Rising Shards

I was still feeling pent up, but now on the cake made of my pent up-ness, I now had icing made out of embarrassment. My friends were being very sweet and putting up with me being needlessly picky about alone time with Zeta, so per Lillia's suggestion, we were wandering campus trying to find some private spot. It was genuinely kind and made me incredibly grateful to have such great friends, but it also had me blushing on a level I was starting to get concerned about with my friends and I searching for a place for my girlfriend and I to have to ourselves. In the back of my mind, I had a glimmer of a hope we'd find a place like my dream, some little pocket of nature where Zeta and I could...well, live out that dream.

"I still say we can figure something out with room time," Kalei said. "You don't even have to say anything about it, just like dinner time you guys get one room, and we go somewhere else."

The first idea that came up was some kind of big heist situation that would get Zeta and I alone over a whole night, like Kalei and I switching wristbands and Marmalade too? I got too confused right away, it seemed like a lot of work and had some pretty significant faults.

"The problem isn't you in that case, it's other people showing up," Zeta said. "This campus is just. Very busy."

"Even Ko has described this campus as difficult," Lillia said. "And that's saying something given her experiences."

The second plan was trying to find some way over to Zeta's apartment or my place with out our families noticing, but we didn't have an easy way over to them in spite of Zeta starting to have some driving lessons. Without a car for her to drive, that one was out.

Our third plan was to find a spot on campus that could be ours. We had made it as far as one of the classroom buildings, which I was sure wasn't going to help us at all, but maybe walking around could help me not feel so heated.

"What, because the wristbands?" Kalei asked.

"Yes," Lillia said. "And when someone with her level of expertise has difficulties with it, that's quite the challenge."

"But again, like, c'mon," Kalei said. "They can't control us that much. We could just be in our rooms and be 'hanging out.'" She stretched as she turned around, raising her eyebrows at Zeta and I.

"Kalei's doing that thing again," Zeta warned. I knew what she meant immediately. Kalei had pieced together that there was something I wasn't saying, and was putting needle after needle in until she figured out what we were really talking about.

"Ugh, why couldn't she start to figure things out when we were already in the room, I really don't wanna say it when we're..." I flinched, seeing the glimmer of realization in Kalei's eyes.

Marmalade glanced back and forth between us all. She wasn't exactly an outsider at this point to our dynamic, but she still had a lot to learn about us.

"What is going on here exactly?" Marmalade asked.

"Kalei is trying to obtain information from Oka," Lillia explained. "She's surmised that something is being kept from her, and at this point knows the exact steps she needs to take to get that information."

"Heh," Kalei scratched her head. "See, when Zates and Oaks do this, you just kind of have to hint about it and they crack pretty easily."

"It's kind of wild that you lot have like, lore," Marmalade said. "Friend lore. That's new to me."

"You never had friends with lore before?" Kalei asked.

"Not really," Marmalade said.

"Then I'll show you an example," Kalei said. "Do you wanna just tell me what it is?"

"This is Kalei giving an ultimatum," Lillia said. "Generally, this is an offer to Oka or Zeta to come clean, and if they don't, she usually embarrasses them with jokes or insults, toeing the line of what's tolerable in a surprisingly effective method."

"I don't know if I like our personalities and such so spelled out like this," Zeta said.

"Well, throw some curveballs in the mix and make yourselves less easily analyzable," Kalei said. "Analyzable, is that a word?"

"Yes," Lillia said.

I looked at Zeta, silently begging for some advice here. I didn't really want to talk about the dream I had about her, but if Kalei was really in a prying mood, hope was pretty much lost there. Zeta just shrugged at me, likely coming to the same conclusion.

"Fine," I said. "The detail I was leaving out was that I had a dream about Zeta that...motivated me to want to have some alone time today."

"You wanna share that dream with the class?" Kalei asked, her grin suggesting she knew how many buttons she'd pushed.

"I don't!" I said.

"I think we can surmise what kind of dream it was without her saying anymore," Lillia said.

"Thank you," I said. "So Zeta and I were all heated up, then we kept getting interrupted like always, so it's got me mad about how we always get interrupted!"

"We knew that last part," Kalei said.

"It was in a forest!" Zeta blurted out. "Or...somewhere with trees. That's where the dream was." She looked ashamed that she'd cracked under the pressure, but I didn't blame her.

"That's a bit of a delayed reaction Zates, Lillia just let you off the hook," Kalei whistled. "Oka having a steamy dream about her girl out in nature."

"This is too much, can we just stop?" I said. "Are you embarrassing us more because we wouldn't do your idea?"

"Maybe," Kalei said. "Your reactions right now are hilarious, too. And I do genuinely want to help, so...maybe we should check out that garden?"

I hadn't spent much time in the campus garden, but Zeta had had enough bad experiences that I couldn't see her wanting to spend much date time there. There was a treehouse we were hanging out in for an afternoon, but we got interrupted after a brief window (shocker, I know).

"Even if Oka's gonna be too uncomfortable to act on it, it might be good to find some secret clubhouse or maybe a filming location?" Kalei said, putting extra emphasis on the end there.

This was bordering on humiliating, but maybe we could play on Kalei's desire for our filming project to get rolling to move her attention onto that. And if we found a hidden spot for Zeta and I to visit later, that might be a sweet bonus.

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