To preface, I should have seen it coming. After the harrowing trials of Friday's mission, I hadn't seen hide nor hair of him once. The weekend was understandable on that front, of course, given that I'd been tossed out of the S-Ranked frying pan and into the high seas fire with about two or three hours of downtime between them—
But Family Day should have tipped me off.
And if not that, through some strange coincidence of scheduling and itineraries not matching up between my supercharged family and whomever might have came from his orphanage, then his total absence from the room and classes all through today should have easily clued even an imperceptive sod like yours truly into the simplest of facts:
Jack Orpheus was no longer here.
"Ah," I grunted in mild surprise.
Our lackadaisical, capricious, and lightning-quick leader had quietly packed his things and left. His space had always been rather spartan compared to mine, to say nothing of even a first-day Bianca Nuit's, but it had never been quite so barren as it was when we'd woke and broke for our lessons. He didn't have much, but what he did have made it very clearly
his. Even it being orderly, when owned by someone with a nature so lax as his, was a break from normalcy—
So, if I was any good at paying any sort of attention, I might have been able to see something like this coming.
"Jericho..?"The Atlesian operative, all 185 brooding and mysterious centimeters of him, was standing outside my open doorway with his patent guarded and carefully neutral expression, surrounded by the smell of food that wafted from within.
Hm. I knew he'd transferred since I saw him in Gym, but what was he doing loitering around my room for? Maybe whatever Bianca'd put together lured him here?
Well, no. His back was turned. Not even Jer Piper would just turn his back on food that was, let's face it, more than likely freely offered. Especially not quality seafood like what my nose was telling me.
Hmm. Maybe lost? It was a new venue and all, and as such it could be disorienting for anyone who had just moved in, even if I was sure he knew how to quickly get the lay of the land. He could be making that face to mask nerves because he didn't want to ask for help— However unlikely that seemed. He didn't care for posture
that much.
How strange.
“Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer.” Bianca called in that syllable-stretching way of hers.
How peculiar.
“Are you… Moving in?”How intriguing.
"Nope."...
...
... After a second's deliberation, he did an about-face and walked inside, not having noticed my presence in the slightest.
"Yes.""Eh?"Hold on! Hold on, hold on, hold on!
Stop!
Pause!
I blinked twice before starting off after him, bursting into the doorframe just as he was sitting down.
"Oi, leave that TV alone! It went through hell with me!"What on Earth were the odds at play here?! First we meet an Atlesian Double-O pastiche on a cruise trip who just happened to be our age, got roped into foiling an assassination plot with him, and now he was replacing our latest vacancy on this revolving door of a team?!
And moreover, weren't you going to be a Flapjack?
He was grumpy about the name and everything!
Is the Headmaster just shuffling a deck of students every two hours?
How were we even supposed to stay cohesive like this?!