Shiro woke to bliss again.
Not the warm, honey soft glow of yesterday, but a gentler, lazier comfort, the kind that made him roll over, blink at the sunlight, and realise with a jolt that he had overslept. Thirty minutes until the exam. He skipped breakfast, half running through the corridors, boots thudding against polished stone. His hair was a mess, his uniform hastily thrown on, but he felt... light. Almost excited. The kind of nervous thrill that came from being part of something bigger than himself.
He met his friends outside the exam hall, the same cluster of nobles who had adopted him into their orbit. They were pale with dread. Reo stood slightly apart, arms crossed, jaw tight. His eyes were sharp, colder than usual. "I can't lose to him again," he muttered under his breath. Shiro blinked. "Lose to who?" Reo didn't answer. He didn't need to. Kuro's absence was a ghost between them. Shiro decided against speaking to him. Not before the exam. Not when Reo's mask, Shiro noticed, was slipping at the edges especially at the mention of Kuro.
The hall was enormous, rows upon rows of desks stretching into the distance like a battlefield of parchment and ink. Students filed in, their faces tight with tension. Shiro found his seat. His heart thudded. Two hours. The exam began.
The proctor's words faded as Shiro unrolled the parchment. The first question was a diagram of the winter quadrant, its stars connected by the Crown's rigid, artificial lines. 'Using the Revised Tables, calculate the angular deviation of Polaris from True North as observed from the Capital on the Winter Solstice, Year 8765. Show your work.' Shiro's hand went cold. The "Revised Tables" were the lie. The "angular deviation" was a fiction. Polaris didn't deviate; it was the fixed point. The King had invented an error so he could claim to have corrected it.
His quill hovered. To answer, he would have to use the false numbers, perform calculations on a phantom error, and arrive at the "correct" answer of zero deviation, proving the King's perfection. It was intellectual blasphemy. Around him, the hall filled with the frantic, scratching music of two hundred quills accepting the premise. He could see Reo, three rows ahead, already neatly annotating the diagram, his movements efficient and untroubled.
The second question was worse. 'Diagram and label the corrected formation of Ursa Minor, noting the strategic shortening of the tail as a reflection of streamlined, modern sovereignty versus the outdated, sprawling myth.' A cold fury ignited in Shiro's gut. They weren't just asking for compliance; they were demanding an endorsement of the mutilation. He saw Aki's face, pale in the shack's gloom, tracing the long, graceful tail with a trembling finger. "The Great Bear's tail sweeps the darkness away, Shiro. It's why we have dawn."
A wave of nausea, hot and sour, rose in his throat. His vision tunnelled, the careful script on the page swimming. The diagrams seemed to pulse, the false constellations twisting like worms on the parchment. He was going to be sick. He couldn't breathe. The elegant lies were a physical weight, crushing the air from his lungs. He gripped the edge of the polished oak desk, knuckles white, trying to anchor himself in the solid wood, but even that felt complicit, carved from a kingdom of dead, obedient trees. Every question was a lie. Every diagram a desecration. Every "corrected" constellation a wound. The King's sky. The false sky.
One of the instructors noticed him panting. "Step outside," she whispered, guiding him gently toward the corridor. "Collect yourself." He stumbled into the bathroom, splashing cold water on his face. His reflection stared back, the Malkor uniform gleaming, pristine, perfect. A lie. A blasphemy. This wasn't him. It never could be. He pressed his palms to the sink, breathing hard. He would not bend. He would not bow. He would not let the King rewrite the sky inside him.
He straightened. He returned to the hall. Reo looked genuinely worried when Shiro re entered. So did the others. Shiro gave a small nod. I'm fine. Reo offered him a smile, warm and encouraging. A smile that said smash this exam. Shiro smiled back. But he wasn't going to smash it. He was going to defy it.
He sat down, lifted his quill, and began. He didn't answer a single question the way they wanted. He wrote the truth. Every star. Every tilt. Every alignment. Every constellation. He doodled the real sky in the margins, the sky Aki had taught him, the sky he had seen from the shack, the sky that had never lied to him. He didn't write an answer. He wrote a testimony.
For the first question, he drew two diagrams side by side. On the left: "King's Chart" with Polaris deliberately offset. On the right: "True Sky" with Polaris centred. Beneath, he wrote: "Polaris does not deviate. The error is in the chart, not the star. The calculation is therefore zero, but not for the reason you want."
For Ursa Minor, he ignored the provided outline. He drew the full, sprawling constellation from memory, the tail elongated in a majestic, curling arc. He labelled it: "Ursa Minor. The Lesser Bear. Guardian of the Pole Star. Its tail is a brush painting light into the void. It cannot be 'streamlined' without breaking its purpose."
