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[areixyn-en]

Waiting For Other Players

Holding a box of cookies, Daisy knocks on the door to Arashi's room. Seeing as the other doesn't respond, she carefully opens the door.

Arashi sits in front of her desk, laptop open to a game. She has headphones on, which probably explains why she didn't answer. Oh, is Daisy interrupting something?

Arashi turns to look at her and removes one side of her headphones. "Oh, Daisy! Don't worry, my mic isn't on. What's up?"

"Ah, nothing, I just wanted to tell you that Ophelia gave us some cookies," Daisy holds up the box of cookies in her hand. "She said the dessert club made too much, so she decided to give us some."

"Ooh! Can I have some?"

Daisy walks up to her and places the box on her desk. "What game are you playing? The characters look pretty cute."

“This is DBD, or Duel Before Dusk,” Arashi answers, “And yeah, for a shooting game, it does have quite a lot of customization options, including cuter ones.”

“Oh, so this is DBD?” Daisy recalls Arashi talking about the game. It was pretty popular, apparently. Daisy studies the game screen while they both grab some cookies.

As they chat, faint voices come out of Arashi’s headphones. “Are these other characters your friends?”

“One second,” Arashi says as she types quickly on the keyboard. She sends a message in a chatbox at the bottom right corner of her screen. Someone has asked her a question, probably.

“Why don't you just turn on your microphone?”

“Well… I just don't want to,” Arashi says. “Sometimes, people can get a bit… emotional.”

“Oh. That sounds scary,” Daisy comments, “Are these characters on the screen your friends?”

“Mm-hmm. This one in the middle is me,” Arashi points to the screen. “This one is Aqua, and this one is Maple.”

“You’re Nana?” Daisy reads the name under Arashi’s character.

Arashi laughs awkwardly, “Yeah.”

Before Daisy can answer, a voice yells through Arashi’s headphones. “I’m here! I’m here!”

Huh. That voice sounds a bit familiar. A girl appears on the screen, filling in the last spot.

“Finally, Akaoni! Took you long enough,” a high-pitched voice says, presumably Maple.

“I was practicing with the basketball team! How was I supposed to know our couch would take so long?” The person, Akaoni, retorts. Although the character is female, the voice sounds more like a boy…?

“Let's just start the game,” another calmer voice says. It's probably Aqua.

Arashi also types into the chatbox. She turns to Daisy, “Well, seems like the game is starting… Daisy?”

Daisy has her brows furrowed, “Why does Akaoni sound so…”

“Familiar? Yeah, because Akaoni is Cyrus,” Arashi says nonchalantly.

“Cyrus? The Cyrus in our class?” Arashi nods. It's hard not to remember Cyrus, being one of the troublemakers in the class. In Daisy’s memories, Cyrus was always loud and a bit arrogant, and Daisy had even fallen victim to one of his pranks before.

“Oh… Wait, but isn’t Cyrus a boy? How is he playing as a girl?”

“Yeah, many people do that,” Arashi shrugs.

“Okay…?” Daisy replies, still confused.

Scratching sounds of paper plays from Arashi’s headphones all of a sudden. A piece of paper appears on the screen with the word signature written on it and a line underneath, like a signing area for a document.

“Oh, the game’s starting!”

The two’s attention turned back to the screen. Arashi hands the mouse to Daisy. “Draw something!”

“Huh? What?” Daisy takes the mouse hastily.

“After you finish drawing, the game will start. You can draw anything, but you only have one stroke.”

Daisy, not knowing what to draw all of a sudden, wrote an “ouo.”

“Pfft…あなたらしいね。”

“…Huh?”

“Nothing… Hahaha…”

[areixyn-en]

didn't feel like drawing in the last post so have a drawing of Ophelia telling Krishna to eat proper meals :3

[areixyn-en]

Study of Hobbies

As the hairdryer's buzzing stops, the silence of the dorm room is restored. Krishna unplugs the hairdryer, preparing to return to her room with it and a textbook she brought.

Said to be "designed with students' privacy in mind," aside from being double rooms, the dormitory of Summermist also has individual rooms inside the rooms, isolating both beds from the outside. In other words, besides your own dorm room, you also have your own room inside of said dorm room. Krishna fails to see how this is better than simply designing single rooms, but she's not complaining.

Her dorm mate, Ophelia, prefers to stay outside since she finds the rooms suffocating, but Krishna is used to studying in front of the desk in her room. Ophelia even placed two bean bags outside, although Krishna never used them.

"Krishna, don't you ever get tired of studying all day?" Beside her, Ophelia's voice breaks the room's silence.

"No," Krishna answers emotionlessly while coiling the hairdryer's cord.

