Frist Days – Part 2
It would seem everything has gone, basically, how I expect it. It seems essentially nothing I have told Dom has stuck, besides the simple inkling that something is wrong. Thank the heavens for his desire to explore his curiosity. Normal people may just shrug off the itches he’s had and pay them no mind. It’s a slow coming, but perhaps with Dom’s help, we’ll get to the bottom of this before Nina finds me a way home.
Nina- another person I have to see before the day is over.
With our initial conversation apparently over, Dom transitions into talking about the schedule of my days here at the Academy. A lot of it will be similar to what you’d expect at a normal school- with the exception of various battle classes and classes focused on the magiks and their aspects. Having covered nearly everything necessary, he sees me off with a wave and informs me again of his continued research.
I have time before another class begins so I decide to check in on Nina. I pass through the silent halls on my way to her. It seems no matter where the school is, or what kind it is, being the only person in empty halls is still unsettling.
Before too long I’m making my way down the stairs into the lowest level of the Academy. As I meet the floor level I hear someone call my name and look all around me. I see no one and just assume I’m hearing things. It’s only when I hear a, “Pss, Eve!” and nearly jump out of my pants that I realize the sound is coming from below me.
I take a seat on the last couple of stairs to settle my heartbeat while calling out for Gee. Before too long I hear a giggle and see an arm reach out of my shadow. To be honest, it’s incredibly unsettling to watch her slowly climb out of my shadow like that.
Before long she’s staring at me with a mischievous smile, concentrating her pupils on my eyes. She gives me a little wink and before I know it she’s hovering over me with her arms on either side of me. I rest my arms on her hips, in part to hold her back from coming any closer.
“What’s up Gee?” I ask, but she simply leans down and relaxes herself on me with her head rested on my chest.
“You’re so warm and alive Eve.” She practically purrs at me.
“Thanks? But really, I haven’t heard a peep from you in months. What’s going on? Is everything ok?”
“Nothing is wrong my dear,” she says while giving my neck a kiss. It causes shivers to run through me. “I’m merely curious as to what you and Old Man Domnis spoke about,” she says between another kiss to my neck.
It feels too good and I’m forced to pull on her hips to drag her away from me. “What do you mean? You would have been there like usual?” I ask in question.
She gives a pouting look at me for pulling her away and says with a seductive smile, “He’s a paranoid old man who put up a barrier stopping anyone besides you and him from entering or hearing anything from that room. So I was forced to wait outside like some kind of peasant.” Gee leans up and tries to place her lips on mine but I push her off me completely and stand up.
“Well, we didn’t talk about anything important. Now I have to go. I don’t wanna waste time I could have with Nina.” I say before walking away from Gee, much to her anger, made evident by her string of colorful language.
How weird of her to actually come out and finally see me, only for that to be the reason. Why couldn’t she have just been showing herself to see me? I stop in the middle of the hallway, stiff as stone, and realize just what I was thinking. Was I jealous that the whole reason she came to see me was for someone else?
“Absolutely not.” I say aloud while shaking my head and continuing my way to Nina.
Before long I’m accosted by a familiar scent as I stand before a wooden door. I give it a knock and hear what seems like an exhausted Nina telling me to enter. I push the door open and am greeted by absolute chaos. There are papers everywhere, some stacked a few feet high. I can barely even see the ground.
I hear a gasp and look up to see Nina staring, scrambling to her feet while also trying to straighten the papers at her desk and trying to brush her hair back with her hands. She tries to tuck it under her little maid-like hat. I can’t help but let out a chorus of laughs at the absurdity of it all. She’s trying to do far too many things at once. I laugh and laugh until I’m hunched over with my hands on my knees trying to suck in as much air as I can. By the time I can see clearly enough again, I see that Nina’s hair has been largely tucked back, besides a few wisps of yellow hair here and there.
