BLACK SWAN
By MargaritaDaemonelix
Black Swan Theory: a metaphor that explains that black swans, or events that come as surprises, have major consequences on the parties involved and are often rationalized erroneously after the fact when hindsight comes into play.
There it is, that call again. "Wake up, Ara," and frankly, she doesn't want to. It's seven on a Saturday and Ara really just wants to catch up on lost sleep, even though she knows she can't be napping at this hour with so many things to do.
She opens her eyes to find her roommate's curious eyes blinking at her. "You said you'd come to Ariel's surprise birthday party with me," Aisha says, pouting. "Weren't you going to make something for her?"
"I had that lecture to go to last night," Ara groans, rolling over onto her side. "Why would I have any time to— Actually, don't answer that. Give me two minutes."
She rolls up into a sitting position and yawns lazily. A copy of the Heart Sutra in Sanskrit tumbles off her lap — she must have fallen asleep while reading through it —and onto the floor below. She climbs down the ladder of the bunk bed, still groggy and disoriented, and scoops it up, tucking the bookmark (an old candy wrapper) back in between the pages.
With Aisha getting dressed on her side of the room, the little dorm room feels a lot more empty. The various actors and actresses that stare from the posters on the walls seem to glare a little harder. The ticking of Aisha's stupid alarm clock buzzes louder. Ara extracts her phone from her hoodie pocket — 7:14 pm. She started reading at 4:10. Three hours spent in a daydream, wasted potential but not wasted time, because unlike some people, Ara actually treasures her beauty sleep.
"Live a bit, would ya?" Aisha emerges from behind her curtain, victorious, with her violet hair let down in a curly wave and her normal white hoodie replaced by a black dress that is less fabric than it is open holes. "Besides, no one is gonna get mad at you for trying to celebrate someone's birthday."
"Yeah, they wouldn't if I brought cake," Ara retorts, starting to look in the area below her bunk. Most of her clothes are similar — black leggings, t-shirts in orange, black and white, and a variety of hoodies from various events she attended. "Usually you get into parties through connections. I don't have those."
"Nonsense, Ariel loves you," Aisha says, but Ariel loves everyone because she's just that kind of person, and besides, even if Ara did bring cake, there's no way she can buy her way out of her lonely corner with food. "C'mon, if you aren't going to pick something, I'm gonna cram you into a dress and buy you a cake myself."
Ara sighs, and gives up.
Ara has never been a very popular kind of person.
It's odd, because anyone who's ever made friends with her has praised her social skills, and her lively sense of humour, and the way she knows when she needs to make people smile. But somehow, she's always been stuck on the sidelines, with only a few friends to stick to.
Things got a bit better after high school. She got into her dream program alongside her best friend, she was asked out and had a significant other for three months, and on top of that, she's taken to her classes like a fish to water. Her peers are people who are dead language geeks just as much as she is. Once upon a blissful first year, Ara was happy.
This is why Ara doesn't want to go to parties:
This is a university campus, and typically on university campuses, when there are parties, there's also alcohol and drugs involved. When there's alcohol and drugs involved, accidents tend to happen. People like to point fingers and push blame onto others, but in the end everyone blames the booze.
A drunk driver, returning home after a party. A sober one, driving his longtime girlfriend of three years back to her dorm. A horn. A flashing light. The screeching of tires on asphalt. A crash that killed one of the kindest, brightest, most wonderful people this campus will ever see.
Ara knows her brother, and she knows he wasn't drunk or high when the crash happened. It was late at night, the world was dark, the mere fact that he survived is a small wonder, and the fact that Sasha didn't make it is horrific on the same magnitude.
At the same time, part of Ara knows the other students don't look at her the same anymore. Steel doesn't stop to speak anymore, only smiles and waves in the hallways. Her classmates look away when she walks into lectures. They know just as much as her that it's not her fault, but fingers are still pointed and they're all locked on her.
It's been a long year. Midterms are in three weeks.
If she's become isolated to a world of her own, she might as well make the best use of it and ace this course.
Aisha does, in fact, cram her in a dress and drag her out to buy a cake from the local grocery store. It's 7:39 when they get to the store and Ara is left shivering by the vegetable aisle, wondering where her roommate finds the energy to do such things.
It's January, and they just walked nearly a kilometre in the snow. Even wrapped in her long winter parka, Ara can feel the cold seeping in under the down.
Aisha comes back with a bright grin and a cake covered in enough chocolate mousse to kill a man. "Bingo," she says, offering the cake to Ara. "Just buy this, bring it to Ariel, and score yourself free entry to the party!"
"I shouldn't have to pretend to be nice," Ara insists, holding the cake out like she would a serving tray, "to get into a party."
"You're doing this because you are a nice person," Aisha chides. "And if the rest of the world can't see that, they can fuck themselves."
Ara just quietly goes to the checkout to buy the cake. The total comes to $13.55, which, according to Aisha, is worth three espressos, but Ara doesn't drink coffee anyways, so it doesn't really matter.
The common room of the Ventus dorm is currently, to put it lightly, a mess. People are dancing. Explosive EDM is screaming through the room. She's pretty sure she sees Elesis hipcheck someone into the window before disappearing into the tsunami of human bodies again.
Someone tugs at her arm. Ara turns around to find Camilla Maxwell from her philosophy class last semester gripping onto her sleeve. "Who are you?" Camilla asks, squinting, clearly not on her first drink of the night.
"Ara~!"
A very, very red Ariel Arkwright floats through the mess of bodies, crashing into Camilla and causing her to release her grip on Ara's sleeve. "I'm so glad you came!" She chortles, smiling more brightly than Ara thought she could as she attacks her with a bear hug.
"Happy birthday," Ara squeaks, "I brought you cake."
In her peripheral vision, she can see Aisha laughing as she moves with the beat, bumping hips and brushing hands and lips with a silver-haired girl. She wonders if she's Aisha's secret girlfriend, the one that she refuses to tell anyone about.
"You have to stay, then," Ariel gasps, taking the grocery bag. "You go and have yourself some good fun, okay?"
She puts a wet kiss on each side of Ara's face before grabbing Camilla's hand and taking off. "Toodles!"
Ara sighs, and promptly realizes she can't find Aisha in the suffocating crowd. In this colourful, bright party, she is the only person standing in plain black, like the ugly duckling among songbirds. It's not a big surprise to her — she's always been the odd one out, even before the accident.
As blaring K-pop screams all around her, she finds her way to the unoccupied piano seat. It feels like home, considering how much she played piano when she was younger. Even if she tried to play, though, no one would hear her, and with the two girls sitting on the piano, she's not sure if she can play.
Someone who doesn't know her offers her a bottle of beer. She turns it down politely. Her parents always taught her to refuse any drugs or alcohol, because conservative Chinese Buddhist household, right? Her father gave her an easy way to escape — "I'm allergic to alcohol" — and it's worked for her for the two years she's been in college, and the four years she was in high school.
It's funny how her made-up allergy keeps the ghost of her brother's accident away more than her words do.
"You look lonely," says someone, and Ara looks up into the face of someone she's passed by a million times but never really registered — that boy in engineering, the one that grins like a lightbulb and wields his words like a love potion. She thinks his name might be Add, but she can't be sure — seems more like a nickname than a legal name, if anything.
"I'm alone," she says, shrugging. "Doesn't mean I'm lonely."
He gives her a look, like really? Kelly Clarkson in this day and age? "Aren't you gonna do anything, though?" He asks. "Not gonna drink, not gonna eat? I heard you brought cake for Ariel."
