By the time Lune turned seventeen, there was nothing left to study.
That realization arrived one afternoon as he sat alone in a café near his school, watching people move past the window. Students hurried by in loose clusters, laughing too loudly, shoving each other with unmeasured force. Office workers checked their phones compulsively. A woman argued with someone on the other end of a call, her gestures sharp and ineffective.
Lune tracked them automatically.
Stress indicators.
Deflection patterns.
Avoidance behaviors.
False confidence masking uncertainty.
The assessments completed themselves without effort.
Once, this kind of observation had felt active—something he did. Now it felt passive, like background processing. The world presented itself as data already sorted, already understood.
He realized then that nothing surprised him anymore.
Not emotional outbursts.
Not dishonesty.
Not weakness framed as virtue.
He could predict reactions before conversations began. He could foresee consequences several steps ahead, adjusting course before anyone else noticed there was a decision to be made.
Adulthood, as others described it, sounded chaotic—full of mistakes, uncertainty, regret.
To Lune, it looked manageable.
Teachers spoke to him about university applications, about careers, about futures full of possibility. They asked what he wanted to become.
He gave answers that fit.
Something stable.
Something respectable.
Something visible but controlled.
At home, his parents trusted him implicitly now. They no longer checked where he went or who he spoke to. They assumed competence because he had never given them reason to doubt it.
"You're ready," his father said once, almost casually. "You've always been ready."
Lune accepted the statement without reaction.
He was ready not because he had learned how to live—but because he had learned how to function.
The distinction mattered.
One evening, he sat at his desk and reviewed his life the way he reviewed interactions: dispassionately, efficiently.
Childhood: analyzed.
Rules: internalized.
Social structures: mastered.
Authority: navigated.
There were no loose threads.
He did not feel excitement about what came next. He did not feel fear. Both emotions implied uncertainty, and uncertainty was no longer part of his internal landscape.
Instead, he felt something like completion.
Observation was no longer necessary. The system ran on its own.
Standing in front of his mirror, Lune did not adjust his expression. He did not practice. He simply looked at the person reflected there—a version of himself that had been refined until nothing extraneous remained.
The world did not feel dangerous.
It felt solvable.
And as he turned off the light and lay down, Lune understood that whatever adulthood demanded—work, relationships, performance—he was already equipped to meet it.
The game had rules. He knew all of them.