Chapter 121 — "Top Secret"
Day 21.
She found him in the meal hall studying his soup with the focus of someone trying to solve an actual problem.
She sat across from him because Mira wasn’t there, the seat was empty, and apparently those two facts were enough.
He glanced up.
At her.
At the chair.
At the bowl.
Then back to the bowl.
"It’s doing it again."
She checked her own.
"What is?"
"The soup."
"What is the soup doing?"
"Being soup."
She waited.
He waited too.
Then she lifted her eyes to him.
"That’s what soup does."
"Exactly."
"Eren."
"It has no ambition."
She stared.
"The soup."
"Yes."
"Has no ambition."
"Look at it."
She did.
It sat there in its bowl, being soup with complete commitment.
"It’s fine."
"It’s comfortable."
"Soup should be comfortable."
"Should it?"
She watched the genuine weight he was giving that question.
"Yes."
"The bread from Day 12 wasn’t comfortable."
"The bread was bread."
"The bread was trying."
"To do what?"
"To be more than bread."
Her attention drifted to the bread available today, then back to the bowl, then to Eren.
"You have a lot of thoughts about food."
"I have a lot of thoughts about ambition."
"Expressed through food."
"Food is honest about what it wants to be."
"What does this want to be?"
He considered the soup seriously.
"A stew."
She pressed her lips together.
At the soup that wanted to be a stew.
At Eren.
"You’re very strange."
"The soup is strange."
"I’m talking about you."
"I know."
He took a spoonful, swallowed, then gave the bowl a small nod.
"Still wants to be a stew."
She laughed.
Not the short, controlled kind.
The kind that arrived before the choice did.
He watched it happen without surprise, as if this had always been the expected result and he had only been waiting for her to catch up.
"You laugh like something fell."
She turned to him.
"Like what fell?"
"Something you were holding up."
Her gaze dropped to the soup.
To the thing she had apparently been holding up.
To Eren, who had somehow noticed this on Day 21.
"I wasn’t holding anything."
"You were."
"What?"
"I don’t know."
"You just said something fell."
"It did."
"But you don’t know what."
"No."
"That’s not helpful."
"It’s accurate."
She stared at him.
He ate another spoonful and checked on the situation again like it was ongoing.
"Still."
"Still what?"
"Wants to be a stew."
She pressed her lips together harder.
Mira arrived seven minutes later, took in the arrangement, caught the expression on Seraphina’s face, and sat down.
She regarded Eren.
"You’re here."
"Yes."
"At our table."
"The soup called me."
Mira glanced at the bowl, then at Seraphina.
"He does this."
"I’m learning."
"It gets worse."
"It gets more specific," Eren said.
"Same thing," Mira said.
Seraphina shifted her attention between them.
At two people who had apparently developed a dynamic without informing her.
"You’ve talked before."
"Once," Mira said.
"About the soup," Eren said.
"It wanted to be a stew that day too," Mira said.
"Chronic condition," Eren said.
Seraphina studied her bowl.
The chronic condition.
The fact that, for the first time in her life, she was the least strange person at the table.
It was genuinely clarifying.
Day 23.
She was writing in the Kestral notebook outside the training hall when he dropped down beside her.
No warning.
No request.
Just sat.
On the floor.
In the middle of the corridor.
She turned her head.
"The light," he said before she could ask, "is good here."
She glanced along the corridor.
At the perfectly ordinary light.
At the sections ahead and behind them that looked exactly the same.
"It’s the same everywhere."
"Different temperature."
"Light doesn’t have temperature."
"This one is warmer."
"That’s not—"
"Slightly."
"Eren."
"Yes."
"That isn’t real."
"I can feel it."
"You can feel the temperature of corridor light."
"Sometimes."
She studied him.
At the complete sincerity.
At the fact that he clearly believed this and had offered it without hesitation.
"You’re very..."
She stopped.
"What?"
"I don’t have the word."
"That’s fine."
"It’s not a compliment."
"That’s fine too."
She looked back at the notebook.
He looked too.
"What are you writing?"
"Things."
"What things?"
"Various."
"Examined or unexamined?"
She turned to him.
"How do you know there’s a difference?"
"There’s always a difference."
Her fingers rested on the pale cover, over the Kestral symbol.
"Unexamined."
"How many?"
"More every day."
He nodded as if that were a perfectly normal update.
"I have a notebook too."
"Of examined things."
"Yes."
"What do you examine?"
"Various."
She looked at him again.
At the way the conversation had folded back on itself from a completely different direction.
"Eren."
"Hm."
"Why are you here?"
"Good light."
"At Kestral."
His gaze shifted down the corridor.
To the training hall door.
To the warm corridor light he had invented.
Something changed in his face.