He moved through the exam like a scribe from a lost kingdom, recording a history the Crown was trying to burn. For the essay on Cassiopeia's symbolic importance, he wrote about the Tumbling Queen not as a myth of instability, but as a celestial lesson in humility and eternal motion. "A throne that is fixed is a tomb. A queen who falls is a queen who dances." He wrote of Lyra's unbroken strings, of Orion's true belt, of myths not as propaganda but as living stories written in light.
His quill flew, not with the neat, cramped script of a student, but with the bold, flowing hand of someone carving a truth onto a wall. He filled the margins with tiny, precise sketches: the view from the Higaru rooftop, the shack's crooked star carving, Aki's face in profile as she told a story. It was an archive of reality, hidden in the exam's interstices. He wasn't just defying the test; he was burying a time capsule of truth inside the apparatus of the lie. For two hours, the hall held its breath, and Shiro exhaled a silent, perfect rebellion. He felt proud. For the first time in the Academy, he felt like himself.
Two hours passed in a heartbeat. When the exam ended, the hall erupted in relieved chatter. Students compared answers, argued over declinations, laughed about trick questions. The noise was a physical release. Parchments rustled as they were collected. Desks scraped. A collective sigh seemed to lift the vaulted ceiling.
Immediately, clusters formed, voices overlapping in a nervous, eager cacophony. "The parallax correction on question four, did you use the summer or winter coefficient?" "I used the revised stellar magnitude for Vega, but then the luminosity ratio fell apart..." "Kael is a sadist. That Ursa Minor question was pure ideology, not astronomy."
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Shiro remained seated, his own parchment a strange, heavy artifact in his hands. He watched as Reo, already surrounded by a knot of anxious peers, calmly dissected each problem. "You overthought it," Reo said to a freckled boy from House Isamu. "The 'strategic shortening' was a distraction. The question was testing recall of the mandated diagram, not understanding. You just had to reproduce it." His voice was a steady, confident drone, a lighthouse in the chaos of doubt. He never once looked unsure.
Elara bounded over to Shiro, her cheeks flushed. "That was brutal! What did you put for the third calculation? I got 47.3 arcseconds, but Lin swears it's 52.1." Shiro's mouth went dry. He hadn't done the third calculation. He'd written a paragraph about the inherent error in measuring celestial truth with politicized instruments. "I... I think I got 49.8," he fabricated, picking a middle number. "The atmospheric variable was tricky." "49.8!" Elara groaned. "A third answer. Wonderful." She didn't seem suspicious, just exasperated by the ambiguity.
But then Baronet Lin's son leaned in. "The essay on Cassiopeia, did you focus on the sovereignty metaphor or the navigation implications?" Shiro felt the trap. "A blend of both," he said, his voice tight. "The stability of the throne enabling reliable navigation." The words tasted like ash.
Through it all, he felt Reo's gaze. Not constantly, but in flickers, when Shiro hesitated, when he gave a vague answer, when he failed to engage in the specific, technical debate. Reo said nothing, asked Shiro nothing directly. He just absorbed the data points: Shiro's evasion, his lack of certainty on core mechanics, his reliance on vague, thematic responses in a brutally quantitative exam. The puzzle in Reo's mind wasn't just forming; the final pieces were clicking into place with silent, definitive snaps. Another crack in his mask.
They went out afterward, to the courtyard games, the food stalls, the little amusements nobles used to unwind. The courtyard was a world transformed. Gone was the tense quiet of exam preparation, replaced by the riotous noise of liberation. A makeshift ring had been set up for blades and hoops, a game of skill where players used practice swords to toss wooden rings onto distant pegs. Shiro, urged on by his friends, took a turn. His unorthodox grip made the others laugh, but he managed a respectable score, his street honed coordination serving him well. The laughter was warm, clapping him on the back.
They bought spiced nuts from a stall, the vendor bowing deeply to the cluster of nobles. The nuts were sweet and hot, a luxury Shiro had never tasted. He stood in the sun, chewing, listening to Elara dramatically reenact her panic during the exam, and for a moment, the uniform didn't feel like a costume. It felt like skin. He belonged to this laughter, this shared exhaustion, this simple, sun drenched afternoon.
They moved to a game of astral dice, where the faces were stamped with constellation symbols. Shiro didn't know the rules, but Lady Mara patiently explained, her hand brushing his as she pointed to the betting layout. He won a few rounds, his pockets filling with cheap copper tokens, the feel of winning a heady, unfamiliar drug. He was Shiro Malkor, cousin, student, friend. The boy from Higaru was a ghost, a story that didn't matter here.
