In a perfect world, Olivier would have been able to say it was Emilia’s laugh that first drew his attention to her.
He would have been sitting there, looking over the menu as his mother yammered on about a case she was planning on snipping from one of her cousins—Clovis and Axelle’s mother—a woman who was just as insufferable as she was, only Judith de la Rue was the one with all the power and could therefore complain all she wanted about
disingenuous relations
and
social climbing women.
It didn’t matter that those things described her just as well. All that mattered was her cousin was annoying her, and she was
within her rights
to complain and steal all the cases she wanted.
In this imaginary world, Olivier’s father would have been nodding along, murmuring assent at appropriate intervals, while Antoine ignored the lot of them—probably, he would be sending lewd texts off to whichever hookup he had been separated from, or perhaps someone from the city, whom he could meet up with later that evening. Olivier would be ignoring his mother as much as he could manage—one of the unfortunate side effects of being a non-dev was his hearing was perfect, his ability to process multiple inputs so precise and exacting that
not
taking in the myriad of conversations around him was the difficult thing; this affected some low-devs as well, but that was a chance of genetics, rather than the rule it was with non-devs.
Then, through the simmer of voices in the restaurant, he would have heard that horrible, aggravating, beautiful laugh. It would have swum through the air and, as noted, been impossible for him to ignore even if he hadn’t already been so familiar with the source. Every laugh in the restaurant was coming his way, mixed in with a thousand strands of conversations that his Censor was dutifully recording and cataloguing, dimming his own attention to the never-ending input as it did so, all thanks to a function Axelle had installed for him over a decade previous.
Axelle, always more interested in hacking and Censors and skills than the rest of them, had taken over managing each of her cousins’ Censors when they were still teenagers. Around their mid-twenties, two hackers had appeared
on the scene
—as Axelle put it—and begun releasing numerous functions that
revolutionized Censors and skills
—again, as Axelle put it. His cousin suspected the hackers were either a low- or non-devs, given the number of functions they released that seemed so specific to the needs of people who experienced the world in too much focus.
Before she had installed the functions, Olivier had managed perfectly fine, but letting the functions handle some of the more tedious and mentally annoying aspects of experiencing everything in such fine detail was even better. Honestly, while he knew some people thought that people with excess categories—which could heavily interfere with their ability to exist within such a chaotic world, especially when there was an excess in multiple categories, such as with ECC or ECK Dyads—were
weak
for not being able to figure out how to function without aid from their Censors and other adaptations, Olivier understood perfectly well how overwhelming the world could be, and his body and mind were literally built to deal with that overwhelm as well as nearly anyone could.
One of the hackers Axelle so revered had also released a number of functions meant to aid various Dyads, all for free. While they were anonymous, not even taking requests for new functions—although his cousin had noted the hacker did seem to frequent several message boards designed to help Dyads find functions that might aid them in dealing with their excess D-Levels—Olivier was quite enamoured with the hacker in his own way.
To him, regardless of how little he knew about them, the hacker was someone kind, giving in a way that few people in their world were. Part of him would be quite interested in meeting someone who was not only brilliant—something Axelle had repeatedly assured him both hackers were—but doing good for the world. Another part was afraid of what he would find, were he to peek beneath their mask of privacy.
In the end, while he wanted to believe people were good, he knew too well how much the world ran on selfish desire. Case in point: his mother planning to steal a case from her cousin just as the woman was at the finish line, while also planning to dump her own ill-fated case onto an associate.
Unfortunately, while Emilia’s laughter hadn’t been what altered Olivier to her presence in the restaurant, everything else about his hypothetical scenario was reality. Mother? Complaining, plotting. Father? Nodding along in a way that said he was probably listening, but who really knew. Little brother? Probably sending nudes to some man or another.
And Emilia? Sitting several tables away, her back to him, as she laughed with three Hyrat clones. One of them was laughing along with her, his eyes crinkling as his fingers brushed over her knee, just visible under the table. The same three clones who had been lingering outside his classroom, waiting for Emilia. At least they’d actually followed through and brought her to dinner—to a nice restaurant, no less—but out of all the places to end up, why did it have to be the restaurant they were at?
Luckily, for as much as every other patron seemed to have noticed the three clones in their midst, neither his parents nor his brother had. He, however, had noticed Emilia immediately, which was, quite frankly, embarrassing. The girl really shouldn’t have attracted his attention like a magnet.
It would have been one thing to notice her from her laugh, from one of the clones calling her name—although he did note they all referred to her as
Emmie
, never
Emilia.
Stars, even if he had noticed her when he sat down, his seat offering him to perfect view of her back—of the ribbons that crisscrossed over her smooth, tanned skin, keeping that little purple dress pulled tight over her tiny body—it would have been better, less mortifying that his body and mind seemed honed to find her even in such an unexpected place.
But, no; that wasn’t what had happened. Instead, he had quietly followed his mother into the establishment, and they had been led to the second floor, itself the top floor of one of the tallest buildings in Roasalia. The moment he stepped off… Olivier didn’t even know how to explain it. It were as though his entire being had been pulled towards the corner of the restaurant, to where the windows opened up to a view of the bay, although it was far off, over the rise and fall of the city.
For the barest of moments, his attention had held on that view. He’d seen it before and never felt much for it—it was an acceptable, if distant, view—but perhaps he was just in a mood? Perhaps he had spent too much time in Yurndale, closer to the Twintides than the ocean.
