Blake tried to tell himself not to worry, still...

"Ack! What if Asher starts to spy on him and discover something?!"

It was an irrational worry, he knew that much.

Especially since Myles only appeared at the end of the novel as the final boss... so it didn’t really make sense for him to be overthinking things this early on.

What he feared the most was suspicion.

Asher wasn’t even supposed to be at their school, anyway.

"Why would he even suspect anyone here? Myles is perfectly fine with his act, that much I know. There’s also nothing that incriminates me as the masked criminal."

His head wouldn’t stop throbbing. Thinking in circles like this couldn’t be good for him.

Carefully, he laid himself back on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

Why had he felt so sad before he fell that day?

***

The next day, Myles actually showed up at his house after school, just like he said he would. He didn’t just check in and leave, either. He stayed.

He brought notes, extra sheets, even something like a schedule already written out.

Not only did he take care of Blake, but he also played with him for a bit. It was brief and casual, like it wasn’t really the point, before going right back into helping him catch up with multiple school subjects.

An interesting thing about this world was that math was expressed differently from the one in his previous life.

The math in his previous world worked in straight lines.

Numbers followed numbers, symbols connected them, and everything flowed from left to right.

If something got complicated, you added parentheses. If it got even worse, you stacked things: fractions, exponents, but it still followed a readable path. You could track the logic step by step, almost like reading a sentence.

Here, math consisted mostly of layered constructs, frames within frames, almost like building blocks stacked on top of each other.

Each value wasn’t simply a number. It carried a "state," something that could shift depending on what it was interacting with.

Operations weren’t symbols placed between numbers, but actions applied to entire structures. You didn’t solve from left to right, you stabilized, collapsed, and resolved.

A simple expression could branch out into something that looked more like a diagram than an equation.

At first, it felt unnecessarily complicated.

Up until now, though, it had never really caused him any major issue.

It was lucky he got it all fast.

Blake rested his cheek on his hand, staring at the sheet. His eyes followed the shapes, the nested forms, the small annotations indicating how each part would behave once resolved.

"Outer frame first, huh," he muttered quietly.

Myles, sitting across from him, gave a small nod. "Yes."

Blake exhaled slowly, straightening just a bit.

He had already started translating everything into something more familiar in his head. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked. Frames became parentheses. States became conditions. Actions became operations.

Different language, sure, but it still had the same core idea, more or less. Either way, it’s not as if he was an exemplary math student before transmigrating, so he wasn’t even at a bad point.

He tapped the end of his pen lightly against the desk, then glanced at Myles.

"Hey."

Myles looked up.

"What galaxy are we in?"

He thought about this multiple times, of course. Was he in the same galaxy? Maybe in a near solar system? Or just another universe entirely?

He struggled to place a world within a novel anywhere.

He even considered it being a simulation, but he didn’t really like the idea.

"Fromolena."

The answer came immediately and, inevitably, Blake blinked, then scratched the back of his head.

’Never heard of it.’

It felt extremely strange.

Fromolena.

The name didn’t connect to anything in his memory. Not even vaguely.

’Jeez. Why am I getting into rabbit holes while doing math!’

Looking over at the literature book waiting to be next, he sighed heavily.

Of course, the alphabet here wasn’t the same either. The characters, the sounds, even the way things were written, it was all different. And yet, somehow, he understood it.

It was like his brain had skipped the learning phase entirely.

But it was still pretty easy to grasp, at least in some aspects.

Blake looked back down.

The subject had already shifted.

Chemistry.

He stared at the sheet in front of him.

And just... stared.

Unlike math, which had some familiar structure beneath the surface, this felt completely foreign. The elements weren’t the same. Their interactions weren’t the same. Even the naming system felt off, like it followed rules he couldn’t quite see yet.

He let out a slow breath, his eyes unfocusing slightly.

"Focus."

Myles’ voice cut through cleanly.

Blake didn’t look up. "I am."

"You are not."

"I’m just thinking. Pamper me like yesterday, will you?"

"You’ve been on the same problem for three minutes. You asked me to force you study a hour."

Blake clicked his tongue softly, finally glancing up.

"True, true, b it’s a complicated problem."

"It’s not, try again with the method I explained earlier."

There wasn’t even a hint of hesitation in Myles’ voice.

Blake held his gaze for a second, then looked away, scratching the back of his neck.

He couldn’t deny it.

He was feeling a little lazy.

Myles didn’t push further. He just tapped the page, pointing to a specific line.

"The reaction stabilizes after the second exchange. You’re overcomplicating it."

Blake sighed quietly but adjusted his posture.

"Yeah. Got it."

He leaned in slightly, trying to focus again.

In around two days, he’d be good to go back to school. In that time frame, he’ll complete the mission.

Another two days after that, things should settle enough for him to move around freely again.

That was all it should take.

Simple, but it didn’t feel simple.

’I feel like the world is going to end up in really, really bad hands...’

Or really, really good ones.

And somehow, both felt equally possible.

Picking up the remote, he turned on the TV to get some more background noise.

He turned his head slightly.

On the screen, Trail-X had appeared again.

"Seriously?" Blake muttered under his breath.

His own luck really was something.

For a second, he considered just dropping his head onto the desk and staying there.

Instead, he glanced at Myles.

Myles looked completely unbothered.

Blake hesitated, then spoke.

"What do you think of Trail-X?"

Myles didn’t answer immediately. He glanced at the screen for a brief moment, then back at Blake.

"I don’t find anything particular about him."

Blake frowned slightly.

"That’s it?"

"Yes."

Blake leaned back a little, exhaling through his nose.

"Do you at least like the idea of heroes?"

Myles didn’t respond right away this time.

He looked at the screen again, then back at Blake.

"...Do you?"

Blake raised an eyebrow. That wasn’t helpful.

Still...

He shifted in his seat, crossing one leg over the other slightly as he thought.

Honestly, it was still a little difficult for him to fully picture this world. Things didn’t always line up the way he expected them to. Even now, it still felt like he was only half-rooted in it.

And whatever was going on in the world, it wasn’t easy to just accept it.

"...Yeah," he said after a moment.

Myles didn’t interrupt.

Blake glanced at the screen again.

"I think a hero can be a lot of things."

His voice wasn’t particularly strong.

"They step in when something’s wrong. Not because they have to, but because they can. Or because they decide to."

He paused briefly, his gaze following the movement on the screen.

"They change outcomes. Sometimes in big ways, sometimes in small ones. But either way, something’s different because they were there."

Myles stayed quiet.

Blake continued, a little more slowly now.

"And it’s not always about power. Or recognition. A lot of the time, people don’t even notice what was done for them."

He let out a small breath.

"But it still matters."

His eyes lowered slightly.

"Trail-X... he’s just a person, though."

He shifted his grip on the pen.

"A police officer could be a hero to someone. A volleyball player could be a hero to someone else. It depends on who’s looking."

He glanced back at Myles.

"Someone who saves lives directly... and someone who just helps people keep going, they’re not that different."

A short pause.

"They’re all human they’re flawed like others, also. That’s why they’re bound to be disliked."

Mykes just looked at Blake for a moment, his expression unreadable, like he was measuring something.

Then he looked away, back at the paper.

"Finish the problem."

Blake blinked.

"...That’s your response?"

"Yes."

Blake stared at him for a second, then huffed a quiet, almost amused breath.

’You’re really something.’

Blake shook his head lightly and looked back down at the sheet.

The structures were still there. Complicated and layered.

But his mind felt clearer, basically less stuck.

He adjusted his grip on the pen and leaned forward slightly.

"...Second exchange," he murmured.

This time, he didn’t stop halfway.