Help! I'm just an extra yet the Heroines and Villainesses want me!

Chapter 206: Sunday Evening (II)

The dining hall at seven held its usual Sunday evening population, lighter than weekday dinners, the specific atmosphere of a meal eaten by people who knew the next morning would bring the resumption of the regular schedule and were, in various ways, making peace with that.

William had sent word earlier in the day — not urgent, not alarming, simply a request that Liam, Marcus, Sara, Mira, Thomas, and Lin meet him and Seraphina and Kai at a specific table after dinner, when the hall had thinned. He hadn’t said why. He’d trusted, correctly, that the request itself would be enough.

They gathered at eight-fifteen, the dining hall mostly empty by then, the serving stations closed, the specific hush of a large room transitioning out of its primary function.

William looked at the table — at the people who had assembled because he’d asked them to, without explanation, on a Sunday evening.

Liam was the first to speak, predictably. "This feels like a serious-conversation setup. Should we be worried?"

"Not about anything happening to any of you," William said. "But yes. It’s serious."

The table settled into the specific attentiveness that statement produced.

William looked at his hands for a moment, and then looked up, and decided that the way to do this was simply to do it — directly, the way he’d decided on the garden path, trusting the people in front of him to receive it the way he believed they would.

"My father," he said, "is at the center of a criminal network that’s been under investigation for several months. The investigation is going to become public soon — possibly this week. He’ll be facing formal charges. The network includes assassination contracts, financial corruption, and political manipulation across several regions, and it connects to most of what’s happened to me this term — the kidnapping attempt on my sister, the attacks on me, and the attacks at Kai’s expedition were not separate things. They were part of the same operation, and my father was one of three people running it."

The table was silent.

He continued, because stopping now would leave the silence to fill with assumptions rather than facts.

"I found out the full scope of it gradually, over the past several weeks. My mother has been investigating independently since before I knew anything was wrong — she’s the one who uncovered most of what the inquiry now has. Sera Vane, the woman some of you may have heard arrived recently, has been investigating in parallel from outside the academy’s institutional structure. And as of this weekend, we have the founding documentation that confirms the third person involved." He paused. "Kai retrieved it. That’s where he’s been since Thursday."

He looked at Kai, who said nothing but inclined his head slightly, confirming.

"I’m telling you this," William continued, "because it’s going to become public, and I didn’t want any of you to learn it from rumor or from whatever version the academy’s gossip produces. You’re the people who matter to me. You deserved to hear it from me, directly, before it became something everyone was talking about."

The silence continued for a moment longer.

Then Liam said, "Okay."

Just that. The same word William had used in the library days earlier, when Seraphina had told him about the system’s registration. The word that meant *I’ve received this, and I’m not going anywhere.*

"Okay," William repeated, uncertain what else to say to that.

"I mean it," Liam said. "I’m not — I don’t know what the right response is to something like this. I’ve never had to know that. But the thing I do know is that none of what you just said changes anything about who you are. You didn’t do any of it. You found out the same way we’re finding out, except you’ve been carrying it longer and alone, mostly." He looked at the table. "That’s the part that bothers me. Not your father. You, dealing with this for weeks without—"

"He wasn’t alone," Seraphina said. "I knew. Kai knew."

"I know that now," Liam said. "I’m saying for the rest of us. For this table." He looked back at William. "You should have told us sooner. Not because we needed to know for our own sake. Because you shouldn’t have had to carry the rest of it without us too."

William looked at him.

He hadn’t expected that particular response — not the shock, or the careful distance some people might have offered, treating him suddenly like someone fragile or compromised. Just Liam, direct in his own way, identifying the actual problem, which wasn’t the scandal but the isolation.

"I didn’t know how," William said. "Until recently. I’m still not certain I know how, generally. I’m doing the best version I can manage."

"This was a good version," Sara said quietly. She had been listening with the specific attention she brought to difficult things, the same focus she’d applied to Thomas’s recovery and to the questions she was building her future around. "You told us directly, gave us the actual information instead of managing it for us, and didn’t ask us to feel any particular way about it. That’s — that’s actually a lot of trust, doing it that way."

"It is," Mira said. She’d been quiet, processing in the way she processed everything, but now she looked at William with the same directness she’d shown her own mother’s unexpected question about her wellbeing days earlier. "My family is one of the ones managing distance from the network right now. My mother’s gathering, during winter break — that’s partly about positioning relative to exactly this. I should tell you that, since you’re being honest with us."

"I appreciate you telling me," William said.

"It doesn’t change anything about how I see you," Mira added, before he could ask or wonder. "I wanted to say that clearly, since the politics of this might create assumptions otherwise. You’re not your father. The fact that my family is managing positioning around the inquiry doesn’t mean I’m managing anything around you."

William looked at her for a moment, and felt something in his chest that he didn’t immediately have a name for — the specific relief of being seen accurately by someone who had every social and political reason to be careful, and had chosen clarity instead.

"Thank you," he said.

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