"Not hungry." She smiles wryly at him. "I just woke up an hour ago. I'm freezing in here, if anything."
"Well, if it's any use, physical activity helps you warm up," he says, looking like he's contemplating something under his smug smile. He reaches a hand out, and Ara realizes he's offering it to her. "Dance with me?"
She rolls her eyes. Is this the kind of party spirit that Aisha wants to get into her? "Sure, why not," she says, letting him pull her to her feet, help her shake off her winter jacket, place his hands just above her hips because of course, what a gentleman.
And as Fantastic Baby starts blaring and the party collectively screams yeogi buteora, as Ara and Add laugh because slow dances don't work in college parties on Saturday nights, Ara realizes that you don't need alcohol to get drunk. The night lights up in neon, and Ara knows she's awake but it feels like a fucking dream and it's the first time she's had fun, felt welcomed, since orientation day.
Someone clearly put on a BIGBANG playlist, because Fantastic Baby fades into Bang Bang Bang, and that brings an explosive beginning to Sober, and then by the time the playlist dies and someone requests Ed Sheeran, Add's hands have settled on her hips again, and her hands are on his strong shoulders, and they sway from side to side as Add's lips form the words I'm in love with the shape of you.
Ara isn't sure if she's dreaming. Any moment now she's certain that Aisha will come wake her up for a party that she'll get booted out of, that she'll practically roll out of bed to scoop up her Heart Sutra off the floor. But then she rests her head on Add's shoulder, and the world buzzes in A flat and neon green, and it seems like she'll be able to slowly lose herself in a new world.
Her feet are burning because of her shoes, but it's okay. Everything is okay. "I never did get your name," Ara murmurs, voice soft not with sleep like she expected but with delight. "Care to share?"
And even though it's a lie, because everyone knows Add one way or another, he laughs. "The name's Edward," he chuckles, making the call me sign with his hand, "but you can call me anytime."
His eyes twinkle with mischief. "But Add works too, I guess."
Their laughter turns to earthen smiles, and then they are not tired college students at a party but simply two people pressed together, dancing, hands locked together. She kisses him, plain and simple, and he steps closer to her, because she really doesn't have much experience with kissing anyone, and he's the one to pull her closer.
Ara's mind isn't racing like she thought it would, like it should be. She isn't in any sort of panic. The pressing warmth of the party fades, and it is just her and him.
"Hey," she says, softly.
"Hey," he replies. "What's up?"
"It's a great night. I'm having a good time, y'know?" She murmurs, fingers dancing over his cheekbones. She really hadn't noticed it before — there's a thin scar under his eye, one that just puts the balance off his otherwise clear face. In the neon strobe lights, it seems to glow in ghostly magenta. She kisses him again, softer this time, and inhales the taste of chocolate mousse.
The rest of the night goes by in a heartbeat, or maybe it's because they've already spent the night on the dance floor. Ara blinks, and suddenly it's twelve, and her phone alarm is ringing to remind her to find Aisha and get back to the dorm. "I— oh shit," she mutters, snoozing the alarm as Add peeks over her shoulder. "I have a workshop tomorrow morning at eight."
Add winces. "Ouch. You're gonna need a good night's sleep for that." He lets go of her shoulder, searches around before locating the piano where she'd thrown her belongings and grabbing her coat. "I'll walk you back to your dorm."
He helps her into her coat again, and offers her his arm to lean on, because heels are painful, and she's not sure why she has these ones to begin with. "Thank you," she says softly, holding on and checking her phone again. 12:03. Time is starting to blend into the night sky, away and away and away. "Thank you very much."
They wander out of the chaos of the party, and no one even bats an eye. Ara focuses on putting her weight on the front of her feet, trying her hardest to not twist her ankle on the gravel path.
Add glances at the dorm building ahead. "You live in the Solace building?" He asks, pausing as Ara kicks a pebble out of her shoe. "That's cool. I live in the Ebalon building."
"That's literally on the other side of campus," Ara notes. "Why are you walking me back?"
Add shrugs. "It's not bad," he amends. "Some people at the party came all the way from town. Besides—"
Whatever he's about to say next is cut off by Ara's phone buzzing in her pocket. 12:08. She did hit snooze, after all. They laugh together as Ara pulls the phone out of her pocket, this time shutting it off.
Before she can tuck the phone back in her pocket, Add pulls up his and hands it to her. "I said you could call me anytime, and I meant it." He gives her a cheeky grin, just a little nervous.
"What should I save my number as?" She asks, taking the phone and creating a new contact.
"Surprise me." Add punches in what is doubtlessly at least six emojis, and then gives the phone back to Ara. "Here you go."
Smiling, Ara saves herself as Ara Haan on his phone—it's simple, and hey, he'll know the name instantly. "Goodnight," she says, patting his shoulder. "Thank you again. I haven't had this much fun in a long time."
He responds with a quiet "goodnight" and a small smile before turning to go.
In the five minutes it takes for her to trek into the building, into the elevator and back to her dorm room, the thrill of the night and the flavour of the blaring neon music seems to die off. She opens the door to her room. It's dark. Aisha must still be out, probably dancing the night away with her secret girlfriend.
Ara turns the light back on, flinches when the world suddenly goes bright even though she's just come from hours of being blasted with strobe lights. Her copy of the Heart Sutra has fallen off her bed again, and she squats down to pick it up, not flexible enough to simply bend over with her heels on.
The buzz and the almost drunken happiness dies off quickly, much too quickly. Ara kicks off the stilettos (she's almost certain they're Aisha's) and reaches behind her to unzip the dress and shed it, like a swan abandoning her dark feathers.
She climbs up the ladder and sighs, sitting there with her legs over the edge of the bunk bed. The room had seemed empty, even while Aisha was in it. Now, Ara curls up on the top bunk alone, wrapped tightly in her duvet, scrolling through her alarms to make sure she sets the right one for the morning, to remind her to get up for the workshop.
A notification pops up, from someone listed as Add Grenore with a purple heart emoji before and after his name. She smiles as she reads the text.
Add Grenore: goodnight! hope you're back in your dorm safe
Add Grenore: good luck on your workshop
Ara Haan: thanks
Ara Haan: gnight
Satisfied, she drops the phone next to her face and closes her eyes, and wanders into Wonderland.
The workshop is mostly uneventful, aside from a scare when someone drops their tablet computer. Ara drains a bottle of lukewarm green tea (the monkey king one that her parents brought back from China) over the course of the three hours, feeling a bit more revitalized with every sip but not enough to wake her up.
Even though she plows through the workshop and reads the selected passages out loud in class, Ara's mind is far, far away, pushing past questions that haunt her.
After she finishes reading out her passage, Ara opens a new document, typing the words THINGS THAT DON'T MAKE SENSE RIGHT NOW over the top and bolding, underlining and italicizing them.
1. Why me of all people
2. Were we not completely sober
3. Does he not know who I am (?)
Nothing adds up, and it leaves Ara with zero answers and much too many questions. Everything seems to be swimming in circles around her mind, little tidbits of information that don't quite satisfy her curious mind.
Why would Add ever decide to approach her of all people during a party? The combination of them is almost cliche—the popular kid and the social outcast, dancing hand in hand at a stupid birthday party. While she's been told she has a pretty face, that does nothing to cover up her mess of a reputation.
The reasonable explanation would be that there was alcohol involved, but Ara knows that she turned down every drink offered to her, and the lingering taste of Add on her lips is nothing but warm chocolate. Even the feeling of his touch on her fingers and hips is like molten chocolate, trickling away as she thinks about it.
