Chapter Text
Two days prior, Helia had moved into her dorm. Temporary? Yes, Helia had been reassigned to a different dormitory after she moved to the academy.
Goodbye Hungary, hello becoming a valkyrie.
But her roommate could barely even be called a roommate. It was temporary. Every valkyrie she knew never talked about the dorms, so surely… oh, so surely, she could move out.
180 days left.
Helia sat down for her first class. And there was her roommate, a girl who she didn’t even know. She pretended their room situation was a mistake. She was too polite about it.
Then for the next two classes, Helia found her roommate. Next to her.
And then, if Helia could not be disappointed anymore, four days later, her roommate had been denied a room change.
176 days left.
Helia clutched the letter. “Looks like you got denied… Ms. Coralie.”
One hundred seventy-six days was manageable. It was divisible; it had structure. It was a number Helia could count on.
Helia passed the letter onto Coralie’s desk.
Coralie never looked up at her. She didn’t have to. What she replied with was simple, without malice, without anger, “If my presence is inconvenient, I can request reassignment again.”
Helia smiled automatically. Looking at the mess on Coralie’s desk, it had to be automatic. Though she couldn’t live with a slob, it wouldn’t be for long. “No, of course not.”
It was a lie. Not a perfect lie, they both saw through it. But Coralie’s tail still flicked. Just once.
Helia exited once more to go get dinner, sitting with people she’d met in class.
They talked about training and instructors. Helia nodded along the whole time, she laughed, learned names, arranged them in her head: lab partner, risk, safe. But after a bit someone asked where she was staying.
“Dorm C, down by the lake,” Helia said. It lived in her mouth even when she didn’t say it.
“Oh,” the girl across from her said, glancing up from her tray. “It’s that where Coralie 6626 Planck is staying?”
Helia paused for a moment too long. “Uh, yes.”
“You know her well?”
“We’re roommates.”
“Ah, you’re buddies with her. I’ve heard—”
Helia blurted, “It was assigned.” She kept her mouth open for a moment longer before forcing it closed. It didn’t sound defensive or upset. Hopefully.
“Still,” the girl said, “Lucky you.”
Luck was not a word Helia would have even chosen, nor the emphasis with you. She stabbed a piece of vegetable with more force than necessary and let the conversation move on from the topic.
When she got back to the dorm, Coralie was there. Still there.
The lights were on. Half the desk had been cleared. Not cleaned, but reorganized. The piles were still there, but they were more concise. Notes stacked by subject, but had more doodles than class materials. Tools aligned, laptop charging in a neat row. The mess hadn’t been fixed; it had been corrected.
Helia stopped just inside the door. The noise from the hallway seeped in.
Before Helia could even find meaning to her own thoughts, she said, “You didn’t have to do that.”
Coralie looked up from her chair this time, “I wasn’t doing it for you.”
Helia nodded. It was easier than asking why it still mattered. She moved to her side of the room. Set her bag down, in line with her desk. Counted the tiles between her bed and the door. Familiarized herself with the way Coralie existed in the room. She was quiet, efficient and particularly… unavoidable. Like a lamp that could choose when to be on and off.
Coralie returned to her work. The faint tap of keys and hum of her laptop’s fans.
After a moment, Coralie paused, then spoke again. “For the record, I don’t intend on making this very difficult.”
Helia laid on her back in bed, staring at the ceiling. “Neither do I.”
Another lie. Smaller this time.
Silence stretched. Not hostile, just functional.
Helia turned her head just enough to see Coralie in her vision. Focused. Unbothered. Settled. As if the denial letter was the least of her worries.
Helia shut her eyes, mentally crossing out the 176 and putting a 175 below it. It’s just a number. Numbers don't lie. People do.
Helia stayed where she was until the sound of keys stopped. Not immediately, Coralie finished whatever she was doing first, unhurried and precise. The chair shifted with a groan, then the lights in the room dimmed. Helia’s side went off and Coralie’s dimmed.
Helia didn’t open her eyes.
She listened.
Footsteps crossed the small distance between desk and bed, stopped short. Not close enough to intrude. Close enough to be deliberate. Coralie’s presence was like a pressure; Helia hadn’t invited her, nor rejected her.
“You count when you’re stressed,” Coralie said.
It wasn’t a question.
Helia’s eyes snapped open. Coralie stood there, arms folded loosely, tail still, and expression unreadable in the dark.
“I don’t,” Helia said.
Coralie nodded once, like she’d expected that answer. “Noted.”
She turned away without another word, crossed to her own bed, and sat. The mattress dipped. Fabric shifted. A drawer opened and closed.
Helia stared at the ceiling again, pulse beating at her ears.
She hadn’t realized she’d been counting out loud.
The room settled into its nighttime shape. The dim room only a whisper of what it was. The lights reflected faintly off the lake outside the window. It was man-made, but who cared. Somewhere down the hall, someone laughed. A door shit. Life continued and no one seemed to care about the arrangement.
Helia reached out for her notebook which had been sitting on the desk, waiting for the week ahead after the weekend. She clicked her pen and wrote, “175.” and underlined it once.
Helia placed it on her desk again and laid back down.
Across the room, Coralie laid on her bed, eyes to the ceiling, mirroring Helia without meaning to. Two parallel lines in the same confined space.
Neither of them said a word. Neither slept right away.
Helia told herself this was fine. It was temporary. Manageable.
Helia repeated to herself that numbers don’t lie. She stayed still for long after she should have gotten up. The lights were dimmed past curfew by the academy. It gave the room a sense of sinking, like being lowered into water slowly enough that panic didn’t trigger until it was too late.
