I apologize that it's been a while! I planned to upload a new chapter last weekend, but I got sick and barely had enough energy to do my homework. A week later, I am still sick, but hopefully the new medicine I've started will help soon. (I also have two tests the day I go back to school - wish me luck.) I hope you enjoy the chapter!

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"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" Callum mumbled to himself for the umpteenth time, running a hand through his hair and sighing. "Thou art more temperate and more fair. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May."

He didn't know why he was rereading the sonnet again. It wasn't like that had helped the previous twenty-something tries.

God, why had he taken poetry to fulfill his English requirement? Mostly because he thought it'd be easier and slightly more interesting than traditional literature, but it was turning out to be just as difficult. In a different, more excruciating way. He hadn't expected sonnets to be so important, although he probably should have.

He just didn't understand what he was supposed to be looking for. Listening for. Whatever. Logically, he knew he was looking for sound devices, sure, but that hadn't clarified much for him. The poem all sounded the same. Words. Old, fancy words. Leaving his mouth. Huzzah.

English had never been his strong suit, and apparently college was no exception to this rule. How unfortunate for him.

His phone rang, breaking his concentration. 'Rang' wasn't the right word, of course, as he never had his ringer on. Rather, his phone buzzed loudly and got his attention. He glanced at the caller ID, raising an eyebrow but finding himself smiling as he read who it was.

Callum didn't typically answer phone calls, unless it was Ezran or Harrow. Claudia, too, though she hated talking on the phone almost as much as he did and therefore relied primarily on texts. Maybe he'd answer Soren once in a blue moon, though it wasn't like he and Soren talked much outside of physical interactions. Anyone else? Not likely.

But this was Rayla.

Surely he could make an exception.

He picked up his phone. "Hello?"

"Oh thank God you picked up." The relief in his friend's voice was evident, the thickness of her accent increasing and making her words nearly unintelligible.

Callum sat up, suddenly feeling much more alert. "What happened? Are you okay?"

"Oh yes, I'm fine," she reassured him. "I need your help with something. It's important."

Callum frowned, trying to figure out what could be so serious that she'd called him to ask for assistance. "What do you need?"

An almost comical beat passed.

"It's my calculus homework."

Callum groaned at her words, slumping against the backboard of his bed in relief. "Jesus. You nearly gave me a heart attack, Rayla. I really thought something bad had happened."

"Something bad is happening!" she protested. "I can't do my math assignment! And I'd normally ask Claudia for help, since we take calc together, but she had to leave about an hour ago to do something with Professor Viren. Her dad. Whatever."

Callum snorted. "Glad to know I'm second on your hierarchy of helpers."

"Please just come over and help me. I know you're smart and good at math and science and all kinds of boring stuff like that."

"Insulting my field of study isn't exactly winning you points, you know."

"Oh, shut it. I'm in Claudia's dorm. Er, my dorm. Our dorm?" She sighed, and he could practically see her blowing her hair out of her face in exasperation. "Just get over here." With that, she hung up.

Callum rolled his eyes and put his phone away. He glanced at his bed, where his English homework lay waiting expectantly. The mess of papers made him shudder.

Well, at least he wouldn't be working alone anymore.

He packed his necessary books - sketchbook included - and papers into his satchel before slinging it over his body. He glanced at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, running a brush through his hair in a pathetic attempt to smooth it down. Not that Rayla would care one way or another about his appearance, but nonetheless he cared about looking decent.

The girls' dorms, if they could be classified as such, actually weren't far from the boys' dorms. Walking there would take little more time than a bus, not to mention it meant he wouldn't have to deal with some stranger's sweaty armpits. It was also a beautiful day outside.

As he was walking, his mind drifted, aided by the fact that he'd put in headphones and was listening to some random instrumental track. His thoughts always tended to float around when he wasn't intently working on something.

In all honesty, Callum wasn't sure how much he'd be able to help Rayla. He'd tested out of basic calculus for KSU during the spring semester of his senior year in high school, but hopefully he'd still remember it. He was in calculus-based physics, so it wasn't like he'd completely abandoned calculus since then. Besides - it would be more than just a little embarrassing if he went all the way to Rayla's dorm to help her with math, only to find that he'd forgotten how to do most of it.

Rayla would never let him hear the end of it. What a terrifying prospect.

In his defense, she hadn't given him much of a choice on whether or not to come. She didn't seem like the kind of person who took 'no' for an answer.

Callum blinked as he realized that he'd arrived at the dorm. Apparently his muscle memory had taken him there without an issue.

He put away his headphones and only knocked once before Rayla opened the door and dragged him inside.

