THE LRU YEARS

CHAPTER ONE

The Collision THE LRU YEARS

Freshman Year — Bio 101 Lab — First Week

The fluorescent lights of Langston Ray University's science building hummed their eternal drone, a thin electric whine that crawled under the skin if you listened too long. Lab 247 smelled of formaldehyde, hot plastic, and the nervous heat of ambition—the particular atmosphere of first-year pre-med students who hadn't yet learned that confidence and competence weren't the same thing.

Janelle Ray arrived first because Janelle Ray always arrived first when territory needed claiming. She swept into the room like she was declaring war on the hinges, dropped her designer bag on the best seat at the center table, and spread her materials across enough space for three people. Her gold jewelry caught the unflattering light and made it flatter anyway.

She was assessing escape routes and potential allies when Maurice Yara walked in.

He did not announce himself. Did not need to. There was something about the way he moved—unhurried, certain, like a man who had already calculated the trajectory of his entire life and found it acceptable—that made people notice. Red-brown skin, low fade, the kind of face that listened more than it spoke.

He took the seat beside her without asking permission.

Jay raised an eyebrow. "That seat's taken."

"By whom?"

"Me. I'm sitting in two seats."

Mar—because he had been Mar since his grandmother first said Maurice was too much mouth for such a quiet boy—just nodded. Sat anyway. Opened his notebook with the same deliberate calm he did everything.

Jay decided she did not hate him.

• • •

Kali Tafari arrived third, apologizing before he had fully crossed the threshold.

"Sorry, sorry—the advising office had the wrong building listed, and then I couldn't find parking, and—" He stopped. Breathed. Smiled that smile that made people forget he was late, forget they were annoyed, forget everything except that they wanted to help him somehow.

Jay felt something shift in her chest. Family recognition—the bone-deep kind. Her cousin had that same energy their grandmother talked about. The Ray gift, she called it. The thing that made strangers confess secrets and enemies’ lower weapons.

"Kali," she said, because saying his name was easier than saying I have heard about you my whole life and you are exactly what I expected and that is terrifying.

"Jay?" His face broke into recognition. "Auntie Mariam's Jay?"

"The one and only." She stood, pulled him into a hug that surprised them both with its ferocity. "Welcome to LRU, cousin."

He hugged her back like he meant it. Like he had been waiting for family to find him in this sea of competitive strangers.

Mar watched the reunion with quiet interest. Noted the way Kali immediately started organizing Jay's scattered materials without being asked. Noted the warmth. Filed it away.

• • •

Allen Yara arrived last.

Exactly on time. Not a second early, not a second late.

The room's temperature dropped three degrees.

He was tall—absurdly, aggressively tall—with thick braids pulled back from a face that could have been carved from obsidian. Everything about him was precise: the line of his jaw, the set of his shoulders, the way his dark eyes swept the room and catalogued everyone in it like data points in an equation he was already solving.

Mar straightened slightly. Recognition. "Cousin."

"Maurice." Allen's voice was low. Controlled. A blade wrapped in silk.

Jay's eyes ping-ponged between them. "Wait. Y'all are related?"

"Yara family," Mar said simply.

"The doctor dynasty?" Jay's grin sharpened. "Oh, this is going to be interesting."

Allen ignored her. His eyes had found Kali, and they stayed there—half a beat too long, the only fracture in his perfect composure.

Kali was sitting in what would have been Allen's seat. The one with the best sightline to the whiteboard. The one Allen had scoped out during orientation.

"You're in my seat," Allen said.

Kali looked up. Something electric passed between them—recognition of a different kind. Not family. Something stranger. Older.

"There are no assigned seats," Kali said.

"There are now."

They stared at each other. The fluorescent lights hummed. Somewhere in the building, a professor droned about academic integrity. Neither moved.

Jay leaned toward Mar, her whisper carrying in the peculiar acoustics of pre-med tension. "Twenty bucks says this ends badly or intimately."

Mar did not look up from his notes. "History suggests both."

Jay's grin split her face. "I like you."

Kali finally moved—not retreating, just shifting to make space. "Sit down, tall, dark, and intimidating. There's room."

Allen sat. Their shoulders were inches apart. Neither acknowledged the proximity.

The professor walked in, and for the next hour, they were just four students at a lab table, alphabetically assigned by the cruel poetry of Ray-Richardson-Tafari-Yara.

None of them knew yet.

