The recording had barely stopped before the news was already moving.
Through Jade High it spread the way things spread in schools, fast and shapeless and impossible to contain, passing from corridor to corridor, classroom to classroom, carried in whispers and nudges and the sideways glances of people who had just learned something they were not supposed to know yet.
"Do you know there's a Mendoza in the school?"
The name moved through the building like a current running beneath still water.
And somewhere in a classroom on the upper floor, completely unaware, Aine sat quietly with her phone in her hand and her airpods in, the world outside her carefully maintained silence shifting in ways she could not yet feel.
"How did you know?"
"She just finished her live and said it herself!"
By the time everyone filtered back into the conference hall the whispers had taken on a life entirely their own, buzzing from seat to seat like static electricity looking for somewhere to land. Heads turned. Eyes searched. The room had quietly reorganised itself around a mystery no one could yet put a face to.
Aine leaned toward Jessy, her brow furrowed. "Jessy, what's happening? Why is everyone whispering?"
Jessy glanced around carefully before answering, her voice dropping low. "Tessy just went live and mentioned her sister. Now everyone is looking for her."
Aine said nothing for a moment. The information settled somewhere behind her eyes without disturbing the surface.
"Okay," she replied simply.
Her expression gave nothing away. It never did.At the front of the hall Jokull raised his hand, and the room obeyed the way it always obeyed him, gradually and then all at once.
"Quiet down, everybody." He waited until the last whisper died. "We just finished the inspection and the ceremony will be held tomorrow." A small smile crossed his face, unhurried and deliberate. "And Tessy wants to hold a meet and greet with all her fans."
The hall erupted.
"Wow!"
The sound crashed through the room in a single bright wave, chairs shifting, voices overlapping, the particular joy of an audience that has just been given exactly what it wanted.
Aine did not share in it.
She rose quietly from her seat while the noise was still at its peak, the kind of exit that required no announcement, slipping between bodies and through the door before the crowd had finished celebrating. The foyer stretched out ahead of her, still and cool, its quiet a different quality entirely from the noise she had left behind.
She exhaled.
She crossed to the far side of the space and let the silence settle around her like something earned.
Then she sensed it.
Movement near the entrance of the lobby. A shape that was not quite still. A shadow that shifted a fraction of a second after everything else had stopped.
Aine's eyes moved there slowly, her expression unchanged.
"Who is that?" she muttered under her breath, her voice flat and unbothered. "Probably some random scumbag."
She watched the entrance for a moment longer.
Nothing moved again.Back inside the hall, the energy had not dimmed by a single degree.
A girl with barely contained excitement was pushing her way forward through the crowd, her eyes fixed on one destination only.
"Tessy!" Jessy reached her slightly breathless, cheeks flushed with the effort of getting there first. "I'm Jessy."
Tesni turned. The smile she gave was the same one she gave everyone and somehow still managed to feel personal. "Hi, Jessy."
"I'm a big fan of yours," Jessy said, the words tumbling out with the uncomplicated honesty of someone who had been waiting to say them for a long time.
"I can see that," Tesni said warmly, her eyes taking her in with genuine interest. "So, your question?"
Jessy hesitated for just a moment, something shifting in her expression from starstruck to something more careful. Then she asked, "How is your sister?"
Tesni's smile softened. The public warmth did not disappear but something quieter and more considered moved underneath it. "She has a stiff sense about her," she said, her voice dropping slightly, as though the answer deserved a different register than the rest of the afternoon. "No matter the distance, she can feel things."
Jessy absorbed this with wide eyes. "Oh, nice!"
"Can you sign here?"
"Of course," Tesni said, taking the pen without hesitation.When the last signature was given and the last photo taken and the last breathless goodbye exchanged, Tesni turned to her waiting fans with a wave that carried the full warmth of everything she was.
"Bye-bye, everyone! Love you all!" Her smile lit the room one final time. "Can't wait till tomorrow!"
Then she was moving, through the dispersing crowd and out through the school entrance where a sleek car sat waiting at the curb with the quiet patience of something that had always known she would appear eventually.
She slid into the backseat. The door closed softly behind her.
The chauffeur's eyes found hers in the rearview mirror. A beat of silence, comfortable and familiar, the kind between two people who had made this journey together many times before.
"So," he said quietly. "Did you meet Miss Aine?"
Tesni turned her face toward the window. The school entrance slid past as the car pulled away, students still spilling out into the afternoon light, talking and laughing, entirely unbothered.
A quiet sigh escaped her lips.
"She didn't show herself."
The car moved on through the gates and into the city beyond, and Tesni sat with the particular stillness of someone who had been hoping for something and was still deciding how much that hope had cost her.
Aine was barely out of the conference hall when she heard her name cut cleanly through the noise of the dispersing crowd.
"Aine."
She turned. "Dismas."
He fell into step beside her without preamble, his expression carrying the particular efficiency of someone who did not believe in wasting words. "We have a meeting right now."
She followed without argument.