The Long Way Back
Copyright© 2026 by Star Again
Chapter 10: The Offer
By the middle of December, Leuven had begun to smell of rain, coffee, and panic.
The panic had stages. At first people joked about January as if it were an unpleasant relative arriving later than expected. Then the libraries filled before breakfast. Summary bundles appeared in plastic folders and were guarded with the suspicion usually reserved for cash. Students who had spent October discovering freedom and November negotiating with consequences now walked through the city with highlighters in their pockets and formulas written on the backs of envelopes.
Medicine made it worse because medicine did not respect the border between knowledge and fear. Anatomy required obedience. Physiology required understanding. Biochemistry required both and then punished you for believing either was enough. Every lecture seemed to end with another list of things that could fail inside a body.
In the old life I had known bodies failing without diagrams. I had pressed cloth against wounds, counted breaths in dust, watched men turn pale in ways no textbook quite described. I had known the weight of a man who could not help you carry him. I had known the smell of blood before anyone gave me a Latin word to put beside it.
Now I sat in lecture halls with a young spine, a cheap pen, and a professor explaining renal autoregulation as if the body were a civilized country.
I wrote everything down. That was still the rule. Write down what mattered. Repeat until boring. Do not trust panic just because it spoke loudly.
The difference, after the coffee shop, was that I answered my phone.
I answered more often now. Sometimes badly and sometimes late, but I answered.
Marieke and I had not become simple. We did not turn one conversation and one hug into a cure. She remained angry in places. I remained difficult in more. But when she sent a message, I did not put the phone face down and pretend silence was mercy.
Lizzy noticed too.
You are answering like someone being supervised.
I am answering like someone improving.
Same thing, but yours has posture.
I read that in the library and had to put a hand over my mouth because laughing in the anatomy section felt like disrespecting the dead twice.
Outside the window, the afternoon darkened early. Inside, the room hummed with pages turning and throats being cleared. I had two hours before tutoring, a bank letter to collect, and three chapters of biochemistry that had become personal. I returned to reading the page.
The body still expected me to learn its names.
Mrs. Claes had the letter ready on Tuesday morning.
She slid it across the desk in a clear plastic folder as if it might bruise if handled emotionally. Her office looked exactly as it had before: plant losing a slow war in the corner, grey carpet, glass wall, forms arranged in piles that knew more about adulthood than I did.
“This is not an approval,” she said.
“I understand.”
“It is not a promise of financing.”
“I understand.”
“It confirms that we have discussed a possible mortgage application, that you have available funds, and that further evaluation would require documentation, appraisal, income records, and standard approval.”
“I understand.”
She looked at me over the rim of her glasses. “You say that very calmly for someone who wants a building before Christmas.”
“I can say it less calmly if that helps the file.”
“It would not.”
Something in her face gave way, briefly. Almost a smile, perhaps only a professional muscle remembering youth.
She tapped the folder. “Use this carefully. If Mr. Van Acker is serious, he will understand that the letter is preliminary. If he is not serious, he will use it to hurry you into a promise.”
“I will not make a promise I cannot keep.”
“Good. Now say the rest.”
I looked at her. She waited.
“Subject to financing,” I said.
“And?”
“Subject to inspection.”
“And?”
“Subject to the building having no legal problem large enough to kill the purchase before it breathes.”
“That last part is not standard phrasing.”
“No.”
“Keep it out of the written offer.”
“I planned to.”
She turned one page toward me. “The tutoring records are better.”
“Better than absurd?”
“Better than invisible.”
There was no praise in her voice. That made it easier to trust.
“I opened the separate account,” I said. “Receipts. Names where they accept receipts. Transfers where possible. Mathis is being paid by transfer now.”
“Good.”
“And if I make additional money?”
Her pen stopped. “What kind of additional money?”
I had expected the question. I had still hoped not to hear it.
“Investments. Small betting wins already exist, but I am not using them as income.”
“You should not.”
“I know.”
“Large unexplained deposits remain a problem.”
“How large?”
She gave me the look adults reserve for young men who ask questions with consequences hiding behind them.
“Large enough to require explanation,” she said. “Which is not a number. It is a situation.”
“What if the explanation is clean?”
“Clean is not always simple.”
“For example?”
She set the pen down. “A lottery win. An inheritance. A gift. A sudden sale. Each may be legitimate. Each still changes the file.”
“A lottery win is documented.”
“Yes. It is also visible. Visible money brings questions of timing, tax, intention, and negotiation. If sudden money appears, you speak to an accountant and a notary before you move it into a purchase. You do not mix it into this process casually.”
“So it helps.”
“It may help later. It may stop everything first while everyone asks what exactly happened.”
That sat on the desk between us with the other papers.
“Mr. Vandael,” she said, “you are doing something unusual. That does not make it wrong. It means every ordinary step matters more.”
“I am learning that.”
“Learn it before you sign anything.”
I put the folder carefully on top of the anatomy notes in my bag.
At the door, Mrs. Claes added, “And sleep.”
I looked back.
“That was not banking advice,” she said. “That was human advice. It is less binding.”