"Whoa," he said as she slammed the door shut and locked it. "I take it this assignment is really urgent?"

Rayla didn't answer immediately, instead pulling him into her and Claudia's bedroom, kicking pens and pencils out of the way. The floor was covered in papers and assorted other knick knacks, with the cord of her laptop stretched out across presumably her bed in order to reach the floor and charge her computer.

"Yes. Very, very urgent," Rayla insisted as she sat down in the space between her computer and the base of her bed. She cleared some of the papers from the floor and pulled him down next to her. "I was so busy preparing for football tryouts over the weekend that I forgot about this assignment, and now it's due in two hours! I didn't know who else to ask for help."

Both her compliment and the fact that their shoulders were pressed together made the blood rush to Callum's face. "Football tryouts?" he managed to say. Wow. So eloquent of him. "Speaking of, how's - how's practice for that going?"

Rayla shrugged. "Eh. Not bad, I guess. Soren has been really patient in helping me. I've had more rules and strategies shoved into my brain these past few days than I ever thought it could hold." She frowned. "He keeps telling me that I'm some kind of 'natural', but I really don't see what's so special about what I'm doing! Run forward, catch the ball, keep running towards the end of the field. Maybe bulldoze a player on the way there. Next play, repeat." Then she laughed. "You know, Felix has actually been pretty helpful, too, even though we're competing for the same spot on the team."

Callum frowned. "Felix? Who's that?"

Rayla waved her hand dismissively. "Oh, he's the guy from the wrestling team last week. We're both trying out for the position of wide receiver. I don't mean to be rude, but I don't think he'll get it." She winced. "Okay, that was a little harsh of me. He's good, and he's helped me understand a lot about the technical aspects of football, but I just don't think he's fast enough to be a wide receiver."

Callum decided that he did not want to talk about Felix, though he couldn't quite put a finger on why. Instead, he steered the conversation back towards the reason he was here. "So what is it about this assignment that you need help with?"

Rayla tapped the mousepad on her computer and signed in, her lockscreen lifting to reveal an online set of ten problems. She attempted to move the computer to his lap, but the cord was too short, so she rested half of it on her left knee and the other half on his right. The position was precarious, but either she didn't notice or she didn't care. Presumably the latter. "It's related rates."

Callum breathed a silent sigh of relief. He remembered those.

"And I know it's only a ten question assignment, and I know the problems are really basic because we just started this unit, but I just don't get them." She sighed, blowing her hair out of her face. Afterwards, her hair promptly fell back to where it had been before. "It's like there's a mental block that I don't know how to get around."

Callum nodded. That was definitely how he was feeling with poetry at the moment. "Alright. Then let's start with the conceptual side of related rates. I assume you know what a derivative is?"

"The slope of a line at any given point." She mock-glared at him. "I'm not that stupid, Callum."

"I know! I was just making sure. But can you explain what a derivative is in a more general sense? Like without describing it in terms of a line."

Rayla hesitated, opening and closing her mouth like a goldfish. "Are you going to make fun of me if I say no?"

"Of course not." He knew what it was like to be spoken to condescendingly when he was trying to learn - his tenth grade history tutor had been awful. "Think of it this way: you already said that a derivative is slope. And slope represents rate of change. Therefore a derivative is the rate of change of something at any given time."

"Oh, duh," Rayla grumbled, smacking her forehead with the base of her palm. "I swear, I did actually know that." She pushed her hair out of her face and behind her ear. "So with related rates... The derivatives are going to be connected, somehow?"

Callum nodded, giving her what he hoped was an encouraging smile. "Exactly!" He carefully shifted her computer and read the first problem aloud. "Air is being pumped into a spherical balloon at a rate of 5 cm3/min. Determine the rate at which the radius of the balloon is increasing when the diameter of the balloon is 20 cm." He cleared his throat before continuing. "In this case, a sphere is increasing in volume. So, what are some other measurements of a sphere that must also be increasing?"

Rayla pursed her lips, which was actually pretty adorable. Not that Callum would ever admit it. "Uh... Well, the radius, I guess?"

"Right. Any others?"

"Mm... Diameter? Surface area?"

"Yup! And with a sphere, especially since you said it's only the beginning of the unit, you're mainly going to be working with the volume and the radius."

Rayla nodded, appearing slightly more confident. "Great. Cool. Got it. What now?"

"Well... I usually like to label the components given in the problem. It helps me sort everything out in my brain before I try to solve anything, and I would say it's especially useful if I don't know what to do." Callum shifted slightly to his right so Rayla could better see her computer, all too aware that his action had also moved him closer to her. "So what do they give us in the problem, and what do they want us to solve for?"