"Don't you have other hobbies?"

Speaking of which, she vaguely recalls someone else also telling her to find a hobby. "No."

"Huh? Not even one?"

"There's not much I can do."

"How come? Baking, writing, drawing… There's so much to do!"

Krishna finally turns to look at Ophelia. "Are you telling a completely colorblind person to go and learn drawing?"

The room goes silent for a brief while. "Oh. Sorry," Ophelia lowers her head in guilt, "Then… What about baking? Baking is pretty fun!"

"I lost both smell and taste," Krishna answers dismissively.

"S-sorry…"

Thus, Ophelia starts listing all the hobbies she can think of. However, Krishna can always come up with a reason to refuse.

"Why doesn't anything suit your liking…?" Ophelia frowns.

"Forget it," Krishna says, about to leave.

Ophelia furrows her brows, "Is writing really out of the question? It suits you so well, though…"

If she can't even feel emotions properly, how can she write anything? "My prose will probably end up being an essay."

"What about poetry?" Ophelia suggests, "Oh, have you heard of Spirits of the Air? It's the school's poetry club. I've attended one of their classes before, and it's pretty interesting—"

"How am I supposed to write poems if I can't even write normal articles…"

"It's fine if you're not good at it, anyone can attend their classes! Besides, isn't writing also a part of future exams? This can count as practice!"

"What's the correlation between poetry clubs and writing compositions…?"

"Come on, just accompany me this once?" Ophelia pleads, expectancy shimmering in her eyes.

Krishna sighs. "But I'm in the astronomy club."

"I'm not in the poetry club, either, but they have extra courses!" Ophelia explains, "So, you can still go to the astronomy club during normal classes, and then go to the poetry club during their extra classes! They have one this Thursday after school, shall we go together?"

Having known Ophelia for so long, it isn't often that she insists so strongly about something. The last time she did something similar was probably… when she insisted she eat proper meals?

Krishna sighs again.

"…Alright."

[areixyn-en]

Monday Brumes

It’s foggy again.

The morning sunlight is covered by the dense fog, making the dorm room unusually dim. Summermist Academy’s campus is often foggy. If Arashi remembers correctly, the mountain where Summermist Academy sits is also called Mt. Fogily. Seems like both the fog and the lilies that cover the whole mountain are features of this mountain.

Having just pressed the snooze button on her alarm, Arashi lies in her bed, trying to get some more shuteye. Ah, the foggy skies always make her so tired.

“Bang!” The sound of the door to her room opening feels extremely loud compared to the silence of her room. It successfully woke Arashi up.

“Arashi, you’re still sleeping?” A sweet voice chimes. It’s Daisy, Arashi’s roommate. She was also her classmate twice, both in elementary school and junior high. The two have always been best friends.

Arashi gets blinded by the light shining through the doorway. She whines, “Just let me sleep some more…”

“You told me to wake you up at 7,” Daisy mutters.

“But…” Arashi turns to face the other way.

Daisy sighs softly, “How late did you stay up playing games last night again?”

“Just half past 12, alright…”

“Just half past 12?” The other’s voice is filled with bewilderment. She walks into the room, stopping by Arashi’s bed. “Come on, time to wake up. You still have to change.”

Arashi glances at Daisy. The other has already put on her uniform and tied the ribbon in her hair.

“You have way too much energy…” Arashi yawns, having no choice but to get up from her bed.

“You sleep way too late.”

Arashi whines again.

[areixyn-en]

Despair

“Next up is…” The teacher looks at the documents in hand, “The class treasurer. Does anyone want to be the class treasurer?”

Arashi raises her hand. She’s always been good at calculating, to the point where her friends call her a “human calculator” as a joke. She’s the perfect fit for a class treasurer.

The teacher looks at the class. “Only two? If there’s no one else, then these two shall be the class treasurers.”

Arashi turns to see who she’s going to be partnered with. She sees a raised hand —

It's Krishna.

Now, she’s not familiar with Krishna or anything, but her sheer demeanor gives her the shivers. Her cold gaze, the eyepatch on her right eye, and her almost entirely black outfit, everything about her screams “stay away.”

Arashi has the sudden urge to put her hand down. But it's too late. Backing out now will surely seem weird, right? All she can do now is pray that someone else raises their hand so that Arashi can lose the round of rock-paper-scissors that follows.

“Is there no one else?”

Please, anyone is fine, someone raise their hand, please-

“Then, these two shall be chosen by acclamation!”

Thunderous applause sounded.

Arashi now understands what they call despair.

Art - Areixyn

The tiny Arashi on the top left corner (?) - Y