“W-w-what are you doing here?” she squeaks out. She’s so flustered and it’s so adorable that I can’t help but laugh again. Before too long I can tell she’s starting to get legitimately upset with me. I shake my head at her while trying to get myself under control again.
“I’m here to see you Nina. We have a little while before the next set of classes and I needed to see you.”
“Classes?” She’s confused. I can’t blame her though.
“I’ll be studying here a few times a month.”
Her face lights up and she practically hops over to me. She looks up at me with rosy cheeks. It was so endearing that I couldn’t help but reach out and brush a wisp of her yellow hair behind her ear. She giggles at my touch, causing me to tilt my head down a little, and plant my lips on her forehead.
“You treat me like a child Evangeline-sama,” she whines to me.
“I don’t see you minding,” I tease her. She gives a small smile and I wrap her up in a hug. She squirms for a moment before wrapping her arms around me.
“But boy is it a mess in here.”
I was amazed at how cluttered it was. How was she able to get any work done? Then again, I think the old adage says something about geniuses having really cluttered workspaces.
She responds by playfully pushing me away and looking around bashfully. “I wasn’t expecting company. Especially not from the best company I could have wished for,” she says while giving me a playful slap.
However, she freezes up afterward and gets a wide-eyed look of shock on her face. Before she can let words slip from her mouth I flick her nose.
“So what have you been working on?”
I ask her nonchalantly before moving further into her room and taking a seat on a chair- a chair that I had to clear the papers off of first. I can tell, even with her behind me, that she wants to protest every bit of what’s happened since I arrived but she ultimately decides against it.
“Finding you a way home, of course.”
I turn around and look at her, “You- you remember that?” I ask her dubiously, my words coated in hesitation.
“Of course!” She says before passing me and maneuvering around her desk.
She picks up some files and hands them to me. “I’ve done all I can to get readings of when you got here. It’s absurd, but even all these months later, the exact area you told me you “came to” this world is still full of unbelievable, unexplainable energy,” Nina shoots off her explanation lightning fast.
“It’s like the reverse of a stasis field or something- the kind you’ve used to heal yourself. Instead of basically trapping energy within it,” she uses her hands to demonstrate something being crushed, “And compressing it until essentially everything inside acts in a hyperactive state, thus speeding up biological functions such as cellular regeneration,” she starts to pull her hands apart in an exaggerated fashion and continues, “It’s more like the reverse happens. As if somehow the area in the eye of the energy was basically frozen due to losing all energy- by sending all the energy within, outward. This outward directing of energy then caused some kind of distortion within the fabric of reality and somehow you traveled through it. Maybe. Perhaps anyways. It’s only a theory based on preliminary data.”
Nina fires off all of this information and much, much more in her machinegun ways of speaking she gets when she’s talking science. I don’t quite understand all of it, and some of the more later stuff she talks about sound far beyond anything I could possibly understand. However, above all, one thing stands out the most.
“Nina, how do you know all of this? Or really, any of this? No offense, but this world is archaic in almost all ways compared to mine, but you’re talking about cells regenerating, as well as complicated matters of time and space.”
Nina drops her arms and her face goes emotionless. I’ve never seen this expression- or rather, lack of expression, on her. After contemplating me for a moment she opens her mouth; however, no sound escapes. She closes her mouth, along with her eyes. She takes a deep breath and holds its for a moment before slowly releasing it. When she opens her eyes again she looks me dead in the eyes and simply says, “Because I’m smart.” That is far and away, beyond what I was expecting to hear. I’m thrown mentally unbalanced for a moment. Using this time before I can speak, Nina simply starts talking about another subject.
“It’s slow coming though. I simply don’t have the resources to go any faster. I’m sorry Evangeline-sama.” She drops her head and her bangs fall in front of her eyes, possibly intentionally, before continuing, “I will get you home. I swear it! But you’ll have to suffer this world a while longer.”
I shake my head at Nina and tell her, “I’m not suffering this world Nina. I want to go home yes, but it isn’t pure hell here. You’re here after all.” Nina’s cheeks flush red and she squirms in her seat.
