SMASH or PASS

I opened the apartment door.

"Noel! You are back!"

Fenra was on the bed. Awake and wagging her tail. Her ears were forward, tracking my footsteps since I’d entered the building. Wolfkin hearing. She’d known I was coming for thirty seconds before the door opened.

"I’m back."

I walked in. Put my bag on the table. Sat on the chair.

Her nose moved. One breath. Slow. Thorough. Not a casual sniff. A full scent analysis. Helena’s perfume, her soap, her sweat, her sheets, the wine, the candle smoke, the pork with red sauce, everything. Every detail of the night compressed into chemical data that Fenra’s biology decoded in a single breath.

Her ears flattened against her skull.

Her tail stopped moving.

She looked at me. One second. There was no anger in her amber eyes. No accusation. Something worse. Understanding. She knew exactly what had happened. She knew why. She knew it was for money. She knew the money was necessary. And she knew that knowing didn’t make it hurt less.

"Fenra I... I know that you don’t like Helena but—"

"It’s alright." She turned her body toward the wall. Curled up. Pulled the blanket over her shoulder with one hand.

"Fenra."

No reply.

"I had to. The academy costs fifteen gold just for the entrance fee. I didn’t have another option."

She tucked her tail between her legs. The blanket covered her whole body now. A Fenra-shaped lump facing the wall.

"Fenra, please."

Nothing.

The silence was worse than any noise she could have made because silence from Fenra meant she made a decision, and her decisions, once made, became permanent until something equally significant un-made them.

I sat on the edge of the bed. Three inches from her back. I could feel her warmth through the blanket. She was right there. She was also somewhere I couldn’t reach.

Pixia was by the window. Dark. With little to no glow.

"Hey, if anything I enjoyed the free sex show—"

"Shut up."

◇◇◇

Two days passed.

Fenra resumed her morning routine. Because the routine is her programming. Exception handling for emotional damage is not included in her programming.

The part that came after was gone. The crawling up to press her face into my neck. The tail wagging. The possessive cuddling... That was gone.

When she finishes, she moves to the other side of the bed and sits facing the window.

Not the wall. The window. Maybe that’s progress. Or maybe it’s the same distance from a different angle.

’Does she really hate Helena that much?’

I knew that their relationship wasn’t great but isn’t that reaction a little too far?

The first day after Helena, I tried talking to her three times.

"Fenra, I want to explain."

Ear twitch. Nothing else.

"The academy costs fifteen gold just for the entrance. I didn’t have another way to get the money."

She shifted her weight. Slightly away from me.

"I’m not going back there. It was a transaction. One time."

She looked at me. Her amber eyes held mine for two seconds. In those two seconds, I saw something I hadn’t seen from her before.

Disappointment.

She turned back to the window.

The second day, I stopped trying to explain. Explanations required a listener. I went about the routine. Breakfast. Exercise. System review. The apartment was the same. But the bed was colder on her side by exactly the width of a wolfgirl who wasn’t curling around me.

I tried once more. Not an explanation. Something different.

"Fenra... I’m sorry."

She turned her head. Looked at me. The word "sorry" landed differently from "I had to" or "the academy costs." Those were reasons. This was an admission.

Her tail moved. Not a wag. A twitch. The involuntary response of a wolfkin hearing something she wanted to hear but hadn’t expected.

She turned back to the window. But her ears rotated toward me. Listening. She was still listening.

I sat on the bed. Not close. On my side. Facing forward.

"I don’t know how to do this. Any of it. The money, the academy, the system. I’m making it up as I go. And sometimes making it up means doing things that..." I stopped. I was about to moralize. That wasn’t me. I wasn’t going to dress a transaction in feelings it didn’t have.

"I chose the money over your comfort. That’s what happened. I’d do it again because the math required it. But I’m sorry it hurt you."

She was still facing the window. Her tail twitched again. Her breathing changed. Slightly faster. Then it settled.

She didn’t turn around. She didn’t touch me. But her ears stayed pointed at me for the rest of the evening, and when I lay down to sleep, the gap on the bed was two and a half inches instead of three.

◇◇◇

On the third morning, I got up and made a decision.

"I need to go shopping today. Academy equipment."

Her ear twitched. Acknowledgment.

Pixia’s glow returned. Faintly. "Shopping. Excellent. A task that involves neither moral compromise nor body fluids. I’m in."

"You were always coming anyway..."

"Obviously. You need someone to tell you when you’re being overcharged. Your wolfkin isn’t volunteering for the job."

Fenra’s other ear twitched. Acknowledgment again. She didn’t move from the window.

◇◇◇

I had twenty-five gold minus living expenses. Academy costs: 15 gold entrance (non-negotiable, paid at the registrar’s window), 3 gold for a mana resonance crystal, 2 gold for two sets of academy-standard uniforms, 1.5 gold for textbooks (used copies). Total: 21.5 gold. Remaining: 3.5. Tight but workable.

The equipment shop was on the merchant quarter’s main street. Glass windows displaying crystals, training weapons, alchemy kits, and a suit of practice armor that cost more than my apartment’s annual rent.

The mana resonance crystal section was behind the counter. Glass case. Velvet lining.

