A week passes

It had been seven days since the last adjustment.

Seven days since Tomi McFirth had gone from a curious, slightly confused econ major to his indispensable—and stunningly restructured—lab assistant.

To Kekyll, it now felt as though she had always been this way. Reality had rethreaded itself neatly, quietly, with only the faintest seams, and everyone else behaved accordingly. No one blinked when Tomi breezed across campus with her oversized hoodie clinging to a newly voluptuous frame, or when she babbled cheerfully about “microcapacitor resonance feedback” between bites of her strawberry yogurt.

Everyone just accepted it.

In the lab, her presence had become a rhythm: her hips brushing counters as she moved through tight spaces without noticing, her hoodie never quite zipped far enough to cover what gravity persistently offered up, her glasses slipping just low enough that she had to tilt her head to focus. She’d lean over the console, cleavage pressing softly against the edge of the keyboard, tapping keys while humming a beat that only she seemed to hear.

Kekyll noticed everything. Of course he did. And the most exhilarating part? She didn’t.

Not even a flicker of self-awareness. Not when she bent to plug in a monitor and inadvertently gave him a perfect view of her tight denim shorts hugging sculpted curves. Not when she stretched one morning, arching her back, hoodie lifting just enough to flash smooth, toned skin. Not when she looked up at him from beneath her thick frames, eyes bright with a question that was always half off-topic.

“Dr. K, is it possible for non-Euclidean fields to destabilize coffee foam?”

“No, Tomi. That’s just… coffee.”

She’d grin, pop a bubble with her gum, and nod like he’d handed her a breakthrough.

The drumming had become its own odd subplot. She’d insisted on bringing her kit—an electronic hybrid setup that took up a corner of the lab now—and during downtime, she’d practice between field calibrations. Her coordination was impressive, her rhythm tight, her energy contagious. Watching her juggle polyrhythms with a lopsided grin and absent hair twirls became a sort of unintentional performance art.

Every time she drummed, her chest would bounce subtly with the motion, her loose neckline slipping even lower, and Kekyll would pretend to check readings just so he wouldn’t stare too openly.

And still, she seemed to see herself as nothing more than a helpful blur in his periphery—no vanity, no self-consciousness. Just a science-minded scatterbrain with a generous heart and DD-cup distractions.

Outside the lab, the shift had taken hold too. Professors greeted her with familiarity. Students remembered her as the “quirky lab girl with the killer rack” who was weirdly into physics for an econ major. She tutored underclassmen in circuitry and once got an article published in the Finster undergrad journal titled “Temporal Dissonance and Cheesecake: A Thought Experiment.”

She still spilled coffee. Still forgot appointments. Still talked about her halmeoni in Jeju and made bubble tea in beakers when no one was watching. But now, when she bounced into a room, the air shifted. Heads turned. Conversations paused. And not a single soul questioned why the smartest girl in the room also looked like she belonged on the cover of a lab-themed swimsuit calendar.

Kekyll, for his part, had never been more productive—or more distracted.

He’d catch himself staring for seconds too long, fingers hovering above the RAC, wondering if maybe, just maybe, he could push her just a bit further. Not physically. No. She was perfect there. But maybe… cognitively. A little more insight. A spark of intuitive genius to go with the rhythm and the soft-spoken compliance.

He shook the thought off. Not yet.

For now, he simply watched her adjust the isolation chamber’s capacitor rig, tongue poking out as she crouched in tight jeans, murmuring something about a “stubborn ground loop.” Her hoodie tugged open once again. She didn’t notice. Of course she didn’t.

He took a breath.

Science had never looked like this before.

And he was absolutely, dangerously addicted.