They're a bit of a disaster combination, Ara figures. Add showing affection to her, an invisible, lifeless wallflower, will only result in a catastrophe. His reportedly huge friend group will tear her to pieces, if she doesn't die of embarrassment first.
A notification pops up on her phone, but she ignores the purple hearts that appear and flips the phone over. Maybe she'll need to focus on the workshop a bit more to get the thought out of her mind. She closes the document quickly and peers over at her neighbour's notes to catch up.
Three hours later, it's eleven-thirty and Professor Ventus pokes the guest lecturer more than a few times to get him to conclude the workshop. Ara thanks the the guest on the way out of the room, and gives Professor Ventus a fist bump—he's probably her favourite professor for this reason. She slings her backpack over her shoulders, checks her watch, and heads for the student centre.
The University of Western Fluone, located just a few kilometres south of downtown Hamel, has an extensive history of nearly two hundred years. Its students are constantly at war with the University of Velder, and their symbol is the blooming wave. The campus is arranged in the shape of a huge twelve-pronged gear—the six student housing complexes alternating with the six main libraries form the twelve prongs, and everything else, from facilities to restaurants to sports stadiums, are locked inside the huge ring.
At the centre of the campus is the Harnier Solace Student Centre, a four-storey donut-shaped building home to services like medical care, a mental health centre, and various rooms that can be booked out for goofing around or quiet study. The garden in the centre, unofficially known the donut hole, is home to a beautiful statue of a weeping woman. Some call her the Overworked Undergrad, and rub her feet for good luck.
The best part of the student centre, in Ara's opinion, is the cafe on the fourth floor. In the summer, they open a small rooftop patio, but since it's January and much too cold, the chairs and tables are all packed up. She ascends the stairs alone, her footsteps echoing in the emptiness of the stairwell, and emerges to the scent of percolating coffee.
"Hey Rena," she says cheerfully as she approaches the counter, reaching into her bag for her purse. If anything, the kind fourth year psychology student will always have her back. "What's up?"
"I was wondering where you were," Rena teases, reaching for a tray. "The usual?"
"Yes please." Ara simply hands her twenty dollars, knowing that she'll get exactly $5.30 back and that she'll drop the 30 cents in the tip jar. "Thank you, Rena."
Rena only works here part-time—she's got an offer to work as a counsellor full-time after she graduates due to her extraordinary grades and maternal kindness. She never forgets Ara's usual order of the ham panini combo, and is never afraid to scare off anyone who's giving her grief.
Ara decides that the world doesn't deserve someone as good and kind as Rena Erindel. Even through her freshman year, Rena supported her and never turned her away. Ara always makes a point of thanking her by playing pieces she likes on the piano in the cafe.
She drops her bags at nearby table, draping her jacket over the top, and makes her way over the to the piano. "Play something by Tchaikovsky," Rena calls from across the room, shaking a bottle of salad dressing violently.
Ara inhales as she sits down at the piano. It's nearly fifty years old, donated to the student centre by one Ernest Hoffman. Some of the keys don't work quite right, especially the G key under middle C, and sometimes Ara's fingers stumble as she tries to play. The sound quality is beautiful though, weathered over fifty years of loving players and their musical magic.
She searches her mind for a piece, finds one, and puts her fingers to the keys.
This is the thing about Ara: she suffered through eight years of practicing piano every day, and at the end of it dropped professional playing entirely. Her medals and trophies decorate not her dorm room but her room back at home in Sander, and her certificates of honour are tucked into envelopes in the bookshelf in the living room.
After surviving her final piano examination, Ara stopped performing at recitals and started to experiment with sound instead. She picked up flute, and singing, until she finally came back to piano and learned to play with her music, to improv off a single theme and morph it into something completely new.
Rena seems to like Tchaikovsky, though, so she keeps her playing clean. The main theme from the Swan Lake Suite isn't too hard, anyways, and the moment she finds her bearings, she works off it, knowing the chords and simply building her pattern and embellishments off them.
A few people come to watch her play, but she pays no attention to them whatsoever. She immerses herself in her music, since playing was once her only escape, and pours out her soul. She becomes Odette for those fifty, sixty, eighty bars, the beautiful swan princess in her element. A serene fluidity washes over her.
Her finger snags across the dead G key and she pushes herself forwards, but it catches her off guard. What's the next chord, the next note?
Before she can catch it, Ara's piece derails itself into The Dance of the Little Swans, light and lively. She holds her breath, afraid to exhale as if it'll impact her playing, and plows through it, ending with gusto.
Loud applause erupts around her, snapping her back to reality. "Oh," she says sheepishly, getting up and bowing lightly. "Thank you."
"How'd you just blend between the pieces so well?" A nearby girl asks, eyes wide. She's still clapping, mostly subconsciously. "More importantly, why aren't you a music student?"
"I'm mostly working off improv," Ara confesses, a little red in the face. "And really, playing is just a hobby for me at this point. I'm in Sanskrit studies."
This is definitely a larger crowd than she's ever seen, probably because it's the weekend, but everyone wanders off all too quickly, and Ara ambles over to Rena, who is smiling brightly. "That was absolutely amazing," she gushes, grabbing Ara's hands in her own. "Your ability to play is just magical!"
"Not magic," Ara laughs, as Rena hands her the tray. "Just a ton of practice."
Thankfully, no one has taken off with her bag or coat—Rena must have been keeping an eye on them, and Ara makes a point of thanking her for it. She sits down with her lunch, pulling up her phone and scrolling through her Instagram feed while she munches on her panini.
Another text pops up, still accompanied by the hearts, and Ara flinches and nearly drops her phone in her soup. Almost cautiously, she taps on the notification,knowing that she's already missed one from this morning.
Add Grenore: have fun at your workshop!
Add Grenore: didn't know you played piano so well
The next text is a YouTube link, and Ara steels herself to open it, expecting a badly-recorded video of her playing.
Instead, she watches as Rick Astley begins to dance on her phone screen, accompanied by the iconic music that graces every other meme she's seen in the past two months.
She nearly throws her phone across the cafe.
Ara Haan: I can't believe you'd rickroll me like this
Ara Haan: in this year of our lord 2018
Add Grenore: good to know that youre fluent in memes
Ara Haan: are you trying to get me to arrange never gonna give you up for the piano
Ara Haan: or are you just trying to extort piano lessons out of me
Add Grenore: would not mind either tbh
Add Grenore: but really your swan lake medley thing was fantastic
Add Grenore: I mean I don't know any of the pieces in it but I know it was swan lake
Ara Haan: thanks anyways
Add Grenore: I try
"I don't get it, Aisha," she complains when they've returned to their dorm room for the evening. Aisha, it seems, spent the night in her girlfriend's dorm, and half the morning too, nursing a headache from not the booze but the loud music. "What on earth possessed him to approach me last night? Much less walk me home and give me his number?"
"He wanted your number, too," Aisha offers not-so helpfully, her legs tangled in the bars of the ladder down her bunk bed. "And by the looks of your texts, he wants to be friends with you."
"But why?" Ara says, almost whines. "What about me is friendly to him? I practically radiate death, judging by the way everyone seems to avoid me!"
Aisha just shrugs. "Don't question it. There's a long list of people fighting for his affection." She pauses for a moment to aim before tossing Ara's phone across the room into her lap. "You're lucky that he's paid you any attention."
"He's a player, isn't he," Ara deadpans. "How can I be sure he won't just throw me away in a week once he's bored?"
"So you are interested in him," Aisha says, raising an eyebrow.
"No, I'm not," Ara retorts.
