Serena Sterling had attended the Autumn Festival every year since she enrolled at Cresthaven, and she had enjoyed it approximately as much as she enjoyed all mandatory social functions: not at all, but with sufficient competence that no one had ever asked.

The festival occupied the central plaza and the east green from four in the afternoon until ten at night on the last Friday of November. It had the infrastructure of these things: booths, music, the smell of warm cider and something fried, the particular acoustic of an outdoor event designed to feel casual but executed with significant organizational effort. She had been to all three iterations of this festival. She had achieved each one and departed when the minimum viable participation had been reached.

This year she was not alone.

This was the new fact, and it was still new enough that she was still occasionally noticing it — the way new facts sat in your awareness and required periodic re-acknowledgment before they became ordinary. She was not alone. She arrived at the festival with Iris, who had been discharged from the hospital on Thursday and was experiencing her first public event since returning and was approaching it with the comprehensive curiosity of someone who had watched it from invisibility the previous year and was now inside it. And with Evelyn, who had come for the music, of which there was sufficient quantity. And with Lyra, who had come because the others were coming and had offered no additional explanation.

Aiden was working. He had a cafe shift until seven and had said he would find them after, which was how things worked now — they had a gravitational field and he moved through it according to his own schedule and found them when he arrived and this was a system that functioned because everyone understood their part in it.

The four of them moved through the festival with the particular dynamics of their group: Iris pointing at things and asking direct questions about what they were and why, Evelyn tracking sounds and noting which booths were worth stopping at by the acoustic quality of the vendors, Serena managing the map of the space and the social landscape simultaneously, Lyra observing everything and communicating through notebook and directed frequency and the occasional dry observation in Aiden's absence sent to no one in particular.

At six forty-five Serena noticed the Blind Date Game registration booth.

She had noticed it every year and had walked past it every year without stopping because the game's premise — anonymous pairing for a structured one-hour interaction across several event stations — was not something she participated in. She had nothing against the concept. She simply had not had use for it.

This year, for a reason she was not going to examine too closely in a public space, she stopped.

The others stopped because she stopped.

She looked at the booth. At the sign explaining the format. At the entry sheet on the clipboard.

"What is this?" Iris said, reading the sign with the focused attention she brought to all new information.

"You sign up," Serena said, "and they pair you with someone anonymously. You spend time with the assigned person at one of several stations."

"That sounds extremely awkward," Iris said. She sounded interested.

Evelyn said: "How do they assign?"

"Computer-based matching. The results are in sealed envelopes. You open them at seven."

Lyra was looking at the sign. Then at Serena. Then at the sign. She wrote in the small notebook: *Cậu đang nghĩ về đăng ký.*

"I'm looking at it," Serena said.

Lyra wrote: *Đó không phải là điều tôi nói.*

"Register," Iris said. "All four of us. It's research."

"Into what?" Evelyn said.

"Into what it's like to talk to someone we don't know for fifteen minutes." She paused. "Or someone we do know."

Serena looked at the entry sheet. Picked up the pen. Wrote her name.

The others followed. Not because she had suggested it — she had not suggested anything — but because the logic was, apparently, sufficient. Lyra wrote in the handwriting she used for public documents: small, precise, not her usual working script. Evelyn wrote with the careful accuracy of someone who had memorized the position of the pen on the paper. Iris wrote in the handwriting of someone who had not held a pen for a year and had spent three weeks rebuilding the muscle memory.

Envelopes were sealed. Distribution at seven.

Aiden arrived at six fifty-eight.

He had changed from his work clothes — still the same quality of unremarkable but fresh — and he found them near the registration booth with the unerring accuracy she had come to expect. He looked at them. At the booth. At the sealed envelope in each person's hand. His assessment was fast.

"The Blind Date Game," he said.

"We registered," Iris said.

He looked at the four envelopes. At Iris, who was holding hers with the expression of someone looking forward to information. At Evelyn, who was doing her listening-at-an-angle. At Lyra, who was looking at him with the particular attention she used when she was recording something. At Serena.

"Good," he said. And nothing more.

At seven, a festival organiser appeared with a cheerful announcement about the game beginning. Envelopes were opened.

Serena opened hers. Read the name on the card.

Looked at it again.

*Aiden Cross.*

She looked up. The others were looking at their cards. One by one their expressions resolved into the particular quality of someone who had received unexpected information and was processing it. Lyra's expression was the most complex — she was reading her card and at the same time clearly cataloguing the reactions of the others.

Aiden was looking at the four faces turned toward him.

He said: "All four?"

Iris held up her card in confirmation. Evelyn held up hers. Lyra turned her notebook to a fresh page and wrote: *Festival computer. One assumes there will be an IT review.*

Aiden looked at the four cards. At the festival organiser who had materialised nearby with the apologetic expression of someone who had just discovered a significant administrative irregularity. "I'm so sorry," the organiser said. "This is clearly a system error. We can re-assign —"

"No," Aiden said.

The organiser looked at him. At the four women. At him again.

"No re-assignment," he said. He looked at the festival map the organiser was holding. "How many stations?"

"Four. But the game runs for one hour and each station is intended for the full —"

"Fifteen minutes each," he said. "One hour, four stations, fifteen minutes per assignment. Is that possible logistically?"

The organiser looked at the map, looked at the women, looked at Aiden with the expression of someone who was encountering a situation their training had not covered and was improvising. "I — technically the stations are flexible in terms of duration —"

"Then we'll do fifteen minutes each," he said. "In order of — " He looked at the four of them. Serena watched him make the assessment — read the room, read the energy, determine the order that would serve the evening best. "Lyra first, then Evelyn, then Serena, then Iris."

This was, Serena noted, a specific choice. He was ending with Iris, who had the most to gain from being last — the accumulation of the evening, the particular weight of a walk she had described taking when she was invisible. He was ending with the one who most needed the ending.

The organiser said: "All right. I'll — update the assignment sheets."

She stood with her sealed card and watched him talk to the organiser about station logistics, and she thought about what she had said to him at the harbor view the previous week: *I want to stay because I want to.* And she thought about what he had said: *I want to learn.*

She looked at the three others waiting with their cards.

Lyra was writing something in her notebook — she could not see what. Evelyn was standing with her head tilted in the listening position, attending to the sounds of the festival around her. Iris was looking at Aiden with the expression of someone who had been invisible for a year and was still occasionally surprised to be visible and was choosing, each time, to let the surprise be good.

She thought: *He's not afraid of us.*

And underneath that, with the particular precision of someone who had been thinking about this since the night she could not sleep and the wraith had run its material and he had sat in the armchair until morning:

*He's never been afraid of us. He's only been uncertain about himself.*

The organiser finished making notes. The festival continued around them. Lyra was collecting her card and preparing to walk to Station One.

Serena put her card in her jacket pocket, close to where she kept the things she did not want to lose.

Stay for the right reasons, she thought. Learn how.

Fifteen minutes.

She could work with fifteen minutes.