Chapter 13: So That Was That

Uriel explained the basics one by one: it was a residential academy, the course ran for three years, there were standard classes, mana assessments, and everything was managed from the top down.

Galatina sat across from him and listened to every word with genuine attention.

"No day students?" She focused on that part immediately, the cup frozen halfway to her mouth.

Just that part?

"Right. Everyone boards." Uriel sat across from her, picking at the table edge with one fingernail. He already felt a little guilty.

"The academy probably needs a librarian," she said. "I'll apply."

Uriel's jaw came unhinged on its own.

"Or a dormitory supervisor." She kept going, already planning ahead. "If I handled room checks in the evening, I could see you whenever I wanted. Or the dining hall—that way I could make sure you were eating every day." She tapped her lips with one finger. "Cafeteria staff probably don’t need formal qualifications, do they?"

"Teaching might work too." She thought about the last few years with the girls. "I do know a lot."

Uriel sat in his chair and said nothing.

Oh no.

She's serious.

He took a breath. Sorted quickly through every argument he had, ranked them, and selected the one that might actually land.

Librarian. Dormitory supervisor. Cafeteria. Faculty.

Any one of those — the moment Galatina stepped into the role, that location would become the most talked-about spot in the entire academy. Not because of her abilities. Just because of her. The way she stood. The way she looked. The specific quality she had of making every person in a room instinctively turn their head, without doing anything at all.

He swallowed everything he'd been about to say and started over.

"Mom," he said, keeping his voice even . "Have you ever considered that you're... a little conspicuous?"

"What I mean is—" he chose his words carefully, "—the way you carry yourself. Even standing still, not doing anything, you don't read as a normal librarian. You don’t really come across as normal."

What he didn't say aloud: You were the Hero. Anyone who knows that — or anyone with half an eye for these things — it doesn't matter what you're wearing or what you're doing. You could be standing in the back kitchen of a cafeteria with your head down and it still wouldn't hide.

He held that back. He wanted to see where she'd go first.

Galatina took the feedback seriously. Thought about it.

Then said, calmly:

"Then I'll do this."

"...Do what —"

"You live at the academy," she said. "If anything happens, just call for me. If you call, I can be next to you within a second."

Uriel went quiet again.

Within a second?

Next to me?

Mom, do you understand what —

He pressed his hand to his forehead and rubbed.

"Mom," he said, something at the edge of a laugh forcing its way into his voice despite himself, "is teleportation that casual an ability to just have?"

"..."

"In the middle of the academy. In front of everyone." He pressed his fingers to his temple. "Picture it — I'm sitting in class, everything is normal, and then you materialise out of thin air —"

Galatina thought about this carefully.

"I wouldn't materialise out of thin air," she said, correcting him with great sincerity. "I'd use a door."

Opening a door out of thin air is also extremely conspicuous, and also that's not the point!

Uriel put both hands over his face and breathed into them. It was a substitute for screaming.

Mom. Your internal logic is always like this. No unsolvable problems — only angles not yet considered. No dead ends — only backup plans. The issue is that every single backup plan, once it lands in reality, is a disaster.

"...That's also conspicuous."

"Is it."

"Yes," he said. "Extremely. Very extremely."

"Then," Galatina folded her hands in her lap, tilted her head back slightly, and tried a different approach. "What if I changed how I look?"

"...Disguise?"

"Yeah."

Uriel raised an eyebrow. "You can do that?"

"Worth trying," she said.

And then she tried.

He watched her step to the middle of the room, stop, and close her eyes.

Her presence changed.

That subtle, ambient weight she carried — the thing that had no name but that you felt the moment you entered the same space as her — began drawing inward. It was still there, but like something seen through a thin layer of gauze. Muffled. The way a bright light gets when you cup your hand around it.

First attempt: silver hair shifting to brown, restyled into a thick braid down one side. The kind of practical plait a woman who has better things to think about than her hair might wear.

Uriel looked at her.

....

Same eyes. Same face. The same thing that made every room feel like it had arranged itself around her.

It was like watching someone drape cloth over a star to hide the light. The cloth still glowed.

"Mom," he said. "Still conspicuous."

"What about this." She adjusted.

The brows came in slightly. A trace of ordinary tiredness — the kind real people had — appeared around the eyes.

Still not right.

"Mom."

"Still conspicuous."

"..."

Third attempt. Fourth. Fifth.

Hair. Clothing. Posture. Expression.

Every combination arrived at the same result.

Uriel had his palm over his eyes, chin resting on the heel of his hand, experiencing a bone-deep fatigue.

....

It's not the surface things, Mom. It's written into what you actually are. There's no outfit for that.

"Stop, stop — Mom. It doesn't work. It wouldn't work in a potato sack either."

Galatina looked down at herself. She didn't argue. She scratched her head thoughtfully.

Then Uriel looked up, and the person sitting across from him was not quite the same one who'd been there a moment ago.

Silver hair still silver. Gold eyes still gold. Same features.

But the lines of her face had softened. Her frame had come down by nearly a head. The weight behind her presence — that dense, layered quality built from years and strength and things survived — had been folded away, replaced with something light, clear, and entirely age-appropriate. She looked young. Genuinely young. Young in a way that made him recalibrate his entire sense of—

Uriel stared at her. Top to bottom. Slowly.

....

She can do that?

What had been an ineffable, almost sacred quality had shifted into something else entirely. Something that landed closer to — closer to —

Wait —

Something in Uriel's brain simply snapped.

Oh no. Oh no no no. She looks — she's basically —

"Mom," he said, voice careful. "Right now, you look approximately..."

He did the mental math.

"Thirteen? Fourteen?"

"Right." She was now roughly his height, meeting his eyes straight on. "About that."

"..."

I am twelve years old.

Uriel could see the direction this was heading, and it was accelerating.

"Mom," his voice had gone a little dry, "you're not thinking of —"

"Mm?" Galatina blinked at him. "At this point, it seems like..."

She propped her chin in her hand, pulled a look of cheerful innocence that her newly young face delivered with devastating effectiveness, and said in a voice that had gone noticeably clearer and lighter:

"The only option would be enrolling as a student and going together, wouldn't it."

Uriel's chair let out a small, pained scrape against the floor.

He grabbed the table edge.

His soul made the same sound.

....

Mom.

MOM.

If you enroll as a student, that means I would have to, inside the academy, refer to that person as my —

I know some people are into this. I am not one of those people .

Galatina tilted her head. On this face, ten years younger, the gesture landed with a natural ease that was somehow even more effective than before.

"Same class as you?"

"..."

"That would be nice," she said, with the airiness of someone settling an unimportant detail. "I could take notes for you."

Uriel said nothing.

Outside, an autumn wind moved through the yard. Leaves scraped lightly across the ground — small, dry, innocent sounds, completely indifferent to the conversation happening inside.

"Actually," Uriel said, something coming back to him. "The year I was five. You couldn't do this back then either — was that also because you'd only just thought of it?"

Galatina blinked. Considered. Then nodded with complete candor.

"Right. I couldn't do it before."

"..."

"I was thinking hard about how to look after you at school," she said, matter-of-fact, with a small undercurrent of something that was almost pride. "And just now it came out."

Uriel looked at the floor.

He had nothing to say to that.

So this is the so-called 'infinite power of a mother's love', huh .

He ran the numbers on it. They didn't come back. Some things, he'd learned, didn't come with tooltips.

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