Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The last week of August always felt quieter than it should.

Montreal had not yet settled into the rhythm of a new academic year. The sidewalks around McGill University were busy enough to suggest something was about to begin, but not so crowded that people had stopped noticing where they were going. Families lingered outside residence halls with overloaded cars, new students stood in loose circles studying maps they would eventually stop needing, and moving trucks idled beneath apartment buildings with their rear doors thrown open to reveal hastily packed lives stacked in cardboard boxes.

From the third-floor window of his apartment, Shane could see none of that in any real detail. The tops of maple trees lined the street below, their leaves still stubbornly green despite the calendar insisting summer was nearly over, obscuring most of the pedestrians passing underneath. Every now and then a cyclist emerged between the branches before disappearing again beyond the intersection. Somewhere farther down the block, a city bus sighed to a stop, released a handful of passengers, and pulled away with the familiar hiss of compressed air.

He watched it for exactly four seconds.

Then he looked back at the clock.

7:18.

The digital numbers glowed a soft blue from the microwave across the room. They matched the time displayed on his wristwatch, his phone charging neatly beside the couch, and the small alarm clock on his bedside table. All four had been synchronized the night before. There was no practical reason to check more than one, but discrepancies bothered him enough that verifying them had quietly become part of his evening routine.

Satisfied, he drew the curtains the rest of the way open.

Morning sunlight spilled into the apartment, illuminating dust particles that drifted lazily through the air before disappearing into brightness. The apartment wasn’t large—just one bedroom, one bathroom, and a combined kitchen and living area—but it was exactly the right size for one person. Large enough that nothing felt cramped. Small enough that everything had a place.

His mother had insisted on helping him find it before his first year at McGill.

“You’ll study better somewhere quiet,” she’d said while touring apartments with a notebook in one hand and a tape measure in the other. She’d checked water pressure, tested every light switch, opened cupboards, measured the distance between the kitchen table and the nearest electrical outlet, and somehow convinced herself that the orientation of the windows mattered.

Shane had thought it was excessive.

Looking back, he was glad she’d done it.

The building was older than most of the surrounding apartments, but it was well maintained. The walls were thick enough that he rarely heard his neighbors, the windows overlooked a tree-lined street instead of a busy avenue, and the walk to campus took just under twelve minutes if every traffic light cooperated.

Twelve minutes and fourteen seconds, on average.

Slightly longer in winter.

He had timed it often enough to know.

The apartment itself reflected the same quiet order that had gradually settled over his life. Shoes rested side by side on a narrow mat beside the front door. His backpack leaned upright against the wall, already packed for the day despite classes not beginning for another week. The coffee mug he’d used at breakfast sat upside down in the drying rack after being washed immediately. A small stack of biology textbooks occupied one end of the dining table, aligned so precisely that their corners formed a perfect square. Beside them rested a notebook filled with neatly labeled tabs marking different lecture subjects from the previous semester.

Not because he expected to need them that morning.

Simply because he preferred knowing where they were.

The refrigerator hummed softly behind him.

Outside, someone laughed.

A dog barked once before falling silent again.

The apartment had its own soundtrack, one Shane barely noticed anymore. The occasional creak of old pipes somewhere in the walls. The muted rumble of traffic filtering through closed windows. The steady, predictable hum of appliances doing exactly what they were designed to do.

Predictability wasn’t boring.

It was comfortable.

He crossed the room in socked feet, pausing briefly to straighten one of the dining chairs after realizing it sat slightly farther from the table than the others. Barely noticeable. Maybe two centimeters.

Enough to catch his attention every time he walked past it.

Once it was aligned, the room felt right again.

His laptop waited on the table where he’d left it charging overnight. The screen came to life the moment he opened it, displaying the familiar McGill login page before shifting to his student dashboard. A handful of notifications appeared in the corner of the screen—library reminders, departmental announcements, advertisements for orientation events he had no intention of attending.

He archived most of them without opening them.

Orientation had never interested him.

Neither had loud welcome events, icebreaker games, or mandatory “meet your classmates” activities designed around introducing strangers to one another. If he needed to know someone, he would meet them naturally. If he didn’t, spending an afternoon constructing marshmallow towers or sharing “fun facts” about himself wasn’t going to change that.

He clicked instead on his academic record.

Everything from the previous year appeared exactly as he’d left it.

Biology.

Chemistry.

Calculus.

Statistics.

Each course listed neatly beside its final grade, each one exactly where it belonged in the degree requirements. He read through them despite already knowing them by heart, not because he doubted the information but because seeing everything organized into categories brought a quiet sense of satisfaction.

There was comfort in progress you could measure.

Numbers made sense.

Requirements made sense.

Complete the necessary courses, fulfill the credit requirements, graduate.

Simple.

Or at least, it was supposed to be.

His eyes drifted farther down the page until they settled on a heading he hadn’t thought much about since meeting with his academic advisor at the end of spring semester.

Complementary Studies Requirement.

Still incomplete.

He frowned slightly.

Not because he’d forgotten about it.

Because he’d hoped looking at it again might somehow produce a different answer.

It didn’t.

One Fine Arts elective remained.

One course entirely unrelated to biology.

One requirement standing between him and a perfectly organized academic plan.

Shane rested his elbow on the table and stared at the screen for a long moment, already feeling the satisfying order of the morning shift ever so slightly off balance.

The semester hadn’t even begun.

And already, there was something to figure out.

He let out a slow breath through his nose and leaned back in his chair, his eyes lingering on the words a little longer than they needed to. It wasn’t as though the requirement had appeared overnight. His academic advisor had pointed it out months ago during their end-of-year meeting, highlighting the line with the end of a pen before reminding him that science students were expected to complete a handful of credits outside their faculty. At the time, it had seemed comfortably far away, something to think about after exams were over and summer had come and gone. Somehow, summer had come and gone anyway.

His fingers drifted absently across the edge of the table. The wood was smooth beneath his fingertips, worn slightly near the corner where he’d spent the better part of the previous year studying. There were faint marks left by textbooks being pushed aside, barely visible unless the morning light caught them at the right angle. He’d noticed them the day he’d moved in and had been careful ever since, though not careful enough to stop time from leaving its own small impressions.

The Fine Arts requirement wasn’t difficult. That wasn’t the problem. It was simply… undefined. Biology had a clear path. Every semester built on the one before it, each course unlocking another until the degree slowly assembled itself piece by piece. A Fine Arts elective could be almost anything, which meant there wasn’t an obvious choice. Too many possibilities made decisions harder, not easier.

He reached for the mug sitting upside down in the drying rack before remembering it was already clean. His hand paused awkwardly in midair for a moment before he lowered it again. Coffee wouldn’t solve the problem, and he wasn’t thirsty enough to justify making another cup. Instead, he stood and wandered to the window, more out of habit than purpose.

The street below had grown busier in the last half hour. A pair of students wrestled a plastic storage bin out of the trunk of a compact car while an older couple looked on with the kind of patient smiles reserved for parents pretending not to interfere. Someone wheeled a bicycle along the sidewalk with one flat tire bumping unevenly over the cracks in the pavement. Across the street, the café on the corner had dragged two small chalkboards onto the sidewalk advertising iced lattes, fresh croissants, and a student discount that would almost certainly disappear by October.

Shane watched for another few moments before returning to the table. Avoiding the decision wasn’t accomplishing anything. It still needed to be made, and it wasn’t going to become simpler by waiting another day.

He rested his hand on the trackpad and clicked on the incomplete requirement.

The page loaded into a list of eligible courses.

The catalogue filled the screen almost immediately. There were far more courses than he’d expected, each listed beneath the Faculty of Arts heading with a short description, the number of credits it carried, and a timetable link beside it. Shane let his eyes travel down the page without stopping, reading every title once before returning to the top. If he was going to spend an entire semester outside his own faculty, he might as well understand what his options actually were instead of choosing the first course that fit his schedule.

He opened the first one on the list. The description sounded straightforward enough until he reached the assessment section. Group performances. Attendance at evening rehearsals. Participation accounted for nearly a quarter of the final grade. He closed the tab without giving it much more thought. It wasn’t that he disliked working with other people; hockey depended on it. But if he had a choice, he’d rather not spend his free evenings memorizing lines for a class that had nothing to do with his degree.

