Chapter 3
The third day at UR always felt different. If the first day was an epic poem and the second was a blueprint, the third was the moment the ink actually began to dry on the page.
Professor Reinn adjusted her glasses, the slight clink of the metal frames against her temples a familiar rhythm. Unlike Reyes, who saw the world through the grand, sweeping lenses of physics and multiverses, Reinn was a woman of Biology and Chemistry. She saw the world in the micro—the way a cell membrane chose what to let in and what to keep out. To her, the students weren't just "universes"; they were delicate ecosystems.
"Good morning, Section A," Reinn said, her voice like a crisp autumn breeze—cool, but not unkind. She stood before the whiteboard, which was already mapped out with a grid. "Science is not a spectator sport. Today, we divide the labor of discovery."
She began the distribution of reporting topics. It was a ritual that usually triggered a wave of groans in other schools, but at UR, there was a strange, focused energy.
"Marcus and Elena—The Circadian Rhythm. Let's see if your 'timekeeping' translates to the biological clock," she noted, acknowledging the two students Reyes had mentioned in the faculty lounge.
Then, her eyes settled on the pair in the middle row. Maya was doodling what looked like a tesseract on the corner of her notebook, while Leo was staring at the board with the intense concentration of someone trying to decode a cipher.
"Leo. Maya," Reinn called out. Maya's head snapped up, her eyes wide and alert. "You two will handle 'Bioluminescence and the Chemistry of Light.' I expect you to explain why some creatures choose to carry their own suns in the dark."
Maya beamed, a radiator of pure enthusiasm. "We won't let you down, Ma'am. We'll make it... illuminating."
Leo let out a quiet huff of a laugh, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. Reinn watched them—the girl who was all light and the boy who acted as her shadow. She saw the way Maya immediately leaned over to whisper a flurry of ideas to him, and the way Leo, despite his stoic exterior, leaned in to catch every syllable.
As the bell rang, signaling the end of the period, Reinn watched the exodus. Most students headed for the canteen, driven by the simple biology of hunger. But Maya and Leo took a sharp turn toward the west wing.
"Library?" Reinn overheard Leo ask, his voice low.
"Library," Maya confirmed with a nod that sent her hair bouncing. "I think I saw a book there once that looked like it belonged in the Restricted Section of Hogwarts. We need to find it."
Reinn watched them disappear down the hallway. She picked up her chalk and began to erase the board, but she paused for a moment. She thought about Maya's assigned topic—bioluminescence. It was a fitting choice, she realized. Some things in this world didn't need an external power source to shine; they were simply born with a fire inside them.
Reinn stepped out of the classroom, her curiosity piqued. She decided to take the long way to the faculty room, a path that just happened to pass by the heavy, carved oak doors of the University Library. The University Library was not merely a room of books; it was a sanctuary of hushed breaths and ancient paper. As Professor Reinn slipped through the heavy doors, she felt the temperature drop—a deliberate preservation of both parchment and peace.
She spotted them near the back, in the "Old Science" section where the shelves were so high they required rolling ladders that creaked like old bones. Maya was already perched halfway up one of those ladders, her fingers dancing across the spines of leather-bound volumes. Leo stood at the base, his arms crossed, but his eyes never left the hem of her skirt or the precarious tilt of her balance.
"Maya, can you come down the ladder now? The librarian will surely have our heads if you fall," Leo whispered, his voice echoing softly against the mahogany.
"Just a second, Leo! I swear I saw it. A book on 'The Optics of the Unseen,'" she replied, her voice filled with that infectious, reckless wonder.
Reinn watched from behind a display of botanical sketches. She saw Maya pull a thin, silver-leafed book from the shelf. As she did, a stray beam of afternoon light hit the dust motes around her, and for a fleeting second, the air seemed to shimmer with a localized aurora.
"Look!" Maya scrambled down the ladder, nearly tripping in her haste. She landed inches from Leo, holding the book open. "It says here that bioluminescence isn't just a chemical reaction. It's a form of communication—a way of saying 'I am here' in a language that doesn't need air to travel."
Leo looked down at the page, then back at her. The skepticism he usually wore like a shield was nowhere to be found. "I am here," he repeated softly, almost to himself.
Suddenly, the lights in the library flickered—a common occurrence in the old west wing—and then died completely. The room plunged into a thick, velvety darkness.
"Don't move," Leo's voice was sharp with a sudden, protective instinct.
But then, the magic happened.
In the center of the table where they had dropped their bags, something began to glow. It wasn't the harsh blue light of a smartphone. It was a soft, pulse-like emerald green. Reinn leaned in, her biological curiosity warring with her sense of professional distance.
The book Maya had pulled—an old, forgotten text on marine flora—contained pressed samples of dried sea moss. Whether it was a trick of the static electricity in the air or a "glitch in the system" that UR was famous for, the moss was reacting to the sudden darkness. The table was bathed in a ghostly, ethereal light that reflected in Maya's wide eyes.
"See?" Maya whispered, her face inches from Leo's in the green glow. "The multiverse is just a place where the rules we know are slightly different. Here, the light stays... even when the power goes out."
Leo reached out, his hand hovering over the glowing moss. He didn't touch it; he seemed afraid to break the spell. "It's beautiful," he admitted, his voice barely audible.
From the shadows, Professor Reinn felt a lump form in her throat. She understood the chemistry of what was happening—the luciferase reaction, the oxidation of a substrate. But as she watched the two students silhouetted in that impossible, living light, she realized her textbooks were missing a chapter. They were missing the part where light isn't just a frequency, but a witness to a connection.
