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Annette skids around a corner, balancing four textbooks and a cup of quills on her left arm, while her right forefinger and pinky are wedged between pages of a fifth book. This is it! This is what Professor Manuela was talking about in her seminar that morning! At least, she’s pretty sure it is. She wants to ask to make sure. Luckily, she dug it up fifteen minutes before her office hours ended, so she should have enough time to at least scratch the surface of the concept. Annette could probably spend another two hours delving into magic theory, but she’ll have to make do with what she’s got.
She skids around her second corner, wobbling the cup against the turn to fight gravity’s pull. Professor Manuela’s office is right up ahead. Annette is so absorbed in her discovery (that faith magic follows gamma patterns and not beta patterns like reason magic), that she doesn't consider that other people might also be seeing the professor during her open hours.
(To be fair, Professor Manuela’s first hours were “whenever I feel like it,” but Professor Hanneman forced her to change them to something more concrete.)
If anyone were to be there, Annette would have bet money on Lysithea. She’s always so studious. And if not her, maybe Lorenz. Ugh. Lorenz. But neither Lysithea nor Lorenz stood in front of Manuela’s door that day. Instead, it was someone on her mental list of least expected.
Felix.
She doesn’t know him all that well, just that he spends his free periods at the training grounds and has a permanent scowl. That scowl aims at her when she skids one final time, to a stop, in front of the faculty offices. She drops the quills and three of the textbooks from her left arm.
“Oh gosh, I’m sorry! I didn’t see you there and I–”
“Didn’t your parents teach you to not run indoors?” he cuts her off curtly. The scowl is still there, but up close, his eyes don’t have piercing anger. They’re almost…soft.
Annette bites her tongue and drops the final textbook, using her left arm to collect her supplies so she doesn’t lose her page. “I was in a hurry,” she explains.
“Clearly.”
She coughs. “Well, you were here first, so I guess you get to ask your question before I do!”
He eyes her stack of books, then nods slowly. “I’ll be quick. Only a minute or two. Come in with me, otherwise she might fall asleep again.”
“Again?” Annette asks. Sure enough, Professor Manuela is sprawled out on her chair with one leg over the armrest and her head hanging off the side.
“Professor.” Felix’s voice rouses her.
“Huh?” Manuela jumps and lands in her seat more professionally. “Oh, kids .” She slumps onto her desk, takes out an opaque bottle, and downs whatever is left in it. “What do you need? If you’re pregnant, talk to Seteth. I can’t deal right now.”
Both Felix and Annette lock eyes. Her face turns beet red. He just looks confused. What sort of students have been showing up to Professor Manuela's office hours, anyway? “I wanted to ask about the Winter Solstice Concert,” he says. “Which students were chosen to represent each house?”
Manuela’s head hits the desk with a loud thud . “It’s going to be so much work,” she moans. “I had thought that with Dorothea attending the Academy this year, we would put on the best show Garreg Mach has ever seen.” She picks up her head, only to drop it again. Thud . “The talent pool begins and ends with her.”
Annette is too busy taking in the sight of her professor, disheveled and clearly not caring what impression that leaves with her students, to see Felix roll his lips in. “Who else will be performing?” he asks.
“Ferdinand from the Black Eagles House.” Thud . “I’m coaching him personally–he can carry a tune at least. The rest of his house is atrocious. Hubert hisses, Caspar screams, and Linhardt snores. Don’t get me started on the representatives from the Golden Deer House. I thought that Marianne would have been a hardworking candidate, but Hilda volunteered in her place. And that Lorenz boy…” Thud .
“From our house?” Felix asks more quietly. “Who is joining from the Blue Lions?”
Manuela finally picks her head up. “You didn’t try out. Why are you wondering?”
With Manuela looking slightly more put-together, Annette shifts her gaze to Felix.
“I don’t sing, but I enjoy the arts,” he says, like it is intuitively obvious even to the most casual observer. It’s not. Annette would never have pegged Felix as someone who enjoys concerts. “I want to know if I’m to encourage the Boar to take lessons before he embarrasses himself in front of the Church and student body.”
The professor shakes her head. “Dimitri is sincere, but Sylvain has more raw talent, so I chose him.”
At the mere mention of his friend's name, Felix turns to go.
“And the other is standing right here. Annette.”
At the mention of her own name, Annette stands at attention. “You chose me, Professor?”
Felix turns back towards his classmate.
Manuela nods. “You have a lovely voice, dear. With some polish, you’ll shine almost as brightly as the Mystical Songstress you’ll be singing alongside.”
“You can sing?” he asks. The question is soft, gentle, and earnest, and Annette sees his lips curl up into a subdued smile. Felix can smile? Since when?
“A little,” she says. “I thought for sure Mercie would get the part, I mean, she’s like an angel.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. You’ve worked hard to be as good as you are.”
