Kyrin sucked a sharp breath in as footsteps approached his room from the hallway. He scrambled to gather his papers from the desk they had been sitting on, abandoning the act of writing in the process. He had just set them down when the door swung open. His roommate, Deril, entered.

"Hello," he said curtly.

"Welcome back," Kyrin murmured, heart pounding. He had taken a seat at his own desk, and was trying to act is if he had been there a while. His papers sat at his desk, half completed. He had hoped Deril would be away longer.

They didn't speak to each other. That was normal between them. Deril walked briskly across his side of the room, removing his coat and hanging it in his closet. Kyrin pretended to study his papers, really watching Deril. He noticed that his face was bruised. The skin around his right eye was darkening by the minute, turning an ugly purple. He must have had another run in with their classmates.

The thought gave him a moment's guilty pleasure. No matter how he tried, Kyrin couldn't stop despising Deril. He often found himself wishing the other boys would escalate in their attacks against him, or do something aggressive enough to make him quit the school all together. Deril's mere presence unnerved him, though his distain was different than that of his classmates.

Sometimes he wished he was not Deril's roommate. His constantly tranquil demeanor had the opposite effect on Kyrin, leaving him always on edge. More than that, the longer he remained in his presence, the more he hated him. Other times, such as that night, Kyrin felt the arrangement to be less unfortunate. Deril had had several roommate assignments before Kyrin, none of which had ended well. Cold silence was probably the best Deril could hope for in a roommate. Not that Deril had made the effort to socialize. Kyrin was glad he hadn't.

Deril sighed quietly and sat down at his desk. Kyrin had been careful not to disturb the objects on the desk from their natural arrangement, but he still held his breath and waited. Deril didn't seem to notice anything. Kyrin released his own quiet sigh. He turned his attention to his own papers. They were worksheets, assigned by their classes. Only half filled out. Filled out with Deril's answers. What the missing blanks might have been, Kyrin didn't know. He absentmindedly trailed his pencil along the paper, searching in the back of his mind for the information he should have known. He didn't have it. He just didn't have it.

Any of it, in fact. The information, the skill to be a surgeon, and the desire to study medicine had all escaped him at some point in his miserable life. Even though he had the best upbringing and the best schooling. Even though his father was the most renowned surgeon in the nation. Even though he spent every waking minute chasing them, they eluded him. But Deril had them. Deril had them all, even without the advantages Kyrin had. He _had them_ even though he hadn't bribed his way into the school, even though he hadn't been raised to it from birth, and even though his classmates despised him. Kyrin hated Deril.

He glanced at him at his desk, pencil scrawling away on new, seemingly infinite sheets of paper. His pencil never stopped. Neither did his mind. God, how Kyrin hated him. He hated him more because of his humility. He had to know he was the smartest one there, but still he endured the insults the other boys hurled at him. They hadn't caught on yet. They couldn't see what Kyrin saw. And Deril wasn't telling them. He just endured. Kyrin was also sure that Deril could have easily fended the physical attacks off, if he had wanted. He was tall, with large, wide shoulders, but he had the mind of a scholar. It was Kyrin who had the mind of a brute.

Kyrin waited quietly at his desk for Deril to finish, and go to sleep. He couldn't turn the papers in half-finished, but he couldn't finish them himself. When it had become clear that working hard at medicine was not enough, Kyrin had learned to work very hard at cheating. He could move quietly in the dark, now. Once he was certain Deril was sleeping, Kyrin crept back over to his desk and quietly grabbed Deril's papers. He sculked to the window and raised the papers to the moonlight. It was just barely bright enough to read them. He'd gotten lucky. Writing as quietly as possible, Kyrin finished his assignments.

He set Deril's papers down gingerly on his desk, trying to leave them in as natural a position as possible. He had taken great care to remember their earlier order and position. It made him feel dirty, cheating off of someone so far beneath him. Or, someone who should have been beneath him. He was under no illusions about the true nature of things. He sighed under his breath and approached his bed, ready to leave yet another disappointing day in the past. He was just about to get in, when a sudden noise from Deril's bed stopped him.

"I would just let you copy them, if you asked." Kyrin stared at him, wide eyed.

Shit.