There are 444 steps on the stairs to Shibusen, and Anna took them at a run.
It's not like she'd brought much with her. Her clothes had been shipped ahead, and she had a backpack of emergency clothes, a few books, and a favourite toy. That was all she needed, everything else was essentials she could buy there.
Running through the halls and up and down the stairs of the palace was apparently good training for Shibusen. Anna let that thought carry her up, eager to see the city.
Her foot came over the top step, and she sighed happily. Then she turned around, and forgot to breathe when she saw the view. Death City lay before her, rooftops and spires looking like a tapestry.
This was going to be a good place. She could feel it. She spun around to face Shibusen.
"New student?"
A tall man with a rather gaunt face and toned muscles was watching her.
"Yes! I'm Anna." She said, then mentally smacked herself. English. Not Arendish. "Yes, I'm Anna. A new meister." she said, hoping it had come out right.
It couldn't have been that bad, because the man smiled. "Right this way."
The rest of the day was a bit of a blur. New classrooms- new people- new textbooks- dining hall that seemed decent- English with accents from around the world.
There were students everywhere in different versions of the school uniform. Anna wasn't wearing hers yet, but neither were any of the other newbies. The meet and greet session was hectic, but then again she had been trying to talk to everyone in the room. There were at least a few people around her age who seemed nice.
The school was huge, with a labyrinthine layout. The themes of death and the macabre were everywhere, and Anna suspected the dark colour scheme and decor could get irritating after a while.
It was almost a relief to arrive at the girls dorm, be shown her room, and start unpacking. Her things were familiar. The room itself was nice- a two person bedroom, with two beds, two shelves, two desks and chairs, etc.
She opened the curtains and looked around at the view, deeply satisfied. Terra cotta rooftops and a few scraggly trees looked back at her. She put a palm against the window. Hot.
"Are you my roommate?"
Anna jumped and turned to see a fair girl with a bush of red hair at the door.
"Um. No idea. I'm Anna. And you are...?"
"Merida. Well, I've been into a few other rooms and it seems like most people have paired off, so do you want to be roommates?"
"I'd love to." Anna scrambled over to help Merida with her bags.
"What's this one?" she asked, hefting an oddly shaped bag in one hand and a gym bag in the other.
"Archery equipment."
"AWESOME." said Anna, almost dropping the bags in her excitement. Then she remembered that this was Shibusen, and almost every student would have exceptional physical skills.
"Thanks." replied Merida, hefting a suitcase through the door. "I'm going to be a meister. And you?"
"Meister as well. I don't have a weapon though."
Merida laughed a bit. "Well, most students don't until they've found their partner."
"Right, right, you're so right." said Anna, depositing the archery supplies on one of the beds. "Uh, do you want this bed?"
"Sure. So, where are you from Anna?"
"Arendelle. The capital city. And you?"
"Scotland. The highlands. Boring, but beautiful." Merida kicked the suitcase into position. "So, did you want to go find something to eat? Or something fun to do?"
"That sounds excellent. Did you have anywhere in mind?"
"Well, we could check out the dining hall."
So they went to the dining hall and chatted over salad and pasta. Merida had 3 brothers ("triplets, and every one of them is out to drive mum mad"), had been doing archery since she was 5 ("Dad gave me my first bow. Mum wasn't happy, but I never stopped."), and had wanted to go to Shibusen for years.
They talked, and kept talking as they walked from the dining hall to the common hall. The common hall was much smaller than either dormitory, but wasn't gender specific. Neither Anna nor Merida really knew what one did in a common hall, but as it turned out, there were game tables, couches, a television and a game station.
There were quite a few students in the common hall, most of them lower year students.
"Upper years usually live off campus." explained Aster, a tall, slightly buck-toothed Australian boy.
"Are you an upper year?"
"No, first year. But I've been asking around." said Aster. He was the one that had found a deck of cards and asked if anyone wanted to play. A group of eight of them were playing gin rummy, after a heated game of cheat had almost ended in a fight.
