Chapter Text
It was a bit chilly, for late Thunsheer. Dierta was really beginning to regret insisting on coming along to the Soltryce open day with Essek. Of course the architecture was beautiful and the tours had been very informative and she was sure the town was lovely when it wasn’t packed full of Year 12s and their parents, but, well. They’d been wandering around clutching their slowly cooling McDonald’s for quite a while now and had failed to discover any benches, large fountains, memorials with suitably-chair-height pedestals or anything of the like that wasn’t already covered in people eating their long-queued-for lunch.
Her son’s friend Caleb and his mother Una were with them, both of them also looking fruitlessly around for somewhere to sit. Essek had mentioned that they'd both taken a leave of absence from school to go to the Soltryce open day today, and he was hoping to meet up. Dierta was certainly pleased to hear it; they'd met only briefly before, a couple months ago when Essek had had some friends over for dinner, and he'd been so polite.
("Oh, this is delicious Mrs Thelyss, thank you for making dinner!" he'd said to her, even as he blinked back tears. And she'd already tried to reduce the spice as much as possible. Empire kids.)
Apparently they were in all the same classes (or "timetable buddies'' as her son called it) and she was always hearing about the impressive things he was doing, competitions and summer camps and such. It was rather unfortunate that they'd be competing for places on the same course, but Soltryce only offered plain Physics (discounting Physics and Philosophy- what did that even mean?). How nice would it be if they both got in, though! She tried to avoid being too hopeful, even if she had more than full faith in her son.
Caleb nudged his mother, trying to gesture towards what was hopefully some available seating. They all set off in that direction immediately, pushing through the crowded street to get… somewhere.
Despite significant investigation, Dierta was still thoroughly failing to understand where exactly every other member of their party was going, since there was no obvious seating area anywhere on the smaller street they’d turned onto.
Hm. They’d stopped in front of a small church with a low wall circling the property. The most obvious distinguishing feature of said wall was that it had a large laminated sign stuck up onto it reading “PLEASE DO NOT SIT ON THE WALL”. The other three had already sat down without hesitation, Una pulling her’s and Caleb’s lunch out on her lap, Caleb settling his bag onto the ground by his feet, and Essek getting ready to do the same.
After some brief, ineffectual sweeping of the mossy wall, she settled down to eat next to her son. His bag dangled in the air, Essek about to drop it onto the somewhat-damp surface of the pavement. She gestured sharply at him.
“Don’t, Essek.”
The bag was returned to his back.
She reached into their takeout bag - the paper was rather scrunched at the top from where she’d been carrying it - pulling out her sweet chilli chicken wrap and Essek’s box of nuggets, leaving their chips in the bag.
Essek always got the same thing (a McChicken® Sandwich) whenever circumstances forced them to go and get McDonalds, but today he’d navigated immediately to the twenty chicken nuggets the moment they got to the touch-screen kiosk. He pulled the box open, counted that there were indeed twenty, and offered one to his friend.
Ah. How sweet. And economical. How they got away with twenty nuggets being only one gold more than nine boggled the mind.
Caleb put his sandwich back into the tupperware balanced on his lap and took the nugget.
For some time all four of them sat in total silence, apart from the munching sounds and the constant low level of paper-bag-rustling. Essek had placed the box resolutely between himself and his friend, and after some murmured negotiation involving the phrase, “well my mum paid for it anyway,” they were peacefully sharing the nuggets.
Another group of people arrived. They looked like students, probably displaced from all their usual lunch spots by the massive open day crowds.
She watched them catalogue their party, the sign on the wall, and consider their own undoubtedly long and annoying search for somewhere to sit. After a moment’s deliberation, the number of delinquents sitting illegally on the wall increased from four to seven. Dierta took a bite of her wrap. Oh, it wasn’t too cold. Still not worth the wait, though.
Caleb offered his mother a nugget. She took it gladly.
Essek followed suit, offering one to her. She’d not had a chicken nugget in years, probably. Setting her wrap onto her lap next to her handbag, she reached over and took it from him.
More silence. On her phone she had zero emails, and one message from her husband, Kelxen, asking how the open day was going.
“Very nice town.”
“King’s is my favourite. Three years provided accommodation.”