Aisha just gives her a long-suffering look, like please, bitch. "Everyone at the party saw you two dancing," she says, "and it's not like no one saw you kiss him. Ara, what on earth possessed you to do that?"
"Oh." Realization washes over Ara like a tsunami. "So you're saying that I kind of accidentally led him on and made him think I wanted to fuck him in my sleep-deprived stupor."
"That's the idea," her roommate agrees. "Then again, he was the first to reach out to you, so we really can't rule out the idea that he's just genuinely interested in you."
Ara groans and buries her face in her pillow. "Great," she mutters, voice muffled in soft cotton, "the one time I go to a party, and I kiss the guy everyone wants a piece of and probably incur the wrath of everyone on campus."
"Do you want to date him, though?" Aisha offers.
"I don't know, and I don't want to know." Ara rolls around uncomfortably in her bed, coming face to face with her plush bunny. "I mean, it's been a day and he's already rickrolling me, so it can't be all that bad being his friend."
She sits up, and gives Aisha a look. "For the record, though," she says, quietly and deadly serious, "what's the my competition?"
Eve Nasod is everything that Ara is not.
For one, she's a prospective law student, with marks high enough to practically guarantee her entry into law school. Her father runs a huge technological firm, making her a trust fund kid in one sense, but a scholarship kid in another.
She's just a quiet first-year kid with a savage streak and sky-high grades, but Ara can't help but think that she's met her before. The good majority of the freshmen don't really shun her, except for the handful who have older siblings. Eve could really go either way, in this situation.
Ara can't fathom why Add would be into this quiet girl, but nothing can convince her to hate her. Eve is a squishy marshmallow of a first year student, all silver hair and orange marmalade eyes, and when she sees Ara sitting alone in the library, she wanders over to sit with her and offer her some chips.
"Are you Aisha's roommate?" Eve asks her quietly, taking a sip from her Starbucks cup. The letters CBruL in thick black market garnish the side of the paper cup. "I believe I've seen you around a few times."
Ara wants to ask her are you Aisha's secret girlfriend really badly, but keeps her mouth shut and accepts a barbecue chip gratefully.
A few weeks later, Aisha invites her to go bowling with some friends, and only then does Ara confirm that Eve is the secret Aisha's been keeping, and she finally understands why.
(She never says anything about it to Add, though.)
Add Grenore: have you seen black panther yet
Ara Haan: I don't like movies
Ara Haan: hard to sit still without fidgeting
Ara Haan: also I cried watching the most recent ice age movie with my dad
Add Grenore: understandable have a nice day
(It doesn't make sense, any of it. Because either he's doing this out of pity, or he's doing it for fun. There is no way someone like Add would approach someone as invisible as Ara.)
The snow melts away as Ara plows through her midterms, causing her to go into a week of radio silence with Add. In her defence, though, she tells him ahead of time that she's focused on studying, and he replies with lol, saaaame.
It's a week of peaceful study. Ara spends most of her time at the library, absorbing the library's huge collection of Sanskrit manuscripts and Buddhist texts. By the time she's actually returned to the dorm, even Aisha is half asleep, mostly due to exhaustion from staring at her notes for so long.
"Why did I ever think that architecture would be a good idea," Aisha groans, having rolled off her chair and onto the floor. "I thought high school would be the end of the all nighters and stupid teachers giving stupid amounts of homework!"
"Do the homework," Ara laughs softly, helping her get back up. "Architecture is, like, ninety five percent math, right? That means practice. Get some sleep now, I'll run to the convenience store and buy you a few Red Bulls."
Aisha only nods weakly, barely managing to climb up to her bunk before passing out entirely. She starts snoring within seconds, and Ara can't help but giggle.
She locks the door as quietly as she can as she leaves the dorm room. Sounds from all the different rooms in the Solace dormitory echo around—exhausted snoring from upstairs, desperate sobbing from below. It's normal for midterm season, and for the Solace dorm in general, so Ara really doesn't pay it too much attention.
She was in a different dorm last year, because the six new dorms were only built over the summer. The new buildings double as official "dorms" for first years, and more or less affordable housing for the students of other years. A poll was held among the students to determine which six professors they would be named after, and at the end, six emerged victorious: Denif, the strict calculus professor; Rosso from law; Gaia from environmental studies; Ebalon from engineering; Solace, whose wife's name graces the student centre; and Ventus, Ara's personal favourite prof.
She wanted to be in the new Ventus dorm really badly, but after Aren's accident, they transferred her to the more tame Solace dorm. Stories of wild parties from the Ventus dorm reach her on occasion—her best friend Elesis is there—but she doesn't pay them much attention. Parties aren't really her thing.
Not until recently, anyways. Ara wonders what changed along the way, what made her suddenly want affection, attention. It started with the stupid party that Aisha dragged her to, and she doesn't think it'll end.
She blinks, and suddenly she's in the convenience store, staring at the Red Bull in her hands as someone calls her name softly from beside her. "You okay?" Add asks, looking genuinely concerned. "I've called your name three times and you just sort of picked up the Red Bull and—" He gestures wildly. "Seriously, you okay?"
Ara nods and smiles. "I'm good. Just a little tired." She looks at the Red Bull. "My roommate is passed out in our room, so I told her I'd buy her something strong for when she wakes up."
"Wow." Add grins at her, though despite his bright expression, she can see the dim exhaustion in his eyes. "What a considerate roommate."
"I know, right." Ara rolls her eyes and looks around for a basket. "I think four is enough for one day. I'll get her more tomorrow if she wants."
"That amount of caffeine cannot be good for you," he comments as she brings her basket to the checkout. "How is your roommate not dead?"
Ara shrugs. "She's built up a tolerance to caffeine," she offers, putting the cans of Red Bull on the counter. The cashier looks just as tired as she feels. "Just these four, please and thank you."
The total comes out to just under $16, and Ara feels her fingers go turn to jelly as she scoops the coins out of her purse. The poor cashier bags up the cans numbly. Ara suddenly feels happy to not be working in retail.
"I'll walk you back to your dorm," Add says after he finishes his purchases (two 5-packs of Shin Ramen and two bottles of Gatorade) and jogs to catch up to her on the sidewalk. "You been doing okay?"
"I guess." Ara strategically places her feet on the sidewalk to match the tiles, left foot on solid tile and right foot on the cracks. It's just a bad habit that she hasn't been able to shake. "Just tired from studying."
"What a big-ass mood," Add replies, rolling his eyes in agreement. "I think I'm gonna break my fingers if I do anymore tension calculations."
"Me except with verb tenses," Ara says. The feeling of bitching about midterms with someone she barely knows is incredibly surreal, especially at this hour of the night. Clouds are draped over the moon, bathing the entirety of the campus in a hazy white light, and a midnight fog rolls across the distance, linger from rain in the daytime. It's not as cold as it is dreary, and in the otherwise silent campus, Ara is glad to have company.
"You must be a good roommate if you're willing to go out at eleven at night and trek half an hour to buy liquid caffeine," Add comments, suddenly shattering the silence.
Ara blinks. "Could say the same for you." She gestures at his bag of purchases. "But really, I gotta shame your choice of food for a second. Shin Ramen is so one-dimensional in taste."
Add snorts. "My roommate only speaks pure spice. There is nothing he will not eat if it's spicy."
"Okay, fair," Ara amends. "My parents are from Xin. It's a small town in China. I love spicy food. But it's gotta have colour, y'know? Dimension!"
