Chapter 23 #2
And then the trophies. Dozens of them, and unsurprisingly almost all gold. Engraved with titles like “Debating Champion, National finals”, “Winner: UK Maths Challenge, gold award”
I let out a quiet laugh, shaking my head.
It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? He’s not just talented; he’s completely excessive.
You’d have to be completely out of your mind to get this many awards and participate in that many events, to win this much in only eighteen years.
This lot would make anyone insecure if they ever walked past.
I guess that’s the point.
Then I notice the photos. Kai holding up a football trophy, his jersey streaked with mud, his teammates crowding around him.
He’s smiling—or at least, he’s trying to.
Ironically, this is one test that he fails.
So young, and so artificial. Seems he’s almost always been this way, and it makes me wonder what happened to him.
There’s one of him shaking hands with what looks like a headmaster, and there’s a framed certificate in the background. His suit is immaculate, his smile polite. But that’s all it is.
You’d think he’d be happier to get such a prestigious award.
In the middle of it all is a picture of Kai, younger this time, maybe around thirteen.
He’s sitting at a table surrounded by very familiar faces.
At the front, it’s Kai and Christian. Behind them are Liam and Will, their expressions serious despite the faint curve of their smiles.
There’s an older-looking photo too. Kai is younger here, maybe nine or ten, surrounded by a different group.
Two blonde girls sit beside him, both smiling brightly at the camera.
One of the blondes sits closer to Kai, her arm brushing his.
She’s grinning widely, her face tilted toward him.
And then I see her.
A little girl I can only assume is Wren, with wild dark curls and big, expressive grey eyes.
She’s clutching a tiny trophy in one hand, her grin so wide it practically lights up the photo.
She looks like Kai, except for the eyes of course.
But she’s also softer—her features rounder, her hair darker, her smile effortless in a way his never seems to be.
Another photo shows her at a piano, her small hands resting on the keys while Kai sits beside her, guiding her fingers.
His face is different in this one, his expression almost… gentle.
My gaze flicks to another boy in the photos, one I recognize. So this is Elliot?
Is he the boy that I met on the bench that day?
He’s grinning in most of them, his arm slung casually around Kai’s shoulders, who is on his knees next to him. He doesn’t look much like Kai at first glance, with his hazel eyes and lighter blond hair. But the more I look, the more similarities I spot.
It’s in the jawline. In the tense smile they both share, and the shape of the eyes.
I touch the edge of one of the frames, feeling the cool metal under my fingertips.
“Adeline.” Kai’s voice cuts through the quiet. I glance up to see him standing a few steps ahead.
“Sorry,” I say quickly, pulling my hand back. How long have I been staring?
He eyes the stand silently.. For a moment, I think he’s going to say something, but then he just turns away.
“We’re not stopping for a tour,” he says over his shoulder, already walking again.
“Right,” I mumble, trailing after him.
He turns abruptly, stopping at a doorway that I hadn’t noticed before. When he opens it, I see stairs leading down. A lot of stairs.
“What… is this?” I ask hesitantly, peering into the dimly lit space.
Kai doesn’t answer, just gestures for me to go ahead. I take one cautious step forward, glancing back at him. He’s standing there with his cold expression, but in the faint light, he looks… slightly terrifying. Or maybe he always has been, and I’m just not noticing again.
“You’re not about to kill me and bury me in a basement, are you?”
“If I were,” he says, “do you think I’d tell you first?”
My mouth opens, then closes again. Fair point.
But my heart races anyway. I mean, seriously? His basement? He couldn’t have taken me to his room or —
No.
I shut down the thought as quickly as it came.
Nope, no, absolutely not. His room? Adeline, what is wrong with you? That might be worse.
After a concerning quantity of stairs - seriously, how deep does this go?
- we finally step into a massive room. The space is enormous, which is as expected considering the whole house is like this.
To my left, there’s a pool table, beside it is an air hockey table, the kind you only ever see in arcades.
There’s a dartboard on one wall, a gaming console with a massive TV on another, and even a couch with bean bag chairs that look way too expensive to be in a basement.
I let out a laugh before I can stop myself. What is this? A man cave?
But then something else catches my eye.