“Kitchen was better than the other ones”
Even after some waiting, he failed to come online. She checked her other email, but there was only spam.
Essek had pulled a handful of chips out of their paper takeout bag, depositing them in his now empty chicken nugget box and transferring it to be within her reach. She went to retrieve their dips.
The other people on the wall were chattering effusively. One of them, the blue haired one, had gotten up, apparently to re-enact some dramatic event. The others were falling over themselves laughing. Almost certainly students here, she was quite sure of it.
The boys were now, apparently, listening to music through Essek’s headphones, one earbud each. Occasionally there’s murmuring as they choose the next song.
Una’s voice emerges tentatively from over the boys’ heads.
“Um. So. What do you think of the university?”
Dierta has to take a moment to gather together her response.
“It’s. It’s very beautiful. And the accommodation is a lot more affordable than the Rexxentrum unis. You know, at Imperial, the better rooms were three hundred gold a week . Even the worst ones were over a hundred and fifty.”
“Really? We’ve not been to an Imperial open day yet, but Caleb’s thinking he can live at home and commute if he ends up going there. Gods. He’s right, it would definitely be worth the trouble.
“Oh, yes, that’s definitely an option. We’ve some friends at Imperial, and some of the other Rexxentrum unis, and they say it’s very common for people to live at home. Especially after first year.”
Una finished the last bite of her sandwich, taking a moment to finish chewing before she replied.
“That’s good to hear.”
They sat in silence for a little while longer, as Essek passed around the last few chips and Dierta stuffed the detritus of their lunch into the take out bag for disposal.
As they were about to get up, Una started.
“I just realised, I don’t think I have your number. Do you think - just, since Caleb and Essek are always out together, it would just make sense, right?“
It did make sense. Not that Essek ever needed minding, but still.
She pulled her phone out of her handbag, navigating over to “Make New Contact”.
“You can just put your details in,” she said, handing it over to Una.
When she got her phone back, Dierta had a new contact named “Una 🐈 (Caleb’s mum)” in the otherwise bland and limited list. Alright, excellent. Now, where to next?
A hush fell over the small lecture hall as the speaker walked up to his spot on the raised platform at the front of the room.
The shadow of the top of his head bobbed at the corner of the powerpoint cast onto the board. He cleared his throat and smiled at the gathered crowd.
“Hello everybody, I’m Professor Zivan Margolin, and I'm one of the tutors here at the Physics department of Soltryce. We’re here today to demo a mock interview, just to give you all an idea of what to expect.”
Essek already had his notebook balanced on the narrow, slanted desk, open to his page of notes. Caleb glanced over at what he’d written down so far: King’s had a restaurant/bar in the quad, Light of the Dawnfather was too far away from the physics building, Flinity occasionally had therapy llamas, that sort of thing. He’d circled the current winner- it seemed his future commute time mattered more to Essek than therapy llamas. A real shame, that.
He was way too stressed about which college to pick. They were all Soltryce, what difference would it make? Caleb was probably just going to pick one at random.
He rested his elbows on the edge of the desk. He’d not brought a notebook, since it wasn’t as though he’d forget anything.
Margolin was going through a few initial slides, turning to continue his (probably very well practised) speech.
“So you see, what we want to see isn’t how clever you are, that’s what all the tests are for. At the interview level, what we're looking for is a good student, if you can respond to feedback, if you can ask questions, what your thought process is like. If you solve the question too fast, we’ll just give you a harder one, okay?”
“Now, let’s get onto the actual demo. We’ve got a helpful volunteer here, one of our students. Go ahead, introduce yourself.”
A young woman had been leaning against the wall next to the projected powerpoint. She took her hands out of his pockets and gave an awkward wave, traipsing over to the middle of the stage area, resolutely not looking into the crowd, a fixed smile on her face. Volunteer indeed.
“Hi guys, I’m Jess, I’m a second year. Um. I’ll be the pretend candidate today.”
Margolin clicked onto the next slide, clearly the intended interview question. It was something to do with a kettle. Wonderful. Differential equations. Essek’s notebook had been flipped to the back page without hesitation, and he was already scribbling down a few initial ideas.