The next few courses met a similar fate. Music Appreciation required several concerts throughout the semester. Creative Writing centered around peer workshops in which students critiqued one another’s work. Photography came with an equipment fee that made him instinctively glance at his budget spreadsheet, even though he already knew exactly how much room he had left after rent, groceries, textbooks, and hockey expenses. He quietly backed out of each page before opening another, narrowing the list one course at a time.

It wasn’t a particularly exciting process, but Shane didn’t mind that. Decisions were easier when they became smaller. Eliminate what didn’t work, compare what remained, and eventually there would only be one reasonable answer left. It was the same approach he’d used for choosing electives every semester, apartment hunting with his mother, even deciding which laptop to buy before starting university. Enough information eventually made the correct choice obvious.

He paused over another course description, reading it from beginning to end before opening the timetable in a separate tab. Tuesday mornings. He compared it with his own schedule, mentally laying each lecture, lab, and practice across the week. There wasn’t technically a conflict, but it left only fifteen minutes to cross campus before Cell Biology. That might have been enough on paper, though it assumed every class ended exactly on time and every traffic light cooperated. Experience had taught him not to rely on either.

He closed it.

Only then did his eyes settle on another title a little farther down the page.

ARTD 200 – Introduction to Drawing.

He read the name once, then clicked it open.

The course page was noticeably shorter than most of the others he’d opened. There were no lengthy prerequisite lists or recommendations for previous studio experience, only a brief overview explaining that the class introduced students to observational drawing through graphite, charcoal, ink, and other dry media. Emphasis would be placed on proportion, perspective, composition, and value rather than artistic ability. No prior experience was required.

He found himself reading the final sentence twice.

Observational drawing.

The phrase was familiar enough that it didn’t feel entirely out of place. Observation was something he understood. Biology depended on it. Every lab began by looking carefully before reaching a conclusion, whether that meant examining cells beneath a microscope or recording changes during an experiment. The tools were different, certainly, but the principle didn’t seem completely foreign.

He scrolled a little farther.

Students were expected to maintain a sketchbook throughout the semester and complete weekly drawing exercises outside of class. There would also be occasional critiques in which completed assignments were discussed as a group. Shane wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about that part. He had no interest in displaying amateur drawings to a room full of people who presumably knew what they were doing, though the description was careful to point out that the course was intended for beginners.

At least everyone would be starting somewhere.

He clicked the timetable and compared it against his own schedule for what felt like the fourth time that morning. Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. The class ended at four-twenty, leaving just under an hour before hockey practice. It wasn’t generous, but it was workable. The Fine Arts building sat on the opposite side of campus from the athletic complex, though the walk wasn’t unreasonable if he kept a steady pace. He’d probably have to pack an extra snack on those days. Maybe move lunch a little later.

His eyes drifted back to the course description.

Materials required.

He clicked the link beneath it.

A new page opened, listing supplies in tidy bullet points.

One hardcover sketchbook.

Graphite pencils in multiple grades.

A kneaded eraser.

A vinyl eraser.

Charcoal sticks.

Compressed charcoal.

A blending stump.

He frowned.

He knew what a pencil was.

The rest of the list became progressively less familiar. A kneaded eraser sounded less like an art supply and more like something that belonged in a bakery. He stared at the words for a moment, wondering what exactly someone was supposed to do with a stick of charcoal that couldn’t be accomplished with an ordinary pencil.

There was probably a reason.

He just didn’t know what it was yet.

He continued reading.

The list ended with a metal pencil sharpener, a portfolio case large enough to carry finished work, and a note reminding students not to purchase materials until after the first class, when the instructor would discuss alternatives and demonstrate the differences between each medium.

That answered one question, at least.

He closed the supply list and returned to the course description, rereading it from the beginning with slightly different eyes. The words hadn’t changed, but they seemed a little less abstract now. Before, “graphite” had simply meant pencils. Now it apparently meant several different kinds of pencils, each with a purpose he didn’t yet understand. If something as ordinary as an eraser came in multiple varieties, he could only assume there was more to drawing than he’d ever realized.

He wasn’t intimidated. Just uninformed.

There was a difference.

Curiosity won out over hesitation. He highlighted the words observational drawing, right-clicked, and opened a web search in a new tab. The results were almost immediate, filled with university pages, art school websites, and beginner guides explaining the same concept in slightly different ways. Most of them described it as the practice of drawing what was actually in front of you rather than what you thought you saw.

Shane read that sentence twice.

It sounded deceptively simple.

The more he thought about it, the more he suspected it wasn’t.

A biology lab demanded the same discipline. Students were taught not to record what they expected an experiment to show but what they actually observed, even if the results contradicted the hypothesis. Good science relied on accurate observation before interpretation. Perhaps drawing worked the same way. Different subject. Different tools. Similar principle.

That made considerably more sense than he’d expected.

He leaned back again, folding his arms as he studied the timetable one final time. Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Three credits. No prerequisites. The class fulfilled the requirement without forcing him to rearrange the rest of his semester, and nothing he’d read suggested he would be hopelessly out of his depth. If anything, it seemed designed for students exactly like him—people who knew almost nothing about art but were willing to learn.

He moved the cursor over the registration button but didn’t click immediately.

It wasn’t second thoughts.

It was habit.

Whenever a decision involved his schedule, he checked it one last time.

He opened his timetable again, tracing each day with his eyes from morning until evening. Biology lectures. Labs. Weight training. Hockey practice. Study blocks he’d penciled into the empty spaces weeks ago. He mentally followed Tuesday from the moment he woke up until he returned home that night, making sure nothing overlapped and nothing felt unnecessarily rushed.

Only when he’d reached the end of the week without finding a problem did he return to the registration page.

The cursor hovered over the blue button for a second.

Then he clicked.

Registration successful.

A small confirmation banner appeared at the top of the page before the course quietly settled into his timetable, occupying its place as though it had always belonged there.

Shane gave the schedule one last, satisfied look.

Everything fit again.

The unfinished requirement had disappeared.

His semester, at least on paper, finally made sense once more.

He closed the registration page and returned to his degree progress. The incomplete requirement had disappeared, replaced by a small green checkmark beside Complementary Studies. It was a minor change, barely noticeable among the rest of the page, but it brought with it a quiet sense of satisfaction. The degree plan looked complete again. There were still three years between him and graduation, countless lectures to attend, labs to complete, exams to survive, but at least the framework was there. Everything had its place again.

He lingered for another minute, clicking through the rest of his schedule more out of habit than necessity. Room numbers had begun appearing beside several of his lectures overnight, though a few still read To Be Announced. He made a mental note to check again before classes started. His biology lab had been moved to the Stewart Biology Building instead of the Bellini Complex, which would add another four or five minutes to his usual route across campus. Not enough to matter, but enough to remember.

Satisfied there were no other surprises waiting for him, he logged out of the student portal and closed the laptop. The apartment settled back into its familiar quiet almost immediately. Without the faint whir of the computer’s fan, the only sounds were the refrigerator cycling on again and the distant murmur of traffic filtering through the open window. It was amazing how much louder a room seemed after a screen went dark.

His eyes drifted toward the backpack waiting by the front door.

He’d packed it the night before, despite not technically needing anything for another week. Inside were a notebook, a planner, a water bottle, a change of clothes for practice, a small container of almonds, and the paperback novel he’d been slowly making his way through over the summer. The drawing class would require a few additions eventually, but that could wait until after the first lecture. There was no point buying supplies before he knew exactly what he needed.

He crossed the apartment and unzipped the front pocket anyway.

The planner was still there.

Pens in their elastic loop.

Wallet.

Student ID.

He checked each item almost automatically before zipping the bag shut again. It wasn’t that he expected something to be missing. He simply preferred confirming it now rather than discovering a problem halfway across campus.

Only then did he glance at the clock.

7:56.

Practice wasn’t until later that morning, but he’d planned to arrive early. Most of the team would probably trickle into the athletic centre throughout the next hour, reclaiming lockers they’d left untouched over the summer, comparing vacation stories, complaining about off-season conditioning, pretending they hadn’t missed the ice quite as much as they actually had.

Shane wasn’t especially interested in any of that.