Then, his eyes had found her. Emilia’s own gaze had been distant as she gazed out the window, Olivier belatedly realizing she was likely looking for The Penns, barely visible from where he and his family now sat, but there nonetheless. It had, rather embarrassingly, taken him a while to realize she was even with the clones, one of them—Olivier thought it might have been the one who had carried Emilia’s bag when they left—ordering food for the table while the other two sat quietly.
It had taken him even longer to realize his family had left him behind, their hostess leading them to their table. A waitress had eventually come to politely lead him there as well, something about her tone implying she believed he was staring at the Hyrat clones and thought it rude, as though anyone would be looking at them when Emilia was there.
Perhaps most embarrassing of all, he had proceeded to bully his brother into switching spots with him. Antoine assumed it was because he wanted a better view of the city, and while Olivier did want a better view, it certainly hadn’t been of the city. A short spurt of bickering—Antoine didn’t want to move, Olivier leaning into the idea that he wanted to see the city while Antoine was likely to only look at his messages for the next few hours—his baby brother had agreed to move, if only so they could order, eat and leave faster.
Olivier might just order whatever took the longest to cook to spite him. He also might order it because he had heard what the clone had ordered: a tasting menu. They would be there forever, and Olivier was perfectly happy to linger and just… watch.
Watch and listen, the woman in front of him—in front of her friends, and what a strange idea it was that she would be
friends
with Hyrat clones—so different from the brat he usually found in his classroom. Different… and yet, these two pieces of her fit so perfectly together. Different, and yet they made sense. Two halves of the woman who so often infiltrated his thoughts with her smile and laughter, with her ramblings and musing.
Everything he experienced with the little silverstrain was related to law… usually. There had been a few completely unrelated tangents that had started on the law and ended up in completely unexpected—and yet somehow sensible—places, requiring Olivier to drag her back to the topic of the class. This Emilia was… everything. They’d only been sitting there ten minutes, and yet the topics she’d cycled through were impressively vast, ranging from how her pet was faring without her around—good, her little sister was taking good care of
Hyrenie
—whether they actually should murder a friend’s parents or not—thankfully, they seemed to have ended on no, but honestly, it was a bit unclear and Olivier wasn’t sure what to do with a conversation in which Black Knot agents were openly discussing murder?—and whether they should organize a climb on The Strats for that weekend—yes, but only if a pink tide came in as forecasts were currently suggesting one might.
Now, the three of them were discussing what they were currently reading. Emilia had apparently taken on reading the optional books for his class—something that virtually no one ever did, not even his most zealous students—while also reading a fantasy series that had been sent to her by a friend in the Grey Sands. Apparently, it was in the Grey Sand’s local tongue, which, like much of the culture from the area, didn’t have a name given to outsiders.
Did Emilia know the name? How did she even know the language? Olivier was under the impression the language was taught to foreigners as often as their religion was—as in, it was
never
taught to foreigners. Some people still knew it, picking it up during visits and extended stays in the pseudo-Free Colony, but as much as Emilia had likely spent time there through her father’s work, the fact that she apparently understood it well enough to read a fantasy novel—which sounded fascinating as she described it to the one clone, Baylie, he believed, although that was certainly a nickname he could never use—was… something. Confusing? Interesting? Olivier wasn’t quite sure.
All he knew was he couldn’t take his eyes off her, and realistically, he could barely see her, her smile and eyes and the signs she occasionally lapsed into hidden from him. She was just…
She just was.
Perfect and beautiful and enchanting, and he
hated
how obsessed he was with her. It wasn’t that he disliked her. The girl was aggravating, yes, but in a way he enjoyed—or, that he would enjoy if he were to allow himself to. He
couldn’t
allow himself to, even if it felt that these last few weeks were an inevitable fall. Annoyance to want to a desire to help her fight a case he didn’t think he could win, that he knew his mother didn’t think he could win and therefore demanded he not take.
Olivier couldn’t help her, and yet everything inside him was telling him he had to—that if he didn’t at least try, he would regret it, that the entire world would regret it.
…
…
What a strange thought that was, sliding into his brain as though a gift from the aether itself, leaving an itch of
truth
behind that he couldn’t quite scratch—not unless he actually took her case, perhaps.
Olivier’s attention, which had briefly split between watching Emilia, poking at the strange thought that the entire universe wanted him to try helping her, and ordering—he had indeed ordered one of their most expensive and time-consuming meals, much to his brother’s chagrin—snapped fully back to Emilia as she pushed back from the table and stood, the clone who had ordered standing to help pull out her chair. Long silver hair flowed down her back, curling against the skin just under her ass—that dress really was almost inappropriately short for this restaurant, not that anyone was likely to say anything with the clones there—and leaving the ribbons that ran up her legs on full display.
Fuck.
“Pee well~” the cheerful clone, Baylie, laughed, hands shifting into a sign that had one of their other clones—it was impossible to tell which one—kicking him under the table.
What in the world had he said to her?
Emilia just laughed and signed something back before bouncing off to use the bathroom, Olivier not even realizing he was following after her until he was pushing his way into the bathroom behind her like a fucking stalker.
Fuck.
.
!
Arc 8 | Chapter 286: Not a Perfect World, Unfortunately
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