Rayla didn't answer immediately, her eyes scanning the screen as she reread the problem. "They name the diameter... and they give us V prime. They want to know what r prime is." She glanced up at him. "Right?"

He smiled at her. "Nicely done. Now, do you remember what the first step in a related rates problem is?" The guilty look that fell on her face informed him that she did not remember, and he couldn't help but laugh. "That's alright. In this case, you need to take the derivative of the formula for the volume of a sphere with respect to time. That means each variable will have a prime."

"So... Kinda like implicit differentiation?"

"Yeah! Er, in a sense."

Rayla grabbed a notebook from beside her, which Callum noticed was already covered with scratched-out formulas. She somehow managed to find a blank space amidst all of the writing and began to work out the problem. "Like this?" she asked upon finishing, handing the notebook to him.

Callum skimmed her work, and other than jotting down a prime mark that she'd left out at the end, it was correct. "Awesome. Now just plug in the values they gave you in the problem, and you should get the right answer."

As she began to work on that, Callum directed his attention to the English homework that he had begrudgingly brought along. He knew that he needed to be productive...

But it would be so much easier not to be.

Maybe he'd work on a drawing or two. Just for a little while.

He pulled out his sketchbook and flipped to a piece that he'd been working on earlier that day. One of his mother.

It saddened him, sometimes, that he was starting to need pictures to remember what she looked like. That was why he tried to sketch her at least once a month - so he'd never forget.

"Who's that?"

Callum jumped at Rayla's sudden question, and tried not to freak out - externally, at least - over the fact that she was leaning over his shoulder. Their faces were so close he could hear her breathing.

"Wait." Rayla reached out, her fingers brushing over the sketch. "Is she… your mother?"

Callum hesitated, then nodded. "Yeah. She died when I was little."

"Oh, Callum." Her voice was sorrowful, but not pitying. There was a pause before she continued. "She's beautiful." She offered him a small smile. "You look like her. Although I'm sure you've been told that before."

He chuckled. "Yeah. My dad reminds me all the time." There was another pause, and he found himself closing his sketchbook. "I should probably be doing homework, anyways. Sketching is my way of procrastinating."

Rayla laughed, and any tension that may have been forming was gone. "Speaking of procrastination, I realized that I wasn't given a radius. So I don't know what to do from here."

"Oh, they're trying to trick you with that. They gave you the diameter, right? Find your radius from there."

Rayla blinked, then groaned. "Duh!" She sighed, making a 'tsk' sound. "How did I miss that?" She shook her head, clearly chastising herself. "Do I have permission to call you up in the future if I need a common sense check again?"

Callum laughed. "Of course. Only you, though."

"Wow. What a tease."

Callum's only response was to blush, and he counted himself lucky that Rayla had already redirected her attention to her computer and had started working through the second problem.

He proceeded to flip through his notes to the assignment he was supposed to be working on - yay, sound devices. Maybe there was... assonance in the sonnet? There were definitely three a's in the first line, but each was pronounced differently in their respective words - shall, compare, day. So maybe assonance wasn't it. But there didn't seem to be any consonance, either. God, this was stupid.

Callum noticed out of the corner of his eye that Rayla seemed to be progressing through the problems quickly - she'd already gotten to the fourth question, the green check marks indicating that all of her previous answers were correct. She was clearly better at math than she gave herself credit for. She'd just needed a boost with the conceptual side of things, which was honestly what most people, even math majors, tended to struggle with.

Back to the sonnet. Unfortunately.

"Thou art more temperate and more fair," he repeated, returning to his mantra from earlier as if that was somehow going to clarify everything for him. He sighed and scratched out whatever nonsense he'd written next to the sonnet.

"What're you working on now?" Rayla asked, leaning back over to look at his papers.

"Oh no," Callum said, shifting away so she couldn't see his homework. Partially because he was embarrassed by his lack of progress, and partially because he wanted her to finish her own assignment. "No more distractions until you've finished that problem set. You've procrastinated long enough."

Rayla rolled her eyes, though there was no irritation behind it. "Whatever. I'm almost done already."

"Then finish!"

"Fine, fine. Meanie."

Only a few minutes later, though, was Callum interrupted by Rayla's groan of frustration. "Here," she grumbled, shoving her papers onto his lap. "Check my work. I swear I did it all right, but the stupid program keeps saying that my answer is wrong!"

Callum skimmed her work, and sure enough, everything seemed to be correct. He frowned. "Can I see the problem?"