He was interested in skating again.

The equipment bag hanging beside the front door was noticeably heavier than his backpack. He slung it over one shoulder, picked up his backpack with the other hand, and took a quick look around the apartment before leaving. It wasn’t a conscious ritual anymore. He simply liked knowing everything had been left the way he expected to find it later. The curtains were open. The dishes were clean. The laptop sat closed on the dining table with its charger coiled neatly beside it. Satisfied, he locked the door behind him and gave the handle a brief tug to make sure it had caught before heading downstairs.

The building’s stairwell smelled faintly of old paint and laundry detergent. Someone on the second floor had left a pair of running shoes outside their apartment overnight, and a folded newspaper rested untouched outside another door farther down the hall. By the time Shane stepped onto the sidewalk, the coolness of the morning had begun to give way to late summer warmth. The air still carried enough of a breeze to make the walk comfortable, though the forecast promised another humid afternoon before the season finally began to turn.

The route to campus had become so familiar over the past year that he rarely needed to think about it anymore. He crossed at the same intersection he always used, passed the small bakery that was already displaying trays of croissants behind fogged windows, and continued east toward McGill. A delivery truck idled outside a convenience store while an employee stacked crates of bottled water onto a handcart, pausing every so often to greet passing customers in French. Shane understood enough to follow the exchange, though he still answered in English whenever someone spoke to him.

As the university came into view, the city gradually gave way to campus. The stone gates stood open as they always did, welcoming a steady stream of students carrying duffel bags, moving boxes, backpacks, and cardboard coffee trays. Orientation volunteers in bright red shirts had already claimed their places near the entrance, waving cheerfully at anyone who made eye contact. A folding table beside them overflowed with campus maps, brochures, and branded water bottles waiting to be handed out.

One volunteer smiled as Shane approached.

“Morning! First year?”

Shane slowed just enough to answer.

“No, sorry!”

The volunteer laughed good-naturedly, as though he’d heard the same response several times already. “Worth asking. Have a good semester.”

“Thanks, you too.”

The exchange lasted less than ten seconds, but by the time Shane continued walking, another group of bewildered students had already gathered around the table asking for directions. He glanced briefly at the map one of them was holding before looking away again. Twelve months ago he might have needed one himself. Now he could picture most of campus without thinking, each building linked to the next by the routes he’d walked often enough to memorize.

The path curved gently toward the centre of campus, where patches of green lawn broke up the limestone buildings that had made McGill instantly recognizable even before he’d accepted his offer of admission. Students had already claimed a few of the benches despite the early hour. Some sat with headphones on and laptops balanced across their knees, while others simply enjoyed the quiet before lectures, assignments, and deadlines reclaimed the semester. For another week, the campus still belonged somewhere between summer and autumn, caught in that brief stretch of time where possibility outweighed responsibility.

Shane adjusted the strap of his equipment bag and continued toward the ARC.

The Athletics and Recreation Centre was already beginning to fill by the time Shane stepped inside. The cool air carried the familiar scent of sharpened skate blades, rubber flooring, and coffee that had long since gone lukewarm. Somewhere deeper in the building, the dull thud of weights meeting rubber mats echoed through the fitness centre, punctuated every so often by laughter that bounced off the high ceilings before fading into the steady hum of conversation. It had been nearly three months since the season ended, yet the building felt exactly the same. There was something reassuring about that.

He adjusted the strap of his equipment bag and made his way toward the locker rooms, nodding politely to a few familiar faces as he passed. Not everyone played hockey. Some belonged to the swim team, others to basketball, volleyball, or track, but after a year on campus enough people recognized one another to exchange a greeting without needing to stop for a conversation.

The hallway outside the locker room was noticeably quieter than it would be in another hour. Someone had propped the door open with a roll of athletic tape, allowing the sound of music drifting from inside to spill into the corridor. It wasn’t especially loud yet. Just enough to suggest someone had arrived before him.

Shane stepped inside.

Rows of metal lockers lined both walls, interrupted only by long benches that had acquired their fair share of scratches, dents, and carved initials over the years. Equipment bags lay scattered across the floor in various stages of being unpacked, while sticks leaned against lockers in untidy clusters that would have irritated him if they had been left anywhere else. This was one of the few places where disorder seemed almost expected.

“Look who finally decided to come back.”

Shane glanced over his shoulder.

Jordan Mercer was sitting on one of the benches, halfway through rewrapping the blade of his stick with fresh black tape. He’d cut his hair over the summer, though only enough that it took Shane a second to notice what looked different about him.

“I was here last season,” Shane replied, setting his bag beside his locker.

Jordan snorted. “You know what I mean.”

“I do.”

“You could’ve at least pretended you missed us.”

Shane considered the suggestion while spinning the combination lock open.

“I missed skating.”

Jordan laughed.

“Yeah,” he said. “That sounds more like you.”

Shane couldn’t argue with that. He hadn’t spent much of the summer thinking about team dinners or bus rides or the constant noise of a full locker room. He had missed the rhythm of practices, though. The scrape of steel across fresh ice. The predictable sequence of warm-ups before every session. The quiet concentration that settled over him the moment he stepped onto the rink.

He opened his locker and paused.

Everything was exactly where he’d left it at the end of the previous season.

His spare stick tape sat on the top shelf beside a tin of skate wax. A pair of running shoes rested neatly underneath the bench, left behind after the final workout before summer break because he hadn’t needed them at home. Even the schedule from last season remained folded into the corner of the locker door, held in place by a magnet shaped like the McGill crest.

He reached up and removed it without really thinking.

Last season was over.

There wasn’t much point holding onto an old schedule when a new one was about to begin.

He smoothed the empty corner of the locker door with his thumb before letting it swing shut.

The magnet remained where it was, now holding nothing at all.

The locker door settled into place with a soft metallic click.

Shane lingered there for another moment, his fingertips still resting against the cool metal before he reached into his equipment bag. The routine returned almost immediately, familiar enough that he rarely needed to think about it anymore. His helmet came out first, followed by his gloves and shoulder pads, each finding the place they had occupied for most of the previous season. He draped his practice jersey carefully across the bench, smoothing one sleeve where it had folded in transit before setting his skates beneath it. By the time everything was unpacked, very little remained inside the bag beyond a spare roll of tape, an extra pair of socks, and a water bottle that had been filled before he’d left the apartment. Nothing about the process was particularly deliberate anymore. His hands simply knew where everything belonged.

When he straightened, the locker room looked subtly different than it had only a few minutes earlier. Empty stretches of bench had begun to disappear beneath helmets, gloves, and half-unpacked gear, while the narrow aisles between lockers grew busier as more players wandered in carrying oversized equipment bags over one shoulder. The room never became crowded all at once. It filled gradually, each arrival adding another quiet layer until the stillness he’d walked into had dissolved almost without notice. Somewhere near the far wall, an equipment bag landed with a heavy thud. A zipper ran the length of another before stopping abruptly. The familiar rip of athletic tape carried briefly through the room, followed by the hollow clang of a locker door swinging shut. None of the sounds stood out on their own. Together, they formed a rhythm that belonged as much to hockey as the scrape of skates against fresh ice.

Across the aisle, Hayden had already settled into his own routine. His locker looked almost as orderly as Shane’s, every piece of equipment unpacked before he’d even finished the last of his coffee. The empty cup now rested neatly inside the mesh pocket on the side of his bag while he sat with one skate balanced across his knee, checking the laces for signs of wear before threading them back through the top eyelets. A few lockers farther down, JJ appeared to have taken the opposite approach. His bag lay open on the floor with most of its contents scattered across the bench around him, one glove resting upside down inside his helmet while the other had somehow disappeared entirely. He paused every few seconds to move a piece of equipment aside, searching with complete confidence through a mess that seemed to make sense only to him. Harris watched the process with poorly concealed amusement from the neighboring locker but offered no help, apparently content to see how long it would take before JJ discovered the missing glove was tucked beneath his own practice jersey.