As dusk tinged the sky, they piled into a warm, noisy tavern just off the academy grounds, a place frequented by students. The air was thick with the smell of roasting meat, ale, and woodsmoke. They commandeered a long table, shouting orders for stew, bread, and sweet cider. Shiro ate until he was full, laughed until his sides ached at jokes he only half understood. He was buoyant, weightless, a leaf caught in a stream of camaraderie. He forgot to watch for masks because here, under the tavern's low, smoke stained beams, everyone's face seemed gloriously, uncomplicatedly real. It was the most perfect deception of all.
They mocked Kael's droning lectures mimicking his iconic whistle. They mimicked Harken's skeletal voice. They complained about the exam. It was bliss. Pure, unthinking bliss. Kuro never crossed his mind. Nor Valeria. Not even Aki. He was lost in the warmth of belonging, something he thought was alien to him.
The tavern keeper, all obsequious smiles, presented the slate. A tidy sum for the stew, cider, and sweetcakes. Almost as one, the nobles reached into tunics and belt pouches, producing heavy, embroidered wallets. The clink of silver and gold was a familiar chorus of their world. Shiro's hand went to his hip, then patted his sides. Nothing. The motion was slight, but his posture shifted instantly, a subtle stiffening, a flicker of panic in his amber eyes before he slammed a placid expression over it. He'd been fluid and laughing a second before; now he was a statue of quiet dread.
Reo watched it happen. He didn't just see the missing wallet; he saw the realization, and more importantly, he saw the frantic, poorly performed pantomime of searching for it. A noble's purse wasn't an item; it was an appendage. Forgetting it was like forgetting to breathe. Impossible.
"I'll cover him," Reo said, his voice smooth as poured cream, already sliding a gold Astra across the worn table. His movement was effortless, a reflex of his station. Shiro flushed, the colour stark against his paleness. "I...I must have left it in my rush this morning. I'll repay you, Reo. Tomorrow." "Think nothing of it," Reo said, waving a dismissive hand, his smile benign. "That's what friends are for." The others nodded, the moment passing as a minor, amusing oversight.
But for Reo, the moment was seismic. It wasn't evidence; it was the keystone, locking the arch of his suspicion into an unshakable structure.
As they filed out into the crisp evening air, Reo lingered a half step behind, his mind a cold, clear engine. The boy knows nothing of his alleged house, its traditions, its vineyards, its history. He fabricates with the clumsy haste of someone reading a summary. He is sponsored by Valeria Malkor, the Prince's own guardian, yet was ignorant of Kuro being the Crown Prince, a fact known to every street sweeper in the capital. He shows a physical, visceral revulsion to the corrected star charts, as if offended on a personal level. He refused direct tutoring on the eve of the exam, choosing certain failure over revealing the depths of his ignorance. His exam answers, from the glimpses Reo caught after, were not just wrong, they were heretical. They argued with the questions themselves. He has no purse or wallet, a sacrament.
The narrative presented, a modest Malkor cousin from a minor branch, rough but worthy of sponsorship, was a threadbare tapestry. Up close, it was all loose threads and gaps. The truth was something else. A gutter rat granted a mask? A pawn in some deeper game between Valeria and the Crown Prince? A spy? A joke?
Reo felt no outrage, only a sharp, intellectual delight. He had been bored. The Academy's hierarchies were stagnant, Kuro's tyranny a predictable storm. This was a new puzzle. A living, breathing lie walking among them, and he, Reo Veyne, was the only one who seemed to see it. He wouldn't confront Shiro. Confrontation yielded lies and defences. No, he would research. He would trace the falseness to its source. He would start with the Malkor family records, then cross reference Valeria's known movements. He would find the crack in the story, and then he would pry it open, not to expose Shiro to the world necessarily, but to understand the shape of the truth. Knowledge was the ultimate currency, and Reo intended to become very, very rich.
He caught up to the group, falling into step beside Shiro. He slung a friendly arm around Shiro's shoulders, feeling the tension thrumming beneath the fine scarlet wool. "A good day, wasn't it?" Reo said, his voice warm. "The best," Shiro replied, the gratitude in his voice painfully genuine.
Reo's smile in the gathering dusk was perfect, and perfectly cold.
Enjoy the borrowed clothes, the borrowed friends, the borrowed light, he thought.
I am going to find out who you really are.
And then we'll see what it's worth.
What Score Will Shiro Get On The Exam?
