Chapter 5: Sasha Gets a Social Life
Yeah, I know the chapter title in the little box isn't the same as down here. It wouldn't fit in the little box. The title over here is what happened a couple weeks ago. So… yeah.
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I'm getting so confused with my stories. They just melt together. I should've just finished the first one. Oh, well!
A couple weeks after the last chapter ended
He had finished one step. He had gotten a degree in mental focusing. They didn't call it "shooting" because then the parents wouldn't let their kids go to the academy. The great thing about becoming a psychonaut was that it only took one year, and it was easier to get degrees in other things. Or, at least, it was faster. And he'd heard (a levitating minx had told him; she was his proverbial little bird) that the courses were harder. That was what he wanted to do. If he had no time for his beloved chemical experiments, then he would be in his element. Little did he know what would occupy his time years from then…
Next, though, was a degree in shields. He was serious. According to Milla's theology, he would be heavy as lead if he tried to levitate. She said that if he lightened up and freed his spirit, then his body would soar. He'd seen her and her friends play games in the wind. It looked like the kind of pointless games that he, too, had played when he was young. And yet, Milla insisted that it was playing tag on windy days made her the wonderful levitator that she was (they now saw each other about once a week) and tried to convince him to play with her. Her friends had no way to explain her attraction to him. They were exact opposites.
He was going to the store. He was out of cigarettes.
He saw her in front of the store (it's just a generic store, at least for now) with her hair blowing in the wind. She saw him and sent up a levi-ball. That's how good she was. Hers, for today, was bright blue. Yesterday… no, earlier, it had been magenta.
She jogged up to him. "Hello, darling. What are you doing here?"
"I'm out of cigarettes."
"Oh." He knew he could ruin a conversation with a couple words. For some reason, he felt compelled to stop, if only to please her.
"Well, darling, to you want to go to a coffee shop later?"
"Sure."
"Okay! See you in a couple minutes, darling!" And she started, levitating only slightly off the ground, toward the coffee shop at the other end of the shopping center.
He watched her for a couple seconds. Then he remembered that he needed more cigarettes. He went into the store and bought a couple packs (he liked to think a couple months into the future) and jogged over to the coffee shop. (It, too, is generic.)
"Over here, darling!" She was at the other end of the shop, waving at him. He blushed and his skin acquired an almost normal hue.
"Did you have to be so loud right then? People might think we're dating."
"Wow! Two whole sentences! I'll have to log that, darling!" She pulled a cloth-covered journal from her bag and used a pen that he supposed wrote in some odd color other than black and scrawled something quickly. She was never one to be discreet. Then she put the journal back in her bag. His face had, in that time, gone from almost-normal to almost-reddish, he was so embarrassed.
"Milla, what did you want to talk about?"
""Well, darling, I thought that a man and a woman could meet in a coffee shop and just talk about nothing for half an hour. That's what I do with my friends, and we don't even stop there. We can go on for hours, baby!"
"Milla, you know me better that that! I have a timed experiment back at the dorm!"
"Fine, then! You can just leave, then. Go back to your precious experiments! Maybe then you'll realize that you can't simulate human contact!" And she ran out, without calling him 'darling' even once in that last statement. That was when he felt something he'd never felt before. It was a feeling of loss at a magnitude that he had never felt before. He knew that she wouldn't talk to him for at least three weeks. She was so stubborn. Her stubbornness almost matched his isolationism before he'd met her. She'd made him realize that he could lose control, if only for a moment.
He wondered, too, if he had been in love.
Wow, this is the best chapter EVER! Milla does seem like the stubborn type to me. Once you mess with her and go a little too far. Don't worry, he'll make it up to her. That's for later, though.