Near the end of the row, Cliff remained exactly where Shane had first seen him, patiently wrapping another strip of black tape around the blade of his stick. He worked with the same measured precision every time, smoothing each overlap with his thumb before continuing to the next, never rushing the process no matter how many people were talking around him. Beside him, Luca had finally won his long-running battle with the impossible knot in one skate lace and now sat leaning forward to lace both skates properly, though not before holding the freed lace up in quiet triumph for Wyatt to see. Wyatt responded with a brief shake of his head and an amused smile before returning to tightening the tape around the knob of his own stick, apparently unimpressed by a victory over a piece of string.

Shane found himself watching the room without meaning to.

It wasn’t curiosity. It was habit.

A captain couldn’t help noticing the small things. Which sticks had been replaced over the summer. Which gloves looked newer than the ones players had worn at the end of last season. The handful of fresh practice jerseys folded on a shelf near the equipment room, waiting for the incoming first-years who would join them after orientation. Hayden had trimmed his beard shorter than he usually kept it. Jordan’s haircut made him look younger from a distance. JJ was still somehow convinced he functioned better surrounded by chaos than order. None of it mattered very much on its own, yet together the details formed a picture that felt quietly reassuring.

Summer ended.

People came back. 

Some things changed. 

Most didn’t.

Practice was still nearly twenty minutes away.

No one seemed especially concerned about the time. There were no coaches moving through the room yet, no whiteboard covered in drills, no urgency beyond the familiar process of getting ready to skate again. Conversations drifted easily from one side of the room to the other before fading into the background. Harris asked Wyatt something about fantasy football. Luca interrupted to insist he’d already forgotten half his offseason workouts. Hayden laughed at something Jordan muttered too quietly for Shane to hear. The words themselves mattered less than the ease with which they were spoken. Three months apart had left surprisingly little distance between any of them.

Shane reached for the roll of tape inside his locker and rested the shaft of his stick across his knees.

As he tore off the first strip, measured footsteps echoed down the hallway outside.

The conversation nearest the doorway continued uninterrupted as a shadow crossed briefly over the floor beyond the open entrance, followed a heartbeat later by the familiar silhouette of another equipment bag swinging through the doorway.

Ilya Rozanov stepped into the locker room.

Ilya nudged the door shut with his shoulder before dropping his equipment bag beside his locker. The dull thump barely interrupted the conversations already moving through the room.

“You’re late,” Cliff called without looking up from the stick he was still taping.

“I’m not late,” Ilya replied, shrugging his backpack off one shoulder. “You are early.”

“There is a difference.”

“Maybe to you.”

Cliff’s mouth twitched into something that almost qualified as a smile.

Shane watched Ilya unlock his locker with the same effortless efficiency he seemed to bring to everything on the ice. Nothing about him suggested he’d rushed to get there. His dark training shirt was creased where the strap of his equipment bag had rested across one shoulder, and his hair still looked slightly damp, as though he’d showered shortly before leaving home. He set his helmet onto the top shelf, leaned his stick against the locker, and started unpacking without a wasted movement.

“Vacation finally over?” Jordan asked.

Ilya looked over. “Vacation was over three weeks ago.”

“You’ve been hiding, then.”

A faint smirk tugged at one corner of Ilya’s mouth.

“I was enjoying peace.”

A few of the guys  laughed.

Hayden didn’t.

He zipped his equipment bag shut a little harder than necessary before standing to adjust one shoulder pad beneath his practice jersey. It was such a small movement that most people probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it.

Shane noticed. So did Cliff, judging by the brief glance he sent Hayden’s way before returning to his stick.

The silence lasted only a heartbeat.

JJ finally pulled his missing glove from beneath his practice jersey and held it overhead.

“See? I knew it was there.”

Harris looked at him flatly. “You checked there twice.”

“I was eliminating possibilities.”

“That’s not how that works.”

“Worked this time.”

The room dissolved into laughter again.

Ilya lowered himself onto the bench with the easy familiarity of someone who had occupied the same locker for long enough that he no longer had to think about where anything belonged. His equipment bag rested open at his feet while he bent to untie the laces of his running shoes, tugging each knot loose with practiced fingers before sliding the shoes beneath the bench. One skate replaced them almost immediately. He rested the boot across his knee and began threading the lace through the top eyelets, his movements unhurried despite the growing noise around him.

The conversations filling the locker room rose and fell in overlapping waves. Somewhere behind Shane, a locker door slammed shut hard enough to rattle the row beside it before someone muttered an absent apology. JJ was still talking about something nobody else seemed particularly invested in, though that rarely discouraged him. Cliff continued wrapping fresh tape around the blade of his stick, smoothing each overlap with his thumb before beginning the next as if the entire process required complete concentration.

“How was Russia?”

Harris hadn’t raised his voice much, but it carried naturally through the room.

Ilya didn’t immediately answer.

He tightened one skate lace, gave it an experimental tug, then threaded the opposite end through the final eyelet before looking up.

“Fine.”

That appeared to satisfy him. It did not satisfy Harris.

“‘Fine’?” he repeated with an exaggerated look of disappointment. “That’s the whole report?”

Ilya shrugged one shoulder.

“What report?”

“The one where you disappear for three months and come back with at least one interesting story.”

“I have stories.”

Harris leaned back against his locker.

“So tell one.”

Ilya pulled the lace tight enough for the leather around the ankle of the skate to crease before beginning the first knot.

“They are not about vacation.”

Jordan let out a quiet laugh from farther down the row.

“Fair enough.”

The conversation might have ended there if Harris had been willing to let it. Unfortunately for Ilya, curiosity had already taken over.

“Okay,” Harris said, shifting his elbows onto his knees. “Then answer me this.”

He hesitated just long enough to gather everyone’s attention.

“Was it freezing?”

Ilya stopped tying his skate.

For the first time since sitting down, he looked genuinely puzzled.

“Freezing?”

“You know…” Harris gestured vaguely through the air. “…Russia.”

The gesture explained absolutely nothing.

Jordan grinned.

“I know exactly what he means.”

“I don’t,” Ilya said.

“You’ve got snow…” Harris continued, still waving one hand as though he could physically illustrate the concept. “Ice. Blizzards. Those giant furry hats. That kind of thing.”

A faint smile appeared at the corner of Ilya’s mouth.

“So…”

“…was it cold?”

He held Harris’s gaze for another second before giving a small shake of his head.

“No.”

The answer arrived so simply that Harris frowned.

“No?”

“No.”

Silence lingered just long enough for JJ to glance up from the pile of equipment surrounding him.

“I thought Russia was cold all the time.”

“It is very big country,” Ilya replied, beginning on the second skate. “You know this, yes?”

“I mean…” JJ admitted, “…I know it’s big.”

“Very big.”

He tightened another lace.

“We also have summer.”

Jordan laughed first.

“Sure,” he said. “A Russian summer.”

Ilya looked over.

“What does that mean?”

Jordan spread his hands.

“I don’t know. Like… twenty degrees? Twenty-two if you’re lucky?”

Another smile tugged briefly across Ilya’s face before disappearing again.

“When I left Krasnodar, it was thirty-four.”

The room quieted for a beat. Even Hayden looked up.

“Thirty-four?” Harris repeated.

“Celsius.”

“No, I got that part.”

“I honestly didn’t know it got that hot,” JJ admitted.

“Most people don’t.”

Ilya crossed one lace over the other before pulling the knot snug.

“They think Russia is only snow.” He paused, glancing between them with the same perfectly straight expression. “Or think we ride bears in snow.”

Jordan pointed immediately.

“I never said bears.”

“You were thinking bears.”

“I absolutely wasn’t.”

“Maybe little bit.”

Laughter rolled through the locker room.

Even Cliff’s concentration finally broke. He looked up from his stick with the faintest smile before shaking his head once and returning to the last strip of tape.

Ilya continued as though nothing particularly funny had been said.

“Russia is bigger than Canada.” He rested his elbows loosely on his knees while tightening the final knot. “Different regions have different climates. Siberia is very cold. The south is not. Krasnodar gets hot enough that nobody wants to skate outside in August.”

JJ blinked.

“I feel like I should’ve known that.”

“You probably should have.”

“I barely know Canadian geography.”

“Yes,” Ilya said evenly. “This has become obvious.”

Another burst of laughter swept through the room.

