The room I entered filled me with nostalgia for a memory I did not have.
The feeling came before I understood why.
The smell of fresh varnish and old sweat.
Rubber soles squeaking against polished wood.
Voices echoed from walls built to hold far more people than were currently inside them.
It was a gymnasium.
I knew that word.
I knew the wooden floor resembled the kind used for basketball courts, though there were no hoops hanging from the walls and no painted lines beneath my feet.
Basketball.
Another thing I remembered without remembering where I had learned it.
Retractable bleachers had been folded against one wall, leaving nearly the entire floor open.
The ceiling rose so high that the wooden beams disappeared into shadow.
Someone could have kicked a ball straight upward with all their strength and still failed to reach it.
Not that there were any balls here.
Instead, enormous brass spheres hung from ropes attached to the rafters.
Some were no larger than my head. Others looked heavy enough to crush a person.
Beneath each one, chalk circles covered the floor. Lines crossed through them at different angles, surrounded by unfamiliar numbers and symbols.
Students gathered around the markings in matching academy uniforms.
I looked down at my own clothes.
They resembled theirs closely enough that no one had stopped me, although mine felt rougher and slightly too large around the shoulders. A small name tag remained pinned to my chest.
Xu XiaoXing.
The name still felt borrowed.
Around me, students greeted one another after what sounded like a long vacation.
They compared schedules.
Complained about instructors whose classes had not even begun.
Laughed at jokes built upon stories I had not been there to witness.
Almost everyone already seemed to belong somewhere.
Then I spotted Lynne.
She stood near the far wall beneath one of the folded sections of bleachers. Her wide straw hat was gone, but I recognized the dark auburn hair and the freckles scattered beneath her eyes.
She was smiling.
Good.
At least I knew one person.
She appeared to be speaking to someone, although several students kept passing between us.
I started toward her.
As I moved closer, the crowd thinned.
No one stood beside her.
Lynne nodded as though listening.
She laughed softly.
Then she answered someone I could not hear.
I slowed.
Was she talking to herself?
The instructor clapped her hands.
“Everyone, find your partners!”
Students immediately began separating into pairs.
Lynne glanced toward the center of the gymnasium.
Then she looked back at the empty space beside her.
I stopped a few steps away.
“Hey.”
She turned toward me.
Her face brightened immediately.
“Oh! Hi.”
At least she remembered me.
“Do you need a partner?”
“I’d love to, but…”
She hesitated.
Her eyes moved toward the space beside her.
For several seconds, she seemed to listen.
Then her mouth pulled into an apologetic smile.
“I already promised him.”
She pointed with her thumb toward the empty floor beside her.
“Sorry.”
I followed her gesture.
There was no one there.
I looked around her.
Still no one.
Maybe whoever she meant had stepped away.
Although she was still looking directly at the place where they should have been standing.
“Oh.”
I scratched the back of my neck.
“That’s all right. I’ll find someone else.”
“I’m really sorry.”
She sounded genuinely disappointed.
That made it stranger.
I forced a small smile.
“No worries.”
As I walked away, an uncomfortable feeling settled into my chest.
It was not anger.
She was allowed to choose someone else.
Even if she had invented the strangest excuse possible because she did not want to embarrass me.
No, the feeling was older than that.
Everyone around me had found their place almost immediately.
Old friends reuniting and choosing partners.
Conversations resumed as though they had only paused yesterday.
I stood among them carrying a name that did not feel like mine.
For a moment, I felt as though I had experienced this before.
Standing at the edge of a room.
Watching everyone else belong somewhere.
I pushed the thought away and searched for another partner.
Every student I approached had already paired with someone.
One group had formed a trio around a brass sphere, but the instructor separated them and sent the third student to another station.
I waited for her to send someone toward me.
She did not.
When I looked back, Lynne was still speaking quietly to empty air.
The instructor raised her voice over the room.
“Today’s practical concerns the first principle of astronomy: the relationship between bodies in motion.”
Astronomy?
I looked up at the suspended brass spheres.
I knew what astronomy meant.
Talking about stars, space and whatnot.
But I had never imagined it being taught in a gymnasium.
“One partner will chart the predicted course,” the instructor continued. “The other will release the suspended body when instructed.”
She pointed toward the chalk circles.
“The sphere must pass through each marked position without touching the boundary. You are not measuring where the body is. You are determining where it will be.”
Several students began whispering excitedly.
The instructor lifted one finger.
“No one releases anything until I have inspected your calculations.”
Her eyes moved across the class.
“I mean it. These spheres are heavy enough to break bones, and I have no intention of explaining another damaged floor to the headmaster.”
A few students laughed.
The instructor did not.
“Begin by establishing your orbital line.”
Pairs moved toward the chalk circles.
One student in each group knelt and extended a hand over the markings. Pale threads of light appeared beneath their fingers.
The lines curved across the floor, connecting one symbol to another.
Their partners held the ropes attached to the suspended spheres.
I stared.
Is that supposed to be mana?
I had heard the word before, but this was the first time I understood what everyone meant.
The light did not resemble fire.
It had no smoke and cast almost no shadow.
