Seeking Gold 66— A Duo of Circumstances: Part 1 (Patreon)

Amy followed Crow across the field toward the place the teacher had told them they could strategize, making sure to always be two steps behind him and using the time to mentally draft her opening statement.

When they reached the staging area, Crow finally stopped and turned to look at her. His expression was, as expected, absolutely nothing.

Dammit, this is going to be a pain.

It still felt unfair; Drayke had clearly said that he put those who complained about their teammates in the exam together, but Amy hadn't, not even one bit. So why in the hell was she with Crow?

As they kept looking at each other in silence, Amy could only lament her fate.

Somebody here has to be the bigger man, and it's clearly going to be me... I'm not even a man. This is so unfair.

Amy took a breath, put on her most diplomatic face, and opened her mouth. "Look. We have our differences. Obviously. I'm not going to pretend we don't, and I'm not asking you to pretend either. But I think it's important that, for the duration of this exam, we both momentarily get past them and work together. For the sake of a good grade, if nothing else."

There, mature, measured, and downright saintly. Honestly, that was probably the perfect thing to say in a situation like this one.

Crow, however, didn't seem to think so, as he said absolutely nothing in return; he didn't nod, he didn't frown, hells, he didn't even blink. He simply looked at her with those dark eyes for a long moment and then looked away as if uninterested.

Amy only sighed.

Great talk, really productive, truly. We should do this more often.

"Listen up!" Drayke's voice rolled across the entire field, distracting Amy from her pathetic attempt at diplomacy. The professor stood at the center of the hall with his arms crossed. "Before we begin, a few reminders, since some of you seem to think this is a game." He said this while looking straight at Iris, who had been laughing happily with her companions and now smiled awkwardly at the stern gaze. "Class S is a privilege, and privileges get revoked. Every single year, more than a few of your predecessors have been cut from this class and sent back down to the general track. This exam alone will not cut anybody, but it will absolutely put names on the potential list. And I promise you, that is not a list you want to be on."

Amy massaged her temples as she listened to his words. From experience, things always tended to go from bad to worse, so assuming she was safe from the chopping block because she had arguably a cheat code as an ability was not good thinking.

Beating this exam with a perfect score would not only help her ego, but would probably also keep her nightmares from getting worse. That's why she couldn't help but feel annoyed both at Crow and the teacher.

What did she do to deserve this?

"Furthermore," Drayke continued. "Both your cooperation and your individual performance will be evaluated separately. So no clinging to your teammate's back like a baggage sack, and no abandoning them to sprint for the gates alone for an easy victory."

Amy once again sighed and glanced at Crow to gauge his reaction to any of this.

Crow was not paying attention—or at least seemed that way. At some point during the speech, he had walked to the hall's wall away from everyone and sat down against it, one knee up and his prosthetic arm resting across it, staring at nothing in the middle distance like an overly edgy and loner protagonist from a trashy grimdark shonen would. Basically, Amy wasn't surprised to see him there.

She bit her lip, weighed her options, and went to sit down as well—a good few meters away from him, of course.

"Your ten minutes of strategizing," Drayke announced, "begin now!"

The field gradually filled with noise as every group immediately huddled into discussion.

From her sitting position, Amy could see every single group working without any sort of delay to complain about their teammate. Even Stella and Tallen—Stella and Tallen—Stella and fucking Tallen—were talking, seemingly having left their differences to the side, at least momentarily.

Everyone was strategizing—well, not everyone. Group six wasn't, which, coincidentally, happened to be the same group Amy was part of.

Amy sat at one end of the wall, and Crow sat at the other, in complete silence.

One minute passed like that—then two, and three. When it became obvious that at this rate they wouldn't achieve anything, Amy had to make a decision.

Okay, I've had enough. If he won't strategize, I'll strategize for both of us.

Amy reached inward toward her core as she called her ability, then asked: a way to complete this exam with Crow cooperating, and get a good grade.

Her eyes shone and a future started—

"If you use your ability on me," Crow's voice cut through her concentration, "I won't cooperate. We won't work together."

Amy's eyes returned to normal as she turned her head toward the person who had just said something she could only qualify as egregious.

Crow was looking directly at her.

"...What are you talking about?" she asked after a second.

"I can accept working with you," Crow said with an emotionless voice. "For the sake of both our grades, that much is fine. What I cannot accept is my path being directed by you toward an outcome of your choosing." He paused, then added, "Again."

He didn't have to explicitly say what he meant by the again for Amy to understand he was talking about Abaddon.

"Your eyes shine," he continued, before she could respond. "Sometimes very bright, and sometimes very faint. But they shine when you use that power of yours. I will know if you try to trick me, so don't."

Amy stared at him with a frown gradually appearing in her expression. "And what," she said slowly, "am I supposed to do, then?"

"Figure it out."

Amy's frown deepened instantly. "Crow." She turned fully toward him now. "This exam is exactly as valuable for me as it is for you. If you think I'm going to follow your whims because of some arbitrary condition you invented on the spot, you're wrong. Because if I bend on this, what's next? I do what you want all the time? Forever?"

It was Crow's turn to frown.

Amy, holding his gaze, let her eyes begin to shine—usually the amount of light that came out of her eyes depended on the difficulty of the path she was walking; however, she could augment it by pulsating mana in her core if she wanted.

The golden light bloomed in her irises as she stared straight at him with an expression she made sure asked, very clearly: And what exactly are you going to do about it?

