We were counting down the minutes to the end of my geography class. Everyone else was on pins and needles. I was very bored. It was the period before lunch, and we would all be rushing for the Student Center. It's Results Day, Rankings Day, whatever you like to call it.

  To keep myself from fidgeting too hard, I distracted myself. Thoughts and speculation- I stared at the back of Belisa Roadaway, The Broken, my fifth love interest. She sat in the classroom, unheeding and unhearing, seemingly insensible to all of us. She was lost in some kind of trauma- a fugue state maybe. She would wander from room to room on her schedule, and always wound up at the right place, even after her program had been abruptly shifted. She sat in her seat, but that was the end of her engagement with the material.

  So this had me wondering: why was she still enrolled? Why hadn't anyone signed off on a medical leave for her? A hardship sabbatical? A gap year? We were six weeks into the semester, surely it would be simpler for someone to withdraw her from classes and see that she got some decent assistance? And then to bring her back next year, presumably in a better state of mind? That had to be better for her and the school, right?

  Or, godsdammit, is this one of the things that the godsdamned goddess decided was my responsibility? Is the world fused into this route until I step in and make the very obvious suggestion that pulls her from classes? Is that how I advance the affection path for her?

  Well, no, probably not. If I stepped in and got her removed from classes and held back a year, she'd never have any classes with me for the rest of the university program. She would be pretty much written out of the story. And with her, any benefits she might have offered.

  Whatever those might be. Who knows? Who could say? Annoyingly this is not something I have any insight into. I haven't played a game that includes her in it as The Broken, only as the Tragic Damsel. Most of the benefits of working with her was that she would steer you towards information about Kudder and Kralcit and the conspiracy to ruin your family. I mean, my family. The Harigolds. She comes from a nice merchant family that has been doing business for literally centuries, fairly successfully.

  So whatever it is that makes her unique here, I don't know of it. When she's Nathan's love interest, her main appeal is that she is scared, helpless, and in need. High-quality bait to lure in noble heroes and generous saviors, but I'm not being offered a Tragic Damsel and I've already shut down the entire plot line that was keeping her scared and helpless and desperate.

  So what is the appeal of The Broken? I just don't get it. But I am intrigued by it.

  And doesn't that make sense? As the Damsel, she was catnip for Nathan because he's a selfless benefactor who can't resist a sob story. As the Broken, she's a complete cipher, an uncontrolled variable. And that, somehow, really is catnip to me.

  I should be annoyed that it is this easy to manipulate me. Curiosity attracts me every time, I hate having to repeat myself, I double-down when I'm embarrassed, and I will move mountains just out of spite. I suppose everyone has handles and triggers like that, but I'm cursed to be aware of mine.

  The bell rang, and I headed out. I set down another candy on her desk and she seemed to move with more awareness to pick it up. I patted her hand, and gave it a squeeze. I paused and let myself accept that squeeze.

  My family, the Harigolds, they're huggers. And there's a whole language of touch. The pause, the pressure, the warmth. The difference between a grip that moves from palm to fingers or from fingers to palm. A curl of fingers, the way that the heel of your hand scrunches against someone. Learning how to hug teaches you how to hold someone's hand. And for a few seconds, I reach Belisa, wherever she is. She can't hear words but I send a message. She holds my hand for a few seconds, and we both walk away.

  She does not take lunch in the Student Center these days. I don't know where she goes, I think she wants her privacy for a little while.

  This is starkly at odds with the rest of the school, however. Our slow touches and sympathetic silences have had a backdrop, and that landscape surrounding us has been noise and bustle and eagerness and anticipation. Big Day! Everyone is grabbing their books and running through the halls. They chatter loudly, enthusiastically.

  I am walking serenely along, and I have the walkways almost entirely to myself because most of the others had run, sprinted, or at least jogged ahead. It's a big shift here, walking quietly and calmly, almost alone in this day-bright light. It is a little paler than sunlight, and suffuses from all different directions. the sky above looks snowy instead of blue chased with gold. And of course, it's still winter-cold because we do after all live in a huge damn cave.

  Yet the differences! Quiet and cool in the bright light that I brought to the whole city, opposed to the bustling twilight chill under scenic but useless stars. Eventually the light will die down, the city absorbs it faster than the crystals magnify it. Maybe in months the stars will be out again. But for now, everything is daylit and summery and bright.

  Opening the door to the student center was taking the hatch off of a roar. Enough voices overlapping in the tiled, stone-walled building made it all sound like an echoing waterfall. The largest room here by far was the dining hall, but the vestibules to the rest of the building were right there, so the logical place to put the class rankings was a series of carefully-printed pages attached to the brickwork with paste and gum.