None of them could know that this moment—fluorescent lights, formaldehyde, four strangers who were not strangers—was the first brick in an empire that would change medicine forever.

But something in the air knew.

It had begun.

CHAPTER TWO

The Study Group

Freshman Year — The Library — 2 AM

By midterms, they were inseparable. Not by choice—by gravity.

The Langston Ray library had a basement level that the university pretended was for "quiet study,” but everyone knew was purgatory with better lighting. At two in the morning, the desperate and the doomed wore the faces of pre-med students who had finally understood that undergraduate was not, in fact, an extended victory lap before real medicine began. It was the gauntlet. And the gauntlet had teeth.

Kali had claimed the corner table three weeks into the semester—the one near the emergency exit nobody used, with the faulty overhead light that flickered just enough to seed migraines but not enough to justify a maintenance call. He had spread his materials across its surface like a general preparing for siege: color-coded notebooks, highlighters arranged by frequency of use, a study system so elaborate it had its own index card explaining the index.

Jay showed up the second night. "Cousin," she announced, dropping into the chair beside him like they had coordinated schedules. "You look like death reheated twice and served cold."

"I'm fine."

"You're lying. Move your highlighters. I need elbow room for my suffering."

Mar appeared the third night, as though Jay's presence had sent out some kind of signal—a frequency only Yaras could detect. He did not ask if he could join. Just set down his coffee, pulled out his materials, and began studying three inches from Jay's shoulder like this was where he had always belonged.

"Your cousin's got instincts," Kali observed.

Jay did not look up from her biochemistry notes. "Not my cousin. Allen's."

"Ah."

"His presence summons." Jay finally raised her head, something knowing in her eyes. "Like a bat signal. But for emotionally unavailable geniuses with excellent bone structure."

• • •

Allen came on the fourth night.

He did not announce himself. One moment Kali was alone in the fluorescent hum of 3 AM, the others having finally surrendered to sleep, and the next moment there was a protein bar on his textbook and a shadow falling across the page like an eclipse.

Kali looked up. Allen stood there like a statue that had wandered away from a museum of beautiful, unsettling things.

"You forgot to eat." Not a question.

"How did you—"

"You've been highlighting the same paragraph for twenty minutes. Your hand is shaking. You forgot to eat." Allen pulled out the chair across from Kali and sat with the same precise economy of motion he brought to everything. "Eat."

Kali picked up the protein bar. Their fingers brushed against the wrapper—barely, barely—and neither pulled away.

"Thank you," Kali said.

Allen's jaw tightened. That was all—just that small motion, that telltale compression of muscle—but Kali saw it. Catalogued it. Filed it in the growing mental folder labeled Things Allen Yara Does When He's Feeling Something He Won't Name.

"Biochemistry?" Allen asked, nodding at the open textbook.

"Morrison's section on enzyme kinetics. It's like he's personally offended by the concept of human comprehension."

Allen pulled the textbook toward himself, rotated it to read. "Michaelis-Menten. The problem is that most students try to memorize when they should be visualizing. The equation describes a hyperbola, not a line. See the saturation curve as a story, not a formula."

And then Allen Yara—cold, controlled, intimidating Allen Yara—spent the next hour explaining enzyme kinetics with a patience and clarity that transformed incomprehensible formulas into something almost elegant. His voice in the quiet library was low and precise, and Kali found himself leaning closer to here, to understand, to memorize the way Allen's hands moved when he was teaching.

By morning, they had established the unspoken rules that would define the next four years: Allen explained with surgical precision. Kali translated into human language. Jay quizzed them with the aggression of someone training soldiers. Mar timed their responses and said little but saw everything.

They argued about everything. They covered for each other constantly.

They became a unit without ever discussing it.

The rule emerged unspoken, bone-deep, the kind of truth that does not require words:

We are one. The system is the enemy. Not each other. Ever.

CHAPTER THREE

The Estate

Sophomore Year — Spring Semester

The Tafari estate sat twenty minutes outside campus, where the noise of academic ambition faded into something older. Rolling hills softened by morning mist. Ancient oaks that had watched generations come and go. Horses that tracked your movements with eyes that held too much knowing for comfort.

Kali had never invited anyone here. Not like this—not the whole group, not for a weekend, not to see the place where his history lived in every floorboard and his grandmother still presided like a benevolent monarch who had simply chosen not to abdicate.

