Yang flopped onto her bed. The past several hours had been absolutely exhausting.
She was finally all moved in, although it had been an incredibly long process. They'd finally arrived at the dorm, Vale Hall, and quickly gotten everything out of the cars and into these bigs bins. Yang supposed that they were originally intended as industrial sized laundry bins, like the type that she'd seen at hotels. They'd been repurposed and rebranded with BU's logo, for students moving into the dorms.
After everything had been put into the bins, Yang and Tai had gone to park their vehicles. They made their way back to the lawn outside Vale Hall, where Ruby was waiting with Yang's things. The wait to get the bins up the elevator was almost as long as the wait from the highway to campus in the traffic line of cars.
Still, they'd made it eventually. Unpacking things themselves wasn't too bad either. They'd managed to get everything on Yang's half of the room squared away in just a few hours. It was decently helpful to not have an extra body in the room while they were unpacking, but Yang couldn't help but wonder where Blake was...
Halfway through unpacking, someone had come to greet Yang and her family. She was a shorter girl, with long white hair, tied in a side ponytail. Her demeanor was formal, and her smile appeared to be a bit forced. Yang immediately guessed who she was based on the reslife t-shirt that she wore: the floor RA.
"Hello! My name is Weiss, and I'll be your RA this year," the girl had called into the room through the propped-open door.
Yang stepped towards the door to greet Weiss with a smile, holding out her hand for a handshake. Instead, a thick, stiff flyer was shoved into her open hand.
"This is a list of all of the opening weekend activities. There's floor bonding on the lawn outside in 3 hours. There's also a mandatory floor meeting tomorrow night, in the lounge downstairs at 8pm. I'll see you there!"
Without another word, Weiss had disappeared, leaving Yang baffled in the doorway with a thick piece of paper covered in information about times and locations for events all weekend.
"Um, okay," she called into the doorway, at no one in particular, since Weiss was long gone.
"She certainly seems... well, interesting," Taiyang chuckled as he lowered an empty box from the bed.
"Yeah, you can say that again. I probably won't be seeing too much of her, so it is what it is." Yang scanned the paper before tossing it to the side.
Ruby tilted her head. "Why wouldn't you see too much of her? She's your RA!"
"Rubes," a new voice called from the doorway, "you usually don't see your RA much unless you're a troublemaker. And Yang better not be getting herself into trouble."
The sisters turned to see the source of the voice, a tall, dark haired man in a campus police uniform. "Uncle Qrow!" they exclaimed in unison.
"Hey, kiddos," Qrow said with a smile as he embraced their hugs.
Tai let out a small chuckle. "You spent your lunch break coming to help us?"
"Who said anything about helping?" Qrow released the girls from the hug and pulled a half-squashed sandwich from the back of his pants. "I came to talk and eat!"
Yang shook her head, a wide smile across her face. "Of course you did, Uncle Qrow. Of course you did."
"Well, I had to come congratulate my niece on her first day at BU! And also, introduce myself to her roommate, so she knows there's no funny business in this dorm room."
"You won't find her here, Qrow. She was gone before we even got here." Tai jabbed his head towards Blake's half of the room.
Qrow entered, glancing around the dorm. "Lots of books, I see. Good sign. Less likely to be a partier."
"Uncle Qrow," Yang groaned. "That's not true, and you know it. Neither is the thing about RAs and troublemakers! You really just won't believe I turned over a new leaf, will you?"
"I'll believe it when I see it, kiddo."
Yang rolled her eyes, smirking. "I'll just have to prove it to you then."
"Now that's what I like to hear." Qrow pulled out the desk chair, sitting down. "Now, I do genuinely need to eat my lunch. Today's a particularly long day. Directing traffic in the August heat is never fun."
Tai chuckled. "Well, Qrow, if you'd stayed with the Patch force, there wouldn't be much of that."
"You know why I left, Tai. Besides, I like it much better up here. Rubes, could you grab me a water?" He pointed to the package of water bottles sitting underneath Yang's bed.
The younger girl nodded, quickly grabbing a bottle and passing it to her uncle. "Why did you leave Patch, Uncle Qrow?"
Qrow opened the bottle and chugged half of it before closing it again. "A story for another day, kiddo. A story for another day. Say, you're going into your junior year of high school now, right?"
Ruby nodded in excitement. "Yep! Junior year!"
"How are you feeling about not having Yang there?"
Her face fell slightly, but then perked back up again after a second. "It'll be weird at first, but I'll get used to it! Besides, Cinder graduated, so things will be easier."
"Cinder... That's the girl who...?"
"Yes." Yang cut off her uncle. "She goes here now, for whatever reason, Beacon decided it would be okay to accept her, even after what she'd done."
"She was a minor," Tai sighed. "The records were sealed, and her father helped her get them destroyed the moment she turned 18. And plus, that sleazebag of a lawyer got her out of actually harmful charges."
"I still don't know how that was legal," Qrow muttered bitterly between bites of his sandwich.
"It's a grey area, legally speaking."