Across the room, Coralie’s chair slid back. Not abruptly, but precisely. Helia didn’t look, but she felt the change in the room when Coralie stood.
Fabric shift and a drawer opened and closed. The desk lamp dimmed, not off. It was never fully off. Coralie didn’t seem to trust darkness.
Helia turned her head just enough to confirm Coralie was still there. She always seemed to be.
“You reorganize when you’re avoiding something,” Coralie said in the way you would if you had observed it like a specimen in a lab.
Helia stiffened. “Excuse me?”
Coralie didn’t face her. She was at her bed now, adjusting with unnecessary care. “Earlier. With your notebook, you lined it up on the desk before you rolled over to shut your eyes.”
Helia swallowed. “It’s called being neat, organized.”
“Mm.” A pause to think. “It’s called control. You organize your side of the room because you can keep a handle on it. It's a compulsive desire to keep things how you want.”
Helia sat up. “You don’t know anything about me.”
Coralie finally looked at her. Not sharply. Not challengingly. Just direct.
“Well, I know you keep counting,” Coralie said. “And I know you will stop when you think it won’t matter. It matters to you that you keep a count.”
The words landed wrong. Too close. Too observant. Helia felt heat creep up her neck. Anger arrived late and with uncertainty.
“That’s not…” She cut herself off. “You shouldn’t speculate.”
Coralie inclined her head slightly, conceding the point without apology. “Noted.”
She laid on her bed, hands folded on her stomach. She acted like the conversation had reached its natural conclusion. Like it was normal to observe people so intimately.
Helia stayed upright, breath shallow, the urge to argue dissolving into something much worse. She was seen without permission.
The room became quiet. Like an office where everyone was deep at work, it was functional.
She laid down slowly. The mattress dipped beneath her weight. The ceiling above her was unfamiliar, faintly cracked in one corner. She traced the line with her eyes, counted them before she could stop herself.
She turned her head.
Still, Coralie stared upward, expression unreadable in the dark, tail rested flat and still, tucked to her side. If she had noticed Helia’s eyes, she wouldn't have reacted.
Helia closed her eyes.
She reminded herself.
175.
Divisible.
Manageable.
Numbers don’t lie.
They don't promise anything either.
And then, lights bled through the thin curtains before Helia was ready. The morning routine had begun despite the weekend: distant footsteps, muffled voices, and the faint hum of the heater.
Helia opened her eyes. Across the room, Coralie was already awake, sitting at her desk in the dark, tail twitching once as she arranged the pens by size. Her lamp was dim, still on.
Helia laid still. Not ready to move. Her side of the room was untouched, just as it had been before. Everything lined up perfectly.
Breakfast would have already been ready for them to eat. Helia ignored it, despite the notifications that illuminated her phone screen. Not yet. Nothing demanded her attention.
Coralie didn’t look at her. She didn’t have to. Coralie never did. Instead, she picked up her pen and began writing. She did one page after another without even looking at her notes. It was like her mind never slowed down or ran in a constant loop.
Finally, Helia rolled out of bed. She exhaled.
She moved towards her own desk, throwing her bag over her shoulder.
Coralie’s pen paused mid-motion. Only the flicker of an eye. A fraction of attention. Helia felt it land like a weight she hadn’t expected.
“Good morning,” Helia said automatically.
Coralie didn’t respond immediately. She didn’t have to. She waited until Helia had begun to do anything else before she spoke, almost like she hadn’t thought about it until Helia did something, “Morning.”
The word was flat. Nothing more. Yet somehow it was enough to make Helia aware of her own pulse, her own breath, the tiny shifts in how she stood.
Helia eventually went to the dining hall to get breakfast. The room hummed quietly around her. Helia had noticed she hadn’t gotten a fraction of Coralie’s eye contact this morning.
Helia entered, trying to appear casual while keeping her steps measured. The trays were stacked neatly and the scent of breakfast haunted Helia’s nervousness. She scanned the room for familiar faces just to fall upon the girl from the dinner prior.
There she was, sitting with her usual group, the group Helia had sat with. She laughed a little too loud over a joke. Helia walked over, weaving between tables like someone threading a needle. She approached, taking an empty seat with a polite nod.
“Morning,” Helia said.
“Helia! I thought I slept in,” the girl said.
The group chatted for a few minutes about the upcoming missions, instructors, and valkyries they wanted to meet on the field. Helia kept her responses measured, each word chosen with a preciseness. She finally got a moment to ask the girl a single question, “Do you think Coralie is… um… difficult to read?”
The girl tilted her head, eyebrows raised. “Difficult? That’s putting it light. But you don’t seem bothered. Not like the instructors.”
Helia felt a strange heat rise to her cheeks. “I’m not…” She stopped herself, realizing she sounded defensive. She couldn’t defend Coralie.
The girl leaned closer, voice lowering just enough to feel conspiratorial. “Are you… I don’t know… into her? She’s got that effect on people, I heard. I mean, look at how nervous you get when you talk to her?”
Helia’s whole body froze. Fork halfway to her mouth. Nervous? That’s absurd. She wasn’t nervous. She always comes off as nervous, but she’s never been nervous. Yet it made her pulse quicken.
“No…” Helia said. “I just… pay attention to details. It’s important. Precision. We’re all trying to be valkyries, no?”
The girl smiled, not pressing further. “Uh-huh, sure. You notice things about her, though.”
Helia forced a smile, keeping the rest of the conversation small, controlled. She counted how long she smiled.
The rest of the conversation was polite but strained. Helia found herself glancing at the dorm wing.
She bit the inside of her cheek, realizing she had been doing it for longer than she meant.
“You’re staring at that dorm wing,” her friend teased.
Her room situation felt like probation. Like she was locked up and nothing could bail her out.