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The campus on the first day back is exactly what I expected and somehow still worse. It's the freshers that do it. You can spot them instantly: they look like they are trying too hard and don’t know where anything is. They also walk in groups of four and five like there's safety in numbers.

"Don't," Mason says beside me.

I look at him. "I didn't say anything." Asshole.

"You were about to." He doesn't even glance at me, he just keeps walking with his hands in his pockets like he owns the sidewalk. We’ve been here long enough, and a lot of students know who we are and stay away from us, while others like to be around us.

"I was about to get my class schedule."

"You were about to say something about the lanyards."

I look back at the group ahead of us. There are three of them. Their lanyards are swinging, and one of them has their campus map unfolded to full size.

"They're wearing lanyards, Mason."

Mason shoulders through the main doors and I follow him into the building, which is somehow louder inside than it was outside. The administration corridor is already backed up. There’s a long, loose queue of students clutching acceptance letters and laptop bags, shuffling forward like penguins in a queue toward the timetable desk at the far end. The woman behind the desk looks like someone who’s already made peace with her day being terrible, which makes me smile.

I join the back of the queue. Mason slots in beside me. A guy directly in front of us drops his entire folder and every single page fans out across the floor in different directions like confetti at the world's most stressful party.

He makes a sound like he's been personally wounded.

I crouch down and help him collect them, stacking pages roughly back into order. He takes them with both hands, and his ears turn pink.

"Fresher?" I ask.

He looks about sixteen. "Is it that obvious?"

"Little bit." I hand back the last page. "It gets better."

He looks around at the queue, the noise, and the woman at the desk who is now dealing with someone arguing about a timetable clash with the energy of a person who’s been personally wronged by God. "Does it?"

I don’t answer him, because I have a feeling this guy in front of me isn’t a student who will have the same amount of fun I have. He seems like he’ll be in his dorm studying and stressing his whole college life.

We both look around and I shake my head.

"Or," I say, turning to Mason. "I could just hack the system and pull our timetables right now."

Mason turns to look at me slowly and I press my lips together to stop myself smiling. The expression on his face is the one he gets when an idea is put forward which he didn't think of first and isn't sure whether to be annoyed about that.

"How long would that take?"

I pull out my phone. "Thirty seconds. Maybe less. Their admin system is embarrassingly basic. I looked at it last year for something else and nearly felt sorry for them."

Mason looks around and the new students and smiles. "Do it," he says.

"I'm not actually going to do it."

He closes his eyes briefly. "Miles."

"I'd leave fingerprints all over their server. It's not worth it for a timetable."

"Then why did you suggest it?"

"To see how fast you'd say yes." I pocket my phone, laughing. "Very fast, for the record, barely a pause."

Mason turns back to the queue with the expression of a man exercising enormous patience. "You're genuinely the most irritating person I know."

"We live with Declan."