Stakeout

Gwen Stacy had come to see Skye, also to ask this girl around her own age about modifications to the program they used in class.

Ever since Henry had shown up empty-handed at the graduation ceremony, his relationship with Gwen Stacy had not progressed any further. It was not because he had angered the older girl; her freshman life at university had simply been overwhelmingly busy.

Her academic advisor, Curt Connors, had been giving her special instruction, treating her as a doctoral student despite her freshman status. To keep up with the research progress, she had an enormous amount of knowledge to make up for.

For doctoral students in applied sciences like them, the environment was much like a workplace. Those who lagged behind would not necessarily be eliminated as they would in a company, but they might fail to finish graduate school. From a certain perspective, that outcome was even more frightening.

Gwen Stacy, merely a freshman, faced the same pressure, yet she had not been crushed by it. Instead, she absorbed the knowledge others poured into her like a sponge soaking up water, turning it all into part of herself.

No one else could help with that process. Whenever the older girl was under great pressure, she would come over to pet the tabby cat to relieve it. So Henry could only lend out his pet with a pained heart and let Kitty suffer a little.

Roar. (Your mom.)

Because he tutored Skye, and because he himself was at the gray-area age of legal adulthood in the United States—

In most U.S. states, the voting age, age of sexual consent, and legal marriage age were eighteen. But the legal drinking age was twenty-one, a nationwide standard.

The legal age for owning firearms also varied from state to state