"I can pay it back. You should - do things people do for fun. Read books. Meet boys. Never think about grinding mana again."

That's exactly what Marcy would say in Annisa's place, but. "Kevin and Abigail and Franklin and I are all on the hook for it. If we all five grind mana we can pay it back within the year and then we'll all be able to focus on having fun."

A year for five adults. 

Annisa isn't, actually, surprised that they would do that for her. She's surprised in an abstract way that people like them exist at all but she's not surprised that they are them. And she'd have done it for one of them. Because of knowing they'd do it for her. 

"And if you give yourself two weeks to just relax and be okay then we'll pay it back within a year and two weeks."

Again good point, again but. "I'm. Worried that if I lose my momentum I'm going to collapse and be useless for months and that wouldn't be fair. I want to get done and collapse into uselessness with a clear conscience.--You can definitely take two weeks off, or however long, obviously, because you don't have this problem, this is a me problem."

"I've just taken several months off, apparently! Anyway I bet sit-ups with chest wounds are great for building mana."

"If you reinjure yourself Abigail will make the concerned mom face at you. Which reminds me, I said there was going to be food."

"Oh no, the concerned mom face. My plan to offer to arm-wrestle you for who gets to lie in bed doing nothing and who has to build mana is foiled."

Marcy laughs. "If anyone ever tries to impersonate you I will see through them the minute they pass up an opportunity to say something hilarious."

"If anyone ever tries to impersonate you I'll see through it because they will sometimes spend ten minutes enjoying themselves."

"Well, I'm glad that's settled. I should really go get that food. Want anything specific for your first meal on the outside?"

Her mother's cooking. "No, I'm good."

"Okay. I'll be right back."

She gets down to the kitchen via the balcony and the stair rail without touching the actual stairs, then runs up them a couple minutes later with a box of crackers, three apples, a jar of peanut butter, two plates, and two spoons. 

Marcy is very good.

Annisa is very good and so is peanut butter.

Once she's had enough food that she's not at risk of trying to talk with her mouth full, she asks, "Do you want to call your parents? I told them earlier that you were okay but needed to sleep."

"Yeah, I should do that. They must've - done pretty well, if I was hurt that badly when I got out -"

"Yeah, they had a healer right there." She holds out her phone. "Here; they'll recognize my number. You'll get your own phone and stuff in a day or two. . . . Do you want me to go outside while you call?"

Weak smile. "You don't have to worry about getting stuck with Javanese."

"It's true, I don't." She stays right where she is.

She hasn't actually spoken much Javanese in the last four years; it comes out a little rusty. "Dad? It's Annisa."

           "You're alive. You're all right?

"I'm all right. We own Boston a lot of mana but that's fixable. I - I did very well. In school. I was very prepared."

           "I know. You did well for yourself. We'll need help, once you've paid back Boston - keeping you safe while you were unconscious was very difficult."

"Of course. I'll come back once it won't make things complicated in Boston. I'll check whether I can have Indri for a couple weeks here, give you a break. Probably not, though. Everyone would try to get away with that."

           "They would. Indri's affinity is wind."

Which is to say, she's probably not worth spending rare favors on. "The valedictorian my year had a useless affinity. Of course, I don't know if - is Julian alive?" she asks Marcy, switching languages.

"Yes, and so are Naima and Malak and Julia." 

Not exactly surprising - New York and Boston have two of the best survival rates out there - but still better than she'd dared to hope for. "And he got his whole team out," she finishes to her father. 

         "We're preparing her to go maintenance," he says. "There's another Surabaya kid in her cohort thinking the same, they'll watch each others' backs."

So he hasn't given up because of the poor affinity. She's glad of that. It's not hopeless. If Ovi's still alive Indri's senior year then it's tolerable odds, even... Annisa is done thinking about this. "I'll let you know when I'm ready to travel."

         "Yes. Well done, Annisa."

"Mmmhmm. Bye."

"You don't need to feel like you need to wait to visit your parents until the loan's paid off. Even I would go see my parents if I had ended up on a different continent before getting to visit them. But it's your call."

"They need help, I should only go when I'm ready to be helpful. And I want to pay the debt off, I'll feel better once I have. And we're not - they know my plan was to get an American enclave, I'd been telling them that for years."

"That--makes sense." Marcy's been sleeping in the bedroom she shared with Athena as a kid; she's still got eight months before Athena either shows up and wants it or turns it into a painful reminder. 

"I told Julian and everybody the general situation but not that today was when you'd be back, in case you didn't want to deal with a million texts at once."

"I mean, I might as well get them out of the way while I'm still not very mobile rather than once my time has more competition. What're the best ways to grind mana around here?"