“I will consider it.”
“That usually means no.”
“It usually does.”
She shook her head once and returned to her paperwork.
Outside, the cold entered my coat before I had reached the corner.
Tutoring had become its own weather.
By Wednesday evening, forty names had passed through Elise’s list. Not all at once, not yet, but enough to change the shape of things. Students came in pairs, in groups, with pages folded into nervous squares. They asked about nephron segments, cardiac output, glycolysis, exam rumours, whether Professor De Smet hated students personally, and whether anyone had old questions from last year that were not already circulating like forbidden scripture.
Mathis arrived early now. Before, he used to arrive exactly on time, because arriving early meant being seen before he was prepared. Now he came with his own stack of exercise sheets and a pencil behind his ear that made him look both younger and more competent.
“You copied the clearance examples?” I asked.
“And corrected the second one.”
“It was wrong?”
“You changed units halfway.”
I looked at the page. He was right.
“Good catch.”
Mathis looked pleased, then tried to hide it badly. Saar stood near the door with two cups of coffee and the expression of someone witnessing a fragile civic improvement.
“He has started correcting you,” she said.
“He was right.”
“That was not my complaint.”
She handed one coffee to Mathis, not to me. Mathis stared at it as if it might be a trap.
“For me?” he asked.
“No, for the chair. Take it.”
He took it. I almost smiled.
The session was too full. Elise had found a second room, but half the students still asked for mine. I split them anyway. Basic renal problems with Mathis. Integrated physiology with me. Exam strategy with Elise for those who had mistaken panic for method.
For ninety minutes, I became calm in a way that did not feel like disappearance.
There were times the old life came back to the body before it reached the mind. When a room became loud, I knew how to lower my voice until people leaned in. When fear scattered attention, I knew how to put a sequence on the board and make everyone follow the first step before worrying about the tenth. In the army, men had listened because hesitation killed. In the lecture room, nobody was dying. But panic used some of the same muscles.
“Stop,” I said when three students began arguing over the same equation.
They stopped.
I pointed at the board. “One variable at a time. You are not confused because the problem is impossible. You are confused because you are trying to solve three versions of it simultaneously.”
A girl in the front row lowered her pen. “That sounds like my entire life.”
A few people laughed. The room loosened.
“Then we start with the kidney,” I said. “The kidney is difficult enough.”
Afterward, Mathis stayed behind to collect papers. He was tired, but he no longer flinched every time someone asked him something.
“They listen to you now,” I said.
“They listen to the sheets.”
“They ask you questions.”
He stacked the pages too carefully. “Some.”
“Good.”
He looked at me then. “Will you be here next week?”
The question should have been logistical. It was not.
“Yes,” I said. “But you can start without me if I am late.”
He blinked.
“I can?”
“You did last time.”
“That was because you were not here.”
“And the building remained standing.”
Saar, who had pretended not to listen from the doorway, said, “Progress.”
Mathis looked between us, unsure whether he had been praised or assigned more work. With Saar, those often shared a border. When he left, Saar walked over.
“He did fine,” she said.
“I saw.”
“Then let him.”
“I am.”
“No. You stand close enough that he keeps looking over his shoulder.”
“I am responsible for the sessions.”
“Then be responsible for letting him work.”
I looked at the empty doorway where Mathis had gone.
Saar picked up her bag. “Eat something. You look terrible.”
“That was direct.”
“You’re welcome.”
Then she left before I could improve my side of the exchange.
Marieke took me to the Christmas market on Thursday because, in her words, my idea of a break had become moving between desks.
“I have walked outdoors,” I said.
“To go somewhere useful.”
“That is still walking.”
“That is commuting with legs.”
She wore a dark coat and a grey scarf, her hair loose under the damp air. The argument from the coffee shop still existed between us, but it no longer stood in the middle of every sentence. It had moved to the side, where both of us could see it.
The square had been turned into a temporary village of lights, wood, sugar, and cold. Stalls sold candles, waffles, small gifts, hot wine, roasted nuts, sausages, and ornaments that looked handmade if you stood far enough away. Students moved through it in little groups, claiming an hour away from study with the desperation of prisoners allowed sunlight. Older couples walked slower. Children pulled at sleeves. A man in a red hat rang a bell near a charity box and looked cold enough to deserve all the money he received.
I had not planned to enjoy it.
That was probably why I did.
Marieke bought hot wine. I bought waffles. She complained that mine had too much sugar, then took a bite. Powdered sugar touched the corner of her mouth. I noticed and did nothing about it for a full ten seconds.
“You are staring,” she said.
“You have sugar there.”
“Where?”
I reached, then stopped with my hand halfway between us.
She saw the pause. Her eyes softened by a degree.
“You may,” she said.
I brushed the sugar from the corner of her mouth with my thumb.
It should have been nothing. A public gesture. Quick, practical, almost foolish. Her lips parted slightly under the touch, and the cold square altered around us.
“Dangerous waffle,” she said.
“Clearly.”
