“We’re pulling out?” The voice woke him up, but Ai pulled him back closer to her before he had a chance to sit up. Her body felt strange to his touch, despite being the one he once fell in love with. That was not something he’d ever reveal to her. I’m cheating on you with you. No, it didn’t make any sense, but the thought had popped up even as they started dating in Wergaist.

  “They’re not going to back down. Look, their next shit-show overlaps with the transition event. You and I both need to be in Japan by then.”

  What are they talking about? Who are they even? Ioha dug his face into her bosom. The adult Ai very much had one, and he revelled in the softness.

  “It’s going to be hard on the kids. You know the sane ones will leave as well?” The silence that followed felt filled with hesitance. “Can’t we just move them to Isekai as well?” Then the sound of someone standing up. “Want some?”

  “Yes, yes, please!”

  When Ioha tried to sit up again, Ai pulled at him once more, but this time she motioned for him to keep silent.

  “Daddy,” she worded exaggeratedly enough for him to understand in the darkness of their room.

  He nodded and rested against her. Why disturb their cuddling if she wanted him silent by her side?

  Feet shuffled on the floor on the other side of the door and eventually fell silent, followed by a dull clicking that had to be a set of china or earthenware. So, coffee or tea. A chair moved on the floor, and he heard the sound of it giving a little when someone sat down. Coffee! There was no mistaking the smell finding its way into their room.

  A cough announced how the conversation was about to start again. “Moving the students? We could, but there’s no point. We can’t open the faculty until autumn anyway.” The voice sipped some coffee. “Andreas, I know you want what’s best for them, but it’s simply not practical.”

  “You know, I always hated that part about you. Practical!” The voice filled with sarcasm. “They’re humans. Not your personal little experiment.” A deep sigh followed. “It’s been the same with the arrivals and…”

  “The kids are awake. We don’t talk about arrivals, ever! That’s not their story, and it doesn’t belong here.”

  “Fair enough. Anyway, about pulling out. When will people start leaving?”

  Even though the door was almost closed, and he couldn’t see anything, Ioha could swear he heard whom he now recognised as Ai’s father shrug. “One or two probably already did. I’m gating tomorrow or the day after for verification. Need to find them somewhere to live if nothing else.”

  “No need, sir.” The voice, Andreas was it, sounded strangely respectful for someone who just admitted to a certain amount of hatred. “I’ve founded a small company, Isekai side. Academic Homes. We can house a dozen families in a new block hugging the mountain. It’s silent, modern, and the logistics are good as well.”

  “A block?”

  “Some of the current faculty personnel will want to move there as well. I even had one of the old-timers open a bar for people who love books more than beer.”

  A loud laugh filled the room on the other side. “You’ll be surprised. Book-lovers are usually beer-lovers as well.” Slow coughing for clearing one’s throat replaced the laughter. “Good work. If they have a place to hang out, life will be easier on them. I’ll arrange for a little marketing, so the place doesn’t go out of business.”

  After that, the conversation meandered into the realm of shared memories, and Ai was warm and soft, and the evening had long since turned into night. Ioha slowly sank into the best night of restful sleep he’d had since the first time he gated to Wergaist.

  ***

  December offered a local holiday that Ai and Ioha skipped, a stiff week later Christmas which they spent in Ai’s home since Christmas was a family event rather than a dating one in Sweden and Christmas in turn gave way to the new years celebration when they both froze their behinds off watching more fireworks fly into the dark sky than during a large summer festival in Japan. In Sweden, a year’s worth of fireworks all went off in less than fifteen minutes. This wasn’t true, of course, but for all practical purposes it was. Ioha was used to it, but Ai had to learn during her years here. Some years she complained about the total lack of summer fireworks, which again wasn’t entirely true since the central theme park made a failed attempt to emulate a Japanese festival more or less every week, but again, for all practical purposes, it was true. Fireworks in a place where daylight set the rules until half past ten in the evening didn’t really open any decent windows for when to show small explosions in the sky to the public. A little later it was time for yet another local holiday, and first, schools, and a week later, universities opened for the spring semester, and it was time for the two of them to return to Spellsword Academy.

  Ioha sold half of his stocks, and when he arrived in Isekai this time he was flush with cash. Or at least he was relative to the fortunes he grew up with. Ai’s definition was something else. No matter what, he had enough to survive for close to a year if he lived on the cheap. More likely it would last for a couple of months if the school threw any funny crap at them that required them to pay for their own living while respecting their status as future cats. In the end he’d have to find work he could combine with studying, something he hadn’t taken into account. The fourth years living in Schooltown was one mental omission of his.

  Speaking of Schooltown, when their carriage rumbled through the paved main street, thoughts of work and unplanned costs mixed in his mind. “Ai, does the adventurers guild,” Ioha pointed at a gaudy building they passed on their final leg to school, “accept students?”

  She turned to him, hair shorter after a visit to a hair salon in Isekai, but still reaching her nape. “Uhum. Cool, isn’t it? I’m a member.”

  “You what?” Since when?

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  She put a finger to her lips and watched how they passed the last of the buildings in Schooltown. “You only need your letter of acceptance to school, so I thought, why not?” Ai said. “Told you I’d become an adventurer. Haven’t taken any missions yet, of course.” Her face lit up in a wide smile. “Tell me I’m the best!”

  A small rock made the carriage bump, and Ioha had to wait for it to settle down first. “You’re the best, always were.” As long as she didn’t do anything dangerous before she graduated, he’d play along. Preferably after she graduated as well, but that was an impossibility. Spellsword Academy prepared its students for a rather special way of life.

