#storypost

Power dies at 6:03 a.m., but the golden glow doesn’t. It’s just Ezan’s cleats, humming like tiny suns while he flexes at the mirror, tight kit catching what little light remains. He grins, shakes a protein bottle, and the dorm learns what thunder tastes like. “Rise and grind, bro,” he announces to the darkness, oblivious to the pillow I throw over my head. The room smells like halftime and victory, and my blanket begins to glitter faintly, as if dusted with warm coins.

By noon he’s promised to help me study. He flips a chair backward, gold-clad thighs bracketing the wood. “Mitochondria’s like the gym’s protein bar,” he says, proud, absolutely wrong, and somehow convincing. Highlighters roll under the glow from his cleats; the page goes blank in my mind. Somewhere between his analogies and that steady locker-room musk, a sweatband appears on my forehead. It feels earned.

Laundry hour brings the miracle. Ezan dumps a duffel of soaked gold into the washer. Steam sighs. The machine sparks. Our hoodies stare at each other, then decide they’ve always been compression tops. He nods, confused but smug, as if he’s remembered a tradition older than electricity.

The power’s still out by nightfall. We wait in the common area like campers. Ezan drops into a low lunge, speaks calmly about “brotherhood thermodynamics” and how warm bodies share momentum. His sweat turns to mist in the air, and the glow from his cleats pools along the floorboards until my socks drink it up. I try to stand; my body prefers to belong. Fabric rearranges. The outline of my shirt ripples, brightens, becomes a disciplined sheen. He doesn’t notice. That’s the magic: he never tries to change …

When the lights finally return, the world looks corrected. Notes are drills. Doors feel wider for shoulders. The professor arrives in a fitted kit and grades with a shaker. Campus hums with a chant nobody taught aloud. Ezan yawns, stretches, and claps me on the back. “Good study sesh,” he says, sincere as sunrise.

I nod because it is true: nothing was memorized, and everything was learned. Bro first. Gold always. Obey.

Later, I set my alarm for 6:03 on purpose, just to watch the glow ignite again, to feel reality slide into place, simple and bright as laces tightening before kickoff, tomorrow.

"...What happened here..."

STEP 1: Say you’ll never forgive him and storm out

STEP 2: Invite him to a bar

STEP 3: Flirt with lesbians (preferably princesses) in front of Alastor and Vaggie

STEP 4: have WAY to much fun while he definitely definitely does NOT notice how good you look

STEP 5: Uh oh… When did you run the bartenders wife with a motorcycle?

STEP 6: After Alastor goes ballistic punch out the bartender yourself (while calling him Cupcake fondly)

STEP 7: when the Bartender stabs Alastor with glass storm out dramatically

STEP 8: Demand he takes off his shirt and the conversation will go like this: “Take off your shirt.” “My dear….” Alastor chuckled cheeks warming despite himself, “that is hardly appropriate alley way behavior—“ “TO TREAT YOUR WOUNDS IDIOT.” STEP 9: Threaten everyone who would dare to hurt him while threatening Alastor as well, and he smiles at you like your being romantic

STEP 10: He asks about your past while definitely not wincing in pain and you say: “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

That was it. A challenge.

The Akaiya perched by side of a busy boulevard, the back of the structure strikingly born aloft thick columns, suspended over a wide canal - rife with skiff traffic. Though sizable in its own merit, the establishment was dwarfed by its grander, more modern neighbors. Yet there was an inarguable quaint charm to the scarlet painted beams, and the relief of ivy decorating the bamboo panels. 

Beyond the front door a narrow hall waited. It’s interior scarcely decorated apart for a magnificently inked scroll - colorfully depicting a scene of crimson and turquoise tents draped amongst unrealistically enormous painted shells. An antique desk bellow the scroll was occupied by a likewise ancient looking Canthan, her leathery skin creased and crinkled. “Cha-Ming!” She croaked, and soon a young woman bustled forth out of one of the many adjacent doorways.

“Pahabazhen. Welcome to our Akaiya!” Cha-Ming chimed in a musical voice, smiling warmly as her gaze swiftly appraised the group. A light scrunching of her skirt by a small plump fist betrayed the presence of a toddler lurking behind her. After a flurry of cordial, if shallow introductions, coins were exchanged and ledges marked.

Later that night, Joan shut the wooden panels in her small chamber, weary of the constant intrusive blare of the city’s Jade Tech infrastructure. Her lodging was bare bones humble - a dresser, and enough space to unroll a futon. She hoped Solveig and Penelope will be pleased with their similar arrangements... as she did entertain a somewhat jealous suspicion that the Caballeros might have gotten a nicer deal with their couple’s suite overlooking the canal.

A lonely pang followed that musing, thus she repicked the old, battered journal in an attempt to quell that line of thought, replace it with another, a more cherished one. Her eyes traced faded words on worn paper, a treasure relayed to her over the breadth of several lifetimes... and perhaps somewhere in the grand scheme of the Universe and its many machinations, a small circle closed.