  Students ran up and down the line, pointing fingers, shouting to each other. They tried to find their names, and the crowd churned regularly. Eager seekers poured in, and streamed left and right to find their names. The ones that found themselves furthest to the right were mostly bitter and disappointed, sulking or storming or slinking away in their shame or rage or glumness. The ones to the middle seemed to have mostly ambivalent responses, plenty of it-could-be-worse and plenty of I-thought-I-did-better-than-that. To the left, the top scores, the responses and reactions were sharp and hot.

  The sizzling "Yessssss!" of victory as someone edged out a loathed competitor or scored higher than expected. The bitter oaths and invectives of those who almost-but-not-quite reached an important goal. Gusty relief from scholarship students who exceeded the standard, or vice verse.

  I was interested in the far left. The top page. Not any of the thousands of other students, I was just checking on one-

  1: Nathan Harigold

  I beg your fucking pardon.

  Heat flushed through my face and if this setting had the kind of magic that could be activated by instinct or emotion I am positive I would have just flash-fried a hundred teenagers. I lost the power of speech for a few seconds, and my mind just completely blanked. I was not aware of curling my hands into fists. I was not aware of anything except that numeral and that name. Sounds went far away for a few seconds, the echoing waterfall sounded like I was plunged underwater.

  When I came aware of myself again, I was shaking all over, teeth gritted, with a raw-edged growl crawling up my throat. I forced my voice down, forced my hands open, forced myself to not make a scene here. I took a deep breath and forced it out. I forced myself calm. Callllllm. Callmmmmmm.

  2: Kurumi Lautan

  3: Natalie Harigold

  I grabbed one wrist with my opposite hand, holding myself back. The instinct to curve wind and rip all these lying lousy godsdamned fucking papers off the wall and throw them out the door was so strong that I had to physically restrain myself. I almost threw a feral tornado straight into the midst of a crowd of people because I was mad about a class rating. It wasn't that I couldn't control my sorcery, I couldn't control myself not to use that sorcery.

  Instead I threw myself into a portal and slammed it shut. And I roared out my resentments.

  He cheated.

  There was literally no possible way that his scores could exceed mine. I know what his stats are, I know what they were when he entered and how many opportunities he's had to advance since then. He's admitted as a merit student which means his Intellect score was a 5 when he entered the school. Those values are married at the start of the game, there's no way to sandbag down or pretend to have a lower score. And if he's been picking up every opportunity to advance and has been getting all of the RNG procs... then at the theoretical most he could have a score of 8.

  Kurumi rates higher than 9 but less than 10.

  Now, I'm laying all this out very blandly and mechanistically to really highlight the fact that I have absolutely no doubt that he cheated. I have more uncertainty in the sun coming up tomorrow.

  And now I'm screaming into the void, bellowing out this betrayal. That he decided to take the title of the smart twin away from me by using his bullshit spy skills. Instead of trying to save the people of his homeland he's been flirting with a Freckentop and cheating his tests to take top score just for the fucking bragging rights, and boosting Kurumi's scores too just to get a hand up her skirt!

  I shouted and thrashed, but there's nothing here to hit, nothing here to feel. I vented my noise but not my anger. I screamed until I was hoarse, and I stopped screaming. I stopped letting the anger back out.

  I was having such a good day!

  So I calmed myself, slowed my heart back down. I shook out my limbs, tried to get myself back to normal. Fixed my hair, composed my expression as best I could with my eyes behind steel goggles.

  The portal opened and I stepped out into the hallway, a decent distance away from the churning scrum of students checking their numbers, or their friends, or comparing old scores to new... whatever. I put a smile onto my face. Unbothered. Unworried. Not enraged by this. I put on my "just a self-sacrificing local hero" smile and walked into the cafeteria.

  After all, I don't want to be a grumpy-faced bitch when people say "look there's the one that saved all those people's lives!"

  .. So it's a good thing that didn't happen, right? In fact, all the commotion seemed to be over to my right, hardly anyone even noticing me. I just needed to get through the serving line, pick up a decent lunch helping of whatever was on offer, and get back to the usual table with my friends. I just casually glanced over as if something caught my eye.

  It was a crowd of people gathered around Nathan and Kurumi, both of them smiling big winning proud-parent smiles, so thrilled with their grades. Kurumi looked dazed and bewildered, almost like she could not catch her breath, and Nathan was speaking out to a small crowd of enraptured hangers-on, gesturing firmly in the air. His teeth gleamed. There were a hundred people gathered around them just glazing on the adoration and adulation.

  I was pissed when I saw him cheating. But now he's soaking up all this reverence and attention like it's actually owed to him with no modesty and no humility at all...

  Someone bumped me from behind- I had stopped walking. The girl who smacked into my back almost knocked me flat, but she had her hands up to her mouth. "Oh, sorry," she said, glancing my way briefly, and followed my eyes back to Nathan. "I was staring too," she giggled. "He's so cool! The number-one!"