Rayla returned her laptop to its previous position on both of their knees, having moved it away earlier so he could work on his own assignment.

He read the final question and immediately noticed the issue. "Oh, you just forgot a sign," he explained. "It says the volume is decreasing by three pi, so your V prime needs to be negative. But I don't think your numerical work needs to be changed - just make your answer negative instead of positive."

As instructed, Rayla added a negative sign to her answer and submitted it again. The green check that appeared next to it now indicated not only that she'd solved the problem correctly but also that she'd completed the assignment.

Rayla groaned and dropped her head onto his shoulder after snapping her laptop shut. "I can't believe I'm literally blind. How did I not see that?!"

Callum found himself flushing at her sudden action. "You're not - you're not blind," he managed to say. "I make that kind of mistake all of the time, too."

Rayla shrugged, though she didn't remove her head from his shoulder. Callum found, oddly enough, that he didn't mind. "I think you're just saying that to make me feel better."

"Did it work?"

Rayla laughed and sat up, gently shoving his shoulder. "A little bit. I appreciate the effort." She peered down at his papers. "So, what have you been working on this whole time?"

Callum grimaced. "Poetry. We're doing sonnets."

Rayla's eyes sparkled, her excitement bright enough to light the room. "Oh, I love sonnets! Which one are you working on?"

"Shakespearean. The classic, of course - 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day'," he said dryly. "I'm supposed to be looking for sound devices. I don't know if I've mentioned this to you yet, but English is not one of my strongest subjects."

"Lucky for you, it is mine." Rayla winked at him. "Now I can return the favor and help you with one of your assignments!" She took the sonnet out of his hands before her could protest, smoothing the paper over her knee before holding it out in front of her. "Here's my advice: the best way to look for sound devices is to read the poem out loud, especially if you're new to poetry."

"But I did read it out loud," he insisted. "Although I think I butchered the iambic pentameter."

Rayla laughed. "Don't worry - iambic pentameter is difficult for anyone, even those who specifically study Shakespeare. But it's not just about reading the sonnet out loud, silly prince. It's about reading it with feeling. Almost... performing. You have to think about what you're saying as you say it. In doing so, you'll better be able to hear how it sounds." She cleared her throat, turning to her left to better face him. "Shall I compare thee to... a summer's day?" Her dramatic pause almost made him laugh. "Thou art more temperate and more fair."

Her voice was wistful, but by no means faint. Maybe it was the beats she took, or the way she paused to move her hair out of her face, or even her inflection on seemingly random words, but Callum found himself swept away by her reading. He never thought he could enjoy poetry, much less a Shakespearean sonnet, but if Rayla was the one performing it...

"So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see," she murmured, drawing the poem to a close, "so long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

Callum stared into her eyes, so entranced that he didn't realize that she'd stopped speaking.

Then Rayla looked away, her face dusted with a pale pink. "Anyways!" she said, probably louder than was necessary in the small bedroom. "Sonnets are love poems. That's the most important thing to remember when you're reading them." She handed his paper back to him, though she did not make eye contact. "And now that you've heard me, I want you to read it out loud."

Callum winced, the spell cast from her performance finally breaking. "I'm not really an orator -"

"So? Just pretend that you're - that you're reading to Claudia instead of me. This sonnet is sweet and genuine, and we all know that you're a big softie at heart."

Callum's face reddened at her words. "Er. Okay." He began to read the sonnet, accepting after the first line that he was nowhere near as eloquent as Rayla and would probably never be. He stumbled over words, and he had to repeat himself several times, but he did his best to focus on what he was saying and how it sounded.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.

The description sounded harsh - a biting criticism of the flaws of summer.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade.

The line was smoother, praising the subject of the speaker's affection.

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.

The sonnet immortalized the speaker's love as well as the lover themself - much like his art immortalized the people he sketched.

Huh. The poem was... slowly making more sense.

"Y'know, that wasn't half bad for someone who claims to not like English," Rayla said, smirking at him. "There's a poet in you yet."

"Ha!" he snorted. "Yeah, no. I do not like English. I'll leave the poetry to you, thanks."

Rayla laughed. "Alright, alright. But did that at least help you?"

Callum paused. It had helped him. More than he'd predicted it would. "Yeah. I feel like I better understand what the poem is saying now." He bit his lip, trying to process his thoughts. "It felt... harsher in the parts where the speaker was talking about the flaws of summer. Gentler when they were talking about the good things. Er, the stuff they liked about their lover. So... juxtaposition?"

