Elara wasn't present when Isaac arrived.
He stood at it for a moment—not waiting, simply registering the absence. The combat class had its own schedule, its own demands, and Elara's B-rank: [Healing Bloom] made her someone the combat class wanted available. She won't be present today. He accepted this and moved.
He found a different table near the eastern wall—the same position he had taken on his first night in the Golden Repose's dining room, the habit of someone who preferred sight lines to proximity. He set his tray down.
He had been eating for approximately four minutes when the tray landed across from him.
"You're alone," Magnus said, with the specific tone of someone stating an observation they considered actionable.
"Yes," Isaac said.
"May I?"
"Go ahead."
Magnus sat. Vesper appeared a moment later, his arrival more deliberate, the careful positioning of someone who had seen Magnus commit and was deciding whether to follow. He looked at the table. At Isaac's casual way of spending the lunch time. At Magnus already pulling food toward himself with the ease of someone who had decided the situation was fine.
Vesper sat, and the two received him with a comfortable silence.
Then,
"You know?"
The conversation that followed had the quality of something that assembled itself without being planned.
"I heard that the situation outside is running crazy. As in, the… 'Hollow King' situation. The Solari Empire's ultimate weapon. They said that he's currently targeting other allied Kingdoms to Aetherion, but soon or later…"
Magnus paused.
"What am I saying, I shouldn't be talking about something depressing like that. Let's see… speaking of the practical session we just had…"
Magnus carried most of the conversation—the running commentary of someone whose internal monologue had an insufficient barrier between itself and speech. He covered the practical session, his own performance which he assessed as "acceptable for someone whose primary skill is fire-aspected and therefore thermodynamically opposed to sustained cardio," Maren's expression during the last two laps which he characterized as "the face of a woman who has filed disappointment so many times it no longer registers as an emotion," and the general situation of being a lesser noble branch of Ignis in a higher class room with an S-rank, a royal princess, and the person who made an S-rank's glass heart dust.
Vesper contributed at intervals, throwing in some words. Gradually, his tight face—the face of someone trying something new—gradually loosened.
Isaac ate, making occasional chuckles. He tracked the conversation with the peripheral attention of someone who found it agreeable without finding it demanding. He appreciated the company in the specific way of someone who had spent a year with no one but Elara as the company—things were changing.
At some point Magnus ran out of his own material and looked at Isaac with the directness of someone who had decided the next topic required input from all parties.
"Question," he said.
Isaac looked up.
"Who's the most beautiful girl in this Academy?" Magnus asked, with the complete seriousness of someone raising an important matter of public record.
Vesper closed his eyes briefly. "Magnus—"
"It's a valid question. We're at this Academy for three more years. The data should be assessed." Magnus looked between them. "I'll start. Lyra Aetherion. Obviously. A solid candidate, silver hair, and she carries herself like she's already decided how every room ends. There's something—"
"Seraphina Everfrost," Vesper said, with the flat tone of someone correcting an error in a ledger. "She's older. She has the composure of someone who has been in every room worth being in and found most of them insufficient." He paused. "Don't guys have a thing for that?"
"Well, I am not sure if that's true. I can tell though, that you, for sure, have a thing for that." Magnus munched as he pointed his utensil at Vesper in a playful manner. "Have you seen her up close before?"
"Once, during an orientation. I got to see her [Winter Wind] at work as well. She froze a student's discharge before it finished forming." Vesper picked up his fork. "It was impressive."
"Speaking of that, she kind of reminds me of Cassiopeia Terra," Magnus said, looking at Vesper with the specific attention of someone testing a hypothesis. "They carry similar vibes."
Vesper's expression did not change. "She is, objectively—yes. The Terra bearing, the efficiency readings, the way she writes in that notebook like the rest of the world is a footnote—" He stopped. Reorganized. "She is objectively notable."
"You went red."
"I did not."
"You went slightly red."
"The dining hall is warm—"
"Magnus," Isaac said, "You're going in circles."
Both of them looked at him.
"You haven't reached a conclusion."
Magnus grinned, "So you too are a guy in the end, huh, Isaac? Invested in this topic just as much as us. Well, you are right. We need a conclusion. Isaac—" he leaned forward with the energy of someone who had been waiting for this moment, "—objectively. Most beautiful. Who."
Isaac looked up. He set his pen down. He thought of all the women whom he interacted with up until now.
He ran the assessment with the same approach he ran everything—simply looking at the available data and producing the accurate output.
"Irine," he said.
A beat.
Magnus blinked. "The commoner girl. D-rank: [Glamour]."
"Yes. The [Glamour] is a passive enhancement that operates continuously. The point is that it doesn't make beauty out of nothing—it simply augments whatever is already there. Objectively, the answer is Irine." Isaac picked his pen back up. "The skill is a factor, but removing the skill from the assessment doesn't change the conclusion significantly. The underlying result holds."