“You know what I mean Evangeline-sama.” I let out a laugh and a chime echoes in the distance, interrupting our small world. “I have to go. I’m being forced into classes now.” I say with an unconcealed frown.
“Poor thing” Nina says mockingly, with a hidden smile. After hugs, and a small kiss on the cheek from a coy Nina, I’m off to a wonderful world of new classes.
Aaaaaaand I’m bored. Holy crap, even across time and space, students have to deal with the same drag from teachers. It’s just older people going on and on about how super important their subject is and how it’s totally more relevant than other subjects. It takes effort, but I manage to at least stay above water in the remainder of classes before lunchtime rolls around. I was told to sit in the back of every class by Dom. This caused me to go essentially unnoticed in every one of them. Even when people saw me, without the Valkyries they didn’t even bat an eyelash at me.
When lunchtime rolls around I’m so excited to get out of the stuffy classes that I’m practically running through the hallways to the agreed meeting point to catch up with the others- all of whom are in significantly more advanced classes than mine.
When I arrive at the courtyard I see Mimi, Kay, Rose, and Charlie. With a smile on their faces, they greet me when I approach them. “Yay! Lunch!” I shout as bounce up to them.
Rose gives me a strained look and simply says, “Mind yourself Zero. You’re no child.” To which, I stick out my tongue. This gets a giggle from Mimi and a sigh from Rose.
“Let us enjoy the sun,” Charlie says while laying out a blanket. I plop down next to where she sits and lean my head on her shoulder. I don’t know why I feel so safe with Charlie but I do. She’s relaxing to be near.
“Zero, are you not giving Charlie more attention than me?” Mimi says while grabbing my arm and pulling me to her. Charlie gives her a slightly annoyed look, before simply shrugging.
“Someone’s feeling a lot better now,” Rose says with a smirk.
“Yeah, whatever,” Mimi replies. She takes a sandwich from our basket and bites into it while giving me a wink.
I sigh, and with a shake of my head, take my own food out of the basket and begin to eat. “This is really good Rose,” I say around my food.
“Manners.” She shoots out at me, much to the giggles of others. I slide across the blanket to Kay when I see she isn’t eating.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, only to have Kay look at me and shake her head. I reach into the basket and pull out a sandwich and rip it in half, holding one of the halves up to her mouth.
Kay turns away from me but I follow her with it. Before too long we’re racing to see who can keep up or escape first. We get a little too wild and Kay falls over on her side with me laying on her. “I win” I tell her while holding the food in front of her. She gives me a look through slit eyelids, but opens up her mouth and takes a bite. Her face practically glows when she swallows it. “Good, ne?” I say to her. She gives me a confused look but nods with a small smile tickling at her lips.
It’s then that I remember that she’s ticklish. And in this position, that could be a good idea.
I reach my hand out gingerly, and place it on her side. Poor innocent Kay simply gives me a small smile without knowing what awaits her. When I feel her guard dropping, I move in. Before anyone knows what’s going on my fingers are running over her ribs and she’s squirming like mad trying to get away from me.
“Muhahaha,” I give an evil laugh while straddling her and tickling her viciously. I can see the others looking at us in abject terror at my torture of Kay. She’s letting out audible giggles and trying to push me away. I keep tickling her as best as I can but she’s stronger than me. Now that the effect of my surprise attack has faded she’s able to sit up while restraining my arms behind me, with me still straddling her lap.
In that moment, my eyes make contact with her nondescript, brown ones. I keep forgetting, but Kay is beautiful, and more than that, her eyes carry a story that I do not know. Behind their beautiful sheen is a layer of bloodlust I’ve never seen on another person. Nonetheless, here and now, with us breathing hard, a light sheen of sweat on us both; we sit inches apart, with the warm sun shining down on us.
Before it really occurs to me what’s happening, I’m leaning forward and pressing my lips to Kay’s.
