Chapter Six: Retreat

I took a leisurely walk to the lift and then to class. I was already twenty minutes late. The GF Instructor – Lovett, I think - narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. He must have known as well as I do that I knew the entire syllabus word perfect.

I crashed at the back and spent the rest of the lesson either doodling spiky objects or glancing through the forums.

Gaia was in her place taking her meticulous notes down. She didn't pay anyone the slightest bit of attention. I had to admit, her concentration on the job at hand was impeccable.

Lesson passed quickly and I caught up with Gaia.

"Hey Gaia." I walked with her to the lift.

"Hello Seifer," she calmly responded. She slipped into the lift and hit the down button.

"Heading to lunch?" I asked conversationally, straining to keep the 'conversation' we were failing to have to keep going.

She tipped her head as if she was cottoning on to what was going on, but said nothing about it, "Sure."

We went to the cafeteria, got our food and sat in silence. It wasn't uncomfortable, but I knew what I was gonna say wasn't gonna go down well with Gaia.

"Gaia, why don't you talk to other people?" I tried to sound offhand.

She stopped eating and looked up to me. Then she smiled. I was taken aback as I felt like I was actually becoming part of the school body. Look at me – I'm interacting with students.

"Because they didn't speak to me. I'm not usually inclined to talk to people first. You were an exception because you were about to be killed by a T-Rexaur," she explained bluntly.

"Oh," I replied. That was... odd.

Gaia gathered her food. "Now I have to go – I have to study. The written exam is in a week, don't forget," she reminded me and left.

I sat in silence for a moment.

So there was no real proper antisocial reason for her not talking to people. Great, that leaves me with my work cut out for me – no-one really talks to me either, so I can't exactly go up to someone and ask for them to talk to Gaia, so this is just a stupid exercise. So what am I going to do?

Looks like I'm gonna have to regroup about this for a bit... and maybe glance over some of the syllabus...

How pointless.