Shane found himself smiling despite keeping his attention on the fresh tape wrapped around the knob of his stick. Ilya never chased laughs the way JJ did. He didn’t tell stories with dramatic gestures or exaggerated voices. Most of the time he sounded completely serious, even when he wasn’t. Somehow, that only made people laugh harder.

The laughter spread easily through the locker room, echoing softly off rows of dented metal lockers before blending back into the constant rhythm of players getting ready. Somewhere near the doorway a locker slammed shut with a metallic bang. Someone else tore a strip of fresh tape from a roll, the sharp rip cutting briefly through the conversations before disappearing beneath the steady scrape of skate guards against the rubber flooring.

The conversation unraveled on its own, as conversations usually did in a room full of hockey players. Nobody formally ended it, and nobody seemed interested in finding another joke once the laughter had passed. It simply fractured into smaller exchanges that stayed close to the lockers they belonged to. Jordan was already arguing with Harris about something Shane only caught pieces of as he turned back toward his own stall. JJ had somehow wandered into an entirely different discussion with Luca, gesturing animatedly with one glove while Luca listened with the patient expression of someone who had long ago accepted that interrupting JJ was pointless. A few lockers farther down, Cliff leaned toward Ilya and spoke quietly enough that his words disappeared beneath the steady murmur filling the room. Ilya answered just as softly, fastening the last buckle on his shoulder pads without ever pausing his movements. Whatever had been said earned nothing more than a brief nod from Cliff before both of them returned to getting dressed, comfortable enough in each other’s company that neither seemed to feel any pressure to keep the conversation going.

Shane reached for his own jersey. The maroon fabric slipped easily over the bulk of his shoulder pads, catching for only a moment against one elbow before settling into place. He tugged the sleeves down over his forearms, smoothed a wrinkle across his chest almost absentmindedly, then reached behind his neck to straighten the collar where it had folded beneath the padding. The routine required almost no thought anymore. After nearly two decades of hockey, his hands knew where every strap belonged, how tightly each buckle should sit, and exactly how much give he preferred in the cuffs of his gloves before they felt right. By the time he’d pulled them on and wrapped both hands around his stick, the stiffness left behind by three months away had already begun to disappear.

Around him, the locker room had quietly transformed. When he’d first walked in, equipment bags had been sprawled open beneath nearly every locker, coffee cups balanced carelessly on benches while everyone talked over one another after a summer apart. Now the bags had disappeared beneath the benches, jerseys covered shoulder pads, helmets rested beneath waiting arms instead of hanging from hooks, and conversations had settled into the lower, more focused hum that always preceded practice. The metallic click of locker doors, the sharp rip of fresh tape, and the scrape of skate guards against the rubber floor gradually replaced the easy chatter of reunion. A whistle sounded somewhere out in the hallway—one of the trainers rather than Coach Wiebe—but it was enough to nudge the room forward. Players stood without being asked, reaching automatically for helmets, water bottles, and sticks as conversations drifted to a natural close. There was no announcement and no urgency. After years of following the same routine, nobody needed either. The walk from the locker room to the ice had become as familiar as lacing their skates, and before Shane fully realized it, the room had begun emptying around him.

Jordan was the first into the aisle, spinning his stick once in his gloved hands before glancing over his shoulder at JJ. “Helmet.”

JJ froze mid-step, stared down at his empty hands, then looked back toward his locker with a theatrical sigh that drew a few quiet chuckles from the players nearest him. “I was testing you.”

“You failed,” Harris called after him.

“I wasn’t the one taking the test.”

“You definitely were.”

Shaking his head, JJ doubled back to retrieve it, still muttering something about unfair working conditions as he tucked the helmet beneath his arm and hurried to catch up. Nobody paid much attention after that. It was the sort of thing that happened every first practice. Someone forgot a glove, someone else left tape behind, another realized they’d packed the wrong visor. The details changed from year to year, but the rhythm never really did.

Shane lingered for only another moment, his gaze moving automatically across the inside of his locker. Helmet. Water bottle. Tape. Nothing left behind. Satisfied, he swung the door closed until the latch caught with a familiar metallic click before turning to follow the rest of the team into the hallway. The temperature dropped almost immediately. Cool air drifted toward them from the rink, carrying with it the unmistakable smell of fresh ice, sharpened steel, and the faint exhaust left behind by the resurfacer. Ahead, the steady murmur of voices grew quieter with every step, replaced by the hollow crack of pucks striking the boards and the distant hiss of skates cutting lazy arcs across newly resurfaced ice. Through the narrow windows set into the heavy rink doors, Shane caught his first glimpse of the empty sheet stretching beneath bright arena lights, Coach Wiebe already waiting at the boards with a clipboard tucked beneath one arm while one of the assistants scattered pucks across the neutral zone. Summer had ended weeks ago on the calendar, but it wasn’t until Shane rested his hand against the push bar and stepped out onto the rubber leading to the bench that it truly felt over.

The cold met him the moment he stepped beyond the bench door.

It settled against the exposed skin around his neck and wrists, sharp enough to sting for only a second before familiarity replaced the sensation altogether. The rink looked different without spectators. The empty stands climbed into shadow beneath the bright arena lights, while the freshly resurfaced ice reflected the ceiling in long, wavering streaks that disappeared beneath the first shallow skate marks of the morning. A bucket of pucks rested beside the boards near the blue line, and Coach Wiebe stood several feet away with a clipboard tucked beneath one arm, speaking quietly with one of the assistant coaches before either of them acknowledged the players filing onto the ice.

Shane stepped carefully over the boards and let his blades settle against the surface. Even standing still felt different after three months away. The ice gave just enough beneath the edges of his skates to remind him why no roller rink or off-season training session had ever quite been enough. He pushed off once, then again, gliding the length of the neutral zone with the easy rhythm his body had carried for most of his life. The stiffness he’d felt while dressing had already begun to disappear, replaced by the quiet certainty that always arrived somewhere between the first stride and the second.

Around him, the team spread naturally across the sheet. There was no instruction yet, only habit. Cliff settled near one faceoff circle, flipping pucks onto his blade before sending controlled wrist shots toward the empty net. Hayden skated hard enough to leave thin sprays of ice curling behind each stop, while JJ immediately challenged Harris to see who could hit the crossbar first despite neither of them having warmed up properly.

Jordan laughed after missing by nearly a foot.

“Good start.”

“I was calibrating,” JJ called back.

“You were aiming for Saskatchewan.”

A puck skipped harmlessly into the corner.

“I said I was calibrating.”

The exchange dissolved into a chorus of groans before anyone could answer.

Shane smiled to himself and circled back toward center ice.

Movement above the glass caught his eye.

A young woman stood near the front row of the otherwise empty stands, one elbow resting against the railing as she watched practice begin. She looked close to their age, dressed casually in jeans and an oversized McGill sweatshirt with an iced coffee balanced in one hand. She wasn’t watching the team.

She was watching Ilya.

As though sensing it, Ilya glanced toward the stands while coasting through the neutral zone. His expression barely changed. He lifted two fingers from the top of his stick in a gesture so small Shane almost missed it before turning his attention back to the puck at his feet. The woman smiled. 

Shane looked away. He had barely completed another lap before Jordan drifted alongside him. “Three guesses,” Jordan said quietly, nodding toward the stands.

Shane followed the gesture without slowing.

“The girl?”

Jordan snorted.

“There’s always a girl.”

Before Shane could answer, JJ skated backward into the conversation, nearly clipping Hayden in the process.

“Is that the one from engineering?”

Jordan shook his head.

“No.”

“The psychology one?”

“No.”

“The journalism one?”

“No.”

JJ frowned.

“…How do you know there are this many?”

“I have eyes.”

JJ looked back toward the stands.

“I’ve officially lost track.”

Several yards away, Cliff collected a loose puck and sent it cleanly into the top corner of the empty net without ever looking up.

“I told you that would happen eventually,” he said.

Ilya trapped another puck against the blade of his stick.

“You spend too much time talking about my life.”

“You make it very easy.” Jordan said with a shit eating grin on his face.

Ilya shrugged, completely unbothered.

“They are adults.”

“That’s your defense?”

“I don’t think I need one.”

“No,” he admitted. “You really don’t.” Jordan laughed. 

Shane listened without joining in.