They spend the rest of the walk bickering about food and just about everything else. Ara finds out that Add, while otherwise talented and expressive, cannot cook to save his own life, and that his mother, who remains his only real family, is from Elder. He has a cat back at home named Dynamo, and Ara tells him about Eun, the fox that followed her home and accidentally (?) became her pet.
"I'm pretty sure it wasn't legal," she says, shrugging, "but we took her to the vet, got her insurance, and she's been with us for three years now." She snorts. "Handful of trouble, honestly. If you think cats are bad, just know that foxes are worse."
"Dynamo has taken a shit on my laptop more than once," Add counters, and they both shudder at the thought. "But he loves my mom, so I think she'll be fine."
Ara rolls her eyes. "Oh yeah. Eun absolutely loves playing with Aren. I think it's because he's always got snacks on him."
They lapse into a comfortable silence after that. "He must be a really nice guy," Add comments softly. "Pets can always tell who the people with good intentions are."
Then they're in front of the Solace dorm again, and Ara stops, unsure of what to say. "So, uh... Goodnight," she manages, smiling. "Good luck with your midterms."
"And you too." Add smiles. "Kick those verb tenses in the ass."
She waves goodbye from the doorway of the dorm, and he waves back before turning away.
Sighing, Ara takes her four-pack of Red Bull and heads back inside.
Ara wishes she'd signed up for a suite sometimes, but then she wouldn't have met Aisha, nor would she have the nice life she has now.
What she really misses having is a kitchen. There's a ban on large electronic appliances in the Solace dorm to prevent fire hazards, and propane stoves are outright banned so that no one gets carbon monoxide poisoning. The money she earned from her summer internship and last semester is barely enough to cover her living expenses—as much as she wants to buy that all-purpose griddle for $149.99, she can't really afford it.
The night before one of her worst exams (Tibetan Buddhism), she gets up, ignoring the fact that Aisha has just cracked open her third Red Bull of the hour, and leaves the dorm room, heading down the stairs to the common room.
She's not one for stress baking. Elesis used to do that and feed all her bad creations to her brother and their parents, back when they were in high school. While Ara may not enjoy baking as much, she's hungry, and she wants to do something, anything aside from staring at her textbook.
The fridge stands humming, like the towering guardian over the common room kitchen. Ara flickers on the light over the stove, filling the room with soft golden light, and opens the fridge.
She finds a carton of eggs, three bags of milk, a bottle of pomegranate juice, and a variety of vegetables in the fridge, as well as a block of butter and some assorted frozen foods in the freezer. The butter, thankfully, hasn't gone past its Best Before date, so she pulls it out, along with some flour from the pantry, and starts to work her magic.
It's 2 am on the day of her worst exam, and Ara is baking a quiche. She likes making quiches—Mama always enjoyed her ham and cheese quiches—but with just limited supplies and time, she can only make a simple one, in the tiny, beat up pie tin she found under the oven.
A groan echoes through the room. Ara turns around and watches as Gloria Grimaldi stumbles in through the front door, looking dead, and crashes on the couch. Part of her wants to ask if she's okay, but knowing that Gloria was close to Sasha, she keeps her mouth shut.
She kneads the dough for the crust gently with her right hand, grabbing the electric kettle with her left and filling it with water. In a few minutes, the water boils, and Ara drops her spatula to reach into the cabinet for a mug.
Quietly, she offers the mug of Earl Grey to Gloria, who sits up and accepts it gratefully. There are tear streaks on her cheeks, and her blonde hair is damp.
"Do you want to eat something?" Ara asks quietly.
Gloria shakes her head. "Thank you," she whispers, voice hoarse from crying. "Thank you."
"Do you want to talk?"
There's a long period of silence, and Ara is about to get up and go put her quiche in the oven, but then Gloria speaks again. "I was in Darkmoon's dorm," she says weakly, staring down into her steaming mug. "W-we fought. About grades and stuff. She expects me to drop out because I'm not doing well in calculus."
"Why are you even taking calculus in the first place?" Ara asks. "Aren't you in the music program?"
"Parental pressure during first year," Gloria groans. "Also, Darkmoon took it too. I hate it. Everything about calculus sucks."
"Then drop it," Ara suggests firmly. "If it's got no use for your future, then you shouldn't be making yourself this stressed over it. If everyone's gonna beat you up after forcing you to do something you don't want to do, then hell, I'll help you find something you do want to do."
Gloria doesn't speak. She raises her mug to her lips, and drains the tea (even though the water is scalding hot). "Thank you, Ara," she says quietly, getting up to wash out the mug.
A small smile blossoms on her face. "You know, I wonder sometimes why the other students blame you for something that was no one's fault," she says. "Our little circle, Sasha's close friends, we always knew Aren was innocent. We wouldn't have let Sasha get close to him in the first place if he wasn't."
She crosses over to the sink and washes out her mug, leaving Ara sitting alone on the couch.
Three am. Ara pulls her spinach and cheese quiche out of the oven, and sits down to eat it alone.
It's peaceful. The quiche is a little bland, but it's filling and gives her energy.
She finishes the quiche alone, washes the dishes, and heads back upstairs.
The last of midterms pass smoothly, and suddenly Ara is standing in Professor Ventus's office with a perfect paper in her hand, wondering when she did this because, holy shit, it seems so foreign to her. Are these actually words she wrote? What a concept.
"I have to say, your analysis of Maitreya imagery was absolutely stunning," Ventus chatters, stapling a scantron to another paper and handing it to some other student from one of his other classes. "You've really got a lot of potential, Ara."
"Thank you, sir," she stammers, looking over his comments. They're as abstract and strange as ever. Pop. Nice prose. Great!
"Please, none of that "sir" bullshit," Ventus laughs. "How much older than you do you think I am? You could literally call me by my first name, and I wouldn't even bat an eye."
This strange encounter leads Ara to wonder just how old her professors really are.
(Google reports that Ventus is turning 53, looks about 25, and might have grandchildren. What the fuck.)
Winter doesn't drag out miserably that year, which is always a plus, but then the lakes start to appear on campus—huge puddles that probably span an entire block. Ara swaps out her black snow boots for bright pink rain boots, resolving to brighten up her wardrobe as the weather changes.
Thankfully, it isn't drab in any way. On rainy days, Elesis runs the half-kilometre or so in the rain and invades Ara's dorm while Aisha is out. She brings good things, like her mom's homemade bread (good, very good), and bad things, like teasing (bad, very bad).
"I still can't believe you met Add at a party," she says, dangling upside down off Ara's bunk bed. Ara is slightly worried that Elesis might just fall off entirely, or the bunk bed will break under the stress of Elesis's legs hooked on, but it's Elesis. She's indestructible. "Like, wow, didn't know he was your type."
"I don't have a type," Ara deadpans, flicking her pen against her wrist. "Why do you know about this to begin with? I haven't even talked to you in, like, two weeks!"
Elesis reaches over and flicks her in the nose. "You underestimate my ability to find out this kind of stuff, darling," she says, all sing-song. "Besides, I have a guy on the inside."
Ara raises an eyebrow.
"Don't worry about it," Elesis says, waving it off. She rolls herself back up onto the top bunk, and Ara winces at the creaking. "I should introduce the two of you formally someday, when we're less busy."
Her eyes light up. "I'VE GOT IT," she squawks, and nearly falls out of the bunk bed, and nearly gives Ara a heart attack.
Ara makes her sit in an actual chair after that.
Add Grenore: hey
Add Grenore: elesis is treating us both to midnight korean barbecue
Ara Haan: love me some kbbq but why midnight
Add Grenore: she says she knows the boss and she can get us a deal at midnight
Ara Haan: aight I'll take it
Ara Haan: meat is still meat
Add Grenore: mood
Ara Haan: how do you know her anyways
Add Grenore: her younger brother is my roommate
Ara Haan: ?