"Your house has a name," Jay said flatly as they drove through the gates. Stone pillars. Wrought iron. The kind of entrance that whispered old money and shouted stay out in equal measure. "Your house has an actual name, Kali."

"It's old," Kali said, as if that explained anything.

"It's a compound. A whole compound. Mar, are you seeing this?"

Mar was seeing it. Mar saw everything. Right now, he was seeing the way Kali's shoulders had dropped from their usual tense position, the way his breathing had changed, the way coming home had already begun to heal something in him that campus kept wounding.

Allen, in the passenger seat, said nothing. But his eyes moved across the property with the same analytical intensity he brought to surgical simulations—cataloguing, assessing, filing away data points that would inform conclusions he would never share.

They parked. The front door opened before anyone could knock, and two dogs came barreling out like furry missiles locked onto their targets.

Zeus, the Great Dane mix, went straight for Jay, nearly knocking her over with the force of his greeting. She laughed—not her performative cackle but something genuine, surprised out of her—and dropped to her knees to receive his affection like it was exactly what she had not known she needed.

Sheba, the German Shepherd, approached with more calculation. She circled Mar once, twice, assessing. Then she sat at his feet like she had decided about his character and found him acceptable.

"She doesn't usually do that," Kali said. "She's selective."

Mar reached down and scratched behind her ears. Sheba's eyes closed in contentment. Something in her recognized something in him—two quiet observers who understood each other without translation.

But Zeus—Zeus had abandoned Jay. He had spotted Allen standing rigid by the car, and he was trotting toward him with the determination of an animal who had recognized something in a stranger that the stranger had not recognized in himself.

Allen froze. "I'm not—I don't—"

Zeus did not care about Allen's protestations. He pushed his massive head against Allen's hand, demanding attention with the patient insistence of a creature who knew he would win eventually. Allen had never been good with animals. Animals required a kind of softness he had trained out of himself years ago.

But Zeus did not care about training. Zeus cared about truth.

"He really doesn't do that," Kali said quietly, watching. "He's the most selective one. Doesn't trust anyone he hasn't known for years."

Allen's hand moved without his permission. His fingers found the spot behind Zeus's ears, and the dog sighed a deep, contented sound that released something in Allen too. Some small, locked-away thing that had not been touched in longer than he could remember.

Jay caught Kali's eye across the driveway. Something passed between them—cousin to cousin, Ray to Ray—that did not require words.

Your dog knows something.

I know.

• • •

That evening, they studied on the back porch until the sun began its slow surrender to the horizon. The sky turned colors that existed outside the standard spectrum—gold bleeding into rose bleeding into purple bleeding into something that had no name but made your chest ache anyway.

Somewhere in the middle of Kali explaining neuroanatomy, Allen stopped pretending to focus on his notes.

"You're different here," Allen said.

Jay and Mar had gone inside to help Kali's grandmother with dinner—or that is what they had claimed. Jay had grabbed Mar's arm and announced "We're helping with dinner" with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, leaving Kali and Allen alone on the porch with the sunset and all the things they were not saying.

"Different how?" Kali asked.

"Lighter. Like you can actually breathe."

Kali turned to look at him—really look, in a way he usually avoided because looking at Allen too long was like looking at the sun. Dangerous. Illuminating. Something that left afterimages on your vision long after you turned away.

"Maybe I just needed the right people to bring home."

Allen did not respond. Did not know how to respond to things that felt like invitations to places he had never been.

But he did not leave. Did not retreat into his fortress of one-word answers and calculated distance.

He just sat there, close enough to touch, watching the sun set over the hills like it was telling him something important that he was not ready to hear.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Decision

Junior Year — Hospital Volunteer Shift — October

They had been dancing around it for two years.

Everyone knew. The study group knew. The nurses at the volunteer hospital knew. Half of LRU's pre-med cohort had theories and betting pools and increasingly elaborate schemes to lock them in supply closets. The tension between Jay and Mar had become its own weather system—something you could feel before you entered a room, like the pressure drop before a storm.

The hospital break room was empty except for the two of them. October light slanted through windows that had not been cleaned since the previous administration, casting everything in a sepia glow that made the moment feel like a photograph that had not been taken yet.

Mar was recounting a difficult patient interaction—an elderly woman who'd refused medication because she didn't trust "young doctors," how he'd sat with her for twenty minutes until she told him about her late husband who'd died in a hospital just like this one, how the medication went down easier once she'd been heard.

