— Day five. South cafeteria. Midday.
It Started Because of a Sauce
The south cafeteria ran a rotating condiment station on the long counter beside the bread baskets—small clay pots with wooden spoons, each one labeled in the cafeteria staff's handwriting. King had been working through them systematically since day three, which Aki had noticed on day four and immediately escalated into a project.
Today there were seven pots.
King looked at them.
He had tried five of the seven over the previous two days. Salt-herb paste. Brown grain vinegar. The thick dark sauce that went on grilled meat. The pale one that tasted primarily of fermented milk and was better than it sounded. The seed-and-oil blend that one of the kitchen staff had told him was a Pannonia border recipe.
The remaining two were red.
Different shades. One was a deep, brick-red with visible seed fragments suspended in oil. The other was brighter—orange-red, smoother, with a thin layer of separated oil on top from sitting undisturbed.
He picked up the spoon from the brick-red pot.
"Oh," said Aki, from directly behind him.
He turned. She was standing two feet away, holding her lunch tray, watching the spoon in his hand with an expression that combined scientific interest with something that looked, for a person who was generally enthusiastic about most things, like genuine anticipation.
"You haven't tried that one," she said.
"Not yet," he said.
"That's the Scythia chili paste," she said. "It's—" She paused, choosing her word. "It has a strong reaction in most people."
"Strong how," King said.
"Heat," she said. "It's a physical heat response, not a temperature thing—there's a compound in the chili seeds that triggers the same pain receptors as actual heat, so your mouth reads it as burning even though it isn't actually burning." She was already moving to put her tray down at the nearest table so she could give this her full attention. "Most people find it very uncomfortable the first time. Some people can't eat it at all."
King looked at the spoon.
He looked at the pot.
He thought about capsaicin—the compound she was describing, which he knew about in the complete and abstract way he knew about everything chemical. He knew its molecular structure. He knew its mechanism of action. He knew the precise pathway from receptor to brain that made people's eyes water and reach for water that did not actually help.
He had never, in this body, in this form, in this scale of existence, experienced it.
"I'll try it," he said.
Aki sat down very quickly, like someone settling in for a performance.
He took a small amount on the spoon and ate it directly.
For two seconds, nothing.
Then it arrived—not dramatically, not all at once, but as a building thing. A warmth that started at the tongue, spread to the inner cheeks, moved back toward the throat. It did not feel like burning exactly. It felt like—warmth that had opinions about where it was. Warmth that was insisting on being noticed.
Oh, he thought. That's interesting.
He held it, experiencing it.
It's concentrated at the back of the palate. Moving forward. There's a secondary wave—slightly different character, more diffuse. The seed fragments are still present, that's the source of the secondary—
"Well?" Aki said. She was holding a spoon herself, having abandoned any pretense of eating her own lunch. She was leaning forward.
"Warm," King said.
"Warm," she repeated.
"In an interesting way," he said.
She blinked. "It's not—" She looked at the pot. "That's a nine-out-of-ten rating on the kitchen's heat scale. The staff uses a system they made themselves based on how many glasses of water the average person drinks after eating it." She held up one finger. "Most first-years who try that one specifically are done in one bite."
"I'm not done," King said.
He put more on the spoon.
"Wait," Aki said. She looked at him with the expression of someone recalibrating a scientific assumption. "How much is on the spoon."
"The same amount as before," he said.
"That's—" She watched him eat the second spoonful. "That's considerably more than most people eat in a full sitting of that particular paste."
"It's developing," King said. He was paying close attention to the sensation now—the second wave had arrived and it was layered differently from the first. There's a sweeter note underneath the heat. The oil is carrying it. The brick-red color comes from the dried chili skin rather than the flesh, which changes the flavor profile—
"Does it hurt?" Aki asked.
"No," King said. "It's—" He searched for the right word. "Warm in a way that has texture. The first spoonful was simpler. The second one has more going on underneath."
Aki stared at him.
She picked up her small green notebook.
"I need to document this," she said, already writing.
"You're documenting my lunch," King said.
"I'm documenting a novel sensory response profile," she said, without looking up. "You are incidentally present."
From across the table, Riku, who had arrived at some point during the second spoonful and had been watching in silence, said: "He's eating Scythia paste without reacting."
"I'm reacting," King said. "I said it was warm."
"The last student I saw try that," Riku said, "drank four glasses of water and left the cafeteria."
"Water wouldn't help," King said. "The compound is oil-soluble. Water doesn't break it down. Dairy would be more effective."
A pause.
"How do you know that," Riku said.
"It makes sense chemically," King said.
Riku wrote something in his pocket journal.
King picked up the spoon again.
"Can I try the other red one?" he asked Aki.