Caleb nudged at his elbow. He looked up, questioning. In reply, Caleb tried to inject his meaning into an eyebrow raise. Understanding dawned, and Essek smirked at him, reaching into his bag for a spare pen. Caleb slid the notebook towards his side of the desk, scanning the page, trying to catch Essek’s train of thought.
In short order a pen was pressed into his hand and they were off, equations chasing each other across the page.
On the stage, the unfortunate fake candidate was doing an adequate job pretending not to already know the answer to the question.
“Ah, I see. So. So alpha is independent of r. That’s. Hm. That would mean that-”
Essek let out a victorious breath at their successful outpacing of the demo. With urgency and aggression Caleb circled two of their previous observations; Essek gasped, with ideas apparently flowing out of his hands too fast to bother turning the page, started to scribble on the back cover.
(Una looked fondly over at the boys, with their heads bent together, their elbows knocking into each other, the notebook slipping around a little as they fought over the limited space. She glanced over them toward Dierta, who was craning her neck to get a look at their solution. A smile had grown on her usually severe face that was equal parts embarrassed and proud.)
Essek slashed a double underline beneath (and a little through) their final conclusion, just a few sentences before the demo interview ended. Grinning at each other, they narrowly resisted high-fiving.
Caleb leaned back in his chair, watching the interview's wrap up.
"Do you have any questions for me?"
"Um. No, not really."
"Ha!" He turned to address the crowd. "They don't, usually. You don't get any credit for asking a clever question, so don't stress about thinking of one."
Hm. Maybe applying to Soltryce wouldn't be so bad after all.
Caleb was poking around the table of free tote bags and badges and leaflets (mostly leaflets). They both had a rich tea biscuit in hand, and he’d also taken a tiny plastic cup of free blackcurrant squash. You’d think Soltryce could expense better refreshments. Imperial had had sandwiches.
They were all fresh out of the Day in the life of a Physics student talk, and everyone was buzzing around the information desk reading about the workload or the wellbeing support or the accommodation available, and to be honest, at 3.37pm after waking up early and walking around for almost six hours, Essek was pretty tired.
He recognised the man standing by the next table, wearing a dark blue lanyard and smiling blankly at the slowly circulating mass of people. Something - um. It started with a Z. Professor something or other. He did the demo interview talk.
Caleb turned to look at him and linked his arm with Essek's, smiling. He was very cheerful, considering the two and a half hour drive between them and their homes.
Their party started drifting over to the demo interview guy’s table, which was covered in leaflets on the syllabus. Essek had already looked up most of this stuff. But it did go into more depth. He added it to his collection.
The guy leaned on the table, trying to strike up a conversation with them.
“Hello boys! How are you finding the university?”
Caleb startled, barely, and recovered with a nervous smile. He still had half a rich tea in one hand and a scrunched plastic cup in the other. After carefully extracting his plastic-cup arm from being linked with Essek’s, he replied.
“It’s very nice. You’re Professor Margolin, aren’t you? We went to that talk you did this morning, it was very helpful.”
“Oh yes, thank you. We usually go by first names here, you can call me Zivan - I might be teaching you if you end up at my college, you know. The Light of the Dawnfather, it’s lovely.
Caleb raised his eyebrows at Essek, who checked his notes on the colleges they visited. Hm. He’ll consider it. Margolin laughed and continued.
“So you’re both physics applicants, yes? What do you think of the syllabus? Anything you’re looking forward to?”
They looked at each other. Essek scrambled for something to say.
A pause, and Caleb said, “Astrophysics? Um. Our school stopped doing the GCSE, but it’s back as a Year 12 elective. We’re, um. It was really great, yeah.”
Margolin, smiling widely, almost replied, before Caleb’s mum cut in to ask a question.
“Ah- can I ask, what would you say the workload is like? Is it significantly more than other universities?”
He considered her question.
“Yes, it is certainly more work. They need to go to tutorials, of course, and they’ll spend more time on assignments and such. This is Soltryce, we expect a certain level of dedication. It can be managed.”
He turns back to look at the two of them.
“What are your names, by the way?”
They stood around talking to that guy for a while. He seemed pleased enough to talk about his research, and what clubs were available, and about his college of the silly name. Caleb looked a little starstruck. It was a little crazy that all of these professors and fellows and such were all world leaders in their fields.
It seemed likely Caleb had been convinced to apply there. Hm.