It seemed less like something created and more like something that had always existed beneath the surface of the world, briefly made visible.
I raised my hand experimentally.
Nothing happened.
I was not sure what I had expected.
The instructor walked between the stations.
“Your third position is too narrow. Account for the weight of the body. Do not force the line. Guide it.”
A student near me groaned as his glowing curve collapsed.
His partner laughed.
“You placed the moon inside the earth.”
“I did not.”
“You absolutely did.”
“Only slightly.”
I found myself smiling.
Then I remembered I still had no partner.
I turned back toward Lynne.
She and her invisible companion were no longer near the wall.
For a moment, I thought she had finally joined one of the stations.
Then I saw her at the gymnasium doors.
She looked over her shoulder, nodded to someone beside her, and slipped into the hallway.
The door closed behind her.
I stared after her.
Was she leaving?
Perhaps the beginner stations were somewhere else.
Or perhaps she had simply decided she would rather skip the lesson than work with me.
That seemed unnecessarily dramatic.
I remained near the edge of the floor while the class began its calculations.
Without a partner, there was nothing for me to do except watch.
The instructor became surrounded by students asking questions.
“Does the first position begin at release?”
“What if the sphere crosses the western line twice?”
“Can we use the outer markings?”
“No,” she answered. “The first position begins when the rope becomes slack. Yes, it may cross twice. No, the outer markings belong to the advanced course.”
She corrected one glowing path with the end of a wooden pointer, then moved to another group.
Several minutes passed before she finally noticed me.
Her brow furrowed.
“Mr. Xu?”
The name took a moment to register.
I looked down at the tag on my chest.
Right.
That was supposed to be me.
“Yes?”
“Why haven’t you begun?”
“I don’t have a partner.”
She glanced around the room.
“Miss Lynne was meant to be the remaining partner.”
So the instructor had expected us to work together.
Interesting.
“She already had someone.”
The instructor looked back at me.
“What?”
“I asked her before the lesson started. She said she’d promised him.”
The instructor scanned the nearby stations.
“Who did she partner with?”
“I don’t know.”
Her expression tightened.
“You don’t know?”
“I never saw him.”
“Him?”
“I think it was a boy.”
I was not actually certain. Lynne had been looking slightly upward while speaking, as though whoever stood beside her was taller than she was.
The instructor lowered the pointer.
“What did he look like?”
“I told you. I didn’t see him.”
Silence.
The instructor stared at me.
The voices around us seemed to recede.
“What exactly do you mean?”
I pointed toward the wall where Lynne had been standing.
“She was talking to someone over there. At least, I thought she was.”
“And when you approached?”
“There wasn’t anyone beside her.”
The instructor’s face changed.
Not much.
A slight widening of her eyes and a tightening around her mouth.
But the change was immediate.
“She pointed to an empty space,” I continued. “She said she had already promised him.”
The instructor turned toward the doors.
“Where is Miss Lynne now?”
“She left.”
Her head snapped back toward me.
“When?”
“A few minutes ago.”
“Alone?”
“I…”
I looked toward the empty space Lynne had occupied.
“I suppose that depends on who you ask.”
The instructor did not find that amusing.
She crossed the gymnasium quickly and pushed one of the doors open.
The hallway beyond was empty.
“Miss Lynne?”
No response.
The instructor stepped into the corridor.
Then stopped.
Behind her, one of the suspended spheres swung sideways.
A student shouted as his partner struggled to control the rope.
The instructor turned back toward the class.
She could not leave them.
Not with heavy brass weights hanging above their heads.
She stood caught between the gymnasium and the empty hallway.
Then she looked at me.
“Mr. Xu.”
Her voice had changed.
The patient warmth she had used with the class was gone.
“Which way did she go?”
“I didn’t see.”
“Then check the eastern corridor first. It leads toward the academy gates.”
I glanced at the other students.
No one else seemed concerned.
Most had not even noticed Lynne leave.
“Did she do something wrong?”
The instructor stepped closer.
“Listen carefully.”
Her voice dropped so that only I could hear.
“If you find her speaking to someone you cannot see, do not argue with her about it.”
I stared at her.
The fear in her face was no longer hidden.
“If she says who she's talking to wants something, whatever they ask you to do, you refuse.”
A cold sensation moved down my back.
“Who is she talking to?”
“I don’t know.”
It was the speed of her answer that told me she was lying.
She glanced toward the hallway again.
“Bring Miss Lynne back immediately.”
“What about her partner?”
The instructor looked directly into my eyes.
“Miss Lynne does not have a partner.”
A shout rose from the class.
The instructor turned as a brass sphere swung beyond its chalk boundary.
“Hold the rope!”
She rushed toward the students, then looked back at me one final time.
“Go!”
I stepped into the hallway.
The door closed behind me, muffling the noise of the gymnasium.
“Lynne?”
My voice traveled along the stone walls.
No answer.
I hurried toward the eastern corridor.
At the far end, an exterior door stood slightly open.
Sunlight formed a narrow line across the floor.
I pushed through it.
Beyond the academy grounds, the road descended toward the harbor.
Lynne was nowhere in sight.