Logan and Mireille exchanged glances.
"All the stories?" Logan repeated carefully. "That could take all night."
"We have all night," Ophelia said eagerly. "I need to know everything. What he was like, what he liked, what made him laugh, what—"
"Someone's got it bad," Mireille teased, serving herself pasta and settling at the table. "Okay, Lia. You want stories? We'll give you stories. But first—" she pointed at Kalina with her fork, "—you need to eat. You look like a zombie, and zombies ruin the storytelling atmosphere."
"Zombies enhance every atmosphere," Kalina muttered, but she obediently took a bite of pasta. It was delicious, as Mireille's cooking always was, and she found herself eating with more enthusiasm than she'd expected.
"Better," Logan approved, settling into his own seat. "Okay, Ophelia. Where do you want us to start? First meeting? First impression? The time Maxi accidentally—"
"Start from the beginning," Ophelia interrupted, pulling out her phone as if to take notes. "I want the full story. How you all met. What he was like. Everything."
"Alright," Logan began, leaning back in his chair as he recalled the memories. "First year of university. Business Administration program. We were all in the same Introduction to Corporate Strategy class—Professor Morrison's class. Terrible professor, by the way. Made everything ten times more complicated than it needed to be."
"The worst," Mireille agreed with a shudder. "He'd assign these impossible group projects with ridiculous requirements. Which is actually how we all met."
Ophelia leaned forward, her pasta momentarily forgotten. "Group projects brought you together?"
"The bane and blessing of university life," Kalina mumbled through a mouthful of food, her exhaustion making her less concerned with manners.
"It was the second week of classes," Logan continued, his eyes distant with memory.
"Professor Morrison announced we'd be doing a semester-long project analyzing a Fortune 500 company's business model and proposing improvements. Groups of five. We had to present three times throughout the semester, with the final presentation worth forty percent of our grade."
"Forty percent!" Ophelia gasped. "That's insane for a first-year class."
"Morrison was infamous for it," Mireille said, twirling pasta on her fork. "He believed in 'trial by fire' or something equally sadistic. Anyway, most people immediately scrambled to form groups with their friends from orientation or their dorm mates."
"But we didn't know anyone yet," Logan picked up the thread. "Mireille and I had arrived late to class that day—"
"Because someone—" Mireille pointed at Logan with her fork, "—insisted we stop for coffee first."
"Priorities," Logan defended. "Anyway, by the time we got there, most groups were already formed. There were just a few stragglers left, including a girl sitting in the back corner who looked like she'd rather be literally anywhere else."
"That would be me," Kalina said dryly, finally lifting her head from her plate. "I'd wanted to sleep in, but my roommate had an eight AM alarm that woke me up. Figured I might as well go to class since I was already awake."
"You were wearing pajama pants," Mireille remembered with a grin.
"They were comfortable."
"They had little clouds on them," Logan added, his eyes twinkling with amusement.
"They were COMFORTABLE," Kalina repeated with more emphasis, though a small smile tugged at her lips.
Ophelia was grinning now, delighted by this glimpse into her sister's past. "So you three ended up in a group together?"
"Not quite yet," Logan said. "Professor Morrison was assigning the remaining students randomly. He pointed at me and Mireille, then at Kalina, then at two other people near the front—"
"And one of them was Maxi," Mireille said, her voice taking on a more animated quality. "Though we didn't know who he was at first. He was just this tall, well-dressed guy who looked way too put-together for eight-thirty in the morning."
"Expensive watch, designer bag, but not flashy about it," Logan described. "The kind of wealth that doesn't need to announce itself."
"The fifth person was Silas Ashworth," Mireille continued. "Even quieter than Kalina, if you can believe it. Dark hair, glasses, always had his nose in a book or his laptop. Polite but distant."
"So the five of us were randomly assigned together," Logan went on. "Professor Morrison told us to exchange contact information and schedule our first meeting. Everyone pulled out their phones, and that's when things got interesting."
"How so?" Ophelia asked, completely absorbed in the story.
Mireille laughed at the memory. "Well, Maxi introduced himself—very formally, very polite. 'Maximilian Blackwood, pleased to meet you all.' And I, having exactly zero filter, immediately said—"
"'Wait, THE Maximilian Blackwood? As in Blackwood Syndicate?'" Logan quoted, making his voice higher to mimic Mireille's.
"The look on Maxi's face was priceless. Like he was bracing for either fawning or hostility."
"I didn't know who he was," Kalina interjected softly, finally taking another bite.
"I don't really follow business dynasties and all that. To me, he was just another student."
