Registration closed at midday on the third day, and Finn arrived at the hall an hour before it did. He had not slept particularly well for two nights, which was itself unusual, and had spent both of them turning over a single sentence somebody had said at dinner without any apparent intention of it mattering to anyone.
I stopped hesitating about this sort of thing somewhere around eight years old.
Arthur had said it lightly. The whole table had laughed. Finn had laughed too, and had gone on to argue about something else entirely within about four seconds, and had assumed the moment had passed entirely. It had not passed.
It had followed him through two days of ordinary lessons, surfacing at inconvenient intervals, and had gradually assembled itself into a question Finn found he could not put down: when had he started hesitating, exactly, and had he ever once actually decided to?
He reached the registration table and found Mira already standing at it.
FNN: You're here.
MRA: I'm here.
FNN: You said you weren't entering.
MRA: I said a great many things. Most of them were reasonable at the time.
She did not look at him, her attention fixed on the ledger, and Finn, standing beside her, recognized something in her posture that he suspected was mirrored precisely in his own.
FNN: Was it the thing he said?
MRA: At dinner.
FNN: About eight years old.
MRA: Yes.
FNN: Me as well.
They stood there a moment, both of them looking at the ledger neither had yet signed.
MRA: I've been telling myself I don't need to prove anything. Which is true. I won a chess tournament and I was genuinely satisfied by it and I do not, in any measurable sense, require validation from a combat tournament I'd almost certainly lose in the first round.
FNN: That's a very reasonable position.
MRA: It is. I've reviewed it repeatedly. It holds up completely.
FNN: So why are you standing here?
MRA: Because reviewing it repeatedly is itself suspicious behavior, and I've begun to suspect that I've been dressing up an ordinary fear as a considered decision, and I find that considerably more embarrassing than losing a match would be.
Finn absorbed this.
FNN: That's genuinely the most self-aware thing I've ever heard anyone say.
MRA: I've had two days to construct it.
They did not sign immediately. Finn found himself explaining, without quite intending to, the whole shape of what had kept him awake, the specific unpleasant realization that his own refusal had felt sensible in the moment and had begun, upon inspection, to look considerably more like relief.
FNN: I said I had no interest in being injured in front of the entire school. Which is true! It's completely true. I don't want that at all.
MRA: But?
FNN: But I've been in four festival events and enjoyed every one of them, and I picked all four specifically because none of them could genuinely hurt me, and I hadn't noticed I was doing that until Arthur said what he said and I started actually thinking about it.
MRA: You'd been choosing safe things.
FNN: I'd been choosing safe things and calling it enthusiasm.
He said it with the particular flat honesty of someone who had arrived somewhere uncomfortable and had decided to stand in it rather than retreat.
FNN: And the thing that's genuinely bothering me is that he wasn't trying to make a point. He wasn't giving advice. He was answering a question and the answer was simply what it was, and it's been sitting in my chest for two days because it wasn't aimed at anyone.
MRA: The ones that aren't aimed always land hardest.
FNN: Why is that?
MRA: Because you can't argue with them. Nobody's asking you to change. There's nothing to push back against.
The upperclassman managing the ledger looked up eventually, mildly impatient.
UPP: Are the two of you registering, or simply standing there?
Finn and Mira exchanged a glance.
MRA: I'm going to lose in the first round.
FNN: Almost certainly, yes.
MRA: I'm reasonably certain I'll be eliminated by someone who doesn't even remember my name afterward.
FNN: That does seem likely.
MRA: I've thought about that quite a lot over the past two days.
FNN: And?
MRA: And I've concluded I'd rather lose in the first round than spend the rest of the year knowing I decided not to find out.
She took the quill and signed her name in a clean, unhurried hand. Finn signed directly beneath her.
FNN: For the record, I'm going to be eliminated even faster than you.
MRA: Almost certainly.
FNN: I want that clearly understood before anyone starts expecting things.
MRA: Nobody is expecting anything, Finn.
FNN: PERFECT. That's exactly the level of expectation I want going in.
They walked back out into the bright late-spring morning together, both of them registered for a tournament neither had any realistic chance of surviving past the opening rounds, and Finn found the particular light-headed terror of it considerably more pleasant than he had anticipated.
FNN: Should we tell him?
MRA: Tell who?
FNN: Arthur. That it was because of what he said.
Mira considered this for a moment.
MRA: No.
FNN: No?
MRA: He'd be embarrassed. He'd apologize for it, probably, or insist he hadn't meant anything by it, which would be true and would ruin it entirely.
FNN: That's a fair point.
MRA: Let him find out we entered and simply be pleased about it. That's considerably better.
They walked on toward the refectory, and neither of them mentioned it to anyone, and when Arthur discovered both their names on the posted roster two days later he stared at it for a genuinely long time before saying anything at all.