Jay was listening. Listening, not performing listening, not waiting for her turn to speak. Her coffee sat forgotten in her hands as she watched Mar tell the story with his typical quiet intensity—the way his voice dropped when he got to the important parts, the way his hands moved when he was explaining something that mattered.

When he finished, she reached over and fixed his collar. Her hand lingered.

"We should stop pretending," she said.

"Pretending what?"

"This." She gestured at the space between them—the three inches of air that had been charged for two years. "The thing. The obvious thing that everyone sees except apparently us."

Mar considered. The consideration lasted approximately three seconds—long enough to be thoughtful, short enough to prove he had already made this decision months ago and was just waiting for her to catch up.

"Okay."

Jay blinked. "Okay?"

"Okay. Let's stop pretending."

"That's it? No drama? No 'what are we' conversation? No—"

"Did you want drama?"

"No." Her face split into a grin that could have powered the hospital's generators. "No, I really didn't."

They were official by the end of the week. No games. No circling. Just decision, followed by action, followed by the easiest relationship either of them had ever experienced—because the hard part had been the waiting, and the waiting was over.

• • •

The library. Two nights later. Kali was highlighting neurology notes with the aggressive determination of someone trying not to think about other things. Allen was in the chair beside him—always beside him now, not across, as if proximity had become a habit neither could break.

"They just... decided?" Kali asked. For the third time.

"Apparently."

"Like it was that simple?"

"For them, it was."

A pause. Neither looked at the other. Outside, November was beginning its slow assault on the campus trees, stripping them bare branch by branch, exposing what had been hidden by leaves all summer.

"Must be nice," Kali said quietly. "Knowing what you want."

Allen's hand tightened on his pen. The knuckles went white, then released. A breath he did not know he had been holding escaped through his teeth.

"Must be," he said, and his voice was sandpaper and secrets.

Neither said what they were talking about. Neither was ready. But the words hung between them like smoke signals, like semaphore, like all the ways humans have invented to say things without saying them at all.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Tag-Team

Junior Year — The Diner — Late Night

Now that Jay and Mar were together, they became a unit. A terrifying, coordinated unit with a singular mission that they pursued with the dedication of generals planning a campaign that would determine the fate of nations.

The target: Kali and Allen's weaponized obliviousness.

The diner was the kind of place that only existed near college campuses—sticky menus, coffee that could strip paint, and booths that had witnessed more emotional breakdowns than a therapist's office. The four of them had claimed a corner booth that smelled faintly of syrup and desperation.

Jay slid in beside Mar with the energy of someone about to commit a crime she had been planning for years. Across from them, Kali and Allen sat with the careful distance of two people trying extremely hard not to touch—and failing.

"We got together as soon as we knew," Jay announced, her hand finding Mar's under the table with the ease of long practice. "No games."

"Y'all been in sync since freshman orientation," Mar added.

"We've watched you finish each other's sentences for two years," Jay continued.

"So, when are y'all going to stop wasting our time?" Mar asked.

"For real though." Jay leaned forward, her gold jewelry catching the diner's unflattering light and making it work anyway. "We're exhausted."

Kali's face performed a complicated series of emotions. "I hate both of you."

Allen said nothing. Picked up his coffee. Drank it with the focused intensity of a man trying to drown.

"He's not denying it, Mar." Jay's voice vibrated with vindication.

"He never does."

Kali kicked Jay under the table. Allen's jaw tightened—that tell, that always-tell—and he studied the menu like it contained the meaning of life.

"I have a group chat," Jay said, the casualness of her tone betrayed by the gleam in her eyes. "Called 'Kallen Watch.' Updates every time one of you does something catastrophically obvious."

"Who's in this group chat?" Kali asked, horrified.

"People."

"What people?"

"People who have eyes. And patience. And apparently nothing better to do than watch two geniuses fail basic emotional mathematics."

Mar's mouth twitched—the closest he came to a grin when he was entertained. "She's exaggerating. It's only twelve people."

"TWELVE?"

"Most of them are just there for the entertainment value." Mar's face stayed neutral, but his eyes were laughing. "Although Dr. Patterson from organic chem asked to be added last week."

Allen set down his coffee cup with slightly more force than necessary. "Our professor. Is in your group chat. About our nonexistent relationship."

"He's rooting for you," Jay said brightly. "Says you have 'promising chemistry.' His words, not mine."

"I need new friends."

"No, you don't." Kali's voice was resigned but warm. "You're stuck with us."

