Chapter 169: 169 | The Thank You and the Recalibration
"The other four?"
"I don’t have names. I have observations." Percy flipped pages. His fingers moved with the careful precision of someone handling documentation that mattered.
"The skateboard male left the building within twenty minutes of arrival and has not returned. I’m uncertain whether he’s actually living here or just collecting mail. The family male went to his room on this floor. Room 208. I heard him playing music through the wall at approximately seven-thirty. It had bass frequencies. The three females are all on the third floor West side. One of them has a dresser that required assistance from facilities staff. The dresser was mahogany. I heard them discussing it in the hallway while I was mapping the stairwell access."
"Yeah. I met that one."
Percy’s eyebrows rose. "You helped move the dresser."
"I helped move the dresser."
"Into whose room?"
"Petra Lang. 301."
Percy’s hand tightened on his notebook. His eyes did the rapid-processing thing where I could practically see information packets colliding behind his irises, the gears of his brain catching on something and accelerating past comfortable processing speed. "Petra Lang. Recommendation track. Conjuration. Legendary active. Parents are Margot Lang, who founded the Lang Agency in 2009, and Heinrich Lang, who runs Lang Industries, which holds manufacturing contracts with. Several government agencies. Multiple branches. She was not required to take the entrance examination. She entered through direct institutional recommendation which bypasses the standard practical assessment entirely."
"She also thought I was a mover."
Percy stared at me. The notebook nearly slipped from his grip. Then something happened to his face that I’d only seen twice before, both times in contexts where his brain had finished processing something and arrived at a conclusion that his body couldn’t contain. The corners of his mouth pulled sideways and his nose scrunched and a sound came out of him that was half wheeze and half actual laugh.
"She thought you were. A delivery person."
"Told me to make sure the bookshelf arrived by three. Gave me her furniture manifest. Had opinions about how I should handle the corners."
Percy laughed harder. It was an awkward laugh, uneven and pitched too high, the laugh of someone who didn’t get enough practice with it and whose vocal cords weren’t entirely sure what shape to make. But it was real. His whole body participated in it, shoulders shaking and notebook nearly slipping from his grip and his breath coming in uneven bursts that sounded almost painful.
"That’s. That is. Statistically. The third-ranked entrance exam applicant. Being mistaken for furniture logistics."
"To be fair, I was carrying furniture."
"To be fair." Percy repeated the phrase with the inflection of someone tasting it for the first time and finding the flavor acceptable. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and collected himself, the flush on his cheeks slowly receding. His breathing evened out. His grip on the notebook stabilized. "She will. Realize her error."
"She will."
"And the recalibration will be."
"Spectacular."
Percy nodded with the satisfaction of someone who had just confirmed a hypothesis he’d been running quietly in the background. He looked around my apartment one more time, his brain filing the final data points of the spatial survey, then turned toward the door with the careful formality of someone who understood that overstaying constituted a social cost he couldn’t afford.
"I’m going to review the orientation schedule one more time. The layout of the academic spine has a bottleneck near the second floor junction that I want to resolve before Wednesday."
"Sounds good, Percy."
He paused at the threshold, his hand resting on the doorframe with the careful deliberateness of someone making absolutely certain he was about to say what he wanted to say and not whatever his brain was going to substitute at the last second. His blue hair fell across his forehead in a way that made him look even younger than eighteen.
For a moment he just stood there, a lean kid with a notebook full of maps and a brain that ran faster than his voice could carry and an Aspect that had spent eighteen years telling him more than he wanted to know about everything.
"Lukas."
"Yeah."
"Thank you for. The desk chair. And for walking the route with me. And for." His mouth worked, processing the sentence structure before committing to it. The gap between what he wanted to say and what his brain would let him say was visible in real time. "Telling me that knowing the exits is smart instead of weird."
"It is smart."
"Most people don’t agree."
"Most people don’t know how to leave a building in under ninety seconds."
Percy smiled. It was small, barely more than a softening around the eyes and a slight upturn at one corner of his mouth, but on Percy Mendoza it registered as a full grin. The kind of smile that showed up maybe three times a semester and that meant something genuine had just landed without deflection. He stepped through the doorway, pulled it closed behind him with a soft click, and his footsteps padded down the hallway toward Room 204 with the careful quiet of someone who had learned not to draw attention when he moved.
I sat on my bed in the quiet of my apartment and listened to the building settle around me. Through the wall I could hear the faint rhythm of music from Room 208, something with a bassline that was probably making whoever lived there feel productive.
Through the floor I could feel the deep mechanical hum of the building’s climate control system working overtime to keep three hundred students comfortable in late August California heat.
Through the window the training grounds caught afternoon light and turned the reinforced concrete a shade of gold that almost looked warm, the kind of light that made you forget the temperature was still pushing eighty-five even this late in the day.
The Oracle Feed pulsed in the corner of my vision with the specific texture of an update I was not going to like.
Quest Progress: First Step To Harem King
Heroines Contacted: 0/3
Note: Interaction with Percy Mendoza (male, non-qualifying) has generated +5 Reputation with Percy Mendoza. While appreciated, this does not contribute to quest objectives. The System encourages Host to redirect social energy toward individuals who advance mission parameters.
I stared at the notification for longer than was necessary. The System wanted women. The System always wanted women. Percy Mendoza, who had just spent forty minutes mapping my apartment building like it was a tactical insertion zone and who had laughed harder at Camille’s furniture comment than I’d seen him laugh at anything in the three weeks since the entrance exam, did not count.
Of course he didn’t count.
