Chapter 16: Shiver
The courtyard was nearly empty by morning. Not by rule, but by choice. Word had spread—whispers about something unnatural. The breeze avoided a certain spot beneath the broken pine near the south wall, and even birds seemed to take the long way around it. The patch of dirt beneath that pine no longer held the same color as the rest of the earth. It was grayer, colder, and somehow... quieter.
It hadn't been like that yesterday.
Keiko stood just outside the range of the disturbance. Her clipboard, once balanced against her hip, now hung at her side as she stared at the subtle divide between "normal" and whatever this was. The hairs on her arms stood on end. She wasn't the only one who felt it—nurses, junior students, even some of the older faculty avoided the area now, making quiet detours, exchanging nervous glances, but never saying anything directly.
She crouched slowly, reaching a hand toward the ground.
It was cold. Not winter-cold. Not frostbite-cold. A kind of internal cold, as though touching it made her think about everything she hadn't dealt with. Like shame. And old words left unsaid. And the sound her mother made when she cried behind the bathroom door.
She stood up again quickly, heart racing.
Behind her, the infirmary door creaked open.
"You shouldn't be standing there," said Xavier.
His voice startled her. She turned to see him leaning against the frame, a bandage across his cheek and his left arm still tucked in a sling. He was barefoot, his hospital pants too loose around the waist, and his expression unreadable. Not cold. Not hostile. Just... heavy.
"I could say the same to you," she replied.
He gave a dry smile, weak but real. "Fair."
They both looked back at the pine.
"What is it?" she asked, her voice lower now. Almost reverent.
Xavier shook his head. "Don't know. But it wasn't like that until I got angry."
He didn't mean the kind of anger that made you slam doors or yell. He meant the kind that curled inward. The kind that grew roots and waited. Keiko didn't ask what had made him angry. She suspected it wasn't a what, but a when.
She stepped away from the zone and joined him at the doorway.
"You look better," she said, eyeing his injuries.
"I feel like microwaved garbage."
"Ah. Gourmet healing."
He gave a short, amused exhale. Not a laugh, but close. It was the most human sound she'd heard from him since he arrived.
Inside, the infirmary smelled like antiseptic and mint. She helped him sit down, adjusting the pillow behind his back without being asked. He didn't thank her, but she didn't expect him to.
"I'm sorry about yesterday," he said after a pause.
"For what?"
"The outburst. I didn't mean to—"
"You didn't hurt me," Keiko interrupted. "You scared some people, sure. But… you didn't hurt anyone."
Xavier looked at his hands. He flexed them slowly, as if testing whether they still belonged to him. "That's the problem."
The silence that followed wasn't the same as the stillness outside. This one was warmer. A silence between two people who didn't know how to speak without unraveling something fragile.
"You're not the only one carrying weight," she said finally. "Everyone here's bleeding in some way. Most just do it quieter."
Xavier turned his head. For a moment, she thought he might cry. Instead, he asked, "Why are you nice to me?"
"Because you haven't given me a reason not to be."
He didn't believe that. Not fully. But he let it sit.
Outside, the patch of gray earth remained untouched. But something had changed. A shift. A breath. The pine tree trembled slightly despite the absence of wind.
And far beneath its roots, something old stirred.
Something listening.