It’s tucked off to the side, half-shadowed by the jut of a beam. It’s so easy to miss, and yet I can’t seem to look away.
Before I can stop myself, I’m already walking toward it.
It’s a long workbench, like you’d see in a garage or lab.
A tangle of wires spills over one side, trailing from open panels of half-assembled devices.
There are soldering irons, safety goggles, a stack of thick notebooks filled with sketches, equations and strange notations I couldn’t decipher if I tried.
Tiny metal limbs, gears, circuit boards, and whole piles of motors…
I don’t know what I expected.
But it definitely wasn’t this.
So, this…
This is what they meant when they called him a prodigy.
I glance back at the table, at the strange, brilliant mess of metal. “You built all of this?” I ask.
When he doesn’t answer, I turn to glance at him and find him already watching me, arms crossed loosely as he leans over a counter that’s in the middle of what I now realize is a fully functional kitchen.
There’s a fridge, a stove, and even a marble-topped island with barstools.
This room is probably bigger than my entire house.
You could actually live here. Comfortably.
He shrugs lightly from where he’s leaning. “Yeah.”
I glance back at the desk. “Right,” I mutter. “Of course you did.”
His mouth twitches, probably hearing my sarcasm, before he lazily pushes off the counter and strolls over, casual as anything, hands in his pockets.
He stops beside the workbench and nudges a small silver device with the back of his knuckle.
“I built that one when I was thirteen,” he says, like it’s no big deal. “It was supposed to track movement. Ended up stalking some random dog for a week.”
I blink. “You had a robot stalk someone else’s dog?”
“Technically,” he says, tapping the top of the device, “I programmed it to follow sound. Unfortunately, dogs breathe.”
A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it, and I shake my head, a half-smile tugging at my mouth. “I’m guessing that didn’t go over well with the owner.”
“Actually, it went fine,” he says. “The neighbours thought it was cute.”
I blink. “Seriously?”
Kai leans one hip casually against the workbench. “They thought it was for school or something. Gave me cookies and invited me over for tea.”
I stare at him, dumbfounded. “You got rewarded. For stalking someone’s pet.”
He lifts a shoulder in a lazy shrug. “People love a story. And they love me.”
I almost roll my eyes.
He doesn’t even say it like he’s bragging. He just says it like it’s a fact.
And maybe it is.
Because of course they’d love him. He’s Kai Steele. Golden boy. Brilliant, charming, talented. He could probably run over their mailbox, and they’d bake him a pie for it.
Kai watches me, something vaguely amused glinting in his eyes, like he knows exactly what I’m thinking and finds it entertaining.
I pick it up one of the notebooks without thinking.
It’s heavier than I expected.
And the second I crack it open, I stop breathing.
It’s beautiful. And completely incomprehensible.
Equations, everywhere. They’re scattered across the page in a cramped, disorganized manner, like he couldn’t write them down fast enough.
It feels nearly feverish, obsessive. There are symbols I’ve never seen before, random diagrams that I’m sure mean something in his head, but certainly not in mine, and arrows looping across margins. I flip a page. Then another.
I always thought I was good at Maths. Not top of the class, but decent enough. But this? I don’t understand a single line.
I didn’t even know I could be humbled with my self-esteem being so embarrassingly low, and yet here we are.
Especially when I notice the majority of what he’s written in here isn’t even in English. There are scribbled notes in what looks like French, and Russian. Even Latin. I don’t even attempt to decipher the others.
“Uh… Kai?” I hold it open, still flipping slowly. “What is this?”
He barely looks up at first, then straightens and comes to stand beside me. His hand brushes against mine as he traces some of the words on the page. “Those are just my notes,” he says, like that explains anything.
“Why are they in, like… five different languages?”
“I like switching. I find it more fulfilling,” he says, still peering over my shoulder. “Some things are easier to think through in other tongues.”
“And the maths?”
“Ah, that goes a bit beyond A-Levels.”
I let out a snort before I can stop myself. “So you really are a know-it-all.”
Kai says nothing to that, just stares at me with an indecipherable look on his face.
I glance away, suddenly aware of how quiet the room has become, as my eyes trail over the workbench again. “You have a lot of talents,” I say, more softly this time. “What do you plan on doing in the future? If you don’t mind me asking.”