"I know." The smile widened slightly. "Everyone knows."

Dravid positioned us on opposite sides of the platform, approximately six meters apart. He then produced two small devices from his jacket pocket and tossed one to each of us. Mine was a lightweight band that wrapped around my wrist and displayed a digital readout of some kind.

"These track your position relative to each other." He stepped off the platform and moved to the edge of the room. "The exercise is simple. Thorn will attempt to close distance and make contact with Belmont’s shoulder. Belmont will attempt to maintain separation. No Aspect use. No physical contact beyond the target touch. The exercise ends when contact is made or when two minutes have elapsed."

Camellia’s smile took on a different quality. Still warm, still genuinely pleased, but with something sharper underneath.

"Just positioning?" she asked.

"Just positioning." Dravid raised his hand. "Begin."

She moved immediately.

Not fast. Not aggressive. Just smooth, constant forward motion that ate the distance between us in small, relentless increments. Her body language stayed relaxed, almost casual, like she was taking a walk rather than pursuing a target.

I backed away, keeping the six meters between us. The platform was maybe ten meters in diameter, which meant I had limited space to work with before geometry forced me into a corner.

Camellia adjusted her angle. Still not rushing. Still that same patient approach.

I circled left. She mirrored. I feinted right. She didn’t bite.

"You’re faster than you look," she observed, her voice conversational despite the movement. "Most people give up ground faster than you are."

"Most people haven’t spent quality time being chased by someone who wanted to catch them."

"That sounds like a story."

"Several."

She changed tactics, accelerating suddenly and cutting off my leftward escape route. I had to adjust, moving backward instead of lateral, which cost me positioning advantage. She pressed the gain immediately, closing to four meters before I could reestablish separation.

The wristband on my arm beeped softly. Proximity warning.

"You’re thinking too defensively." Camellia’s smile never wavered. "You’re trying to maintain distance instead of controlling my movement. There’s a difference."

She was right. I’d been reacting to her approach instead of shaping it. The same mistake Monolith had made in the footage, just slower and less obvious.

I stopped retreating and angled toward her instead.

Her eyebrows lifted, the motion barely visible beneath that auburn frame. She adjusted without breaking stride, weight shifting to intercept my new trajectory. The movement was clean and automatic. Trained, not just reactive.

Except I wasn’t trying to pass her. I was trying to force her to commit to a defensive position that put the platform’s edge at her back.

It almost worked.

She recognized the trap about half a second before it closed and pivoted hard to her right, but the recovery cost her momentum. The sudden change in direction meant she couldn’t maintain the same pressure she’d been building. I used the opening to reestablish a comfortable five-meter gap, circling back toward the center of the platform.

"Better," she said, and she sounded genuinely pleased. Not condescending. Not impressed in a way that undercut the observation. Just... satisfied with the adjustment I’d made. "Much better."

I kept my breathing steady and my eyes on her positioning. She wasn’t rushing to close the gap I’d just created. She was resetting, reading my body language the same way I was reading hers. The smile was still there, but her eyes were sharper now. More focused.

The next ninety seconds were a chess match played with feet and angles.

Every time she tried to close, I created new obstacles. Not with my hands, not with any physical barrier, just with positioning that made the straight line between us less appealing than the lateral adjustment she’d have to make. Every time I tried to control her movement, she found ways to slip the constraint. A half-step that looked like commitment but wasn’t. A weight shift that suggested vulnerability and delivered nothing I could exploit.

The platform became a constantly shifting landscape of invisible pressure and counter-pressure, neither of us quite gaining the advantage we needed. She was faster than me in a straight line. I was faster at reading what she was about to commit to. The gap between those two speeds was narrow enough that neither of us could leverage it into a decisive position.

My wristband beeped twice. Ninety seconds left.

At the one-minute-forty-five mark, she finally committed to a direct rush. I’d been waiting for it. The moment she accelerated, I moved in the same direction instead of retreating, passing her on her right side while she was committed to the straight-line approach.

The timer hit two minutes with three meters of separation between us.

"Time," Dravid announced.

Camellia stopped and turned to face me, her breathing only slightly elevated. The smile was still there, but it had evolved into something more genuine. Respect, maybe. Or at least acknowledgment.

"That was fun." She extended her hand. "We should spar properly sometime."

I shook it. Her grip was stronger than expected, and her palm was slightly cool against mine. The vine tattoos on her forearms seemed to shift in the light, though that might have been my imagination.

"I’ll hold you to that."

"Please do."

Dravid was watching us with an expression I couldn’t read. His grey eyes moved between us, cataloging something that his flat face didn’t reveal.

"Adequate," he said finally. "Both of you identified the core principle of the exercise, which is that pure evasion is unsustainable against a patient pursuer. The defender must create conditions that make closing distance costly, not merely difficult."

He addressed the rest of the class.

"You’ll practice this in pairs during Thursday’s practical. I suggest you spend time before then considering how your particular capabilities might enhance or complicate the basic positioning dynamics you just observed."

He picked up his tablet again.

"Dismissed. Don’t be late for your afternoon sessions."

Students began gathering their things and filtering toward the exits. I stepped off the platform and headed back toward my seat to collect my bag. Felicity was waiting with an expression that suggested she had seventeen observations she was eager to share.

"You let her push you to the edge twice before you changed strategy."

"I was gathering data."

"You were showing off."

"Both things can be true."