The next week was… a disaster.
A polite, well-intentioned, utterly catastrophic disaster.
Chris tried. He really did. Every morning he woke up, glared at the etiquette binder like it had personally wronged him, and muttered, "For Saha. For peace. For my own questionable decisions."
Then he read a chapter.
Meanwhile, Dax tried too. He woke up, looked at Chris, remembered the ban, and physically left the room like a man fighting gravity, instinct, and his own biology all at once.
By day three, Rowan was exhausted just from watching them.
By day four, Rowan had stopped pretending he wasn't suffering. He stood in the hallway with a coffee the size of a fire extinguisher, watching Chris shuffle past with his binder like an underpaid monk and Dax stalking in the opposite direction like a large, frustrated jungle cat.
