For reasons that were painfully obvious to anyone with working eyes, classes were canceled for the day.
The teachers blamed it on "structural issues with the dormitory," but everyone knew the real cause: the boys couldn't stop tripping over themselves trying to impress the influx of girls who were temporarily stuck in their half of the building.
It was chaos. The dining hall was louder than a battlefield, corridors had become confession stages, and some idiots were even walking around with props—flowers, blindfolds, handwritten poems—anything they thought might help them replicate Zane's accidental legend.
Zane, of course, wanted none of it. He spent most of the morning buried under his blanket, convinced sleep was the only noble pursuit left in life.
By midday, the staff had had enough. A group of teachers stormed the dorm, their patience thinner than paper. Within the hour, new rules were announced:
Half the dormitory would now be sectioned off for the girls.
Each room would hold four girls.
No exceptions. No excuses.
The boys groaned, half from disappointment, half from sheer exhaustion after spending all morning failing to get noticed.
Meanwhile, the girls—many of them nobles, others commoners with enough confidence to rival nobility—treated it like a game. Friend groups began to form instantly, alliances and rivalries brewing over who would share which room.
Through it all, Zane sat at the edge of his bed, hair messy, expression flat.
"Four girls to a room," he muttered. "Can't wait to hear the complaints when someone snores too loud or eats the last snack. Glad it's not my problem."
Asher appeared out of a portal in the corner, looking half-asleep and fully irritated. "You say that now, but Mira's going to drag you into it somehow."
Zane sighed, flopped back onto the bed, and covered his face with the pillow. "Then I'll fake a coma."
The new arrangements were in place by evening, and though the dorm had quieted a little, the atmosphere was far from calm. Whispers traveled, eyes lingered, and somewhere in the crowd, Celeste—the noble girl Zane had flatly denied—was already scheming her next move.