Allen looked at him. That look—the one Jay had been documenting for two years, the one that said things Allen's mouth refused to.

"I know," he said quietly.

Jay's phone buzzed. She checked it, grinned like a shark scenting blood, and typed something rapidly.

"What did you just send?" Kali demanded.

"Evidence."

CHAPTER SIX

The Surgical Cap

Senior Year — Anatomy Lab — Final Semester

It was such a small thing.

The anatomy lab was bright and clinical, humming with the tension of senior pre-meds who could finally see the finish line. They were practicing suturing techniques—the last practical exam before their fates would be sealed by application committees and interview panels and all the gatekeepers standing between them and the futures they had been building toward for four years.

Kali reached into his bag for his surgical cap—the teal one he had bought the first year, worn soft now from use and washed so many times the color had faded to something gentler—and pulled out the wrong one.

Navy blue. Pristine. Folded with military precision.

He put it on without thinking. His hands were already occupied with the suture kit, his mind running through the procedure, and the cap was just a cap, wasn't it? Just fabric and function.

Across the lab, Allen froze.

Three tables away, his hands went still over his own sutures. His eyes fixed on Kali—on the navy-blue cap against brown skin, on the casual intimacy of wearing something that belonged to someone else without even realizing it. On the way it looked so natural, like it had always been there, like it belonged.

"That's not yours," Allen said.

Kali looked down, confused for a moment. Then understanding arrived. "Oh. Sorry, I must have—our bags were next to each other, and I—"

"It's fine." Allen's voice was too controlled. Too careful. A fortress built in two syllables. "Keep it."

"Are you sure?"

"I have others."

Kali kept the cap. Wore it for the rest of the lab. Did not notice Allen watching him. Did not notice Allen's hands were not steady as he finished his sutures—Allen, whose hands never trembled, whose precision was legendary, whose control was absolute.

But Jay noticed.

She pulled out her phone under the table, typed rapidly:

I cannot do this anymore.

Mar's response came in seconds: patience.

I have been PATIENT for four YEARS

they will figure it out.

WHEN. WHEN WILL THEY FIGURE IT OUT.

when they are ready

I am filing for divorce.

no, you are not!

no, I am not. but I am thinking about it.

Across the lab, Allen was still watching Kali. The navy cap. The concentrated furrow between Kali's brows. The way his hands moved with that grace that had nothing to do with training and everything to do with who he fundamentally was.

It was such a small thing. A surgical cap grabbed by mistake.

But Allen Yara had never let anyone touch his things. Had never shared space or supplies or the carefully controlled elements of his existence. His life was a system of precise boundaries, and those boundaries existed for reasons he had stopped questioning years ago.

And he had said keep it without even thinking.

Jay added another note to the group chat: kali wearing Allen’s surgical cap. Allen told him to keep it. Allen’s hands were SHAKING. I repeat: Allen Yara’s hands were shaking.

Twelve people saw it.

Dr. Patterson responded with three exclamation points and a request for photographic evidence.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Question

Senior Year — The Tafari Estate — Spring Break

The future was three months away and closing fast.

They had gathered at the estate one last time—a study weekend that was really a farewell tour, though none of them were saying it aloud. Med school applications had been sent. Interview invitations were trickling in like dispatches from distant lands. The four of them had spent four years becoming something essential to each other, and now the universe was preparing to scatter them across different cities, different programs, different lives.

The living room was soft with evening light, that golden hour glow that made everything feel like a memory even while it was happening. Notes were scattered everywhere like academic confetti from a party no one had planned.

Jay was curled against Mar on the couch, their ease with each other so complete now that it barely registered—just the natural state of two people who had stopped pretending three years ago. His hand was in her hair. Her head was on his shoulder. They fit.

Kali sat on the floor with his back against the armchair. Allen was in the armchair itself, close enough that his knee occasionally brushed Kali's shoulder. Neither acknowledged it. Neither moved away.

"Med school applications go out next month," Jay said, breaking the contemplative silence. "Where's everyone applying?"

They went around. Johns Hopkins. Harvard. Duke. Stanford. The names fell like stones into quiet water—each one a potential chasm opening between them, each one a future that might not include the others.

And then Kali said: "What if we didn't just go to med school?"

Allen looked down at him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean—" Kali turned so he could see all of them, his eyes bright with something that had been building for years, his whole life. "What if we built something? Eventually. After residency. A hospital. Something different. Something that puts patients first, not profit. Something our parents always wanted but couldn't make happen from inside the system."

