Across the room, Utahime leaned hard against a desk, fingers pressed into her forehead, rubbing slow circles like she could push the last hour back out through her skull. Her breathing had gone shallow, catching every few seconds.
Ren watched her for a second. The strict, easily-annoyed teacher was gone. Whoever was standing there now looked like she was carrying something too heavy to put down.
He walked over, footsteps quiet, and stopped beside her.
"Don't think about the whole world right now," Ren said.
Utahime's hand stopped moving. She looked up at him, eyes red-rimmed, and for a second didn't say anything.
"I don't need a pep talk from a first-year," she said. Her voice caught on "first-year," thin for half a second before she forced it back down. "How are we supposed to fix this? Everything's gone."
"We don't fix everything today. We just survive today." He reached over, grabbed a cold bottle of water off a supply crate, and held it out to her. "Look at your students. They're alive. You kept them alive in that crater. Focus on that."
Utahime stared at the bottle for a second before she snatched it out of his hand, more annoyed than grateful. But her shoulders dropped a little, and the shaking in them slowed.
"You're too young to be acting like the adult here," she muttered — some color coming back into her face despite herself.
"Someone has to." Ren's mouth twitched, almost a smile. He turned back to Maki. "So. What's our next move?"
...
The classroom was dead quiet except for the wind pushing through a broken window somewhere down the hall. Dust hung in the last of the sunlight, drifting slow over the overturned desks.
Maki stood dead center in the room. She'd dropped Playful Cloud onto a nearby desk, but she stood like she hadn't — spine straight, weight forward on the balls of her feet.
Mai sat on the edge of the teacher's desk near the window, arms crossed. The pendant Ren had given her hung against her collarbone.
Ren was against the chalk-dusted blackboard, hands in his pockets.
Maki stood still, arms crossed, eyes locked on him.
"Tonight," Maki said. "When we were up against that ice guy — Kamo, whatever his first name is, the monk-looking one." She jabbed a finger at Ren. "What the hell did you use on him? It looked like Mai's Construction, but it wasn't. It was on a whole different level."
"Hey," Mai said from the desk, not looking up. "What's that supposed to mean, 'whole different level'?"
"It means your Construction is dogshit and you know it," Maki said, eyes still on Ren. "You get winded building one bullet. Whatever he was throwing around out there, he wasn't slowing down for it."
"Rude, but okay, continue," Mai muttered.
Ren pushed off the blackboard. "It's not Construction anymore. Manifestation. That's what it turned into."
The conversation dragged on for about half an hour, with Ren having to explain everything to Maki—from his "artifact storage" of cursed energy to the new cursed technique he used tonight against Kenjaku and Uraume.
He didn't explain it in depth; he just made things up, claiming it had somehow evolved from Construction. Maki was completely dumbfounded by the idea of a technique being able to evolve, but she didn't really have the knowledge to push back against it.
Plus, Mai's technique had evolved right alongside his, so the proof was right there. After finally getting past the fact that he had slept with Mai, the three of them were currently stuck on a much heavier topic: what to actually call this relationship, considering both Maki and Mai were now involved with him.
The classroom went quiet in a different way than before — not tense exactly, just stuck.
Maki stared at the scuffed floorboards, jaw tight. Fighting curses, she knew how to do. Sharing a boyfriend with her twin sister was not a category of problem she had any training for.
"Fuck you, Ren." She threw her hands up. "Let's just break up. We're done. Stay with my sister, play the tragic hero, whatever. I don't need this."
Mai scoffed from the teacher's desk without looking away from the window. "Oh, don't push him off on me just because you're spiraling, Maki."
Ren pulled his hands out of his pockets, grabbed a wooden chair, and dragged it across the floor until it sat right next to her desk. He dropped into it and leaned in close enough that the desk trapped her against the wall.
"Are you actually mad at me, babygirl?" he said, low, just for her.
Maki's face went red so fast it looked like it hurt. He'd called her that once, in the armory, just to fluster her — and now he was doing it in front of Mai like it cost him nothing.
"D-don't call me that!" She shoved a hand against his chest. It didn't move him an inch. "Not in front of her, you idiot!"
Mai gagged loudly from the desk. "Oh my god. 'Babygirl'? I'm going to throw up. I am right here."
Ren didn't even look over. He caught both Maki's wrists in one hand and pulled them into her lap, easy, like it was nothing.
"You didn't answer the question," he said. "You want to break up with me? After I promised not to steal your bed for a whole month?"
"I'm going to kill you." Maki's eyes flicked toward Mai and back. Her whole face was burning. "Let go of my hands so I can kill you."
"I think you're jealous," he murmured, forehead against hers.
She let out a strangled whine and slumped back in the chair, eyes shut, the blush stubbornly refusing to go anywhere.
Ren laughed — she felt it more than heard it, a low rumble against her skin — before he pulled back and looked over at Mai.
"Don't mind her," he said. "Just throwing a tantrum."
"I am not—"
"Mai. Come here."
Mai rolled her eyes. "Why should I sit anywhere near this trainwreck?"