Chapter Text
“Is this seat taken?”
Layla turned her head to see an Inazuman youth with a rather large hat pointing to the open seat next to her at the lecture bench.
“Oh, no, I don’t think anyone sits there.” Layla paused. She’d seen him before, where had she seen him? It had been some time ago, before her thesis update, and that project in hydromancy class, sometime around—oh, right!
In the time it took for her to search through the syrupy swamp-waters of her sleep-deprived mind, he had taken the opportunity to sit down and pull out a stack of books and notebooks.
“You’re Hat Guy, aren’t you?” Layla definitely recognized him now. He had a rather distinctive little silhouette, come to think of it. “We competed in the tournament a while back. You represented Vahumana.”
“You remembered. Congratulations,” he responded flatly. “Isn’t Professor Faruzan supposed to be teaching this class?”
“Yeah, but I’m guessing she’s running late.” Layla sighed. “I agreed to take this class because she’s having it count for nearly three times the linguistics credits.”
“Is that important?” Hat Guy raised an eyebrow.
“It would clear the rest of my language requirements for graduation.” Layla looked to her little leather-bound agenda, with all of the course times blocked out and deadlines looming overhead like a dagger over her bed. “I’m here on a scholarship, but scholarships can run out. I’ve already been here for three years—I want to be done in another three.”
“And taking this class would help?”
“Yes, I’d then be able to focus on just my Rtawahist courses.” That would be much easier. “Then maybe I would actually have the time to sleep—really sleep—and not feel tired after.”
Hat Guy blinked, looking surprised. “D-Does that happen often?”
“Oh yes, all the time.” Layla nodded. “I don’t think I’ve had a good night’s sleep since coming to the Akademiya. But who has?”
“Uh, right.” Hat Guy still looked off-guard. “You might want to get that checked out, actually.”
“I know, I know, but I don’t know where I’d pencil in meeting with a Healer.” Layla winced and looked at her agenda.
She rarely wrote home, partially because she knew that her father would tell her the exact same thing, and it would worry her family. Her family, who had made so many sacrifices to send her here. The last thing they needed was to find out that she wasn’t taking care of herself, that she couldn’t handle it, that she wasn’t nearly the shining star they’d thought of her back in the village.
“What about you?” She asked, desperate to change the subject.
“What about me?” He was flipping his pen with a surprising amount of grace, considering how little attention he was truly giving it.
“Well, why are you taking this class?” She prompted. “You’re a new student, so you still have a lot of general education requirements to go. Most of the students here aren’t that interested in Professor Farzan’s work, unless they’re from Kshahrewar.”
“Oh, that.” A strange, almost dreamlike expression passed over his face. “I heard about the Professor’s time in the desert. I heard she was trapped there for a hundred years.”
“Poor Madam Faruzan.” Layla shook her head empathetically. “Although I heard she didn’t need to sleep or eat during the time she was trapped in the tomb.”
She paused, glancing at the moonlit sky filtering in through the windows near the lecturers’ side. “I wonder if I’d finally be able to finish all of my schoolwork if I had a hundred years without food or sleep.”
“You have got to be kidding me.” Hat Guy slumped back in his seat. “What, are you just procrastinating or something?”
“No, no, I try to break down my projects and start as soon as possible,” Layla explained. She then sighed and sank into her folded arms on the desk. “I don’t know, maybe I’m just not good enough to be here.”
“Well, why don’t you just leave?”
Layla peeked out from her arms. His voice was as sharp as the sword she kept for her own protection under her bed in her dorm. Yet there was something about how he wasn’t placating or reassuring her that intrigued her.
Why don’t I leave?
“Because I’d be letting everyone down.” She thought of her parents, of her first schoolroom teacher, of the elders in her village. “So many people believed in me and made so many sacrifices for me to come here and I can’t just let them down.”
“Heh.” He crossed his arms over his chest and looked forward. “You can’t let yourself be chained down by the weight of others’ expectations. The only way to find your destiny is to break away from the one others’ make for you and make it for yourself.”
Layla considered this for a moment. “Is that why you’re here, then? Did your family expect you to come here?”
Hat Guy laughed dryly again. “No. I’m here to pay back a debt. That’s all.”
“A debt?” Layla tilted her head. “But an education is expensive, I don’t understand how—“
Hat Guy cut her off. “Not that kind of debt. I don’t know why I’m telling you any of this, anyway.”
He leaned forward. “Still no sign of Professor Faruzan. I wonder what’s got her running late. It’s starting to look unprofessional. What a joke.”
“I thought you were only taking this class for Professor Faruzan?” Talking to the enigmatic Hat Guy was nothing like Layla would have thought. He was like a puzzle box her mother had given her for her fourth birthday, with an ever-shifting lock that was almost impossible to solve. Well, at first. After several sleepless nights, she’d managed to solve it, much to the wonder and surprise of her family.
She wanted to solve Hat Guy like that too, she decided.
“I am.” His indigo eyes clouded over. “I want to see how she does it.”
“Does what?”
“A long life.” There was something heavy in his words that Layla didn’t entirely understand. But it conveyed something beneath the sharp edges and apathetic attitude.
A beating heart.
A bleeding heart.
Right on cue, Madam Faruzan strode through the door, carrying an arm-full of scrolls.
“Sorry everyone, one of the youngsters in Krshahrewar stopped me to ask about one of their mechanism designs and they had some examples from a new ruin they excavated near the Temple of Silence. . . “ Madam Faruzan dumped the scrolls on her desk. “Just give me a second to get settled, and then we’ll get started.”
Layla looked to Hat Guy. “Well, it was nice talking to you. I hope I get to again soon sometime.”
“You really mean that.” He sounded impressed, unnerved, and in disbelief all at the same time. “This class meets three times a week. We’ll both be sick of each other by the end of the semester.”
“Probably,” Layla agreed. “But we could also study together.”
“Yeah. Uh, sure.” He looked down to his notebook, and Layla was certain she caught a glimpse of a smile.