Jasper realised his world had become too small when Mia said it aloud.

"Do you three ever do anything separately?"

They were eating lunch.

Jasper looked left at Harper.

Then right at Ava.

Then back at Mia.

"Yes."

Mia waited.

Jasper tried to think of an example.

Harper said, "I go to the bathroom alone."

Ava closed her eyes.

Mia laughed.

"I mean everything else. Classes. Lunch. Library. Handball."

Soren looked up from his book. "They live together."

"So do lots of people."

Jasper felt defensive.

Then he wondered if Mia had a point.

Room Fourteen had become a tiny country.

Not intentionally.

Harper and Ava had been beside Jasper during nearly every strange Water event. If Jasper went somewhere, one or both often followed. If Harper found something interesting, she dragged them into it. If Ava made a theory, they heard it first.

There was nothing wrong with being close friends.

Tidefall still contained more than three people.

The next week, Foundations assigned mixed practical groups.

Jasper worked with Mia and Theo.

Harper was paired with Soren and a quiet girl named Leila.

Ava joined three students from East Residence.

Jasper expected his new group to feel wrong.

It did not.

Their task was to maintain a shared shield around a stack of wooden blocks while soft balls rolled toward it from changing directions.

First attempt: all three blocked the same ball and left the other side open.

Second attempt: Theo became distracted.

Third attempt: Mia called positions, Jasper covered the left side and Theo remembered he had a right side.

Success.

Across the hall, Harper's group was doing badly.

Soren wanted instructions before every movement.

Harper wanted everybody to move before instructions existed.

Leila finally said, "Both of you stop talking."

They stopped.

Their next attempt worked.

Ava's group finished first because, according to Ava, somebody else had a better formation idea and she had allowed them to use it.

Harper stared at her afterward.

"You let someone else plan?"

"Yes."

"Are you ill?"

At lunch, everybody complained about their groups.

Nobody stopped being friends.

That mattered.

By the end of the week, Jasper had joined Theo for handball without Harper.

Harper spent an hour practising with Mia.

Ava went to a Nocten puzzle session with Leila.

The change felt obvious once it happened.

It had not felt obvious before.

Jasper also learned something else.

The Water Titan did not care whether Harper and Ava were standing beside him.

One afternoon, he felt a brief pressure while walking with Theo.

Theo noticed Jasper stop.

"What?"

Jasper hesitated.

Then remembered how secrets grew when nobody was allowed to name them.

"I get a strange feeling from the sea sometimes."

Theo stared. "Seasick?"

"No."

Jasper gave him the short version.

Teachers knew.

Sometimes Jasper sensed something unusual.

He could not control waves.

Theo listened.

"That's weird."

"Yeah."

"Cool though."

"Sometimes."

Theo looked toward the western windows. "Can you make waves?"

Jasper's stomach tightened.

There it was again.

The easiest wrong idea.

"No."

"Not at all?"

"No. It isn't mine."

Theo nodded.

"Okay."

That was it.

No disappointment.

No argument.

Jasper had expected people to want the exciting version.

Some did.

Some accepted the true one.

It isn't mine.

He liked the sentence.

That night he told Harper and Ava.

Ava wrote it inside the notebook cover.

Harper read it.

IT ISN'T MINE.

"Good title for your life," she said.

Jasper threw a sock at her.