She looked up from her notebook, then at the condiment station, then back at King with the expression of someone who had just been handed a research project she hadn't expected and had immediately decided to take seriously. "The orange-red one is from the Bahari southern island chain," she said. "Different heat compound, different mechanism. Higher surface intensity, shorter duration."
"So it hits faster and leaves faster," King said.
"In theory," Aki said. "Compared to the Scythia paste which builds and stays." She was already moving toward the condiment station. She came back with the second pot. "Most people describe them as completely different experiences."
King tried it.
He held it.
"Different," he said.
"Different how?" Aki said immediately. She had the notebook ready.
"Sharper at the front of the mouth. Less complex underneath. The first one had more layers." He thought about it. "The Scythia one feels like it's exploring. This one just—" He searched for the word. "Announces itself."
Aki wrote this down very fast.
"Announces itself," she repeated, writing. "That's—" She looked up. "That's actually quite accurate for the compound variation. The capsaicinoid in the Bahari pepper has a higher binding affinity at the receptor level, which creates a more immediate response, while the Scythia variety has a slower binding rate with higher—" She stopped. She looked at the notebook, then at King. "Did you derive that from tasting it."
"It tasted that way," King said.
"You described the pharmacokinetics of two different capsaicinoids based on how they tasted."
"I described how they felt," King said. "You're the one connecting it to the mechanism."
She looked at him.
He looked back, mildly.
She wrote something in the notebook. She wrote it with the pen going slightly faster than usual.
---
Haruto arrived late, dropped his tray on the table, looked at the two red condiment pots, looked at Aki's furiously writing notebook, looked at the focused and completely unbothered expression on King's face, and said:
"What's happening."
"King is tasting spicy condiments," Riku said.
"And you're all just—" Haruto gestured at the scene. Aki writing. Riku with his pocket journal open. King with a small amount of Scythia paste on a clean spoon, examining it like it contained interesting structural information. "What is this."
"Research," Aki said.
"Into condiments."
"Into King's sensory response profile," she said. "He's never had significant capsaicin exposure before today. I'm documenting the first-contact responses."
Haruto sat down heavily. He looked at King. "You'd never eaten spicy food before."
"Not this type," King said. "I've had mild pepper preparations. Nothing in this range."
"How are you doing."
"Fine," King said. "It's warm in an interesting way."
Haruto stared at him. "The Scythia paste," he said, pointing at the brick-red pot. "I tried that in second week last year at a festival. I drank milk for twenty minutes and my nose ran for an hour."
"Dairy helps more than water," King said. "Oil-soluble compound—"
"I know it helps," Haruto said. "I know it because I needed it." He pointed at the pot again. "That's the second-year cafeteria dare paste. Upper-classmen bet each other who can eat the most."
"Who wins," King said.
"No one, usually." Haruto picked up his own fork and started eating his lunch with the energy of someone who had decided not to try to understand the current situation. "Wang Lei apparently cleared a full spoonful last semester and didn't react at all, which everyone says is impossible, but—" He trailed off.
King looked at him. "Wang Lei. Is that the student from the Cathay eastern provinces?"
"Yeah. Iron Body talent. His whole thing is physical enhancement to the theoretical limit of human biology." Haruto pointed his fork vaguely in the direction of the training yard. "He's in the advanced combat track. A-rank candidate." A pause. "He makes me want to train harder, which is annoying, because I was already training as hard as I could."
"He's good," King confirmed. He had watched Wang Lei's assessment yard performance briefly from the yard's edge during the second group rotation—clean, economical, powerful without waste. The kind of physical precision that took years to build.
"He looked at your assessment results," Haruto said. "He asked me who you were."
King looked up. "What did you tell him."
"Your name and rank." Haruto shrugged. "He didn't say much after that. He just nodded and went back to his drills. Which is—that's what Wang Lei does, he processes things internally. But he asked."
He asked, King filed. Interesting.
"Does that concern you?" Riku asked, watching King.
"No," King said. "He seemed curious."
"A-rank candidates don't usually get curious about F-rank students," Riku said.
"He saw the assessment board," Haruto said. "Everyone saw your numbers. Clean green, dead center, no mana output registered." He pointed his fork at King again. "That's a thing people notice."
"Green is average," King said.
"Nothing about your green was average and you know it," Haruto said. He said it without accusation—just the direct honesty of someone who had decided to say the thing plainly rather than go around it. "The green numbers came out of nothing. No technique visible, no mana signature, just—numbers. Clean as anything. The assessors were looking at each other."
King said nothing.
"I'm not asking you to explain," Haruto said. He went back to eating. "I'm just saying. People are paying attention. Not in a bad way. Just—" He waved his fork. "Paying attention."
