The training grounds were at their quietest just before dinner.
Adam realised this by the third day when he observed that the combat track students left around the same time the kitchen bell rang across campus, driven by hunger and routine.
The eastern grounds remained mostly empty for around forty minutes, with only an occasional solo trainer and the sound of wind passing through the stone archways at the perimeter.
Seraphine practised alone every day during that period.
He did not intentionally monitor her schedule.
He had just paid attention, as you do in a world where information is the only true advantage, and the pattern had emerged naturally through three days of careful watching.
She finished her last class, dropped her bag at the dormitory and was on the training grounds with a practice blade in hand before the crowd had even thinned.
She was already in mid-flow when he arrived, performing a sequence whose name he didn't know but recognized as advanced due to its precision.
Each movement seamlessly transitioned into the next, showing the expertise of someone who had practised so long that overthinking would only hinder her.
He did not interrupt. Instead, he found a spot at the far end of the grounds, picked up a spare practice blade from the rack by the wall, and began practising the only combat form he knew- the basic introductory sequence left to him by Adam Reindeer's memories.
His movements were slow and somewhat embarrassing compared to the scene happening thirty meters away.
He was counting on that.
He went through the sequence twice, intentionally broke form on the third time, causing the practice blade to clatter against the stone, then crouched to pick it up.
As he straightened, she continued moving without showing any sign of noticing or caring, so he reverted to his form and kept going.
This went on for roughly ten minutes before she paused.
Not because of him, she completed the sequence smoothly, paused in the final pose for a breath, then lowered the blade and reached for the water flask on the bench at the edge of the grounds.
She drank without paying attention to anything specific, while Adam kept his focus on his own form and remained silent.
"Your grip is wrong."
He paused mid-movement and glanced over. She wasn't directly looking at him; her gaze was directed somewhere beyond his shoulder in the middle distance, but she had clearly spoken, and no one else was nearby.
"Sorry?" he said.
"Your grip," she said, still avoiding direct eye contact, "you're holding it as if it might slip. It won't if you stop expecting it to."
Adam gazed at his hand holding the practice blade. He then adjusted his grip, loosening slightly where he had tensed and tightening where it had been slack, allowing the weight of the blade to feel more natural and better balanced in his palm.
"Better," she said, and picked up her own blade again.
Adam paused briefly before returning to his form and resuming his activity. They trained silently on opposite sides of the grounds for another twenty minutes until the dinner bell rang across campus.
She gathered her belongings and left without saying another word.
He remained in his position until her footsteps disappeared past the archway, then took a slow breath out and returned the practice blade to the rack.
One exchange. Twelve words from her, three from him. Neither seemed significant to onlookers nor indicated the start of anything.
But she spoke first. He hadn't planned for that, nor expected it, which meant that beneath her composed exterior and careful distance from others, something had noticed him enough to comment.
It was the smallest possible foothold.
He strolled back across the empty grounds toward the dormitory, hands in his pockets, his mind already contemplating the next move.
He was not going to push it, knowing that pressing Seraphine in the original story led to her routes reaching their worst outcomes. She responded to pressure by becoming immovable and to absence by paying closer attention.
The key was to remain consistently present without appearing to seek anything in return.
Redirecting the devotion of one of the most dangerous people in the academy was easier said than done, especially before a golden-haired protagonist accidentally triggered it.
He passed Rim in the dorm corridor on his way to his room, still wearing his outdoor jacket, clearly just returned from somewhere.
"You look like you've been thinking again," Rim said.
"When am I not?" Adam said.
Rim fell into step beside him. "You were at the training grounds?"
"For a bit."
"Alone?"
Adam glanced at him. "I met Seraphine there."
Rim's expression remained mostly unchanged, but a hint of sharpness appeared, like someone quietly noticing a detail they weren't sure how to handle yet. "And?"
"And nothing," Adam said. "She just corrected my grip."
A beat of silence. "She spoke to you."
"Well she said twelve words, so maybe that counts."
"S
" Rim chuckled, in an amused tone as they reached Adam's door. "Seraphine doesn't usually speak to people she doesn't already know unless they've done something worth noticing."
"I had bad form," Adam said.
"Everyone has bad form," Rim said. "She doesn't usually mention it."
Adam pushed his door open and glanced back at Rim, who wore an expression of tentative wariness, someone who had chosen to be cautious but hadn't fully decided how cautious yet.
It was the same look Rim had maintained since their first morning in the dining hall, a subtle, guarded attentiveness that hadn't yet evolved into true suspicion.
"It was twelve words, Rim," Adam said.
"Right," Rim said slowly. "Twelve words." He nodded once, the way people nodded when they were filing something away rather than letting it go. "Dinner in ten?"
"Ten minutes," Adam agreed, and closed the door.
He sat on the edge of his bed in the quiet room and stared at the floor for a moment, running back through the exchange on the training grounds. Twelve words, unsolicited, from a girl who by the novel's own account did not speak to people she had not decided were worth speaking to.
It was nothing. It was also the best possible start he could have hoped for.
He changed from his training clothes and went to dinner.
As he passed through the dining hall, he avoided noticing Seraphine's table, choosing not to track where she sat or who her companions were, because his next step was to do nothing and let the silence take its course.
Across the hall, Ren Ashford sat with a small group of students who were naturally drawn to him, as if by an unexplained magnetism. At the same time, Adam ate his dinner and discussed the theory assessment with Rim without once looking over.
Patient, he reminded himself. The board was only starting to take shape.
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