Ara Haan: elsword? the small child?
Ara Haan: highkey has been adopted by professor solace and preparing to be a counselor?
Add Grenore: I hate to say this but thank god we're talking about the same person
Add comes to pick her up in an old, old looking Honda Civic in the same colour as old red leather shoes. "Thank you for flying Air Grenore today," he jokes as she slips into shotgun. "Would you like a complementary cookie?"
"I—" Ara has to laugh out loud as Add extracts a package of airy Chinese crackers (probably purchased from the nearby supermarket) and offers one to her. "Oh my god. Thank you. But I'm afraid I'm going to have to decline, I won't have anywhere to put the meat afterwards."
"That's true," he agrees, putting them back where he got them (a small box on the side of his seat. "I forgot to eat lunch. I'm hungry enough to eat an entire cow."
Ara snorts. "I'd like to see you try."
The car feels all like home and stranger at the same time, regardless of how old it is. The inside seems to carry the same chocolatey scent that always lingers around Add. Although the seats are still intact, the faded fabric indicates to Ara just where long road trips were spent.
They stop in front of the Ventus dorm, where Elesis is waiting, all flaming red hair and snowy white ski jacket. "Hey, y'alls," she chortles, opening the door and plopping herself down in the back seat unceremoniously. "Glad to see you're both still alive."
"Yeah, midterms were a pain in the ass," Add says, grinning. "But am I going to die because of them?"
"Yes," Ara cuts in quickly, and they all laugh.
The Korean barbecue place they go to is pretty loud, even though it's midnight. Then again, it's a Friday night, and everyone's off for the weekend, coming to chow down on juicy barbecue.
Elesis gets them the Friday-Sunday All You Can Eat combo for the price of the Monday-Thursday combo thanks to her connections. They sit down at their table, and for a moment Ara hesitates, before sitting across from Add, next to Elesis. There's a small scare as Elesis tries to turn on the burner herself, and nearly singes off her own hair, but thankfully, they're not kicked out of the restaurant.
"Before I order more pork than I can physically eat again," Elesis says, handing the order sheet and pencil to Ara, "please take this far, far away from me."
Ara shrugs, and starts to fill out the chart. Kimchi is a must—she orders a small dish for them each, along with some spicy bean sprouts (and normal bean sprouts for Add because he is a coward), spicy marinated tofu, radish pickles, and something listed as "beef soup", which seems sketchy at best.
"Meat. You need meat," Elesis says, "why are you ordering so many side dishes when meat awaits?"
So they order meat. Add is allergic to seafood, so Ara pouts and crosses out her order for squid. She puts down orders for five servings of pork, and five servings of beef, and five servings of chicken, and then hands it to a waiter passing by.
"Now that we have a moment," Elesis says, sipping her ice water, "I should properly introduce the two of you."
"Yeah, our first meeting wasn't exactly... Formal," Ara supplies, and Add smirks.
"Besides, now that I know my best friend knows my punchbag, I need both of you to play wingman for me," Elesis continues to chatter. "Who knows, I might meet a cute girl on campus and need both of you to set me up with her."
She turns to Ara first. "Ara, this is Edward Grenore," she says, gesturing wildly at Add. "Everyone calls him Add, though. It's because he can't do addition."
"No, it's because it was a nickname my mom gave me when I was younger," he protests.
"Elsword told me he was screaming at two in the morning because he accidentally wrote 4+7=2," Elesis informs her gleefully. "And it messed his entire lab up really badly. Anyways, everyone loves him, but he's actually a fucking dork, and he's a huge nerd and has had an unnatural obsession with time travel since reading Homestuck."
"This is slander," Add complains. "I refuse to stand for this-this blatant slander!"
"It's not slander if I'm right," Elesis snarks in response.
(Ara tries her best not to laugh, and fails.)
A waiter shows up with glorious platters of meat, and all sorts of little dishes containing side dishes red with chilli oil. The "beef soup" never arrives, but Ara doesn't particularly miss it. Elesis gets up to lay thick slices of sizzling beef and buttery pork onto the grill, and the world smells like heaven and all else is forgotten.
"Anyways, now that we have been blessed with glorious amounts of meat," Elesis says, as Ara gets up to take a turn on the grill, "lemme continue with my introductions. This is Ara Haan."
"I got that much," Add snorts, before smiling at Ara. "It's nice to meet you."
"You mean it's nice to meat you," Elesis says, shovelling a piece of pork and kimchi into her mouth. Ara mimes smacking her over the head with the tongs. "Anyways, I've known Ara since ninth grade, so you bet I have a literal treasure trove of stupid stories about her."
This is a statement that does not fill Ara with confidence. She shoots Elesis a nervous smile, and gets an absolutely shit-eating grin in response. "Ara is the definition of a hot mess," Elesis starts off, which is definitely alarming. "She used to have hair that came down to her lower back, except in twelfth grade she donated about half of it. And she has a pet fox named Eun!"
"I know about Eun," Add says. "I've seen photos."
Elesis raises an eyebrow, chopsticks bearing spicy bean sprouts halfway to her lips. "You have?"
"It was the day before my Physics exam," he amends. "I needed a morale boost."
"Can't argue with that," Ara mutters, snatching a slightly charred piece of pork off the grill and dropping it on her own plate.
"Anyways, Eun is probably a demon in disguise as a small fox," Elesis continues. "Ara, however, is an angelic small child that deserves nothing but happiness."
"Stop bullying my height," Ara protests, but Elesis shushes her.
"She's also a gamer." Another shit-eating grin. "I'm pretty sure she holds a world record in Tetris. She'll go for hours on end playing Tetris without stopping. She regularly suffers from the Tetris effect."
Add looks like he's trying hard not to laugh. "Duly noted," he says, before reaching over to take the cooking tongs from Ara. "Here, let me take a turn."
He chars half the meat he cooks, and apologizes profusely for it. Ara suddenly understands why Elesis calls him a huge dork.
They go through their first order pretty quickly—the meat is no match for three ravenously hungry college students. Add stops eating sometime after they order their second round, and Elesis calls him "a weakling. A coward." (To which Ara totally agrees; she was taught to always eat her money's worth at AYCEs.) Elesis herself does end up ordering five platters of pork, which she eventually concedes defeat to, and then it's just Add and Elesis grilling the remainders as Ara somehow inhales it all.
There's not so much the loud buzz of the party as there is a quiet hum from the restaurant patrons, the crackling of the flames under the grill, and the sizzling of the meat. Ara feels less out of place and more like a college student with her two best friends with every bad joke Elesis tells, every tangent about time travel Add accidentally goes off on. The peaceful chaos of the restaurant fades away to just an ambient hum in the cosmological background of things.
Ara loves it and hates that she does, because good things never stay for long.
"I'm highkey glad that you aren't seeing grade eight me," Add laughs, as Elesis ruffles his hair and makes it stand on end even more than it already has. "That was the peak of my emo phase, honestly. I let my hair grow out until my mom made me shear it off before grade nine."
"Horrific," Ara says. "I can't imagine you with long hair."
"You know what else is horrific?" Elesis asks, smacking her in the back of the head. "The fact that you're still going. Girl, do you not fear the exercise gods?"
Ara swallows a mouthful of kimchi. "I, uh, have good metabolism?"