He wasn’t especially interested in whoever happened to be watching practice that morning. College athletes attracted attention. Hockey players probably more than most. Ilya, in particular, had a way of carrying himself that people noticed long before he ever spoke.

It didn’t seem to affect him one way or the other.

He simply kept skating, the puck moving with him as though it belonged there, never more than a few inches from the blade of his stick. Even during an easy warm-up, there was something unusually economical about the way he moved. Nothing looked forced. Every stride covered more ice than it seemed it should, every turn finished exactly where he intended it to.

Coach Wiebe finally snapped his clipboard shut.

“Alright,” he called, his voice carrying effortlessly across the rink. “Enough sightseeing. Circle up.”

The easy conversations disappeared almost instantly. Sticks stopped tapping pucks. Players drifted toward center ice without needing to be asked twice.

Practice had begun.

The first whistle sent the team into motion almost immediately, years of repetition taking over where conscious thought left off. Warm-up laps dissolved into edge work, skates carving deep crescents into the fresh sheet of ice as the quiet morning gave way to the familiar sounds of practice. Steel bit cleanly against the surface. Pucks clattered against the boards. Coach Wiebe’s whistle cut through the arena at measured intervals, resetting one drill before another began.

By the second rotation, the stiffness Shane had carried onto the ice was gone.

His legs remembered long before his mind did. Crossovers felt effortless, each stride settling into the rhythm he’d spent most of his life chasing. The burn in his lungs returned gradually, familiar enough that he barely noticed it until sweat had begun collecting beneath the padding along his shoulders. Summer training could build endurance and strength, but nothing ever replicated the feeling of skating. There was always an adjustment during the first practice back, a brief conversation between muscle memory and rust, and every September he found himself relieved that the former always won.

Coach kept them moving.

Passing drills flowed into transition work before giving way to controlled breakouts through the neutral zone. The pace never slowed enough for conversation, only the occasional call echoing across the rink.

“Boards.”

“Middle.”

“Again.”

The team answered instinctively, pucks moving tape-to-tape with increasing precision as the morning wore on. Missed passes became less frequent. Timing returned. Lines tightened. The long summer slowly disappeared beneath the routine they’d built together over the past year.

Shane had always enjoyed practices like this more than most people seemed to. Games carried an excitement that couldn’t be replicated, but practice was where everything was refined. Every drill had a purpose. Every repetition solved a problem before it had the chance to appear under arena lights on Friday night. He liked the predictability of it—the small adjustments, the constant search for cleaner edges, quicker decisions, better positioning.

Coach rarely raised his voice.

He didn’t need to.

A single sharp whistle was enough to send everyone back to the starting line.

As the drills became more demanding, the differences between players began to show. Hayden attacked every race as though losing was personally offensive, driving hard through each stride even when the outcome no longer mattered. Cliff remained almost impossibly composed, his skating economical, every movement deliberate rather than flashy. JJ, despite never missing an opportunity to complain under his breath between rotations, somehow managed to keep pace with everyone else anyway.

Shane found himself opposite Ilya more often than not.

Not intentionally.

The rotations simply worked out that way.

During one passing sequence, the puck arrived from Ilya’s stick with enough speed to thud sharply against Shane’s blade, perfectly flat despite the distance between them. Shane redirected it in one motion toward the next player in line before circling back into position. The following pass came exactly the same—firm, accurate, arriving precisely where it needed to be instead of where Shane happened to be standing.

He appreciated players who made the game simpler.

Ilya had always been one of them.

Nothing he did looked rushed. There were no unnecessary stickhandles or dramatic bursts of speed meant to impress anyone watching from the stands. Every decision seemed to happen half a second before everyone else’s, leaving him with more space than should have existed. It wasn’t flashy hockey.

It was efficient.

Shane respected that.

Coach’s whistle sounded again, breaking the drill before motioning them toward the opposite end of the rink.

No one complained.

They simply turned and skated.

The rest of practice settled into the steady rhythm that always seemed to make time disappear.

One drill flowed seamlessly into the next until the individual repetitions became almost impossible to distinguish. Controlled breakouts gave way to odd-man rushes, rushes dissolved into board battles, and before long the team was circling back to another sequence that demanded the same quick decisions through slightly different patterns. Coach Wiebe rarely needed more than a whistle or a single instruction to redirect them. The players understood what was expected long before he had to explain it.

As the morning wore on, the ice slowly lost the pristine appearance it had carried at the beginning of practice. Fresh skate marks crisscrossed every zone, shallow grooves catching the overhead lights whenever someone turned sharply. Snow gathered along the boards where repeated stops had thrown up sprays of ice, while dozens of stray pucks gradually collected near the benches until one of the assistants swept them back into play with the blade of his stick.

Fatigue settled in quietly.

It announced itself in heavier legs during the final conditioning drills, in the damp weight of sweat beneath shoulder pads, and in the deeper breaths players drew between whistles. Nobody complained. They had all expected the first practice back to hurt a little. Summer workouts kept them in shape, but they could never quite recreate the demands of skating at full speed for two hours.

Coach remained characteristically economical with his praise.

A clean breakout earned little more than a brief nod before the next group stepped onto the ice. Mistakes were corrected quickly and without fanfare.

“Again.”

The players reset.

Another whistle.

Another repetition.

Shane hardly noticed the passing of time until his legs began to feel pleasantly heavy beneath him. There was a certain satisfaction in that kind of exhaustion, one that couldn’t be earned sitting behind a desk or inside a lecture hall. Every muscle ached with purpose. His breathing came harder than it had an hour earlier, but his movements remained instinctive, guided less by conscious thought than by years of repetition.

It reminded him why he’d missed hockey. Not the games, although he loved those too. This. The work that happened long before anyone filled the stands.

Coach’s whistle echoed sharply through the arena.

Three quick blasts.

The movement on the ice slowed almost at once.

Players coasted another few metres before easing to a stop, several resting their forearms across the tops of their sticks as they caught their breath. Steam drifted faintly from damp jerseys into the cold air while the only sounds for a few moments were steady breathing, skates carving lazy arcs across scarred ice, and the distant hum of the arena’s ventilation system.

Coach gathered them briefly at centre ice.

“Good first day,” he said, looking around the circle. “Classes start next week. Don’t wait until midterms to remember you’re students.”

A few tired smiles appeared around the group.

“We’ve got meetings tomorrow morning before practice. Same time as always. Captains, stay behind for a minute after everyone’s off.”

He looked around once more before giving a short nod.

“That’s all.”

Almost immediately, the tension that had carried them through practice dissolved. Sticks tapped lightly against the ice as players turned toward the benches, conversations beginning again before the first skate had even reached the boards.

Players peeled away toward the benches in loose groups, conversations already replacing the sharp focus that had carried them through the morning. Helmets were tucked beneath arms, sticks balanced across shoulders, and skate guards clicked softly against the rubber flooring as everyone filtered through the bench door.

Shane remained where he was.

Not for long.

Coach Wiebe beckoned him and Ilya over with a small wave of his clipboard before the rest of the team had fully disappeared into the hallway. The conversation lasted only a few minutes. Most of it was familiar territory. Practice schedules for the coming weeks. Leadership meetings before classes resumed. A reminder that the first-years would be joining them after orientation and that helping them settle into the team fell as much to the captains as it did the coaching staff.

Nothing about it came as a surprise.

They had already spent a semester learning what the letters stitched onto their jerseys actually meant. This was simply the next season beginning where the last one had ended.

Coach dismissed them with a nod.

The arena had grown noticeably quieter.

Only a handful of pucks remained scattered across the ice while one of the assistant coaches pushed them into a pile with the blade of his stick. The resurfacer waited beyond the open gate at the far end of the rink, its engine idling softly in anticipation of reclaiming the sheet.

Shane stepped over the boards, his skates thudding dully against the rubber matting.

The warmth of the hallway met him almost immediately.

Behind him, Ilya followed a moment later, neither of them speaking as they made their way back toward the locker room. There was no awkwardness in the silence. After sharing enough practices, bus rides, and road trips, silence had become as ordinary as conversation.

The voices waiting beyond the locker room door grew louder with every step.

Practice was over.

The rest of the day was only just beginning.

The locker room had changed again by the time they returned.