"I know," King said.
"Good." Haruto pointed at the condiment pot. "Can I try a little of that."
"It's warm in an interesting way," King said.
"That tells me nothing about whether I should try it."
"Probably not, then," King said.
Haruto tried it anyway. He lasted six seconds before reaching for his water glass with the slightly pained expression of someone who had made a decision they could not immediately undo.
"Water won't help," King said.
"I know," Haruto said, drinking the water.
Aki wrote this exchange down without looking up from the notebook.
---
She found him again after the afternoon study period.
He was in the corridor outside the library, standing at the window that looked out over the training yard, watching a group of second-year students run combat drills below. He had his notebook under one arm. He wasn't writing in it. Just watching.
She stood beside him.
They watched the drills for a moment.
"I have forty-seven expressions documented," she said.
He turned to look at her. "What."
"Of yours." She opened the small green notebook, not to show him, just to reference it. "Since I started the documentation on day one. I've noted forty-seven distinct facial expressions." She paused. "Most people would have noticed they were being observed that closely. Most people would have said something uncomfortable by now."
"You told me you were keeping notes," he said. "I said it was all right."
"You didn't say it was all right," she said. "You didn't say anything. You just—didn't ask me to stop."
He thought about this. "I didn't mind," he said. "Is that the same thing?"
She looked at the notebook. "Most of the forty-seven expressions are subtle. The range is wider than you look from a distance." She turned to a page. "For example—number twelve. That's the one you made when Haruto introduced himself on the bus, according to what he told me." She looked at the notebook. "Small upward movement at the corner of the left eye. Barely visible. He called it weird and pleasant."
"He called me weird," King said.
"He called the expression weird," she said. "The full thing was—he was happy that someone talked to him without mentioning the classification first. That was number twelve."
King was quiet for a moment.
She turned another page. "Number thirty-one. Yesterday in the library when you caught the methodology error. Quick lateral movement in the jaw—the kind people make when they're not surprised by something but they're confirming it. Like you already knew the number was off and you were just checking."
"I wasn't—"
"You looked at that column for one second," she said. "You told me it was off. I looked at the methodology section for forty-five seconds before I could confirm it." She looked up from the notebook. "One second. One column. A number that has been cited correctly for eighty-two years without anyone questioning it."
King looked out the window.
Below, the drill group was cycling through footwork sequences. One of the students had the crisp, minimal technique of someone who'd been training since early childhood. The others were catching up, working harder to get there.
"What do you want to know?" King asked. Not defensively. Just directly—the same way she was being direct.
She thought about it. "Right now? Nothing specific. I'm still building the picture."
"Building toward what."
"I don't know yet." She was honest about that too. "The observations I have don't resolve into anything I can name. Every time I think I have a category, you do something that puts you outside it." She closed the notebook. "So I keep observing."
He looked at her.
"You're not bothered by not knowing," he said.
"I'm curious," she said. "Not knowing is the start of figuring something out. Being bothered by not knowing wastes the time you could spend figuring." She put the notebook in her coat pocket. "Are you bothered by being observed?"
He thought about it.
"No," he said. "I find it—I find it interesting that someone is paying that much attention."
"Forty-seven expressions," she said. "In five days."
"That's a lot of attention," he said.
"You're a lot to pay attention to."
She said it the way she said most things—matter-of-fact, accurate, no particular feeling loaded into it. But he noticed—because he noticed things, it was a habit he could slow but not stop—that she had looked away when she said it. Out the window, at the training yard. Not at him.
That's the forty-eighth expression, he thought.
He didn't say this.
He looked back at the training yard, where the student with the good footwork was running the sequence again from the beginning, slower this time, looking for the place where it was breaking.
"You should add a forty-eighth," he said.
"What is it," she said.
He didn't answer.
She looked at him. He was watching the training yard. His expression was—she catalogued it quickly, reflex—small, settled, something that was not quite a smile and not quite simple attention. Something in between that she hadn't seen from him before in exactly this form.
She opened the notebook.
She wrote: No. 48—library corridor window, Day 5, evening. No name yet. File for return.
She underlined it.
---
That evening, in the east reading room, Sora Aizawa sat down with the previous forty-eight entries open in front of her and read them from the beginning.
She was looking for the pattern—the one her Stillwind instinct kept telling her was there, just outside the range she was currently searching.
She read through every entry.
She found nothing she could name.
She found everything she needed to keep looking.
She opened to a fresh page.
She wrote at the top: What I know.
Beneath that she wrote: Nothing definitive.
Then she drew a line.
Below the line she wrote: What I feel.
She held the pen.
She didn't write anything below that line.
But she left the page open.