She's not at dinner either.

Yeah, he was expecting that.

He knows her room number. After dinner he cleans out her dorm room. 

He should build mana. It's not like he can get any from Briar anymore. (Maybe he should've tried harder to keep her alive— but he did try, and she was stupid about it, he saved her life and she was still trying to hurt him. What else was he supposed to do?)

He does twenty pushups. Trying to store the mana is like trying to store water in a ... in something with holes. He's pretty sure there's an expression there but he doesn't actually remember what it was. Like trying to store water in a colander.

He feels sick. This— it shouldn't be happening like this. He's been sticking to mice, he's been careful, you're not supposed to lose this all at once like that— he didn't even kill Briar—

He didn't even kill Briar but his stupid useless anima can't tell the difference, apparently, between pulling malia to save someone's life and pulling malia because you want to hurt them.

He needs a plan, a way to make it through the next four years, only right now the entire concept of a long-term plan feels out of reach.

Three-and-a-half years. Three-and-a-half years, and then he can— figure something out. He's going to need to be conservative, but maybe, maybe he can still recover from this. He doesn't have enough mice for this to be a good plan, but if he just gives up he's definitely going to die.