Chapter 163: Education - Leah
The school opens in autumn.
Not just for the twins. For everyone. Refugee kids study alongside young green visitors. Xiao Ba teaches music—she's really talented at it, her ability to sense fragments helps her turn emotions into melodies. Xiao Qi teaches strategy and science. Kiran teaches PE. Avi teaches medicine.
Kael teaches history.
His own history. Three thousand years of it. Not boring facts, but real stories. The night the northern fortress fell. The day he met his father's ghost. The hundred years he spent wandering the wilderness of Side A, even forgetting his own name.
The kids are completely absorbed. Even the green visitors, who don't understand personal memories, find something meaningful in his words.
"Why did you keep going?" a refugee girl asks. "When you'd lost everything?"
Kael goes quiet for a moment. Then he looks at me. At the twins. At the family that now fills this once-empty castle.
"Because I didn't know what I was waiting for. If I had known... I would've run faster to get here."
The kids laugh. He smiles—that rare, beautiful expression that completely changes his face.
I teach cooking.
Not very well. My pancakes are still unpredictable. But I teach what I know: how to feed people you love. How to make do with what you've got. How to burn something and still serve it proudly.
"Cooking is about heart," I tell my students. "Not being perfect. You can follow a recipe exactly and make something that has no soul. Or you can wing it, burn the edges, forget an ingredient—and create something that tastes like home."
"Mom's cooking tastes like home," Ophelia says.
"Mom's cooking tastes like charcoal," Adrian shoots back.
"Charcoal is homey!"
"Charcoal causes cancer."
I throw a wooden spoon at him. He dodges, laughing.
The class turns into total chaos. Flour everywhere. Dough on the ceiling. Someone's hair catches fire—quickly put out by Ophelia's light.
Kael shows up at the door, taking in the mess.
"Class over?"
"Class evolved."
He helps me clean up. The twins run off to play in the courtyard. The other students follow, chattering away, covered in flour and happiness.
"Imperfect," Kael says, wiping dough off the wall.
"Real," I correct him.
We finish cleaning in easy silence. Side by side. Like we do everything now.
The school bell rings—Xiao Ba's composition, played on a C-side instrument that sounds like wind chimes.
Another day ends.
Another begins.
Imperfect.
But enough.