"What was his reaction?" Ophelia asked, her eyes shining with curiosity. "When Mireille recognized him?"
"He kind of... deflated," Logan said thoughtfully. "But in a resigned way, like he was used to it. He said something like, 'Yes, that Blackwood family. I hope that won't be a problem for the group.' Very diplomatic, very careful."
"And then Kalina—" Mireille started giggling, "—Kalina looked up from her phone, where she'd been trying to figure out her schedule, and said—"
"'Should it be a problem?'" Kalina quoted herself, shrugging. "It was a genuine question. I didn't understand why his family name would affect a class project."
"Maxi actually smiled," Logan remembered.
"Like, a real smile, not the polite one he'd been wearing. He said, 'No, it shouldn't be. Thank you for that.'"
Ophelia's hand pressed against her chest, her expression soft. "That's so sweet. He must have been dealing with so much pressure and judgment."
"Oh, constantly," Mireille confirmed. "We learned that pretty quickly. But I'm getting ahead of the story. So we all exchanged numbers—Silas was super quiet through all of this, just watching and taking notes—and we agreed to meet in the library that Thursday to start planning our project."
"And did everyone show up?" Ophelia asked.
"Everyone except Maxi," Logan said. "He sent a message about twenty minutes before we were supposed to meet, apologizing profusely. Family emergency, had to fly home to handle something. He promised to catch up on whatever we decided."
"We were annoyed at first," Mireille admitted. "Like, great, the rich kid's already ditching us. But then—"
"Then he showed up at the library at midnight," Kalina said quietly, a hint of warmth in her voice. "I was the only one still there—I'd fallen asleep studying in one of the private rooms. He found me, woke me up, and apologized again. Said he'd read through all the group chat messages and had prepared a preliminary analysis of three potential companies we could choose for the project."
"At midnight?" Ophelia's eyes widened. "After flying home and back?"
"He'd worked on it during the flight," Kalina confirmed. "Had this whole presentation on his laptop. Woke me up just to show me, to prove he was taking the project seriously. I told him he was insane and to go to sleep, but I was... impressed. Most people wouldn't have cared that much."
"That's when you started to like him," Mireille said knowingly. "Not romantically," she clarified quickly when Ophelia's expression changed. "But you respected him. Saw past the name to the person."
"He worked harder than anyone needed to for that stupid class," Kalina said, pushing her now-empty plate away and slumping back in her chair. "Not because he had to prove anything, but because he genuinely cared about doing things right. It was... refreshing."
"So the five of you became friends?" Ophelia prompted, eager for more.
"Eventually," Logan said. "It wasn't immediate. The first few meetings were awkward—everyone feeling each other out, trying to figure out the group dynamic. Maxi was always polite but guarded. Silas barely spoke unless directly asked a question. Mireille was her usual friendly but chaos-inducing self—"
"Hey!" Mireille protested.
"—and Kalina seemed determined to do the minimum amount of work while somehow still contributing the best ideas," Logan finished with a grin.
"It's a gift," Kalina mumbled, her eyes starting to drift closed.
"But then," Mireille said, leaning forward conspiratorially, "came the Great Coffee Incident of October."
"Oh god," Logan groaned. "I'd forgotten about that."
"What happened?" Ophelia demanded, completely captivated now.
Mireille's eyes sparkled with mischief. "So, we were meeting in the library again—this was maybe a month into the project. Everyone was stressed because our first presentation was coming up. Maxi had brought coffee for everyone from that expensive place near campus—"
"Probably cost more than my textbooks," Logan interjected.
"—and Kalina, who was half-asleep as usual, reached for her cup without looking. Except it wasn't her cup. It was Maxi's laptop."
Ophelia gasped. "No!"
"Oh yes," Mireille confirmed gleefully.
"Knocked the entire cup of coffee directly onto his laptop. Like, drenched it. Coffee everywhere. The laptop made this horrible sizzling noise and just... died."
"I wanted to die too," Kalina said, her voice muffled by her arm as she'd laid her head on the table. "That laptop probably cost more than my entire scholarship. I was convinced he was going to hate me forever."
"But he didn't," Logan said softly. "That's the thing about Maxi—he could have been furious. It was an expensive laptop, and all our project work was on it. But instead, he just sat there for a second, looking at the destroyed laptop, and then he started laughing."
"Laughing?" Ophelia repeated, surprised.
"Laughing," Mireille confirmed. "He said something like, 'Well, that's what I get for not backing up to the cloud.' Then he looked at Kalina, who was absolutely mortified, and said, 'Don't worry about it. These things happen. Besides, I was looking for an excuse to upgrade anyway.'"