She quietly turned and walked out, leaving them in their glowing pocket of reality. She had enough for her notes. She had witnessed the exact moment the "What If" became a "Right Now."
The glow of the sea moss eventually faded as the emergency lights of the library hummed to life, casting a sterile, yellow glare over the aisles. The "magic" was gone, replaced by the mundane reality of dust and deadlines. Reinn watched from the doorway as Maya and Leo began to gather their things, their movements slower now, more deliberate. They didn't speak, but the air between them was no longer empty; it was charged with the memory of that emerald pulse.
Reinn made her way to the faculty lounge, her mind a whirlwind of chemical equations and the inexplicable. She found Professor Reyes sitting in his usual corner, a lukewarm cup of coffee in his hand and his journal open.
"You look like you've just seen a ghost, Reinn," Reyes said without looking up, his voice carrying that familiar, observational warmth.
"Not a ghost," Reinn replied, sinking into the chair opposite him. "Bioluminescence. In the library. From a dried sample of Pleurotus or some ancient sea moss. It shouldn't have been able to produce that much light, Arthur. The ATP should have been long gone."
Reyes finally looked up, a small, knowing smile tugging at his lips. "And yet, it did."
"It did," she admitted, rubbing her temples. "Maya and Leo were there. They were... right in the center of it. It was as if the universe decided to give them a visual aid for their report."
Reyes chuckled, a soft sound that seemed to harmonize with the distant ringing of the campus bells. "That's the thing about this school, Reinn. We think we're the ones teaching them, but the campus has a way of providing its own curriculum. We witness the 'what ifs,' but they—those children—they live them."
Reinn looked at the window, watching the students navigate the courtyard below. She saw Marcus and Elena sitting on a stone bench, their heads bent together over a shared notebook. She saw the girl with the Mulawin pendant laughing with a group of friends.
"I gave them the reporting topic on the 'Chemistry of Light,'" Reinn whispered. "I thought I was being practical. But watching them in that dark library... it felt like I was watching the birth of a star. Or the beginning of a heartbreak. It's hard to tell the difference at that age."
"It's usually both," Reyes said softly. He closed his journal with a definitive thud. "At UR, we don't just teach them to see the light. We teach them how to be the ones who remember it when the room goes dark again."
Reinn nodded, her scientific mind finally finding a place for the wonder she had witnessed. It wasn't an anomaly to be corrected; it was a data point in the larger experiment of the University of Remembrance. She picked up her pen and, on the back of her syllabus, wrote a single note for the next day's lecture:
Light is not just a wave or a particle. Sometimes, it is a bridge.
Outside, the sun had fully set, and the campus was bathed in the soft, artificial glow of the streetlamps. But in the quiet corners of the library and the hearts of two students, the green light of the "what if" continued to burn, unseen but undeniable.
As the faculty lounge grew quiet, Reinn found herself staring at the periodic table hanging on the wall. To most, it was a chart of elements—fixed, stable, and predictable. But today, she saw it as a list of ingredients for the impossible. She thought of the phosphorus in the bones, the iron in the blood, and the carbon that made up everything from the lead in Leo's pencil to the diamond-hard resolve in Maya's eyes.
"You know, Arthur," Reinn said, her voice cutting through the hum of the air conditioner. "I've always taught my students that the universe tends toward entropy. Things fall apart. They lose heat. They go dark. It's the most fundamental law of biology and physics alike."
Reyes leaned back, his eyes reflecting the soft glow of the desk lamp. "And?"
"And today, I saw two kids who didn't care about entropy," she said with a faint, tired smile. "They were looking at a dead plant in a dark room, and for three minutes, they forced the universe to stay bright. It shouldn't have worked. The chemistry was all wrong."
"Maybe the chemistry wasn't in the moss," Reyes suggested gently.
Reinn let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. She stood up, gathering her things. "Maybe. I suppose that's the 'Value' part of our curriculum. Valuing the anomaly over the rule."
As she walked out of the building, the campus was transitioning into its evening skin. The University of Remembrance felt different at night; the shadows of the old Spanish-style arches seemed to stretch out like fingers, trying to hold onto the stories of the day. She passed the covered court where the orientation had been held. It was empty now, but in the silence, she could almost hear the echoes of "Shedah!" and the whispered "What ifs" that Maya had scattered like seeds.
In the distance, near the campus gates, she saw two figures. Maya was walking backward, gesturing wildly with her hands as she talked, likely explaining some new theory about separate dimensions where moss always glows. Leo was walking toward her, his hands tucked into his pockets, his head tilted in that specific way he had when he was listening to her—not just with his ears, but with his soul.
They looked like a scene from one of those "fantasy" books they loved so much—the wanderer and the protector, walking toward the edge of the known world.
Reinn stopped for a moment, adjusted her vintage watch, and felt a strange sense of peace. She was a woman of evidence, and today she had seen enough. She didn't need to know how the light happened; she only needed to know that it did.
"Keep the light, kids," she whispered into the cool evening air.
She knew that tomorrow would bring more lectures, more grading, and more talk of practical things. But as she drove out of the university gates, the green glow stayed behind her eyes, a contraband map of a world where magic wasn't just ink on paper, but a choice two people made in the dark.
Professor Reinn was no longer just a teacher of Biology. Like Reyes, she had become a Keeper. And as she looked in her rearview mirror at the receding lights of UR, she realized that the story of "Us"—of all of them—was being written one miracle at a time.