Rising Shards

Once I had cooled off a bit, Zeta and I apologized for our rudeness. As her retaliation, Kalei had a very Kalei-like response when I described our issue to her and Marmalade (the latter arriving during our cooling off time).

“Maybe it’s fate trying to keep you from being alone together,” Kalei said.

“I already don’t like where this is going,” Zeta said.

“If you do actually get alone time," Kalei barreled on, ignoring Zeta's pleas. "It’ll be like one of those crime shows and one of you will wind up dead and the other will be the main suspect, and you’ll be all ‘ohhh I’d never kill Oka, I looove her,’ and then the twist at the end was that you did kill Oka! And this whole thing was all a long con to get to that murderous point.”

“I hate all of that!” Zeta said. “What the heck is wrong with you?”

“I’m just trying to make you feel better about your lack of alone time!”

“By freaking Zeta out?” I said. “Zeta, I know you wouldn’t kill me. We’ve been alone plenty of times too and neither of us murdered each other so I will second Zeta’s assessment that I hate this and what is wrong with you?”

“You really know how to push their buttons, don’t you?” Marmalade asked.

“It’s so easy,” Kalei said. "I think a little roasting is fair when they were so rude greeting me."

Kalei was oddly understanding of our plight past that, though.

“Dating sounds stressful," She said once we'd gathered around the beds, with Kalei and Marmalade sitting on theirs (I hoped my former bed was treating Marmalade well) and Zeta and I on hers.

"Well the dating part is great!" I said. "Just the...life stuff getting in the way of it is annoying."

“And I wanna note that I only intentionally interrupt you two sometimes, I don't want you to think I'm always blocking you on purpose," Kalei said. "And I hope you do know that in spite of my amazing jokes that I am rooting for you. I'm sure you'll figure this out."

"Wow," Zeta said. "That's really nice."

"Coming from me, I know," Kalei said.

"Did you get replaced with a secret Kalei clone?" Zeta asked.

"No, everything just sucks now so we have to have each others backs," Kalei said. "We don't have to do this bit every time I'm nice."

"You're nice a lot, though," I said.

While I was processing how far Kalei had come since I first met her, she hopped off her bed. "I can go right now if you want. Me and Marms can go wander or something."

I waved my hands in front of me, blushing. "No, then you'll know we're doing something, that just feels weird! The moment has to be right. Like when Zeta asked me to the dance."

"When she asked you to the dance as we exploded a bunch of batteries," Marmalade said.

"It was incredibly romantic!" I said.

"I think we need to call in Lillia, it's been a while since she's set us all straight," Kalei said. "Or set us all gay, I guess."

I kind of expected Lillia to still be busy with Ko, but after exactly fifteen and a half minutes (she said she needed a quarter of an hour of study time before she would join us), Lillia stopped by and we explained the situation.

"I think it might be good time to clear the air a bit," Kalei said. "Get us on the same page, you know?"

"We apologized a ton for the battery thing," Zeta said.

"Not that, more that Oka's all jealous of Lillia and Ko and that's probably gonna be a bad time if we let that fester," Kalei said.

"I didn't say that at all when I was explaining this whole situation!" I said.

"Calm down, it was heavily implied," Kalei said. "Or maybe you didn't realize it."

I felt awful, but Lillia didn't seem too surprised. She dragged Kalei's gamer chair over and we made a circle to chat.

"I think I'm more jealous of Iris and Maia than you and Ko," I said.

"That's understandable, I sort of feel the same way," Lillia said. "Ko and I haven't even kissed yet, so you shouldn't be jealous."

"I shouldn't be jealous of you even if you did, I'm sorry," I said.

“Accepted," Lillia said. "And my apologies for being any kind of a roadblock. I’ve been so focused on Ko that we haven't had as much time to discuss things like this."

“It’s fine! You should be focused on Ko," I said.

For a bit, Lillia and I dominated the conversation. Kalei sat smugly, feeling proud of herself for keeping the peace and quelling a fire before it even ignited, while Zeta and Marmalade both had the body language of people wondering if they were supposed to be in this conversation. Which was fair, Zeta wasn't usually present for my Lillia chats. We didn't go fully in depth on our preferred topics like we would if it was just us, but I covered a lot of my frustrations.

"And they're not even dating, so if they go farther than me and Zeta, and who knows, maybe they already have! That would just make me feel...like it's not fair."

"Exactly!" Lillia said. "Exactly."

"This will probably sound kinda sucky, but if we're not going to be jealous of each other, you probably shouldn't be jealous of Iris and Maia either," Kalei said.

"Therapy Kalei is kinda cool," Zeta said. "I bet you'd be a good therapist or counselor if you wanted."

"Pfft," Kalei said. "We don't have to suggest that every time one of us starts a heart to heart talk. But those recent heart to hearts have me thinking...I just wanna make sure we keep things running smoothly around here. I don't even wanna think about how I'd feel if things were so suckass and this got all screwed up."

"Dang," I said.

"For such an awkward starting point in Oka and Zeta trying to make out or whatever, we did get some nice chatting in," Marmalade said. "Well, you all did. Sorry if I didn't contribute much."

"Marms, you've just been sitting, it's all good," Kalei said. "It took Lillia forever to really join the group, you'll get there."

I wasn't exactly sure how we went from me being frustrated about getting interrupted all the time to hashing things out with Lillia before I was even really aware anything was up, but I did feel a bit better even if my problem wasn't fixed. But maybe with Lillia around she could have some good advice.

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