THESE HIDDEN WINGS

[74.1]SATURDAY

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Knock, knock.

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"SOMEONE PLEASE TELL me what students on Kingsland do for fun on the weekend," Claire groaned into her pillow, lying face down on her bed while I sat beside her cross-legged.

I glanced over at her for a moment before going back to sketching a flower in my notebook. I wasn't much of a drawer really, but I found there was nothing else to do to keep me occupied.

I couldn't even go back to my room or I would suffocate in Daya's presence. She had brought over a whole posy of girls like her and I didn't have to stay an hour to know that they were not my sort of crowd.

Each seemed to have a dirty story to tell about how they spent their Friday nights. Ones I was too embarrassed to even remember.

"Well, they do their homework and rest," Lira huffed from the table, crumpling another paper and tossing it into the bin across the room almost perfectly but it bounced on the rim and fell to the floor in front of the door, next to five other pieces.

I watched it roll for a moment before turning back to shading my petals quietly. As boring as all this was it kept me from thinking about what happened this morning, trying to block out the feeling of that force taking over my body-

I hated it. I hated when he did that.

I was already helpless as it is, not having control of my own body scared me even if it was just for a few seconds. I had to bring him his stupid trinket back, and curse Daya for taking it.

Of course, she would eventually figure out I took it, I mean who else could have? But I was starting to think it was better being on her bad side than on Harvest.

"What do OTHER people do on Kingsland on a weekend?" Claire rephrased, turning her head to the side so that her face was half buried into her pillow-

Lira rolled her eyes, flipping over a page. Lira could be serious when she wanted to.

Give her a test or an assignment and she would be all over that but she hated classes to the bone.

She was weird that way, but in a sense, we all were. I was the mute weird girl AKA Crazy Locks, Claire was the shy girl who transformed into a chatterbox once you knew her and-

Knock, knock.

My eyes snapped to the door, Claire's head hovering over her pillow as she looked over her shoulder at the doorway, she glanced at Lira-

"Are you having anyone over?"

I doubted it, the only people I saw Lira with were Andrew, Claire, and I.

Lira sighed, side turning to her roommate, "didn't you invite that weird blue yesterday?" she asked.

Claire snapped into realization turning to me, "It's David," she huffed, her face visibly cringing.

I raised an eyebrow at this as she got to her feet. Last night must have played better than she had led on if she had invited David to her room to hang out with us.

I watched her with a look of disbelief in my eyes whilst she returned a guilty look in hers, shrugging before opening the door.

David stood there awkwardly, his short brown hair ruffled and his shirt a little rugged. He straightened it looking back up at Claire, his jaw slightly open-

"Uh..., hi," he trailed off with a short smile. David was a skinny kid, taller than any of us but I wasn't exactly sure we were worthy opponents to compare heights from as I believed Claire and I were the shortest in our Origins Class.

It wasn't that noticeable, but quite apparent to me.

"Hi..." Claire replied with a notable awkwardness in her tone, after standing there for a few seconds and after a scoff coming from Lira,  she moved out of the door frame beckoning him to come in and join us,

"Come in?" David echoed, his eyes trailing inside to where both Lira and I were, "y-you mean i-in there?' he asked, eyebrows creasing.

Claire looked at him like he wasn't exactly sane for asking that question but I knew nervousness when I saw it. David was far from threatening physically of course, intellectually was a whole other deal.

Because of this, it was hard to feel threatened by his presence like I normally would have had it been any other boy from our class, for instance, Derek. Then we would have a problem, but just David was easier to handle.

"Either get in dweeb or stay out, your choice-" Lira sang, gathering her papers into one pile, "but that doors got to close in 3, 2,1-"

David walked in, looking at Lira like she was crazy and Claire closed the door after him. I kind of felt bad looking at him. He seemed very uncomfortable alone in a room of three girls and I felt like I had been in his kind of situation before, not particularly this one but being shy in a place that was foreign to me-

"Here, take a seat-" Claire offered drawing a chair, he gladly took but his form was still rigid even as he sat down.

It also seemed that he was finding difficulty in finding a worthy sitting position, whether to drape his hand over the chair, cross a leg or just sit like one of those men at a bar.

Each position looked awkward until he settled for sitting like he was in a classroom.

His eyes trailed up to me and waved slowly and I threw on the best heartwarming smile I could come up with to make him feel comfortabl. I had to help him out somehow.

He managed to crack a smile accompanied by an awkward nod.

"So." he began trailing off, "what are we doing here exactly?" he asked as if trying in vain to cover up the silence that was threatening to collapse over us.

I had this one.

I jotted down a few words, "discussing what people do fun here on Kingsland.' I jotted showing him the words with a smile.

His gaze drifted from the words to my face nodding, "Seems like the best place to start," he replied with a slight shrug.

"Only we can't find anything to do," Claire huffed, before her eyes trailed to Lira, "Anything FUN to do,"

"Well," David dragged, "my roommate did say some students are having a couple of basketball games down at the Cube," He suggested his eyes trailing among us.

Claire's eyebrows creased and so did mine as she turned to look at Lira, "I thought no one was allowed at the Cube."

Lira sighed turning around and folding her arms, "the cube inside the cube" she paraphrased, "the building itself is a box divided inside sections, you'll find the combat room and a few inner rooms like the pools, the gym, and the combat courts- this only takes up a quarter of the space- the cube itself is the part that is restricted, the three remaining quarters," she placed her legs on her desk her head leaning back to get a view of us I assumed.

"We should go there!" Claire explained, getting to her feet.

I looked up at her onboard with it all, it wasn't like we were doing anything particularly proactive and I wanted to get my mind off things.

Lira scoffed at her excitement, "do you really want to see sweaty, terostrin-fueled shirtless guys?" she huffed before stopping in her sentence her eyes meeting both Claire's and me, and I bit my lip shrugging as Lira trailed off, "Do you want to spend your weekend like that? Because I know that I am," she added getting to her feet.

I chuckled doing the same while David scoffed, but Lira took care of that, "oh please, if it was girls sweating in bras you would be eager to see that too," she accused.

His eyes widened at that whilst Claire and I chuckled, slipping into our shoes and I grabbed my notebook.

I wasn't going to miss this.

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Neither would I 🙄
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