The careful order that had existed before practice had long since disappeared beneath damp towels, half-open equipment bags, and jerseys draped over locker doors to dry. Steam drifted steadily through the open doorway leading toward the showers, carrying with it the familiar scent of soap, shampoo, and melting ice that seemed to belong to every hockey locker room Shane had ever known. Conversations overlapped comfortably from one end of the room to the other, quieter now than they had been before stepping onto the ice, softened by the pleasant exhaustion that always followed the first practice back.

Someone laughed near the showers. Another locker door clanged shut. A roll of athletic tape bounced once across a bench before its owner caught it without looking.

Shane returned to his locker and began removing his equipment.

The routine unfolded almost as naturally as putting it on had earlier that morning. Gloves first. Then his helmet, placed carefully on the top shelf while he loosened the straps securing his shoulder pads. His elbow pads followed, disappearing neatly into his equipment bag before he bent to undo the laces of his skates. The leather gave slightly beneath his fingers, still warm from practice despite the cold of the rink.

Around him, players moved through their own routines without much thought.

Several disappeared toward the showers carrying towels over one shoulder while others lingered beside their lockers, talking through plans for the rest of the afternoon as they packed away equipment. JJ was attempting to convince Harris that the conditioning drills had been noticeably longer than Coach claimed they were every year, though Harris seemed unconvinced.

“They were,” JJ insisted.

“They weren’t.”

“They definitely were.”

“You say that every September.”

“Because it’s true every September.”

Jordan laughed as he pulled his practice jersey over his head. “No,” he said. “You’re just older every September.”

A chorus of amused groans followed, accompanied by a crumpled towel landing squarely against Jordan’s shoulder.

Shane smiled faintly to himself as he wiped the moisture from the blades of his skates before sliding the guards into place. He set them carefully inside his bag beside his helmet, checked that his water bottle had been emptied, then zipped one compartment closed before moving on to the next.

Across the room, Jordan paused while pulling a clean T-shirt over his head.

He glanced toward Ilya’s locker.

“You staying again?”

Ilya looked up briefly from where he was rearranging something inside his equipment bag.

“Da.”

Jordan nodded once, as though the answer had been exactly what he’d expected.

“Alright.”

He slung his duffel bag over one shoulder.

“See you tomorrow.”

“You too.”

That was the end of it.

Jordan headed for the door without another word, several others falling into step behind him as conversations continued around whatever plans the afternoon still held. Shane barely gave the exchange another thought. If anything, he assumed Ilya had forgotten to pack something or had volunteered to help one of the equipment staff. Whatever the reason, it clearly wasn’t unusual enough for anyone else to question it.

He zipped the last compartment of his bag closed, swung it over one shoulder, and took one final glance inside his locker. Empty. Exactly as it should be. 

With a soft metallic click, he closed the locker door and followed the others out into the hallway.

The afternoon had warmed noticeably while they had been inside.

By the time Shane stepped out of the Athletics and Recreation Centre, the last traces of the morning chill had disappeared beneath the late-August sun. The breeze that drifted across campus carried just enough warmth to soften the lingering cold still clinging to his skin after leaving the rink. Behind him, small groups of teammates gradually split off in different directions, conversations continuing as naturally as though practice had never really ended.

“See you tomorrow.”

“Don’t be late.”

“I wasn’t late today.”

A few quiet laughs followed before the voices drifted apart with the people who’d spoken them.

Shane adjusted the strap of his equipment bag and started toward the gates without much thought. The familiar weight rested comfortably against his shoulder, heavier than it had been that morning now that damp equipment filled the compartments. His legs carried the pleasant heaviness that always followed a good practice—not exhaustion exactly, but the quiet reminder that he’d spent the last two hours doing something worthwhile.

Campus had grown busier while they were on the ice.

Students crossed the lower field carrying cardboard boxes toward the residence halls, weaving around clusters of orientation leaders in bright red shirts who continued handing out campus maps and welcome packets to anyone who looked uncertain. The benches surrounding the central lawn were occupied now, some by students eating lunch beneath the shade of mature maple trees, others by parents lingering a little longer before saying goodbye. Somewhere nearby, someone was attempting to play an acoustic guitar. They knew only part of the song, repeating the same handful of chords often enough that Shane found himself unconsciously recognizing the pattern before it faded behind him.

He crossed campus at his usual pace.

Without lectures to hurry toward, there was no real urgency to his walk. He waited patiently at crosswalks instead of trying to beat the lights, paused briefly to allow a cyclist to pass before stepping onto the sidewalk, and continued toward his apartment through streets that had begun settling into the slower rhythm of early afternoon.

The city felt different from the quiet he had left behind that morning.

Cafés had filled with lunchtime customers, their conversations spilling through open windows onto the pavement outside. Delivery vans stopped briefly along the curb before pulling away again. A construction crew farther down the block worked behind temporary fencing, the steady tapping of hammers rising above the distant hum of traffic before gradually disappearing as he continued home.

The familiar brick façade of his apartment building came into view a few minutes later.

Shane climbed the stairs at an unhurried pace, balancing the weight of his equipment bag against one shoulder while fishing his keys from the front pocket of his backpack. The hallway looked much as it had that morning. The running shoes outside the second-floor apartment hadn’t moved. The folded newspaper still rested untouched outside another door farther down the corridor.

Somehow, it was reassuring that not everything had changed over the course of a few hours.

He unlocked his apartment, stepped inside, and nudged the door closed behind him.

The quiet greeted him almost immediately.

It was a different kind of silence than the one he’d left at the rink. There were no distant conversations filtering through thin walls, no clatter of skate guards against concrete, no whistles echoing across cold air. Only the soft hum of the refrigerator, the faint ticking of the clock above the microwave, and the muted sounds of the city drifting through the open living room window.

For a moment, he simply stood there.

Then the familiar routine began again.

He set his backpack beside the dining table before lowering the equipment bag onto the floor with a muted thud.

The apartment still looked exactly as he’d left it that morning. Morning sunlight had given way to the softer light of early afternoon, shifting the shadows across the hardwood floor until they stretched farther into the living room than they had a few hours earlier. The curtains remained open, allowing a warm breeze to stir them every so often, while somewhere outside another bus sighed to a stop before pulling away again.

Shane shrugged out of his practice clothes as he crossed into the bedroom, gathering his jersey, compression shirt, and socks into one arm before returning for the rest of his equipment. The routine was as familiar as lacing his skates. Damp clothing went straight into the laundry basket. His shoulder pads and gloves were laid out carefully to dry instead of being sealed inside the bag where moisture would linger. He loosened the laces of his skates another turn before setting them side by side beneath the open bedroom window, giving them a little more air than the equipment bag could.

Only once everything had been unpacked did he zip the empty bag closed. It looked considerably smaller now.

He leaned it neatly against the wall beside the front door, where it would stay until tomorrow morning.

The bathroom gradually filled with the sound of running water.

Steam gathered slowly across the mirror while Shane adjusted the temperature out of habit, waiting until it felt comfortably warm before stepping beneath the spray. The heat loosened the lingering tightness in his shoulders almost immediately, washing away the faint smell of the rink that always seemed to cling to the first practice of the season. He stood there a little longer than he usually did, letting the water run over the back of his neck before reaching automatically for the shampoo resting in the same place it always had.

By the time he turned the tap off, the mirror had disappeared completely behind a thin layer of condensation.

He dried himself, changed into a clean grey T-shirt, fresh boxers and a pair of comfortable sweatpants, then carried his damp towel back to the bathroom and hung it neatly over the rail instead of leaving it crumpled on the floor.

The apartment settled back into its familiar order almost without him noticing.

The only evidence that he’d spent the morning on the ice was the line of hockey equipment airing out quietly by the bedroom window.

His stomach reminded him that breakfast had been several hours ago.

He wandered into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.

The shelves were neatly arranged, much like everything else in the apartment. Containers of cooked chicken breast occupied one shelf beside roasted vegetables prepared earlier in the week. Fresh spinach, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and bell peppers filled the crisper drawers below, while tubs of Greek yogurt sat beside eggs, cottage cheese, and cartons of milk. A bowl of blueberries rested on the middle shelf next to sliced watermelon, already portioned into reusable containers. Nothing had been bought without a purpose.

