Chapter 38: [38] Twenty Minutes
Two hours later, Xavier slouched on the couch, one leg draped over the armrest, scrolling through his phone. The coffee table in front of him held a scattered array of textbooks and notes, all of them barely touched. He’d opened his Gate Theory textbook exactly once, read half a page about dimensional resonance patterns, and promptly set it aside.
Calypso sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by her own academic chaos. Her silver hair had escaped its bun entirely, falling in messy waves around her face as she glared at a particularly dense paragraph about Essentia classification.
"This is torture," she moaned, dropping her head onto the open textbook. "Actual torture. I’ve existed for thousands of years, and I’ve never been this bored."
Xavier didn’t look up from his phone. "Mm-hmm."
"Are you even listening to me?" Calypso lifted her head, pink eyes narrowing. "I’m suffering here, Xavier. Suffering."
"Tragic," he replied, continuing to scroll.
Calypso grabbed a pencil and threw it at him. It bounced off his chest and clattered to the floor. "You could help me, you know. Isn’t that what roommates do? Help each other?"
Xavier finally lowered his phone and looked at her. "I’m not doing the homework."
"What?" Calypso straightened up. "Why not?"
"Because it doesn’t matter." He sat up properly and reached for the syllabus lying on the coffee table. He flipped through it, then turned it around to show her a highlighted section. "Look. Class participation and homework is only fifteen percent of our grade. The midterm is thirty-five percent, and the final is fifty. As long as I ace the tests, I’ll pass."
Calypso snatched the syllabus from him. "But... that’s not how school works. You’re supposed to do all the assignments."