Compulsion

Cuan Caerwyn counts things.
 
He doesn't particularly like counting things, but he’s very good at it. Good at numbers, good at math. Fast. Accurate. Remembers everything he calculates, everything he counts.
 
He's good at it because he does it all the time — almost every waking moment, and a lot of the non-waking ones. He can do other things at the same time, thankfully, can do it while holding a conversation, but he has to do it.
 
There's a word for it: arithmomania. He learned it shortly after arriving at the academy. It’s a disorder, apparently. A compulsion.
 
Cuan likes that word, “compulsion.” It sounds a lot nicer than “Infernal corruption.”
 
They assigned him to the Grove because they thought, as someone who grew up in the Clockwork City, that all the nature would be good for him. Breathe fresh air. Touch some grass. Bathe in a river.
 
He caught a cold within the first week, standing chest deep in the water for hours, counting the river pebbles. He got to 30,881 before Sanipkur finally forced him to get out. He wanted to kill her, but he didn’t, obviously. He just smiled.
 
Cuan learned a long time ago that people who aren’t from the Clockwork City like it better when you smile. They like you better. They treat you better. Or at least, they don’t treat you quite as badly. So he smiles whenever he’s around people, no matter what. Smiles and keeps counting.
 
Not everything triggers his arithmomania, but a lot of things do. Steps on a staircase. Books on a shelf. A lot of foods — legumes. The circumference of fruit. Rice. Gods, he hates rice.
 
(Soup is good. Cuan likes soup. There’s only ever one of soup, so he can eat and get on with his fucking day.)
 
Some things are inconsistent though. It became far more conspicuous after he came to the academy — how, for example, sometimes he’ll meet someone with freckles on their cheeks and then has to keep making small talk for an agonizingly long time because of it, like with that stupid Dragon Tribe girl who was convinced afterwards that he had a crush on her or something.
 
Other times, he sees freckles and feels nothing. Sometimes he counts them anyway, out of habit, but he’s not compelled to. He can focus on other, more important things.
 
It took him a while to figure out why that was. What the pattern was. Why this and not that. Why now and not before.
 
He found the answer towards the end of the first year, while working on his capstone project — a lost wax casting, using an alloy consisting of 89% copper, 5% aluminium, 5% zinc, and 1% tin. The resulting color of the 2x2 inch cube was a match for that of real gold, despite not containing any, and Cuan polished each face to a perfect, mirror finish. The whole thing was an exercise in precision, as all artifice should be.
 
It was during the polishing phase (216 passes on each face, because 216 is six cubed, of course). The realization was sudden — sudden and so very, very satisfying — like finding the missing quantum in an equation that breaks the whole thing open.
 
The things he’s compelled to count are the things Anachronous would find useful.
 
In retrospect, the answer was obvious. The logic, intransigent like the Machine Prince himself.
 
Because one day, Anachronous will complete the Eschaton Clock and this world will end. Cuan knows this, just like he knows that two comes after one. Like he knows that there are 6,801,123 pebbles in the Grove’s bathing river.
 
It's an inexorable sequence of events. A mathematical inevitability.
 
So he doesn’t question it anymore. He just counts. Just calculates. Just obeys, and whatever the Machine Prince chooses to do with the information is his business and his alone, ineffable to someone like Cuan.
 
But he’ll be ready. When the time comes, he’ll be useful. Maybe even have value.
 
Cuan doesn’t smile in private, but the corners of his mouth turn ever so slightly at the thought.