The Vellanti drove like a small dream. Smooth, quiet, whatever Mira had paid for the suspension she had paid well. This car was fantastic from inside out.

’I will get addicted.’

I took the long way to campus, threading through the city under the early-afternoon sun. While doing so, I thought about my changed life.

Lithium battery thing about to be an industry. Renner clearing bars and more things that I would give him. Mira about to have research data. Ruby about to build a computer from scrap. Zero stockpiling stones.

Everything I had set in motion was actually moving, and the strange new feeling under my ribs was, I realized after a minute of inspection, competence.

’I am a man who has things going on. Don’t get cocky.’

The campus rose up on the right exactly where I remembered it. Brick buildings, ivy, the bell tower that had never worked the entire time I was a student. East lot, by the engineering building, twelve trees and one sad fountain, Lia’s directions held.

I parked the Vellanti in a visitor spot near the fountain.

’Hermit returns. Triumphantly. In someone else’s car.’

I got out.

Three things happened in immediate succession.

First, two girls walking past the lot stopped mid-step to look at me, did a small double-take in a way that I tried very hard not to find flattering, and then kept walking with a not-very-subtle look-back.

Second, an older man in a tweed jacket who had clearly been a professor in this department for thirty years looked at the Vellanti, looked at me, pursed his lips in clear disapproval, and moved on.

Third—

"Lukas?"

I turned.

She was standing on the path that ran along the engineering building, holding a small stack of folders against her chest... of course she was holding a stack of folders against her chest, the woman never went anywhere without one... and her hair was up in the same loose bun she’d worn the day I’d headbutted a man for her in an alley.

The thin-rimmed glasses caught the sun. The blazer was a slightly different color than the one she had worn that day, a soft gray instead of black, but everything else was the same.

Professor Yuna Sakamoto.

She did a small re-evaluation of me from shoes to shoulders to face, the same scan everyone had been doing this week. The folders shifted in her arms. The corner of her mouth lifted in a small surprised smile.

"...Lukas. I was just thinking about you yesterday, actually."

"Professor." I gave her the small mock-bow I’d given her on the station stairs that afternoon. "What did I do this time?"

"You—" She laughed, soft, the same laugh I’d surprised out of her in the alley. "Nothing. I was grading a paper that reminded me of yours. I had a thought to send you a message but I lost the nerve. And now you’ve turned up in the lot of all places. The universe is, apparently, very on-the-nose about hint delivery."

"It’s a habit of the universe."

She tilted her head, taking in the rest of me.

"...You look different."

"I started working out."

"You started... Lukas, you look like you ran into someone’s elder brother in the gym, made him your personal trainer, and won. This is a transformation."

"...Recent development."

"Recent as in?"

"A few weeks."

"Mm."

Her eyes flicked down to my shoulders and back up with a quickness I was not, repeat not, going to call appreciative, because I was a man in a committed sugar-relationship with my aunt and a borderline-girlfriend-arrangement with one of her students and I was about to meet the latter on this very campus and the absolute last thing I needed was Professor Sakamoto looking at me like that.

She did, very politely, do it anyway.

Then she snapped her eyes back to my face and re-set her smile, which I respected, because she clearly knew she’d done it.

"What brings you to campus, Lukas? You haven’t been a student here in two years."

"Meeting a friend. She’s running late."

"Mm. Lucky friend."

A small beat.

"Can I ask you something, since you’re here?"

"Of course."

"That day. In the alley. You disappeared on me afterwards. I was... I had wanted, very honestly, to thank you properly, and you just walked off after handing me my folder. I felt rude for not following up. I had your contact from the class register but it felt inappropriate to call a former student of mine to thank him in any way that wasn’t strictly professional, so I left it." She paused, the folder shifting again in her arms. "Would you let me buy you a meal? As a long-overdue thank-you? Today, if you’re free. It’s been on my list."

I checked my phone.

A new message from Lia.

Lia: Daddy, professor kept us late, going to be 45 min behind. Sorry sorry sorry. I’ll make it up to you. (Wink emoji)

I looked back at Professor Sakamoto.

She had auburn hair coming loose from the bun. She had soft sun on her glasses. She was holding folders against a fitted blazer. She was offering to take me to a meal in the middle of the afternoon on my old campus, and she had, just thirty seconds ago, made a face at me that I was officially noting and unofficially filing.

’Forty-five minutes. Professor Sakamoto. Free meal. Lukas, my friend, who exactly do you think you are kidding by hesitating.’

"Lead the way, Professor."

Her smile got a little wider. "Yuna. I think we’re past Professor by now, Lukas."

"...Yuna." 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

"Mm. Come on. There’s a place across the green that does very good sandwiches."

She turned and walked, and I followed, and somewhere in the part of my brain that was always running a novel-draft in the background, a new Chapter title quietly typed itself into a file. ’The Professor and the Sugar Daddy. Working title. Possibly losing it later. But noted.’