"I need a crystal.... something around 3 gold?"

Shit, did that sound bad? I should never tell my actual budget...

The shopkeeper was a human woman with wire-rimmed glasses.

Apparently she had been dealing with students for long enough to predict every question I had before I asked.

"Three options at your budget." She pulled them from the case. "First: basic clarity. 2.5 gold. Standard resonance. Does the job for most exams."

She set it on the counter. It was crimson with clear glasses. Very small size-wise.

Those fuckers use drugs on exams? Is that even legal?

Well... I think I should look at it more as an energy drink of sorts.

"Second: enhanced clarity. 3 gold. Better accuracy during practical exercises."

She set the second one beside the first. Slightly larger. Slightly brighter.

"Third: academy preferred. 3.5 gold. Same model the noble students purchase. Best accuracy available at retail."

The third one was noticeably brighter. The light caught its facets and threw rainbows on the countertop.

Pixia, from inside my collar, whispered directly into my ear. "Look at the 3 gold crystal. Center. See the cloudiness?"

I looked. A faint milkiness in the crystal’s core. Barely visible unless you knew to check.

"Clarity impurity. Natural occurrence. About 30% of crystals in this grade have it. That cloudiness will read your mana output approximately 10% lower than actual."

"Is the cloudiness in the enhanced model a manufacturing defect?" I asked the shopkeeper.

She paused. Most students didn’t notice impurities. "That’s a minor clarity variation. It occurs naturally. The reading variance is negligible for most users."

"How negligible?"

"8 to 12% lower than true output, depending on the user’s mana density." She adjusted her glasses. "For a student with standard output, the difference is unnoticeable. For a student with very low output..."

"It makes low look lower?" My face turned pale.

"Technically, yes."

Pixia whispered: "Buy that one. Your output is already the worst recorded in modern academy history. Having the crystal read 10% lower changes nothing about your practical performance but makes the academy think you’re even weaker. Lower expectations. Fewer questions about how you’re improving. More room to grow without attracting any attention to your soul parasite."

’I’ll call it a symbiote but...’

She wasn’t really wrong.

"Sometimes being underestimated is the best investment," I said.

The shopkeeper blinked. "Most students try to buy the BETTER crystal."

"I’m not most students."

"Clearly."

’Was that sarcastic?’

She wrapped the 3 gold crystal. "Anything else?"

"Where’s the textbook shop?"

"Three doors east. Ask for used copies. The margins have better information than the text."

The textbook shop was exactly where she said. Narrow. Crowded shelves. The smell of old paper and ink.

"Fundamentals of Mana Theory" by Professor Aldric Morne. 40 silver used. The cover was bent. And someone had drawn a funny face on page seven. The margins of Chapter three contained "THIS CLASS SUCKS" in block letters, underlined twice.

Pixia read the spine from my collar. "Aldric Morne. Still publishing? He was old when I first heard him lecture. Decades ago. Well, multiple decades." She hopped along my collar to get a better view. "His mana efficiency theory in Chapter seven is the most important content in this book. Everything else is standard curriculum material you’ll learn faster from me than from reading."

"You’re volunteering to tutor me?"

"I’m volunteering to correct the propaganda your education system passes off as scholarship." She poked my neck with a finger smaller than a matchstick. "The History of the Covenant textbook is approximately 40% accurate. The Convergence Chapter is fabricated. The Titan Empress section is misattributed. The founding of the Covenant of Purity is presented as a humanitarian initiative, which is like calling a cage a retirement home."

"That bad?"

"Worse. But the exam will test the textbook version, so you need to know the wrong answers as well as the right ones." She kicked her legs. "Buy both books. I’ll teach you which parts to believe and which parts to memorize and forget."

’Yeah so you can give your own propaganda?’

Although she’s been around for a while I didn’t really trust that fairy. Not even a little.

However, I still think she can be useful somehow, so I’ll just pretend to eat whatever she’s cooking.

I bought the Morne textbook, a used copy of "History of the Covenant: From Convergence to Present Day" (50 silver, heavily annotated, question marks in every margin of the Convergence Chapter), and an alchemical basics handbook that smelled like someone had spilled a potion on it.

"That stain is Restoration Draught," Pixia said, sniffing the cover. "Grade C. Whoever owned this book was either clumsy or trying to heal paper. Neither is a good sign."

We visited two more shops before the tailor. An alchemy supply store where I bought a starter kit (mortar, pestle, three basic reagent vials) for 30 silver. Pixia evaluated every item.

"That mortar is granite. Acceptable. The ceramic ones crack after six months. The brass ones react with acidic reagents and ruin your compounds." She pointed at a shelf of bottled reagents. "You’ll need moonroot extract for the basic formulas they teach in first semester. That bottle is 15 silver here. The same bottle costs 8 silver at the Patchwork market because the Covenant Race herbalists sell direct."

"So I should shop in the Patchwork?"

"You should shop everywhere and compare. The academy district marks up everything by 40% because students are captive customers with parental funding. You don’t have parental funding. You have 25 gold that a Baron’s daughter gave you in exchange for spending the night, and every silver matters."

"Could you phrase that differently?"

"No." She kicked her legs. "The truth doesn’t come in comfortable packaging."