The cold air between them could have frozen Lain out of a job.

Amy turned her attention inward, to the futures branching gold across her vision, ready to pull the winning thread out right in front of him just to make a point—

—and went back to frowning.

She looked at the threads again. Then again, carefully, in case she had misread something.

She had not misread anything.

Amy deactivated her ability. The golden light in her eyes died out all at once, and she caught, in her peripheral vision, Crow's frown loosen into confusion at the sudden retreat.

She turned away from him and stared at the ground.

Fucking hell. You absolute traitor!

She had asked, and her ability had made it very clear: if she wanted to pass this exam successfully, the optimal path was to stop using her power. And if she wanted to use it anyway and still pass the exam, the ability asked for an amount of effort she could only describe as overwhelming, completely hostile, and definitely deliberate.

There was no other way to see it; her ability had just gone rogue and turned against her.

So damn embarrassing!!!!

Crow was still looking at her; she could feel it on the side of her face.

Amy cleared her throat, smoothed her expression into indifference, and turned back to him.

"I changed my opinion," she said. "I'll follow your condition."

Crow's eyes narrowed slightly.

He studied her—specifically, he studied her eyes, clearly searching for even the faintest trace of golden glow. Amy stared back at him, eyes brown—well, gold, but the normal gold.

If he had been looking for the light, he wouldn't find it. After a long moment, Crow realized this fact himself, and gave a small nod, mostly to himself.

He was still looking at her suspiciously. A useless action, thought Amy.

Despite her words denouncing her ability as a traitor, she had gone through so much with it and escaped so many mortal situations that if her ability told her to jump off a building, she would do it instantly—actually, maybe she would think twice, but still, she would eventually do it.

What did I do to deserve this?

Amy sometimes had the feeling that the universe conspired against her to make her life a living hell, but she had never outright thought of this seriously. She did now. Because honestly, why did these kinds of things keep happening?

"Time is up!" Drayke's voice suddenly echoed across the hall, earning the attention of every single student, including both Crow and Amy. "Ten minutes are up! All groups to your marks!"

Crow, without any kind of delay, rose to his feet as the professor finished speaking and walked toward the mark without waiting for her.

Amy exhaled through her nose, pushed herself up off the wall, and followed.

Once every group had reached their marks, Drayke wasted no time with further speeches. He raised one finger over his mouth, and the entire hall gradually fell silent.

Amy could hear people’s breathing. Somewhere to her left, someone swallowed audibly. Everyone seemed tense about this exam.

"Ready."

The word dropped into the silence, making Amy’s fingers twitch with nervousness. She hadn’t been that worried before; despite what she had said, there was a faint thought in the back of her head telling her that even if she failed every exam, there was no way that she would be dropped from S class. But still, the atmosphere was contagious.

"Set."

Amy prepared as every runner leaned forward, ready to get ahead of everyone—or at least keep up with everyone if needed, waiting for one syllable—

"Go!"

The hall exploded as every single group tore toward the doors and students shoved and elbowed each other for a head start.

Amy, knowing she couldn’t outpace them, tried to get behind someone big and use them as a sort of shield to—

Suddenly, a hand closed around her wrist and yanked her to a stop.

She whipped her head around. Crow was holding her arm while watching the crowd rush past them.

"What—"

He let go of her wrist without a word and started walking in the exact opposite direction of the exit; toward the changing rooms—the male changing rooms, Amy noted.

She stood there for a solid second, torn between running after the others and following the edgy weirdo. Her frown deepened, but her feet had apparently already made the decision for her, because she found herself walking after him.

As she followed, she glanced back over her shoulder at the rest of the class—and blinked.

The first students to reach the doors hadn't gone through them. They had crashed. Straight into nothing and were now stumbling backward and pressing their hands against empty air.

Amy squinted and saw an almost imperceptible trace of mana. A barrier?

She turned back around and hurried after Crow, who had already entered the changing room.

Inside the room there were rows of lockers, benches, showers—and to Amy’s horror, underwear. 

"Okay," Amy said, stopping in the middle of the room and crossing her arms. "What exactly are we doing?"

Crow stopped. He turned and looked at her—and for once, his expression wasn't blank or cold; instead, he seemed a bit surprised.

"You really aren't using your ability," he said.

Amy raised an eyebrow. "I said I wouldn't."

"You did."

That was it; that was the whole response. Amy waited for an answer to the question she just asked, and got nothing as Crow just stared at her in silence. She had to physically stop herself from strangling him.

But then, to her genuine surprise, Crow actually kept talking.

"As you know, my ability enhances my sight," he said while turning around and walking. "When the professor sealed the doors, I saw the barrier go up. It covers the exit and the windows." He stepped past the last row of lockers and into the shower area, then pointed down at the floor. "It doesn't cover this."

Amy followed his finger. Set into the tiled floor, between two shower drains, was a maintenance grate. Old, heavy, and just wide enough for a person to fit through if they squished very hard.

"The drainage tunnel runs under the showers," Crow said. "I used it before during… Either way, it comes out past the hall's outer wall. It's faster this way."

Amy stared at the grate, then at the darkness under it, then at Crow.

A dozen responses lined up on her tongue, most of them variations of "that is disgusting." She opened her mouth—

—and then remembered that not too long ago she had personally crawled out of an actual sewer.

She closed her mouth.

"...Lead the way."