Page 56 of Interion

“Yes, but today you won. I'd say anyone else sitting on this bench would have wiped the floor with you,” she said, gesturing at the group members and miming a scrubbing motion. “But what you did was still a good victory. Today, you stopped being zoozi and came close to being rassala.”

“Rassala?” I asked, intrigued.

“Rassala,” she explained proudly. “It refers to valiant souls. Those who don't bow under the pressure of injustice, don't surrender under the sword of fear, and don't break under the weight of evil hearts. Souls that rise when all others hide.” Aish's eyes shone with emotion, and as she recited the phrase with a certain reverence, her love for its meaning was clear—she knew it so well it seemed memorized. “Rassala is the ideal of the Amperian people. Courageous souls.”

“That's a beautiful meaning,” I said, still smiling. “So would a rassala be someone like you?”

“It's a life goal. Few are born that noble,” Aish replied with a broad smile. “But yes, one day I'll earn that title.”

“Then I think I like rassala.”

I felt like a fool for letting myself be happy around another student who wasn't Breno. She could still be messing with me—that had happened plenty of times when I was new to Interion and couldn't tell that the honey in students' words was actually poison. But despite my uncertainty, Aish's infectious smile kept me talking.

“I like rassala too,” Hiro said, setting his red headphones aside and craning his neck to be noticed.

The Amperian clicked her tongue in disapproval.

“Hiro's still worked up about getting beaten by someone thirty centimeters shorter.”

“Not worked up! I'm hopelessly in love with you,” Hiro said, pressing his enormous hands over his heart.

I'd noticed some things about Hiro during my solitary observations, and I'd come to realize that he put a lot of sincerity into every joke.

Aish rolled her eyes, ignoring him.

“Hey, Kyller,” he called to me. “It is Kyller, right?” he asked Adrian, who was beside him. Adrian shrugged, ignoring me like he had all week—which was both baffling and strange. Unable to get an answer, Hiro turned to me. “I liked the headbutt. That was a really smart move for a hand-to-hand fight. I swear I don't know how you didn't go down too.”

He ran his hand over his forehead, as if feeling the blow there.

“I think it was luck,” I said with a shrug.

I felt a flash of indignation that he didn't even know my name, but I understood that was just how Hiro was—sincere in a way that mixed friendliness with, perhaps, a light dusting of stupidity.

“Luck!” He snorted indignantly. “That wasn't luck at all. I don't even know if I could take a headbutt like that—I heard the skull crack from over here.”

“You could take it. You're the biggest hardhead in this class—I bet you'd handle it just fine,” Aish said, watching Breno's fight against Laura.

“It's not just my head that's hard, Aish. I hope you'll grant me the honor of showing you some other parts,” he said suggestively, gazing at her adoringly with those big eyes.

I just watched as Aish crossed her arms over her chest, turning her back to Hiro to face me. Seeing him act like this was unusual—he never showed interest in anything besides his headphones and the punching bag.

“If you ignore what he says and just focus on the physical, you'll find that Hiro's actually a nice guy.”

“I heard that!” Hiro called back, grinning in our direction.

Aish smiled mischievously and turned to me.

“So why do you go around ignoring everyone, like nobody in the world matters but you?”

I blinked a few times, confused by what she meant.

“I don't do that.”

“Yes, you do. I've tried to talk to you a couple of times. You just walked right past me without even noticing.”

I raised my eyebrows in surprise and stared at her, mouth agape. Maybe she had tried to approach me the day of the incident with Adele, or when we were running laps around campus, but I'd never thought she wanted to talk.

“Sorry, it's just that no one really talks to me, so I assumed you didn't want to either.”