“Sing something?” he half-demands, half asks. The softness is stuck in the corners of his eyes. Annette doesn’t know how that makes her feel. It’s weird–it looks weird on Felix–but it’s not unwelcome.
“How about your audition piece, the carol ‘Seiros’s Lament?’” Manuela suggests.
Annette nods, but her gaze is stuck on Felix and his bizarre enthusiasm. She takes a deep breath and begins.
“See the gentle falling snow
Stained with crimson blood surrounding”
Annette feels like she’s being studied under a microscope. He’s watching her with a burning intensity, one that she thought existed only when he clashed swords with opponents.
“Brethren lost, and I alone
Venture forth, my guilt compounding”
It’s not like she hasn’t been watched before. She’s sung in front of her mom and Mercie, and she’s even sung solos in the Fhirdiad cathedral. Something about Felix’s gaze, the way it glosses over in unabashed wonder, stirs her stomach with butterflies.
“O that we
Safe would be”
Oh gosh. She’s dancing. She didn’t even notice. Her arms and legs were moving with the music, and he’s been following every movement. His eyes glide from the tips of her fingers to the heels of her boots as she rocks forward and back. Annette wills herself to stop, but that only brings his eyes back up to hers.
“Crush the head, the serpent dies
Fallen star again will rise.”
She stops, and her first instinct is to run out of the room, but she’s frozen like a deer in the headlights. The headlights being Felix’s increasingly consuming gaze.
“That was good,” he says, looking just as flabbergasted as she is, for some reason. “Really good. I can see why you were chosen to represent our house.”
“I wouldn’t–well–thank you?” she sputters.
“Professor,” Felix asks, “Is there still time to join the choir?”
Annette's mouth goes dry. No way she’ll be able to sing if he’s right there, staring her down with his pretty eyes. (Pretty?) “I thought you couldn’t sing!”
“I don’t sing. There’s a difference.” He finally breaks eye contact with her and turns to Manuela. “I’m not great at harmonizing, but with enough practice, I’m okay. Do you need more tenors?”
With Felix’s attention elsewhere, Annette manages to peel herself out of the room and bolt down the hall back toward the library. Where she dumps all of her books back onto the table. And loses her page. But with her heart pounding so loudly in her chest, she wouldn’t be able to study, anyway.
“That was loud. You woke me up.”
“GAH!” she jumps and frantically searches for the body the voice belongs to. Seeing him, she relaxes, just a bit. “Oh. It’s just you, Linhardt.”
Linhardt stretches, yawns, and half sits up on the stairs to the second floor. Which is chained off, but she’s already learned that rules don’t bother him much. “Did you just run a marathon?” he asks. “Your face is red as a tomato.”
She quickly shakes her head. “I, no, I just dropped my stuff coming back from Professor Manuela’s–oh no! The gamma patterns! I didn’t ask her!”
“You had a question about healing magic? Explaining something as basic as that should only take a minute, at most.” He opens his mouth to continue, then tilts his head to the side. “On second thought, it looks like you’re busy, and I don’t feel like talking to your friend, so I’m just going to go back to sleep.”
“Linhardt? Wait!” She waves her arms, then aims to tap him awake with her book, when she hears a single word from behind her that makes her freeze up again.
“Annette.”
She takes a deep breath. Then a second. Then a third, and finally spins around. “Hello, Felix.” Her other books are still strewn on the table, and she clenched the one in her arms to steady her hands. “What brings you to the library?”
“You didn’t get to talk to Professor Manuela. We’re done, now, so you can ask her whatever question you had.”
“It’s fine! I’ll just ask her tomorrow. Or Monday.” She plasters a huge, fake smile on her face. Why is she so embarrassed? He only heard her sing! He liked listening to her sing.
“Oh. Fine, then.” He looks to the side, but all that’s there is a pillar and a shelf of religious texts. “I suppose I’ll see you at choir practice Wednesday.”
She looks down at her boots and shakes her head. “We’re in the same class. I’ll see you Monday.”
“Oh,” he says again. “Yes, Monday. Wait, will you be worshiping over the weekend?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“I was just curious. Maybe I’ll see you in chapel.”
The question bubbles to the surface. She couldn’t contain it if she tried. “Do you just want to hear me sing again?”
His response flows over just as readily. “Is there something wrong with that?”
She doesn’t know how to answer, and he doesn’t think anything else needs to be said, so he leaves her in the library. Linhardt snores behind her. She doesn’t hear him.
“Young Love. Ugh.” Manuela tips her flask over and licks the last few drops of wine from the rim. “I need a man. Or a sabbatical.”
“Manuela!” It’s Hanneman. “Our meeting is in two minutes! I won’t have you late again!”
She groans. “A sabbatical. I hear Brigid is nice this time of year.”