not right. That's the next page."
"You don't know either?"
"I'm teaching, not knowing." She said it with absolute seriousness. "There's a difference."
There's absolutely no difference.
Not in this context.
Not ever.
Teaching requires knowing things.
That's literally the definition.
Twenty minutes later, we'd covered approximately three pages.
Mostly because Angy kept getting distracted by literally everything.
"Oh, look at this picture! Is this what people wore back then? That's hideous."
I leaned over to look. It was a drawing of farmers harvesting crops. Simple clothes. Practical hats.
"That's a drawing of a farm."
"Still hideous. Look at those hats. They look like mushrooms."
"They're farmers, Angy. They wear hats to protect from the sun."
"They could wear BETTER hats." She flipped the page dramatically. "Hats with style. Hats with personality. Hats that say 'I'm a farmer and I have opinions.'"
"Why do you care about hats?"
"I don't." She shrugged. "But they could still do better. Everyone can do better. It's about having standards."
Standards.
For historical farming hats.
I'm never going to survive this.
By hour two, I'd given up on learning anything academic.
But somehow—despite the chaos, the tangents, the sudden rants about historical fashion, the conspiracy theories about what cats really think—I was... smiling.
"Young Master!" Angy noticed immediately. "You're smiling! Does that mean my teaching is working?"
"Your teaching is terrible."
"But you're smiling!"
"...Yeah."
She beamed. The kind of smile that lit up her whole face, that made her look younger, lighter, freer.
"Then it's working."
"That doesn't make sense."
"Doesn't have to." She patted my hand gently. "You're smiling. That's enough."
You're smiling. That's enough.
Since when is that enough?
Since when is my smile enough for anything?
I didn't know.
But for some reason, sitting there with chaos incarnate and a pile of unread textbooks—
It felt like it might be.
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