She looked at my mouth and then away first. That small retreat had become familiar. She looked away first, and the fact of it stayed with me.
We had barely moved on when Hanne spotted us. Of course she did.
She appeared beside a stall selling candles, wrapped in a red scarf, eyes bright with the pleasure of social weather. Elise was with her, carrying two paper cups and a folder even at the Christmas market. Mathis stood behind them holding a paper cone of roasted nuts like he had been assigned custody of it. Saar lingered near the edge of the group, hands in her coat pockets, already unimpressed by the sentimental lighting. Hanne looked from Marieke to me with open satisfaction.
“So this is real,” she said.
“Hanne,” Elise said.
“What? Everyone’s thinking it. I’m helping.” She smiled at Marieke. “I’m Hanne. This is Elise. Mathis. Saar. We’re mostly harmless when fed.”
“No,” Saar said.
“Fine. Elise is harmless when fed.”
Elise handed Saar one of the paper cups without looking at her. “Drink and stop frightening people.”
“I am not frightened,” Mathis said, too quickly.
“No one asked you,” Saar said.
Marieke returned Mathis’s small nod. “Hello.”
“Hello,” he said. “James mentioned your article.”
“One of them?”
“The reperfusion one. I did not understand all of it.”
“Good. Neither did one of the reviewers.”
Mathis blinked, then smiled because he decided it might be a joke.
Hanne looked between us again. “He’s said almost nothing about you.”
“That sounds like him,” Marieke said.
“It’s rude to us as friends,” Hanne said. “We’re forced to invent things.”
“You were going to invent things anyway,” Elise said.
“Yes, but I prefer to call it research.”
Saar looked at me. “You look uncomfortable.”
“I am eating a waffle.”
“You can do both.”
A gust moved through the stalls and set the candle flames leaning.
Hanne leaned toward Marieke. “Does he do this with you too? The standing there quietly until everyone becomes more serious?”
Marieke glanced at me. “Sometimes.”
“That must be exhausting.”
“Sometimes,” she said, and the word came out fonder than the complaint deserved.
They had arranged themselves without deciding to. Hanne stood where the light from the stall reached her. Elise held the cups and the folder and looked ready to hold more. Saar had placed herself outside the circle by exactly the distance that let her watch all of us at once, which I suspected she had measured.
I took another bite of waffle because defence had become crowded.
Elise rescued the conversation with the mercy of a competent person. “Are you also in medicine?”
“Research track,” Marieke said. “Cardiology, mostly. Reperfusion.”
Mathis straightened a little. “That was in the article.”
“He makes us read things we do not need yet,” Saar said.
“It is sometimes ambitious,” Elise said.
“And sometimes bad,” Saar said. “He knows.”
Marieke laughed then. Not loudly. Enough. For a moment she looked as if she might say something else, then chose the laugh instead.
The sound did something to me. I had known her in bed, at desks, under pressure. Seeing her laugh there made the student world and the private one touch before I was ready.
Hanne saw that too. Her expression changed, briefly, from amusement to interest, then softened.
“We should go,” Elise said. “If I do not return to biochemistry soon, I will begin believing in miracles.”
“That’s what the market is for,” Hanne said.
“The market is for overpriced sugar,” Saar said.
“Also miracles,” Mathis said, surprising everyone, including himself.
Hanne pointed at him. “See? Growth.”
They left with cups, folders, and the smell of roasted nuts trailing after them. Marieke watched them go.
“You have friends,” she said.
“That sounds like an accusation.”
“It is a finding.”
“Saar already has that job.”
“She seems qualified.”
We walked on. The lights reflected in the wet stones. Somewhere nearby, a choir sang with more sincerity than tuning. Marieke’s gloved hand brushed mine once, then did not move away when I took it.
“Are we public now?” I asked.
She glanced at our hands. “Apparently.”
“Should we have discussed that?”
“Probably.”
“Do you want to?”
“No.”
That made me smile.
She squeezed my hand once. “Do not look pleased. Avoiding a discussion is not the same as winning one.”
“I am learning that.”
“Slowly.”
We stopped near a stall selling wooden toys. A small train circled endlessly through painted snow. Children watched it as if repetition were magic. The old man running the stall wound a key and set another engine moving. Marieke’s hand tightened slightly around mine.
“There is something I should tell you,” she said.
The market continued without mercy. Bell, voices, laughter, rainwater dripping from a canvas roof.
“All right,” I said.
“My supervisor mentioned a placement abroad.”
I kept my face still because the body sometimes knew discipline before the mind knew whether discipline was wise.
“For you?”
“For the work.” She looked at the wooden train instead of me. “But yes. For me.”
“Where?”
“London is possible. A few other places. Nothing is decided.”
“When?”
“Autumn. If it happens.”
Autumn had weight now. It was far enough away to make fear look unreasonable and close enough to begin changing things.
“How long?” I asked.
“Six months. Possibly a year.”
I nodded.
Marieke looked at me then. “You are very calm.”
“I have had bad news before.”
“That is not the comfort you think it is.”
“It was not meant as comfort.”
“I know. That is part of the problem.”
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