"Ooh, good catch!" Rayla said, grinning at him. "We use 'cacophonous' to describe those harsh sounds and 'euphonous' to describe the softer ones, which makes sense if you know words like 'cacophony'." She winked at him. "Just a little terminology for you."

Callum nodded and took a moment to jot down his thoughts about the sonnet before they could escape his mind, including the newfound vocabulary that Rayla had graced him with. The assignment had only been to annotate for sound devices - no real analysis required - thus he considered the poem to now have plenty of notations recorded on it. At least enough for a completion grade. "Yes," he finally said. "That makes sense. I'm no English major, but even I can make that connection."

Rayla rolled her eyes. "Okay, Mr. Smartypants. I think a 'thank you' would have been more appropriate."

"What? I already thanked you!" At least he thought he had.

"Well if I didn't hear it, it doesn't count."

"Oh, please. You're ridiculous."

"No more than you!"

Callum started to laugh, but was interrupted by the sound of metal clanging. It was an alarm on his phone, reminding him that he had class in a half hour.

"That's a terrible noise," Rayla said, wincing as he dismissed the notification from his phone and thereby silenced the sound. "You should reconsider your alarm choices."

"I'll think about it." Callum tucked his phone into his pocket. "I guess I should be on my way out."

Rayla pouted. "What, you're going to abandon me?"

"For physics?" He began to collect his papers from her floor. "I have no choice, unfortunately." He stuck them into his satchel in as neat a pile as he could manage. "If it's any consolation, I would much rather stay here. My professor is nowhere near as funny as you." Although, most people weren't as funny as Rayla.

"As if anyone could be as funny as me."

"Mm, touché," Callum admitted, doing his best to pretend he hadn't been thinking exactly that. He snapped his satchel shut and got to his feet, dusting off his pants. "Walk me to the door?"

Rayla rolled her eyes as she stood, the smirk dancing on her lips as clear as day. "You need me to coddle you?" She chuckled. "Oh wait - I forgot the prince is incompetent without me."

Callum dramatically placed his hand over his heart, as if wounded by her words. He resisted the urge to laugh at her comment - he didn't want to give her that satisfaction. "Am I not allowed to enjoy the company of my loyal knight?"

"No, of course not," Rayla reprimanded as they walked to the door of her dorm. "A prince and a knight? You know very well that our friendship is forbidden. We never should have spoken to each other in the first place."

Callum paused with his hand on the doorknob, the reality of her words sinking in. KSU was, on the whole, accepting of Rayla's presence. But there were still too many people who didn't believe that Katolians and Xadians could ever get along, much less be friends. "For the record," he said, turning around to look directly at Rayla, "I'm glad the prince and the knight started talking. Screw what anyone else thinks."

Rayla blinked, seemingly stunned by his words. Then she smiled. A gentle smile that Callum had never seen on her lips before, but one that didn't feel uncharacteristic, either. "So am I."

There was a moment when neither spoke.

(God, Rayla really was almost half a head taller than him, wasn't she?)

"Anyways!" Rayla exclaimed, clapping her hands together in an obvious attempt to break the silence. Her face was red. "I guess you need to... get going! Don't want to be late."

Callum nodded, though he didn't move.

"Oh," Rayla said, snapping her fingers as a thought occurred to her and in doing so successfully broke Callum out of his reverie. "After Renaissance History on Friday, I was wondering if you wanted to come to the football tryouts with me! Maybe get something to eat afterwards?"

Callum bit his lip. He was tempted. Seriously, seriously tempted. But... "I think I have to watch Ezran on Friday." Noticing disappointment flash across her face, he hastily added, "I might be able to catch the beginning, though!"

Rayla beamed at him. "Awesome. Bring some pom poms so you can cheer me on."

"Eh... We'll have to see about that one." He started to leave, then hesitated. "Hey... Can this homework session become a regular thing? It was really helpful today."

Rayla seemed taken aback by his suggestion, but then her smile widened. "I'd love to. Same time next week?"

Callum nodded. "Roger that."

This time, Callum successfully left the dorm, Rayla thanking him again for his help after he did the same for her.

As he walked towards his physics class, Callum slowly realized that there was genuinely no other person that he would go to football tryouts for. Claudia and Soren had persuaded him to go to a game or two in previous years, but he had always adamantly refused to attend tryouts.

Huh. Rayla really had him wrapped around her finger.

Weirdest of all, though, was that he did not mind in the slightest.

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Quick update-schedule news: I probably will not be able to post during March because I have school-related events every weekend except one (I definitely intend to try to update that weekend, but I don't want to get ahead of myself). I hope you understand and that you'll stick around for the next update, whenever it may come! Thank you so much for reading!