Chapter 132 | A Word That Carries Weight

"And a sauna," Sloane added, reading over my shoulder with her chin resting on my arm. Her breath was warm against my skin. "The 1-A house has one too. My friend Mira from prep was talking about it last week, said her older sister graduated from Halloran two years ago and still talks about the bath house like it was a religious experience."

I kept reading. The letter explained that each apartment came furnished with what it called ’standard mid-tier accommodations,’ which from the photos looked like perfectly acceptable furniture that would be completely fine for anyone who didn’t have strong opinions about thread counts or mattress firmness. Bed frame, desk, chair, dresser, small couch. All clean, modern, and functional.

However.

If a student wished to furnish their own apartment, they could decline the standard package by notifying the housing office before July seventh. The space would then be delivered empty, ready for whatever the student wanted to put in it.

Diane plucked that particular page out of my hand before I’d finished the paragraph.

"July seventh," she said, reading the date with the tone of someone who’d already opened her calendar app. "That gives us three weeks. We’re going shopping this weekend."

"We don’t have to—"

"Both of my babies are going to the best Hero Academy in the world. They are not sleeping on mid-tier furniture." She said ’mid-tier’ the way most people said ’contaminated.’ Like the concept personally offended her Southern sensibilities. "We’ll do a full day. Saturday. Furniture, bedding, organizational pieces for the closets, bathroom accessories. Your father left money specifically earmarked for education expenses, and I have opinions about how that money should be spent."

She was talking about the original Lukas’s father. Marcus Belmont, who’d apparently set up a trust before he died that Diane had been managing for nine years. The guilt of spending a dead Hero’s money on furniture for his son’s body, currently occupied by a transmigrant with a gacha system, was a specific flavor of existential discomfort I didn’t have time to unpack right now.

"I can just use the standard stuff," I said, knowing full well this was a losing argument.

"You can, and you will not." Diane set her coffee down with the finality of a gavel. "Sloane, tell him."

Sloane hadn’t moved from her spot pressed against my arm, still reading through the housing details with the intensity she brought to combat analysis. Her blue eyes scanned the floor plan of the 1-A house, memorizing exits and room dimensions the way she memorized opponent weaknesses. "Mom’s right. If you’re going to be living somewhere for two years, you want a space that feels like yours. Not institutional. The standard stuff is fine but it screams ’I don’t care about where I live,’ and people notice that. Image matters at Halloran."

"Since when do you care about image?"

"Since my mother runs a Hero PR agency and I’ve been absorbing her philosophies through osmosis for seventeen years whether I wanted to or not." Sloane turned the page. "Also, I want a good mattress. Like, genuinely good. Not whatever seventy-dollar foam block they’re putting in those rooms."

"Your mother just said we’re going shopping Saturday."

"Yeah, and I want to pick my own mattress, not have Mom pick it for me. She’ll get something with like four thousand springs and temperature regulation and I’ll feel like I’m sleeping in a hospital."

"I would get you something tasteful and supportive," Diane said.

"You’d get me something that costs more than a used car."

"Those are the same thing, sugar."

I looked between them. Mother and daughter, arguing about mattress specifications with the same competitive energy they brought to everything else. Diane’s blue eyes carried the authority of someone who’d been furnishing luxury spaces since before Sloane was born. Sloane’s identical blue eyes carried the stubbornness of someone who was going to pick her own damn mattress and everybody else could deal with it.

My apartment was seven hundred fifty square feet. Decent bathroom. Rain shower head. I’d be living there for at least two years, possibly three if I made the Advanced Track. The bed I’d be sleeping in, the desk I’d be studying at, the couch I’d be collapsing onto after training sessions that would make Sloane’s morning beatdowns look like warm-ups.

"Fine," I said. "Saturday. But I’m picking my own couch."

Diane’s smile was the one she used when a negotiation went exactly the way she’d planned it from the beginning. "Of course, baby. You can pick the couch."

The endearment landed differently now than it had two months ago. Two months ago, ’baby’ from Diane was maternal. Warm. The kind of thing a guardian said to a kid she’d raised since eight. Now it carried weight that made the back of my neck warm, layered with memories of her whispering the same word in a very different context while her nails scraped across my chest.

I cleared my throat and returned to the housing packet.

The communal bath house occupied the entire basement level of each residence, and the more I read about it, the more I understood why Mira’s older sister apparently wouldn’t shut up about it.

The main bathing area featured three temperature-controlled pools, ranging from cool to near-scalding, all built from natural stone with underwater lighting that made the water glow faintly. The dry sauna seated twelve comfortably with tiered cedar benches and adjustable heat settings.

There was a changing area with individual shower stalls, towel service replenished daily, and, because Halloran apparently just had money falling out of its pockets, a small relaxation lounge with reclined seating and cold water dispensers.

"They have a bath house," I said again, because it bore repeating.

"Communal bathing is a major component of Hero culture in Japan and South Korea," Diane said, scrolling through something on her phone that was probably already a furniture catalog. "Several of the top international academies include similar facilities. Halloran adopted the practice about twelve years ago as part of an exchange program with Tokyo’s Shinshu Academy. It promotes physical recovery, stress management, and team bonding."

"Team bonding," Sloane repeated flatly. "In a bath house. Where everyone’s naked."