The time ticked on, and eventually the group dwindled to three- Merida, Anna and a boy named Jack.
"I think I'm going to go to bed now. See you in a bit, eh Anna?"
"Goodnight, see you later."
And then it was just Jack and Anna. They looked at each other.
"Another game?"
"Yes!"
Jack started dealing the cards, giving Anna a chance to look at him. He was pretty, this American boy, paler than anyone she'd ever met, with almost white hair. He dressed in blue, and somehow it looked good on him.
"What?"
Anna realized that she was now looking at his eyes, not his hair. Part of her brain was busy noting that his eyes were pale blue, which was perhaps why the other part struggled in getting out. "Uh- nothing. So, what game will we play?"
Jack shrugged. "Go fish? It's easy, and fast. We probably don't want to be here too much longer."
The words made it suddenly, glaringly obvious that they were the only two left in the common hall. They began to play, but something felt off. Anna let a few rounds go by, to be sure, before commenting.
"This feels different."
"Well, it's just the two of us." said Jack, shrugging.
"So why are we still here?"
Jack looked up from his cards, one eyebrow raised.
"Ah, sorry that- it's not exactly what-" She made an irritated growl. "I can't English when I'm tired." she snapped out in Arendish, hoping that would make her point.
It seemed to. "Oh." said Jack. He waited while she found her words.
"Why are we here after everyone else has left?" Anna said finally, with exaggerated attention to enunciation.
"Because it's fun? I don't know. Do you always question games this much?"
"I was just wondering! Everyone else was having fun too, but now we're here, playing alone, and it's still fun, it's just- different."
Jack grinned. "As long as it's fun."
Anna grinned back, and lifted her cards. "So then, Jack, why did you decide to come to Shibusen?"
He shrugged. "I'm a weapon, I had to. But you're a meister, right? How'd you end up here?"
Anna stared at her cards. "Ohhhh, well, I wasn't really wanted at home- I mean, I was but it's so boring there. My sister hardly ever does anything, just stays in her room all the time, and my parents encourage it and never have company. So I never got out much, and when I went to boarding school it didn't go too well, so they sent me here."
"What went wrong with boarding school?"
Dangit, THAT'S what he'd pulled from that? "Nooo, don't make me tell, it's embarassing."
Jack pulled his knees up to his chest, cards forgotten. "Come on, tell. I'll tell you about my school after."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
"Okay. Well, I wasn't happy being tutored at the cas- at home, so my parents decided that boarding school would be best. I didn't want to go because it seemed too far away and it was an English boarding school. They made me, so I spent the first week or so pretending I didn't speak English."
Jack laughed. "And did they figure it out?"
"Oh, yeah, once the teachers saw me talking with some of the other girls, that was over. It was fun- I liked being with people, and the staff were pretty nice. I was good in classes, and at the sports. But then- well- there was this girl, not a very nice girl, and I ended up punching her in the face. During a food fight. That I may have started."
Jack laughed again. "Oh man, I wish I could have seen that."
"Stop laughing, it was very serious." said Anna, but she was laughing too. Once they'd calmed down a bit, she asked "So what was your school like?"
"Oh... not nearly as much fun as yours. I was mostly ignored. My family are weapons, and people don't-" He looked at his knees. "I'm from a small town in the mountains. Everyone knows everyone, and everyone knows to stay away from the Frost family. So the other kids pretended not to notice me, mostly."
Anna realized she was was reaching toward him, and pulled her hand back. "That's terrible." she said instead.
"It wasn't fun." Jack still looked serious, then lifted his head and straightened. "So. Shall we finish the game?"
"Let's do it."
After the game, Anna looked at the clock, and thought for the first time how she would feel going to class on only a few hours sleep. They put away the cards, and Jack walked Anna to her dorm as they chatted about nothing in particular.
They said goodnight, and as Anna crept up the stairs as quietly as she could, she was very sure that she would see Jack again soon.