Not the goofy surface.
Something beneath it.
There for two seconds.
Gone.
"You," he said.
She stared at him.
"Me."
"Yes."
"You came to Kestral because of me."
"Yes."
"We had never met before Day 10."
"Correct."
"You were here before Day 10."
"Also correct."
"So the timeline doesn’t work."
"Timelines are flexible."
"They aren’t."
"Destiny operates outside linear—"
"Eren."
"Just kidding."
Two words.
Flat.
Immediate.
After all of that.
She stared.
At just kidding sitting there with no shame whatsoever.
At the corridor.
At the warmer light.
"Just kidding," she repeated.
"Yes."
Something shifted at the corners of her mouth.
She was losing control of that around him.
"Eren."
"Hm."
"I will put you in the soup."
"The soup already has enough problems."
"I’ll give it a personality."
"What kind?"
"Yours."
He considered that.
"That would make it very interesting."
"That wasn’t a compliment."
"I know."
She tipped her head back against the wall.
At the corridor.
At the day.
At the increasingly doomed battle she was fighting with the corners of her mouth.
Then he said, quieter:
"Do you actually want to know?"
She turned to him.
The shift was immediate.
From just kidding to something else.
The thing underneath the goofiness had come back, and this time it stayed.
"Yes."
He glanced once toward the hall, then the training door, then back to her.
"It’s top secret."
She stared.
"Top secret."
"Yes."
"You’re offering to tell me a top secret."
"If you want to know."
"In a corridor."
"Good light here."
"Eren."
"Yes or no."
She held his gaze.
At the seriousness beneath the joke.
At the way it kept appearing and vanishing.
At the corridor.
At the apparently warmer light.
"Yes."
He leaned in slightly.
She did too.
The corridor was quiet.
The training hall door stayed shut.
No one else was nearby.
Then he told her.
She listened.
When he finished, she leaned back.
At the corridor.
At the light.
At what he had just said.
At him.
"That’s why you’re here."
"Yes."
"That’s the real reason."
"Yes."
"Top secret."
"Yes."
"Just me."
He looked at her.
"Just you."
She looked away for a moment.
At what he had placed in her hands.
At just you.
At all of it.
Something moved through her expression.
Not amusement.
Something more precise.
The feeling of being trusted with something real after soup ambition and corridor light temperature and just kidding.
Something real.
That evening she wrote in the Kestral notebook.
Day 27.
At breakfast, Eren sat beside her.
Not across.
Beside.
New development.
She noted it and said nothing.
He set down his tray and looked at the food.
"It’s not soup."
"No."
"Progress."
"It’s porridge."
"Porridge has ambition."
She looked at it.
"What does porridge want to be?"
"Something warm."
"It is warm."
"Something warmer."
She turned to him.
"You can feel the temperature of porridge too."
"I can feel the temperature of many things."
"Like corridor light."
"Like corridor light."
She looked at the porridge.
At the ambitious porridge that apparently wanted greater warmth.
Then Mira sat across from them, took in the arrangement, registered the difference between beside and across, and said nothing.
Which covered everything.
Seraphina looked down at her porridge.
Eren looked at his.
"Trying hard," he said.
About the porridge.
"Yes," Mira said without glancing up. "It is."
Seraphina looked between them.
At the porridge conversation moving forward without consulting her.
At the fact that she was once again the least strange person at the table.
Consistently.
It remained clarifying.
Day 28.
She found out.
Not from Eren.
From Mira, who mentioned it with the calm of someone stating information she assumed was obvious.
"He told you the top secret thing."
Seraphina looked up.
"Yes."
"The just you one."
She stared.
"He said just you."
"Yes."
"To me."
"He says it to everyone."
Silence.
Complete.
Then—
"What?"
"The top secret." Mira kept eating. "He told Cassin on Day 11."
"Who’s Cassin?"
"The boy from the northern region."
"The large one."
"Yes."
"Eren told him the top secret."
"Just him."
"On Day 11."
"Before me."
"Yes."
Seraphina looked at her porridge.
At just you sitting in her memory from Day 23.
At Cassin apparently also being just you on Day 11.
"He told everyone."
"In the same tone."
"’Top secret.’"
"’Just you.’"
"Yes."
She looked at the porridge.
At the ambitious porridge.
At Eren, somewhere in this building, apparently delivering top secret just you to an entire academy.
Something moved across her face.
Not annoyance.
Not betrayal.
The very specific feeling of discovering something so absurd it cleared everything else out.
That evening she wrote it.
Eren, somewhere nearby, being consistently top secret just you to anyone willing to listen.
The commitment.
The respect she apparently had for it.
And yet.
Still there.
Still meaning exactly what it meant.
Still accumulating.