They all laugh after that, and then Elesis gets the bill and pays for everything. Most of the other patrons have left, and the few still remaining are packing up. Ara quickly scarfs down the last bit of pork and then helps the tired server pack up the dishes.
"Well, that was eventful," Elesis sighs as she puts her jacket back on. "I haven't had that much meat in a single sitting since 1969."
"This isn't the Hotel California," Add says, "although it's a lovely place."
What a lovely face, Ara thinks, and nearly slaps herself for thinking it.
They all pile themselves back into Add's beat up Civic, and they begin the absurdly short drive back to campus. It's nearly two in the morning, and although Ara really hasn't gotten enough sleep over the past few weeks, she's not tired. The car ride is just enough time for them to tell a few final jokes before dropping Elesis back off at the Ventus dorm.
"Anyways, I am now going to invest in a gym membership for the three of us," Elesis laughs, waving goodbye. "Get some sleep, kids. It's late as fuck!"
She closes the door with a bang, which effectively shuts down the laughter in the car. Ara is suddenly hyperaware of the fact that Add is humming something quietly to himself, like a lullaby.
"Do you have any plans for the next break?" Add asks suddenly, breaking her trance.
"Uh." Ara thinks ahead for a bit, trying to recall what her schedule requires of her in the next few days after the break. "I'm probably gonna visit home for about a day, and then I'll come back to work on my translation project."
"Sounds fair." Add nods, eyes still trained on the road ahead. He's going at about a kilometre per hour, and Ara feels like he's just stalling for time to talk. "I'm gonna be mostly free, so I'm gonna head home and visit my mom."
"Not your dad?" Ara asks, and immediately regrets it as Add winces and the car jolts forwards. "Oh. I'm sorry. I-I shouldn't have —"
"No, It's not your fault." He gives her a wry smile. "I haven't seen my dad since I was six, and it's for good reason."
He stops in front of the Solace dorm as they devolve into complete silence. "God, that was an awkward way to end off a really fun outing," he laughs, reaching out to pat her shoulder. "Get some sleep, kick some ass, and send me more photos of Eun."
"I will trade my Eun photos for pictures of Dynamo, one for one," Ara snarks back, thankful that at least they have something to laugh about. "Goodnight!"
Add echoes her, and then she slips out of the car and into the building.
She returns to her room to find Aisha sitting at her desk, a mischievous smirk on her face. "I saw you come in," she says, jabbing her thumb at the window. "Thought you said you weren't into him."
Ara flushes. "Shut up."
After the ice melts, Ara gets her bike out of storage and prepares to bike daily across campus, instead of using the bus system provided to the students in the winter. She cleans off the mud, fixes the squeaking in the handlebars, pumps the tires, and takes it for a spin.
She makes it three metres away from the bike rack before the chain snaps and she collapses in the grass, bike, Ara and all.
"Well shit," she mutters, getting up and rubbing her shoulder. Thank god she decided to test it out before actually riding it to class. It'd be embarrassing to just topple over into a fountain, halfway across campus.
She looks through the grass, and scoops up all the pieces that fell out—a roller, a link, and the rest of the chain in one fluid piece. In theory, it'd be an easy fix, since the only thing that happened was that the links flanking the roller got pried open, but Ara has neither the tools or the raw strength to push them back into place, much less get it on her bike.
There's no local bike shop, unfortunately. Ara's dad taught her how to replace a burst tire and how to inflate a flat one, but not how to get a chain back onto the sprockets. She sighs, and sits up and reaches for her phone.
How to fix bike chain. A YouTube video tells her quickly to use about six tools she doesn't have, and Wikihow provides bad illustrations that only confuse her more. "Damnit," she mutters.
A text notification, along with a quick buzz, shakes her phone in her hand. She catches sight of the familiar hearts around the name, and her frustration subsides.
Add Grenore: look at this photo of Dynamo that my mom sent me
Add Grenore: [IMAGE]
(It's a picture of the small ragdoll curled up next to a basket of warm bread, the golden glow of the bread reflecting off Dynamo's silken fur. Ara can't help but smile.)
Ara Haan: this image just raised my grades, paid my loans and fixed my bike
Add Grenore: your bike?
Ara Haan: the chain snapped
Ara Haan: roller and link came loose
Ara Haan: would you happen to have either a pair of bottlenose or line man's pliers
Add Grenore: *needlenose
Add Grenore: *lineman's
Ara Haan: I said what I said
Add Grenore: give me twenty minutes
Add Grenore: where are you
Ara Haan: in the grass outside solace dorm
Add Grenore: say no more
Ara drops her phone, sits back in the grass, and tries to hide her goofy smile, and fails.
It ends up taking Add about forty minutes to get to her (ten minutes to find his bag of pliers, and half an hour to haul it halfway across campus since Ebalon dorm is literally on the direct opposite side of campus). Ara spends those forty minutes putting DO NOT TOUCH sticky notes on her bike (seven minutes), resisting Aisha's teasing (forty minutes) and making ham and cucumber sandwiches (twenty minutes).
"I think this might be overboard," Add says when he arrives, dropping his bag of pliers on the grass. Ara watches as a screwdriver the size of her pinky finger falls out from the side of the opening and disappears. "But it's probably safer to bring all this shit than to have to run all the way back across campus again."
"Thank you for doing this," Ara says meekly, standing over her bike with her Tupperware full of sandwiches as he starts to work with the chain. "I, uh, made you some food for your troubles."
"What are friends for?" He gives her a grin, and Ara realizes with a jolt that he referred to her as a friend. What the fuck. "But I'm always down for food, so I owe you one now."
"You're saving me from having to trek to the Abbadon Library on foot virtually every day, so I think we're even," Ara protests.
Watching him work is mesmerizing. He mumbles to himself as he folds the joints back together, swears at least once at a pair of pliers, and smacks one of the sprockets with the butt of his screwdriver. Ara thinks it's kind of endearing, actually.
They talk naturally like old friends. Add explains how the joints fit together, gesturing wildly with a screwdriver in one hand and half a sandwich in the other. Ara laughs and nearly chokes on a piece of bread as he sticks the screwdriver in his mouth and pushes the sandwich at the bike chain.
"That should work," he finally says, slapping the pedal and watching as it brings the wheel along as well. "There we go. One fixed bike."
"I owe you my life, my soul, my firstborn child," Ara says, looking over the bike. "Thank you so much."
Add frowns slightly. "I don't think I'd like to keep your firstborn child," he muses. "Children are loud and hard to handle."
For some reason, that makes Ara laugh so hard that she topples over into the grass. The Tupperware in her hands, thankfully, is closed and does not spill her sandwiches all over the grass. "I'm sorry," she giggles, trying to sit up, "maybe I'm just tired, but that was so funny and I don't even know why."
"Gotcha." Add tries to suppress a smile as he packs up his tools. "Have you ever heard the song Big Enough? That was basically my reaction to hearing it the first time."
"I have not," Ara says. "Send it to me sometime."
"Alright." He waves awkwardly, choosing to just smirk. "I'll find it and text you the link."
"Please do not rickroll me again."
He laughs out loud, and something in Ara's mind says victory. "Alright, alright. See you around!"
She stands on the lawn and watches him cross the road, watches as others join him along the way—his actual friends, people who are normal and not wallflowers. He jokes with them, and she can hear his laughter, even from far away.
Ara picks her bike up off the grass and pushes it back towards the bike rack.
Add Grenore: youtube watch?v=rvrZJ5C_Nwg
Add Grenore: that's big enough
Add Grenore: start at the beginning and just watch it in its entirety
Add Grenore: I swear it will not disappoint
Ara Haan: will I regret watching this
Add Grenore: depends on your sense of humour
Add Grenore: how's it going so far
Add Grenore: hello? Ara?