"I tried to pay for it," Kalina added. "Offered to use my emergency fund, work extra hours, whatever it took. He refused. Said it was genuinely an accident and he didn't blame me."
"That's when the group dynamic really changed," Logan said thoughtfully. "Up until then, there was always this slight distance—like we were working together but not really connecting. But after that incident, Maxi became more... real. Less guarded."
"He started joking around more," Mireille added. "Making sarcastic comments during our meetings. Showing up in casual clothes instead of always being perfectly put together. It was like the coffee incident broke through his professional facade."
"And Silas?" Ophelia asked, noticing he'd barely been mentioned. "What was he like during all this?"
Logan and Mireille exchanged a quick glance, and Kalina's eyes opened slightly, though she remained with her head on the table.
"Silas was... complicated," Logan said carefully. "He was brilliant—maybe the smartest in our group, though Kalina would argue otherwise."
"I would not argue," Kalina mumbled. "Silas was definitely smarter. I'm just better at pretending I'm not trying."
"He had this incredible memory," Mireille said. "Could quote statistics and studies from memory, always had some relevant research to back up our ideas. But he was also incredibly private. We worked together for the entire semester, and I still felt like I barely knew him."
"He was kind, though," Logan added. "Always the first to notice if someone was struggling. If Kalina fell asleep during a meeting—which happened often—Silas would quietly cover for her, taking notes on what she missed. If Mireille was stressed about her other classes, he'd share his study guides."
"He sounds sweet," Ophelia said softly.
"He was," Mireille agreed. "Just... distant. Like he was going through the motions of friendship without fully committing to it. We all assumed it was just his personality—some people are naturally more reserved."
What they didn't say, what Ophelia didn't need to know yet, was that Silas had spent that entire semester quietly in love with Kalina. That every time she'd fallen asleep during their meetings, he'd watched her with an expression of such careful longing that it had made Logan uncomfortable to witness. That he'd taken detailed notes not just for the project, but of little things—how she took her coffee, which topics made her eyes light up despite her studied disinterest, the unconscious way she hummed when she was deep in thought.
But that was Silas's story to tell, not theirs.
"So the five of you worked together all semester?" Ophelia prompted, sensing there was more.
"We did," Logan confirmed. "And it was actually... fun. Once we all relaxed around each other, it became less about the grade and more about the experience. We'd have these marathon working sessions that would turn into debates about completely unrelated topics."
"Maxi was obsessed with business ethics," Mireille remembered with a smile. "He'd get so passionate about corporate responsibility and stakeholder value. Meanwhile, Kalina would argue that the entire capitalist system was flawed and we should all just become artists or something."
"I stand by that position," Kalina said drowsily.
"You own multiple companies," Logan pointed out.
"Ironic, isn't it?"
"What about outside of the project?" Ophelia asked. "Did you hang out socially?"
"Sometimes," Mireille said. "Though Maxi and Silas were both really busy. They'd disappear for days at a time—family obligations, business things we weren't privy to. But when they were around, we'd grab meals together, study in the library, occasionally hit up the campus coffee shop."
"There was this one time," Logan said, grinning at the memory, "when Kalina convinced us all to skip class and go to this art exhibition downtown. She'd seen a flyer and became obsessed with seeing this one artist's work—"
"Haruki Nakamura," Kalina supplied without lifting her head. "His use of light and shadow was revolutionary."
"Right, him. Anyway, Maxi and Silas actually came with us, even though they both had important meetings they were supposed to attend. We spent the entire afternoon at this gallery, and Kalina gave us this impromptu tour, explaining every piece with so much passion that even the actual gallery docent stopped to listen."
"That's where I fell in love with art curation," Kalina admitted softly. "Watching people connect with pieces, seeing their understanding deepen when given context. I thought... maybe Ophelia would love this too."
Ophelia's eyes misted slightly. "You were thinking about me even back then?"
"You were in high school, constantly talking about wanting to do something creative but not knowing what," Kalina said, finally lifting her head to look at her sister. "I thought if I could help you find your path, help you avoid the pressure Father would put on you... it would be worth it."
"And that's why you gave me the gallery idea," Ophelia realized, her voice thick with emotion.
"That's why I gave you everything you needed to make it happen," Kalina corrected. "The idea, the connections, the initial funding. But you're the one who built it into something extraordinary, Lia. That was all you."
The table fell silent for a moment, the weight of sisterly love and gratitude hanging in the air.