Meal preparation had become part of his routine not long after joining the hockey team.

Long practices and a full course load left little room for deciding what to eat every afternoon. Planning ahead simply made more sense.

He settled on lunch without much thought.

A container of grilled chicken, brown rice, and roasted broccoli went into the microwave while he rinsed a handful of grapes beneath cool running water. By the time the timer chimed, he had already filled a glass with water and carried everything to the dining table.

He ate slowly, more focused on refuelling than lingering over the meal.

Outside, the neighbourhood carried on much as it always had. Cars drifted steadily beneath the canopy of maple trees lining the street, cyclists passed in both directions, and every so often the doors of the café across the road swung open, releasing a brief ripple of conversation before closing again.

The pleasant heaviness left behind by practice still lingered in his legs. It was the sort of tiredness he welcomed. Tomorrow would bring another practice. A week after that, lectures would begin again, and the steady rhythm of the semester would quietly reclaim his days.

For now, though, there was nowhere he needed to be.

When he finished eating, he carried the empty container and glass to the sink, rinsed them immediately, and placed them neatly in the drying rack. He wiped the counter almost absentmindedly with a dishcloth before folding it over the edge of the sink.

Only then did his attention return to the laptop waiting on the dining table. The screen was still dark where he’d left it before heading to the rink.

He rested both hands on the edge of the dining table for a moment before pulling out the chair and sitting down.

A breeze stirred the curtains just enough to lift them away from the window before letting them fall back into place. Somewhere farther down the street, a cyclist rang the small bell on their handlebars, followed a few seconds later by the muted rumble of another bus disappearing toward downtown. The apartment itself remained as quiet as ever.

His laptop had never quite gone to sleep.

The charging light still glowed faintly along the side of the casing where he’d left it plugged in that morning. He folded the screen open, watching it wake almost immediately before the familiar McGill portal replaced the desktop.

The dashboard looked much as it always did.

His timetable occupied the left side of the screen. A panel of campus announcements cycled quietly through upcoming events on the right. Welcome Week activities. Residence move-in reminders. Volunteer opportunities. None of them held much interest.

He’d already decided weeks ago that orientation wasn’t for him.

The few notifications waiting in the corner of the screen were more practical.

A library reminder.

A message from Student Accounts confirming his tuition payment had been received.

Another encouraging students to attend the Faculty of Science welcome barbecue before lectures began.

He skimmed each subject line in turn.

The tuition confirmation remained unread. He already knew the payment had gone through; he’d checked his bank account the same morning he’d made it.

The barbecue announcement disappeared into the archive with a single click. He imagined it would be crowded. Loud. Perfectly enjoyable for someone else.

The inbox shifted upward almost imperceptibly as the archived message disappeared.

Another email took its place.

Shane’s hand paused lightly against the trackpad. For a second, he searched the name without opening the message. Professor Sarah Chen. It wasn’t familiar. None of his biology lecturers shared that name. Neither did anyone connected to the athletics department.

His eyes drifted naturally to the subject beneath it.

Welcome to ARTD 200 – Introduction to Drawing (Fall Semester)

He looked at the words for another moment. The course suddenly felt a little less theoretical than it had that morning. Until now, it had existed only as a requirement on his degree progress report, another coloured block added neatly to his timetable after pressing Register. A necessary elective. Three credits. Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.

Now there was an instructor. A classroom. A first day. Without really thinking about it, he clicked the email open.

When he reached the bottom of the email, Shane didn’t close it straight away. His eyes drifted back toward the beginning, lingering briefly on the course title before he reread the message a second time. There wasn’t much he hadn’t noticed the first time around. The class would meet in Studio 3B. Students were asked to arrive a few minutes early. Supplies would be discussed during the first lecture, and there was no expectation that anyone would already know how to draw. The message was practical, concise, and surprisingly reassuring. Earlier that morning, the list of required materials had left him feeling as though he’d wandered into a subject with its own language. Reading the professor’s email made it feel a little less unfamiliar. Whatever he didn’t know, the course was apparently designed to teach him.

He clicked the close button, returning to his inbox. The remaining emails looked exactly as they had before: library reminders, student newsletters, and advertisements for orientation events that would probably fill campus over the next few days. He considered clearing out the rest of them while he was already there, but decided against it. None looked particularly urgent, and there was something satisfying about leaving his inbox with only routine announcements waiting. He closed the laptop instead, listening to the soft click as the screen folded shut before the apartment settled once more into its familiar quiet.

For a few moments he remained seated at the table, his gaze wandering toward the open window. The street below had begun to settle into the slower rhythm of the afternoon. Most of the moving vans had disappeared, replaced by parked cars whose owners seemed in no particular hurry to leave. Across the road, a café employee collected empty cups from the outdoor tables while a pair of students stood beside the entrance comparing class schedules, each holding a freshly printed campus map that would probably be folded into the bottom of a backpack by the end of the week. The breeze carried the scent of warm pavement and freshly cut grass into the apartment, stirring the curtains just enough to make them sway before falling still again.

His attention drifted back to the laptop.

There probably wasn’t anything else worth looking at before classes started, but curiosity got the better of him. He opened the screen once more and logged back into myCourses, the familiar dashboard appearing almost instantly. The ARTD 200 course tile sat where it had earlier that afternoon, tucked neatly between Organic Chemistry and Cell Biology. He clicked it without expecting much. Aside from Professor Sarah Chen’s welcome email, the course was unlikely to have much content yet.

He was right.

The homepage looked sparse, containing little more than a brief announcement welcoming students to the course and explaining that the syllabus would be discussed during the first class. Most of the navigation tabs along the left-hand side were empty. Modules hadn’t been published. Assignments displayed a message informing students that nothing had been posted. Grades, unsurprisingly, contained nothing at all. Shane clicked through each page more out of habit than genuine curiosity before his eyes settled on another tab lower down the menu.

People.

He hesitated for only a moment before clicking it.

The page loaded almost immediately. Professor Sarah Chen’s name appeared beneath the heading marked Instructor, followed by the teaching assistant. Below that was a list of enrolled students arranged alphabetically, each accompanied by a McGill email address. Shane hadn’t opened the page because he wanted to know who else was taking the class. If anything, he was simply curious how many students would fit into a drawing studio. Twenty-four names filled the page—more than he’d expected, though still considerably fewer than any of his science lectures. His eyes wandered absentmindedly down the list, skimming surnames he didn’t recognise before pausing halfway through.

Rozanov, Ilya.

He blinked.

For the briefest moment, the name pulled his thoughts somewhere entirely different. He’d seen it often enough over the past year—typed beneath practice schedules, printed on travel itineraries, scribbled onto line combinations taped inside the locker room. It wasn’t a name that blended easily into a crowd.

A faint crease formed between his brows.

Strange.

The coincidence lingered for another second before common sense quietly pushed it aside. McGill enrolled thousands of students every year. It wasn’t impossible for two people to share the same name, even if it wasn’t one he came across often. Without giving it any further thought, he closed the page and returned to the course homepage.

Satisfied there was nothing else to see, Shane shut the laptop and leaned back in his chair. The apartment fell quiet again, broken only by the distant hum of traffic filtering through the open window. Outside, the afternoon had begun giving way to evening. The sidewalks were still busy with students arriving for the semester, though the rush of moving vans and overloaded cars had finally begun to thin. Cardboard boxes waited beside apartment entrances to be collected, and the occasional burst of laughter drifted upward before disappearing into the warm August air. In another week, the unfamiliar faces would become part of the background, the temporary chaos replaced by the steady rhythm of lectures, practices, assignments, and routines that defined the academic year.

His planner still lay open on the dining table where he’d left it earlier. He reached for it, smoothing a hand across the page almost absentmindedly. Tuesday’s schedule sat neatly in blue ink, each hour carefully accounted for. Morning lecture. Lunch. Practice. ARTD 200. Everything fit together exactly as it should. There was comfort in seeing it laid out so clearly, every commitment given its place before the semester had even begun. It was the way he’d always approached things, one task after another until everything found its place.

He closed the planner, slipped it back into his backpack, and switched off the light above the table.

By this time next week, the semester would be underway.

As far as Shane was concerned, he already knew exactly how it would unfold.