  Then they rattled inside the red iron gate, and the bumpy ride once again became smooth as the carriage rolled through the avenue and stopped at the administrative building. Ioha grabbed his backpack, a piece of luxury he bought in Isekai, filled with cheap but perfectly serviceable outdoor gear, also bought in Isekai, and stepped out. Cheap, most likely, was a matter of definition, but the last two years had seen an explosion of innovations that reached far beyond the immediately visible. Ideas and knowledge flowed in through the gate, and craftsmen and artisans arrived by carriage, horse or foot from Wergaist and possibly from even further away. What he bought might seem like everyday items in an archetypical fantasy land, but Ioha had a nagging suspicion most of it simply wasn’t available outside of Isekai.

  After they settled inside Ai’s room, and he had his fill of watching her cross-legged on her bed, memories surfaced from the conversation he overheard during the first night they spent together in Gothenburg. It all tied in just a little bit too neatly. “Did you ever talk with your father about what they were planning here?”

  “Planning?”

  “You know, him talking with that Andreas guy?”

  She shook her head. “Talking with… Ah, yes, you mean the new school?”

  Ioha nodded.

  “It was,” Ai tilted her head, “vocational education, I think he called it. Ah, and engineering!”

  Engineering? A shudder ran through Ioha’s body. It left something cold slithering down his back. “Scope, did he say anything about scope?”

  Ai gave him a nonplussed look and pressed her lips together. “Boring.”

  “Please, it’s important.”

  “Whatever. A few hundred or so. Nothing big.”

  A few hundred? For her, used to studying in a city with close to seventy thousand university students, it was, as she called it, ‘nothing big’. Isekai changed; he knew that, and he expected ripples flowing out of it like rings on water, but this was something else. A few hundred? He shuddered again. Oh shit, they’re going to colonise this world. A conquest, not by arms but by knowledge. Arms, Ioha realised, would come later. “I see, so something like here then,” he said. Whatever real problems awaited still lay years in the future. And you know that’s not true. But Ai was here, and they spent the last night alone together before school started.

  “Yeah, I think so.” Signs of displeasure spread on her face, and Ioha knew right now was the perfect time to change the subject.

  “Guessed where the group tournament will be?” She wanted to become an adventurer. Talking about armed excursions had to be a good idea.

  It was. Her face lit up with anticipation, and a grin replaced her earlier frown. “Two places. Either the border zone further north along the coast or the contained zone to the west.” She untangled her legs and stretched. Now was talking; an invitation to her bed would come later.

  “North then.”

  “Sure?”

  “West zone’s new and outside the Wergaist domain.”

  Her sigh crossed the distance between them. “No rookies allowed, I guess.”

  A cup of lukewarm tea lent itself as an excuse for him to collect his thoughts. “It’s not explored yet, so yes, no rookies.” He held his breath for a short while. “Pretty sure the neighbouring lord doesn’t want anyone from Wergaist crossing the border in force.” Ioha exhaled the first half of that sentence. “You know, like two hundred armed kids with underdeveloped frontal lobes?” He was rather certain no one wanted that outside a fenced-in high-security area, like Spellsword Academy.

  “So north?”

  “Yeah.” That was his bet. He even brought extra money and bought gear for it.

  “Also, outside Wergaist, you know.”

  “I know,” Ioha admitted, “and who’s going to stop us there? The local lord?”

  “Isekai?”

  “Not a chance. Why would they stop anyone from paying for running a subjugation mission in a zone?”

  She smiled. “Yes, so north. March or wagons?”

  “Both.” The school would make certain everyone made a wide berth around Isekai proper, but there was a small town three days by carriage north of Isekai. “We'll go by wagon to Halfpoint, sleep in the barns there, and walk the rest.”

  Ai groaned. “But the road continues from there.”

  “You’re the one in logistics.”

  “I know.” She sighed again. “I just don’t like too much walking.”

  “Our next adventuring hero doesn’t like walking?”

  “Shut up!”

  “It’s supposed to be good for you.”

  She grinned. “I’ll learn horse riding.”

  She didn’t have to learn. Ioha knew she was an excellent rider, but she avoided topics that gave away how she came from a wealthy family. “We don’t have horses.” The school did indeed have some, but not a lot of them. Two dozen third-year knights didn’t require that many for their riding lessons, and the fourth years had to buy their own or rather have one handed over by their families. War horses were stupidly expensive. Talking about the fourth years… “Third years on cleaning duty as well or only…”

  “Containment,” Ai said. “I guess the fourth years, or maybe even some teachers, bring them along in groups for cleaning up.”

  Ioha had forgotten about the enforced six-person parties. Still, supervised missions for the third years made sense. A year later they had to run the show by themselves with only minimal interference from the teachers. “And us?”

  There was a shrug and a smirk. “Real blades.” She shrugged. “Whatever they let inside will be subdued enough you could hammer it to death with the bread we have for breakfast.”

  The bread was indeed infamous. As weaponised food, at least in theory, it should allow Karaki to overwhelm an entire army. “So just a sniff at a border zone, a few controlled subjugation events, and then we get our score?”

  Ai nodded. “Yup. We’re freshmen. Anything more would be reckless”

  Made sense.

  There had been longer periods of awkward silence between them talking, and Ioha decided now was the time to end the conversation. He moved to her bed, and two glittering eyes told him he was right.