Rising Shards

After all that weirdness, we finally got to actually go into the Twin Wolves mall. The automatic doors closed on my new tail, which was really fun and definitely not super painful. Also, escalators became a much bigger concern with a tail, as I had three panic-stricken rides up picturing my tail getting sucked down into it and crushing me to death.

It was worth it though to see Oka react to the massive mall, even if she did scare me by zipping straight to the guardrails to look at the floors above and below. I had a fear of them at Twin Wolves, so like any time I was at the massive mall, I clung to the other side far away from them.

After an elongated session at a directory, Kalei texted that she already had her system and to meet her at the fountain.

“What fountain?” Oka asked.

The Twin Wolves mall has a famous huge fountain that was close to the game store. It didn’t take us too long to get there. Oka froze at the massive amount of water jets and beautiful statues of the mall’s twin wolves spread all around a mountainlike scene. I looked through my handbag.

“Here,” I said, handing Oka a coin. “Make a wish!”

I threw a coin in the fountain and made a wish that was pretty much a mishmash of every daydream I’d had since Phase Zero of this crush and for a few more vague things I wanted with Oka. She tossed hers in as well and grinned at me.

“Thanks,” Oka said. “But don’t tell me what you wished for or it won’t come true, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, right as a weirdly loud fountain jet burst right by us. I yelped and instinctively moved forward. In a second I had fallen into Oka’s arms.

Like when we danced in our room, neither of us moved for a beat too long. Oka let go, and we started giggling. We laughed ourselves into sitting on the edge of the fountain. I noticed that Oka had her hands clasped in the weird supervillain style hand-finger claspy thing again.

“What’s up?” I asked, feeling a bit fluttery.

“Hey, so Zeta,” Oka said. “This might be pretty random but I was thinking about it…you said you don’t know if you’re a good kisser.”

A bit fluttery went to nuclear fluttery levels. I thought I was going to faint, or I actually had fainted and this was a dream, or the fountain actually had magical powers and my wish was about to come true.

“Y-yeah?”

“I…bet you’re a good kisser.” Oka said. “And I don’t think it’s fair Jeans is the only person you kissed.”

“Whoa, Zeta kissing someone?” Kalei said, announcing her presence as she arrived at the worst possible time. Oka casually moved a bit further away from me. Kalei had a big bag with the game store’s logo all over it, and gave a salute to Syval, who was heading towards the exits already. Despite my crush induced daze, I still felt glad Syval hadn’t actually smashed up Kalei’s game system. “I still have you pegged as a ‘too much of a prude to do much of anything’ type of girl.”

“She’s still pretty prudish,” Oka said. “Try saying sex to her.”

“Sex!” Kalei said. “Wow, yeah, her face is just full red now.”

“Hey,” I said. “I grew a tail.”

“Wait, why were you saying sex to her, Oka?”

Oka waved her hands.

“I—it’s not like that!”

“Then you can keep your secret sex and kissing conversation going with your pal Kalei here then, right?”

“Er…well.”

“Ooooh! A juicy scandal among my own roommates!” Kalei said. She held up the big store bag she was carrying. “I actually am too excited about this to care about that, so call your sister and let’s get to playing.”

"Hey, Kalei, before that, though..." I said. I didn't want to ruin her night, but I also didn't want to keep things from her.

"Huh?" Kalei asked.

"We kinda just ran into Roux," I said. 

"You did?" Kalei snickered. "What, did she make you go through some dumb challenge as she threatened to like break my eGame?"

"Wait, huh?" Oka asked.

"Uh...yeah, wow." I said.

"That's it exactly," Oka said. "Does she do that a lot?"

"All the time." Kalei said. "Lemme guess, she said she had a sleeper agent or something, like Syval or someone ready to wreck my system if you didn't do what she asked?"

Oka and I looked at each other in disbelief.

"The thing with Roux is she's always lying," Kalei said. "While I appreciate that you two presumably went through whatever stupid thing she came up with for me, don't worry about like, anything she said. She'll come at you with a different story every week. One day she'll say she's a poor beggar with no family, then the next week she'll talk about her huge inheritence from her rich family. But they'll always be like a part in her story about some secret black market network she's somehow in charge of. We all just kind of deal with it since she won't leave us alone."

I blinked, trying to piece all that together. Oka sighed and grabbed the bridge of her nose.

"I'm not gonna lie, I feel a tad bamboozled here." I said.

"Yeah, I played a video game to defend your system and Roux's just a weird little liar?" Oka asked. "She tried to relate to me about my family!"

"It was still kinda...I dunno, vulnerable? Even if she was lying..." I said. "The way Roux left did make me feel a bit sympathetic to her. Even if she is a weird little liar, she's...not that bad, maybe?"

"That's true, I guess." Oka said. "Still, though. I can't believe I fell for her story."

"I mean, you could have texted me." Kalei said as she shrugged. "Or like thought about her story for even a few seconds. She and I both met Syval at the start of the semester, that isn't enough time to train him as a sleeper agent or whatever, is it? We all just play games together, really."

"I...well...you know...I could have...texted..." I stumbled on my words.

"Just call Stella, please," Oka said.

Stella didn’t take too long to find us, which was good because Kalei got into a near trance as she gripped her eGame 3 harder the closer we got to the apartment. When we got inside, Kalei zipped straight to the TV in our living room and started tearing open the box to get the system set up immediately.

“I assume you guys are taking the living room then tonight?” Stella asked. “Just like don’t keep me up too late because I still have to drive you back in the morning.”

Kalei murmured a response as Stella handed a big blanket to Oka, who curled up on the couch immediately.

“I think we’ll be alright,” I said. “Oka’s pretty tapped out already, so if Kalei muttering to herself as she plays gets too loud, just like kick her or something.”

“You kick her if she does, I'm not getting out of bed,” Stella said. “Alright, night guys. Or wait, Zeta…”

Stella gestured to me.

“C’mere a sec.” Stella said.

Stella gestured to her room. I followed her to her doorway.

“Nice job on the upgrade,” Stella said quietly.

“Huh?”

Stella nodded towards Oka. “She’s adorable. Much better than the last one.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, but I must have made some kind of face because Stella laughed as she shut her door.

I gave a thought to going to my own bed to sleep. Kalei was already sitting inches in front of the TV with eGame 3 branded headphones on, so she was set for the night. Oka was already dozing off, but she groggily caught me looking back and forth from the living room to my room. She lifted a side of the blanket towards me, making my choice very easy. I sat next to her and put the footrests out for both of us. Oka yawned and leaned onto my shoulder. She fell asleep almost immediately, or maybe it took a while and time was just sped up due to this being a crush moment beyond even my phases of crushes. I let myself enjoy the peacefulness of having Oka so close to me as long as I could before I fell asleep myself.