Vesper was looking at Isaac with the specific attention of someone who had just received a data point they hadn't expected and were filing carefully.
Magnus leaned back. "Huh." He considered this with the open expression of someone updating a model. "Fair. Yeah. Objectively—yeah, that's fair. I remember seeing her on the first day of the Academy and went like, huh, from which noble house is she from? Turns out that she was a commoner." He nodded slowly. "I was going to say Camilla Hedron before Irine but I think you're right."
"Speaking of which—"
The voice came from the adjacent table. A student who appeared to be third-year or higher, currently leaning toward their table with the posture of someone who had been listening and had found an entry point.
"You know she's not actually—Irine, I mean." The student's tone was careful, the register of someone carrying information they considered valuable and were deciding how much to spend. "I heard from someone who was at the Golden Repose dinner last night. Apparently she was rude to Aldric Zephyr. Just—flat refusal, in front of everyone, like he was nobody. And she's a commoner." A pause. "I don't know who she thinks she is."
Magnus looked uncertain. Vesper said nothing, watching Isaac.
"Also," the student continued, "she apparently has this pattern. Acts like other people aren't worth her time. Doesn't know how to speak to people properly. The [Glamour] makes everyone look past it but apparently if you talk to her for more than a minute it's obvious she doesn't care about anyone around her." They sat back with the satisfaction of someone who had delivered a useful report. "Just—if you're going to talk about her like that, worth knowing what she's actually like."
The table was quiet.
Magnus looked at Isaac. Vesper looked at Isaac.
Isaac set his fork down.
This scene felt familiar to him. He then recognized—the spread of bad rumors, bad reputations, excessive hostility from others—what was being directed at Irine was the exact same treatment that he had been receiving.
The memory of her interruption during the dispute against Camilla resurfaced. Isaac frowned.
"I have spoken with her," he said. The flat, carrying register of someone delivering a record rather than an argument. "Twice. On the first occasion, she intervened in a situation that didn't require her involvement, on my behalf, without being asked. On the second occasion she said nothing she hadn't been invited to say."
He looked at the student at the adjacent table.
"What you've described doesn't match the evidence I've observed. The person who told you this, I'd assume to be in Camilla Hedron's social orbit, during the dinner, at the moment Irine declined Aldric Zephyr's invitation." A pause. "That context is worth factoring into your assessment of the source."
The student opened their mouth. Then closed it.
"I'm not saying she's—"
"I'm not asking you to say anything," Isaac said. He picked up his fork. "I'm noting that the characterization doesn't match the data. What you do with that is your decision."
He returned to his food.
The adjacent student leaned back. The silence had the quality of a room that had been given a precise counter and hadn't found a response to it.
"…Isaac Nameless." Then, he growled. "Don't assume that you stand above everyone just because you beat Silas Fulgur."
"I'd suggest that you refrain from the use of ad hominem. Targeting the speaker cause of your incapability to find a counter to my argument doesn't diminish the point."
Magnus was looking at Isaac with an expression that had added a new layer to it since the training ground—the open admiration still present, but adjacent to it now something more specific, the particular look of someone watching a person do something they hadn't expected and finding it interesting rather than just impressive.
Vesper said nothing. He was eating, his fork moving with careful precision, his eyes on his plate. But the calculation in his expression was different from the calculation that had been there since the training ground. It was running against different inputs now.
Eventually Magnus picked up his fork and said, "So. The rotating waterdrop I saw you fire at the tree this morning—"
Isaac looked at him.
"—I was at the window. Saw the holes. Three of them, spiral pattern." Magnus pointed at his own temple. "That's new, right? That's not what you used against Silas."
"You were watching," Isaac said.
"I wake up early. Now I got to learn that you wake up early as well," Magnus said, without apology. "Also your room is across the courtyard from mine and the window was open." He leaned forward. "How does it work?"
Vesper looked up from his plate. Despite himself.
Isaac considered the table—Magnus leaning forward with uncomplicated curiosity, Vesper failing to appear uninterested—and set his pen down again.
"Rotation," he said. "[Condensation], by theory, is composed of the manipulation of pressure and temperature. Applying partial pressure on the developed waterdrops enables rotation. The equilibrium between compression and rotational velocity produces gyroscopic stability. The impact geometry changes from distributional to concentrated."
"…I am not sure if I follow." Magnus stared at him. "Can you say that again but—"
"It spins," Isaac said. "It hits harder in a smaller area."
"Right." Magnus nodded. "That I understood." He looked at Vesper. "Did you understand?"
"Yes," Vesper said, then a pause. Magnus looked at him intently, "…No. The second part, yes."
The lunch hour continued. The adjacent table had found other things to discuss. Outside the dining hall's windows, the Academy went about its midday in the specific way of an institution that had processed a significant result and was returning, as it always did, to the rhythms that preceded it.