  I'm being trampled by his fan club. He cheated. I walked away without a word, and went through the serving line. I could not even see the food, I was too lost in my thoughts to pay attention to anything at all.

  Larianne glanced at Elica with a knowing look as I walked up. Vancy looked pensive like she was ready to try to defuse me. Rinnie smirked. "Yeah, she's mad," she said, and withdrew to her textbook.

  Elica twitched her skirts out of the way as I sat down. "Larianne was right. You are very angry about this."

  My heart would not slow down and my vision was just a bit blurred. I think I may have had a migraine from all the yelling in the void. "I know that he cheated. I don't know what to do about it."

  "Of course he cheated," Elica said immediately. "And it is painfully, laboriously obvious. He has never invented a dozen new fields of science, but he just shows up taking classes two tiers below you and still outscores you? That's not subtle or discreet, that's a thrown gauntlet, daring you to do something about it. Right now he's got a swarm of fans around him that have never really heard of him or you, and just assume that what the pages say has to be true." She sniffed haughtily. "I am not best pleased that I am sharing quarters with some intellectual that is leading the world in natural philosophy of all things, but I will certainly not have it said that I'm sharing quarters with someone who has used frauds and hoaxes to pretend to be such a thing!"

  "We'll get it sorted out," Vancy said, reaching out a hand halfway towards me like she would touch my arm but was measuring my responses first.

  I must look just as angry as I feel.

  Larianne reached out with a fork and speared something off of my plate but I could not find the capacity to care about that.

  Only a minute later Yheta came hurtling in, practically vaulting a table to get to us. "Unacceptable!" he declared immediately. I was just sitting and seething quietly, but it was still kind of good to see him already worked up.

  "Good morning Yheta," Elica said.

  "Right, my manners," he looked embarrassed. "Good morning to you, Lady Elica. You look radiant. Good morning, Lady Vancy, that is a lovely dress today. Countess Larianne... your stygian mystique is chilling as always. Hello Miss Rinnie. Now then: how? How did that happen?"

  "Does it matter?" Larianne said. "Get rid of him."

  "No," I said. I forced myself to unclench my jaw. I do not need to chip a tooth on top of everything else. "Need him alive."

  Yheta looked across at Elica and Larianne, he seemed to measure something in their responding glances and then he shrugged. "All right. This doesn't quite cross the line. I didn't actually think you cared that much about the ranking anyway."

  "First of all, he betrayed me and expected me to accept that," I said, my voice still raw. I started raising fingers as I raised points. "Second, this is immediately on the heels of that debacle on Sixthday, so it now officially indicates a pattern of him betraying me. Third, this is what he's wasting his time on instead of the mission I assigned him. Fourth, he has to know how academic dishonesty will reflect on the family, everything that we do impacts the family. Him more than me, I'm halfway-disowned already. And fifthly, it makes me look bad. I've told people that my visions indicate I'll be first-place, and I may have undersold the degree to which people can change those futures. So I've got several major moves in the balance right now, and it's a really bad time for people to start wondering if I was bluffing about my abilities. He might be fucking up some very serious long-term plans just for this narcissistic display."

  Elica looked thoughtful, and glanced in Nathan's direction. "I mean, if he was trying to provoke you..." she said, trailing off. I was about to ask her to clarify that, but -

  "And sixthly, he's doing it to impress a girl," Vancy added helpfully.

  "What?" I said.

  She looked confused. "He- girlfriend? Mad at him?"

  I looked at Elica for clarification. Elica rolled her eyes, and then adjusted her rings as she spoke, keeping her eyes down. "What Vancy refers to is you holding a grudge against your brother paying attention to other girls."

  "Only when he's being stupid about it," I snapped. "Like rigging grades or associating with the Freckentops in any way."

  Larianne and Elica and Yheta all shared a look. Rinnie and Vancy were on the outside of that look but they noticed it.

  "What was that look about?" I asked.

  "Natalie," Elica said gingerly, "you spend a lot of time staring at your brother from afar. Especially when he's with other girls."

  My suspicions grew. "What do you mean other girls? You mean girls that are interested in him romantically and not girls that have a purely familial fraternal relationship, right?"

  "Er, yeah," Yheta said helpfully.

  Fuck. All five of them think I've got a crush on Nathan. On my twin brother.

  "I'm going to address the fuck out of that later," I grated out. "We're not done with that. I promise. But right now I need to fix this. How can I - who do I talk to about a recount?"

  Helpless shrugs and glances all gradually migrated towards Yheta, everyone looking to him for answers. "Very well," he said. "I can get you an appointment with the Dean of Student Affairs. Maybe there will be good news."

  I measured my breaths out. "I've got a free period next hour, we can take care of it then. But before we get there, I've an errand to take care of."

  Okay not so much an errand as a need to scream at the void some more. Endless emptiness is the perfect rage-room.