By the end of the first week, Arthur had developed a working theory that Yseult Marchant did not experience embarrassment the way ordinary people did, and possibly did not experience it at all. The theory found new supporting evidence most mornings.
YSE: I've decided you should walk me to breakfast.
He looked up from where he was lacing his boots, midway through the particular ordinary business of getting ready for a day that had not yet properly started.
ART: Isn't that what we already do?
YSE: We happen to leave the room at similar times and end up walking the same direction. That's different from you deciding to walk me. I'd like the deciding part. It matters more than you'd think.
ART: I don't understand the distinction.
YSE: You will. Give it time.
She said things like this with such complete conviction, delivered so plainly and without any of the coy hesitation Arthur might have expected from someone flirting, that he found himself, more often than not, entirely unequipped to respond, his usual steady composure dissolving into something closer to flustered silence. It was, he suspected, precisely the effect she was going for.
ART: Fine. I've decided.
YSE: Decided what?
ART: To walk you to breakfast.
Something in her expression shifted, a small, genuine flash of surprised pleasure quickly folded back beneath her usual composed confidence, and Arthur felt a small private satisfaction at having, for once, managed to catch her slightly off guard instead of the other way around.
YSE: Look at you. Learning.
ART: I have good teachers.
YSE: You have one excellent teacher and several adequate ones. Don't be modest about the distinction. It's beneath you.
The refectory was crowded by the time they arrived, the particular busy noise of a hundred students converging on the same limited breakfast hour, and Arthur found their usual table already half occupied, Briar deep in some notebook, Finn talking at a volume that suggested he'd been awake and opinionated for several hours already. Elsie waved them over.
ELS: You're both late.
YSE: Arthur was deciding things. It took longer than expected.
ELS: Deciding what?
ART: Nothing. Don't ask.
Elsie's eyes moved between the two of them with the particular quick, assessing attention she'd been bringing to this exact configuration more often lately, and Arthur, catching the look, felt an unfamiliar warmth climb up the back of his neck that had nothing to do with Yseult this time. They settled into the meal, the conversation folding back into its usual sprawling shape, Finn holding forth on some theory about the kitchen's bread supplier, Briar occasionally interjecting a correction nobody had asked for, and Arthur found himself, somewhere in the middle of it, relaxing into the particular comfortable noise of a group that had, in a single week, already begun to feel like something permanent.
It was Yseult who broke the moment.
She reached for the pitcher of water at the table's center, and in doing so, stretched slightly across the table in a manner that was, Arthur suspected, not entirely necessary given how close the pitcher already sat, and the effect on the surrounding tables was immediate and considerable. A boy two tables over, mid-sentence with a friend, simply stopped talking, his eyes fixed and his expression gone entirely slack. His friend followed his gaze, and had much the same reaction.
Somewhere behind them, a sudden, startled exclamation was quickly followed by the particular scramble of someone realizing, with real alarm, that their nose had begun to bleed rather dramatically, and a small commotion broke out as friends produced handkerchiefs and offered unhelpful advice about tilting the head back or forward, the two schools of thought apparently in fierce and immediate disagreement. Yseult, oblivious or entirely unbothered, poured her water and sat back down.
YSE: What's all that noise?
BRR: Marlowe's having a nosebleed.
YSE: Is he alright?
BRR: He'll live. Probably.
FNN: This is the third one this week. There's something wrong with the water pressure, I've been saying it for days, all that stretching people do to reach the far pitchers, it's clearly a design flaw in the table.
Elsie, watching Finn's earnest theorizing with open disbelief, caught Arthur's eye across the table, and something in her expression made it clear she'd drawn a rather different conclusion about the water pressure than Finn had.
ELS: It's not the table, Finn.
FNN: Then what is it?
Elsie glanced pointedly at Yseult, who was buttering a piece of bread with total unconcern for the small chaos unfolding two tables away, and Finn, following her gaze, went very still for a moment, processing.
FNN: Oh... OH!
BRR: Took you long enough.
FNN: Well nobody TOLD me, I thought it was genuinely a structural issue!
Yseult looked up, apparently catching the tail end of the conversation, and glanced between the three of them with mild curiosity.
YSE: What are we discussing?
ELS: Nothing.
YSE: It's clearly something. You've all gone very quiet and Finn's making a face like he's just solved a great mystery.
FNN: I have, actually.
BRR: Finn.
FNN: What? I'm allowed to be impressed by things.
Arthur, who had been quietly, desperately hoping the conversation would move on without requiring his participation, found Yseult's attention swinging toward him instead, her expression settling into something amused and knowing that suggested she had, in fact, understood the joke from the start and had simply been enjoying watching everyone else arrive at it.
YSE: Arthur. You've gone very red.
ART: I haven't.
YSE: You have. It's rather sweet, actually.
ART: I'm not- it's warm in here.
YSE: Is it?
ART: Yes.
YSE: Interesting. I hadn't noticed.
She said it with a small, private smile that made the warmth in question considerably worse rather than better, and Arthur, recognizing a losing battle when he was thoroughly, comprehensively engaged in one, gave up entirely and buried his attention in his own breakfast, which did not stop Elsie's quiet, delighted laughter from reaching him regardless.
ELS: You're hopeless.
ART: I have no idea what you're talking about.
ELS: No, of course you don't.
She was still smiling when she said it, but there was something underneath the teasing that Arthur, absorbed as he was in his own flustered retreat, did not fully register, a small, careful watchfulness that had settled into her expression sometime over the past week and had not, despite everything, entirely left it since. Across the refectory, the commotion around the nosebleed had finally settled, the unfortunate boy escorted off toward the infirmary by two sympathetic friends, and Finn, apparently satisfied with his newly acquired understanding of the situation, returned to his breakfast with the particular contentment of someone who had solved a puzzle he hadn't previously realized existed.
FNN: This is going to happen a lot, isn't it.
BRR: Probably.
FNN: I should keep a tally.
BRR: Please don't.
FNN: I'm absolutely keeping a tally.