Ara Haan: uh hi this is Ara's roommate
Add Grenore: oh no
Ara Haan: I think your video might have killed her
Ara Haan: because she's just lying on the floor right now
Add Grenore: oh god
Ara Haan: I don't think she's breathing
Ara Haan: oh god I'm calling 911
Ara Haan: oh wait never mind she's just laughing so hard that her chest is shaking
Ara Haan: she keeps muttering "country screamo"
Ara Haan: should I be concerned
Add Grenore: no that was intentional
Ara Haan: ah
Second semester goes by in a breeze after that. Ara trades pictures of Eun for pictures of Dynamo, and cooes over the cat with Rena at lunch. Massimo from her Tibetan Buddhism course accidentally addresses Professor Ventus by his first name, and soon after that they're all calling him Soran, much to Professor Denif's unamusement.
Elesis gets her excused from a workshop when her period cramps get really bad, and runs over from her dorm to deliver warm chicken noodle soup (a gift from Rena), rosebuds for tea, and a bottle of Tylenol from the pharmacy in town. She makes Ara curl up in bed around a hot water bottle, and furiously texts her brother before making Ara some not-spicy cup noodles.
Add introduces her to his bros sometime during April. Ain Ishmael is in their year, but lives off campus with his grandmother. Ara realizes that she's seen him much more often across campus than she'd let on—the strange flashes of light that seem supernatural at times come from his camera. Ciel Lucas is a gentle giant with a tendency to smack Add when he swears. He's going into culinary school for postgrad ("you're allowed to do that?") and laughs more than he speaks.
Professor Ventus (Soran? Professor Soran?) encourages her to take her Maitreya essay from midterms and polish it for possible publication, so she does. She sends a copy to Add, who admits that he doesn't "even understand all these words separately", but he helps correct her grammar, for which she is grateful and sends him one (1) ham quiche and a folder of Eun photos to repay him.
The published paper gets a bit of attention, since her little niche in the world is tiny. Ara knows she has virtually no career options aside from research, so every boost she can get is useful. A professor at University of Velder applauds it, which makes Professor Ventus fake cry and loudly blow his nose.
She cuts communications with everyone right before exams again, or at least she tries. She shuts off her phone during the day and only turns it on at night to send Add a photo of Eun to prove that she's alive, and gets a photo of Dynamo in response. No words are exchanged, only precious photos of their pets that serve as fuel to keep going.
It also becomes easier to just study from the safety of the dorm room, since it's blistering hot outside and the nearest library is so, so far away. She puts on music, listens to whatever makes her focus, and drinks cold milk to keep herself awake. She blinks, and suddenly her mug is empty, she's halfway through her third listen of the Swan Lake Suite, and her highlighter is completely out of ink.
But the suffering passes, as it usually does. Ara survives her finals (only barely with the Shaktism course, though—there were just too many devas) and passes all her courses for the semester, which is a relief if anything else. Her hands are sore from writing, and they tremble as Professor Ventus hands her back her "astounding!" essay on Mahadevi, the mother goddess, as the ultimate reality.
Aisha and Eve's little secret is let out of the bag on exam review day, mostly by accident. Ara watches as Aisha runs through the door of the student centre, screaming something about having aced all her exams, and Eve responds with a very aggressive congratulatory kiss. Ara is pretty sure she watches three people hand money to Rena, who just smiles, eyes twinkling with mischief.
And Add… is unreadable. Ara looks at him, and realizes she genuinely cannot tell what he feels. She watches in abject horror as he walks over to them, gives them a solemn congratulations and a noogie for Aisha. It's like she's frozen in time, and everything that has been told to her is a lie.
"Aren't you happy for them?" Add asks her, which effectively snaps her out of her daze.
She gives him a look over. There's a smile on his face, but the very edge of his lip is trembling, and she sees in his eyes that he's hurt. "I already knew," she manages to answer. "Aisha's my roommate."
He ogles at her in disbelief. "Okay, so apparently I was the only one kept in the dark about this," he says, pursing his lips and sticking his hands in the pockets of his jeans. "Alright, then."
Ara wants nothing more than to hear his thoughts, but she keeps quiet.
Rena invites a bunch of them to her graduation on the last day, and there's a silent agreement among the extended friend circle that all of them have to get her something nice.
Between the Sieghart siblings, Add, Chung (Elsword's best pal/boyfriend), Ciel, Ain, Eve, Aisha and Ara, they manage to pool together enough to buy Rena a new iPad mini for her new job as a counsellor on campus. They present it to her after the ceremony, along with a heartfelt card signed by each of themselves, and she cries so hard that the minimal makeup she applied runs off.
"Don't worry about me," she laughs through the tears, as her longtime boyfriend Raven hands her another tissue. "We're passing the torch to you now. It's time for you to do greater things."
"If none of you go to outer space, we're going to be very disappointed," Raven supplies.
Glances are cast at Add, who tints pink, scoffs and turns away, and Eve, whose father could probably build a rocket from their own backyard. Ara is too busy crying along with Rena to really catch their reactions.
After tissues are passed around and runoff makeup is cleaned up, everyone starts to head back to their dorms to pack up their remaining things and head home for the summer. It's been nearly two months since Ara last saw her parents in person, after all, and much longer since she saw Aren.
She says goodbye to Rena and Raven in front of the student centre, and she says goodbye to Elesis, Elsword and Chung by the Ventus dorm (although she knows there's no use in saying goodbye to Elesis). She gives Ciel a quick nod and a smile along the path back to Solace dorm, and waves at Ain as he calls goodbye from the other side of the road.
The last she sees of Add is him smiling at the girl he's talking to by Rosso dorm. She prepares herself to not say goodbye, to not tread on his happiness, but then he spots her and turns to wave. "YOU OWE ME MORE PICTURES OF YOUR FOX," he yells, cupping his hands around his mouth to amplify the sound.
Ara can't help but smile at that. "ONE PICTURE OF EUN FOR ONE OF DYNAMO," she yells in reply. "THAT'S HOW THE DEAL WORKS. SEE YOU NEXT YEAR, GRENORE!"
It's the first goodbye that doesn't leave her on the verge of tears again. She heads back to Solace dorm with a smile on her face, and prepares to say goodbye to Aisha and Eve—and the dorm—for the year.
A/N: here it is, ladies and gentlemen and nobles of every house, Black Swan! i've been very excited to release this fic for a long, long time!
so uh adra kinda holds a special place in my heart because of what they represented to me as a person and as a writer. they've since grown on their own as my muses, and this fic is the culmination of that. this is literally the most self-indulgent thing i have ever written, and is the capstone to my motto of write the fic you want to see in the world.
Ara is majoring in Vedic Sanskrit (called Sanskrit studies in this fic). Add is majoring in electrical engineering. these are inspired by two of my cousins who are majoring in those particular things respectively. yes majoring in Sanskrit is a valid thing
some thank yous:
thank you to tin, KumihoSei and justforfum for keeping me hyped up for this fic all while i was writing it. i'm so blessed to have friends like you guys in the elsword writing community.
thank you to my irl friends and classmates who had to deal with me rambling about this au in the early days of its conception, and a special thank you to the one person who has supported me through it all and has read literally everything i've ever written. i love you all
and finally thank you to all my readers and reviewers. every time i see the views on my fics going up, every time i get a review, it makes me smile. thank you all so much.
nanowrimo may have me in its clutches right now but know that i appreciate you all very very much
~Marg