"Someone should probably get that checked out by a doctor. A steaming pile of bullshit isn't supposed to be grey."
The two sisters exchanged glances, holding back giggles. Even when talking about Cinder, whom the mere mention of could bring fury to every member of the family, the banter between Tai and Qrow never missed a beat. If the girls didn't know any better, they would think that their father and uncle were actually brothers.
Qrow placed down his sandwich. "Well, I can guarantee you, if she tries anything of the like here, she'd be getting a big shiny boot out of campus, and an arrest that her father can't just evaporate away. What about the other two though?"
"Emerald and Mercury?" Ruby asked, to which Qrow nodded. "They got held back. Still allowed to go to Patch High, for whatever reason. They're a lot less untouchable now that they aren't following around the mayor's daughter like a couple of lost puppy dogs. Plus, if they so much as step a toe out of line or even look at me the wrong way, they're on the block for expulsion."
Qrow took another long swig from the water bottle. "Good to hear."
"I still just can't believe that their parents cared about them failing, but didn't care that they-," Tai shook his head, "Nevermind. Let's not dwell on the past too much, shall we?"
"That sounds like a spectacular idea," Yang said, opening up another box. After a brief look inside, she slammed it closed again.
Qrow rose an eyebrow at the girl. "Yang, why'd you do that?"
"Absolutely no reason whatsoever," she said, shoving the box underneath the bed.
"Yang," Tai said sternly.
"What?"
"Give me the box."
"Pssh, there's no reason for anyone to look in there whatsoever!"
"Yang Xiao Long."
"Fineee, Dad, jeez." Yang pulled the box up, and placed it back on the bed. She gave her younger sister a sly wink. "Take a look for yourself!"
Tai grabbed the box and opened it, looking inside for only a moment, puzzled. "It's... your boxing gloves? And your workout gear?"
"Exactly!" Yang smiled, a huge smile on her face. "The two of you thought it was going to be shot glasses or a bong or something. I told you I was turning over a new leaf!"
"Yang Xiao Long, I swear to god, you're going to be the reason I die ten years earlier than I'm supposed to," Qrow said with a long sigh, watching Tai investigate the gloves further to find absolutely nothing weird about them.
But Yang, nor Ruby, had even heard what their uncle had said. They were too busy laughing hysterically at the sight of their father peering into a boxing glove, incredibly confused.
All of those shenanigans had taken place a few hours ago. Yang had been able to spend a little bit more time with her family after they'd finished unpacking before everyone left. She'd barely said goodbye to Qrow, as he worked on campus and lived only a few minutes away. Plus, he was letting Yang store her car at his house, since she wasn't allowed to have one on campus yet, so she'd be seeing plenty of him all year.
Saying goodbye to her father was difficult, but saying goodbye to Ruby was incredibly hard. She knew it wasn't a permanent goodbye, as they'd see each other by Thanksgiving again at the absolute latest, but it would be the first time she'd be spending more than two days away from her sister since, well, since Ruby had been born. It was a bit of an understatement to say that Yang was a bit protective, but well, in recent years, she'd had very good reason to be.
Still, the sisters managed to part ways after a tearful goodbye, and Yang had been left alone in the dorm room. She was beginning to regret not opting to go to the corny looking events outside on the lawn, but they had long since left for another location. The loneliness was starting to set in, especially since her roommate still hadn't returned from god-knows-where.
Yang turned and looked to the other side of the room. Where could Blake even be all day? She'd moved in early, Yang knew that, but she had no idea where on campus she could have stayed. She wasn't in the lounge when Yang had explored the building, and she highly doubted Blake was the type for group activities. Most of the buildings were closed until the first day of classes, Qrow had told her that months ago. There was no way Blake could still be outside somewhere. It was late August, and the heat was unbearable.
Where Blake was wasn't the only question Yang had. Why was her side of the room so empty? It was so... bare, nothing much above basic necessities. It almost reminded Yang of the old movies her and Ruby used to watch as kids about old orphanages. It was... just plain sad.
The only part of Blake's half of the room that made her look remotely human, according to Yang, was the books under the bed. Sure, they were in boxes, and somewhat organized, but goddamn, there were so many! If what was in her closet was all the clothes that Blake had, Yang estimated that she owned at least five times as many books as she did clothes.
Literally, who even was this girl? Yang didn't even have the slightest clue of what she looked like, nor anything about her. Judging by the wardrobe she had, she seemed to really like the color black. What other things could Yang guess about her? Her major? Obviously, something to do with English or literature. Who else has hundreds of books stored underneath their bed? A STEM major? Hell no. Maybe she wanted to be an English teacher, or a journalist. Maybe a poet or an author. Yang had no clue.
Whoever Blake truly was, whatever sort of personality she had, Yang wanted to know more. She was so intrigued by the mystery of her roommate. Yang wanted to know as much about her as she could possibly learn. After all, they were going to be living together for an entire year. Based on the narratives from friends back home, this wasn't the normal path that freshman year roommates took.
Yang's thirst for knowledge about the ever mysterious Blake Belladonna was insatiable.