Silence. The kind of silence that precedes either laughter or revolution.

"You've been thinking about this," Mar said. Not a question.

"For years." Kali's voice was quiet but certain—the voice of someone who had found the shape of his future and was finally brave enough to say it aloud. "All four of us. Our different specialties. Our different strengths. Jay's emergency medicine. Mar's maternal-fetal. Allens cardiothoracic. My neurosurgery. What if that was not an accident? What if we are supposed to do this together?"

"I'm in," Jay said immediately, because Jay made decisions the way she did everything—fast, loud, and without apology.

"Same," Mar added, his hand tightening on Jay's.

Everyone looked at Allen.

Allen, whose whole life had been about control and certainty. Allen, who did not make promises because promises were vulnerabilities. Allen, who had spent four years building walls and watching Kali dismantle them brick by careful brick without even trying, without even knowing he was doing it.

"We'd need a plan," he said finally. "Infrastructure. Funding. Years of preparation."

"Is that a, yes?"

Allen met Kali's eyes. Held them. The sunset was painting the room in colors that belonged in cathedrals, and in that light, Allen's fortress seemed almost transparent—the walls still there, but you could finally see through them to what he had been protecting all along.

"That's an 'I'm listening.'"

Kali smiled—that soft, private smile that Allen had catalogued four hundred and seventeen times since the first year, the one that made his chest do things he had spent four years pretending not to notice.

"Then I'll keep talking."

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Promise

Graduation Day

Langston Ray University's graduation ceremonies were held on the main quad, where the burgundy and gold banners caught the May sunlight like they were trying to bottle it. The holographic lion at the gates seemed to roar with pride—or that was just the sound system. Families clustered on the lawn. Cameras flashed. Futures balanced on the edge of beginning.

Kali found them after the ceremony. Caps and gowns still on, diplomas clutched like talismans against uncertainty. He pulled them behind the science building—their building, the one where they had met, where fluorescent lights had hummed over the moment that started everything.

"Med school is going to try to separate us," he said. No preamble. No easing into it. Just Kali, cutting to the heart of things the way he always did. "Different programs. Different cities. Different paths. But we come back. We build TYMI. We do this together."

He held out his hand.

"Promise me."

Jay's hand landed on his first. "Promise." Her voice cracked slightly—Jay, who never cracked, who laughed in the face of sentimentality like it owed her money. "You better not make me cry, Tafari. I have a reputation."

Mar added his hand to the pile. "Promise." Steady as always. The anchor none of them had asked for and all of them needed.

They looked at Allen.

Allen, who did not make promises. Allen, who had been raised to believe that vulnerability was weakness and certainty was a myth. Allen, who had spent four years watching these three people become the only thing in his life that felt like safety—and terrified himself with how much he needed that.

He put his hand on the pile.

"Promise."

One word. The first promise he had ever made willingly. And he meant it in a way he had never meant anything—meant it in his bones, in the part of himself he kept locked away from everyone except the three people whose hands were touching his.

Jay sniffled. "I'm not crying."

"You're crying," Mar said gently.

"I'm aggressively hydrating through my face. Shut up."

Kali laughed—that warm sound that had been the background music of their lives for four years. "TYMI. The Tafari-Yara Medical Institute. It does not exist yet. But it will."

"The Tafari-Yara?" Allen's eyebrow rose fractionally. "Not Yara-Tafari?"

"Alphabetical."

"Convenient."

"TYMI sounds better than YAMI. You want people coming to a hospital called YAMI?"

"He's got a point," Jay said, wiping her eyes with her free hand. "YAMI sounds like a failed anime villain. Or a discount sushi restaurant."

"Fine." But Allen was almost smiling—that rare expression that transformed his whole face, that made him look like someone who had discovered joy instead of just hearing rumors about it. "TYMI it is."

They stood there for a moment longer, four hands stacked, four futures intertwined. Behind them, families called names and cameras clicked and the university they were leaving celebrated another year of sending bright young things into the world.

None of them could know—not really—what the next six years would bring. The sleepless nights of residency. The patients who would break them. The systems that would try to crush them. The love that two of them would eventually, finally, stop denying.

But this moment—hands touching, promise spoken, the foundation of something revolutionary laid in the shadow of the building where they had met—this moment was certain.

Before they saved lives, they saved each other.

That is where it started.

That is where everything started.

THE LRU YEARS