I Think I Like You

Chapter 3: I Won't Leave You

It's been about two weeks since Weiss's episode and, thankfully, nothing has happened since.

As soon as we had made our truce, and Weiss had calmed down enough to exit the restroom, we were faced with a pretty pissed off librarian lady. I got quite the earful about running in the halls and how dangerous it is for the next five minutes after that.

As for how the survey stapling went, well, even though it took a lot longer than it should have, we finished it eventually. I stayed with Weiss as she waited for someone to pick her up, even after being told numerous times it wasn't necessary. I just wanted to make sure she was okay. Once Weiss's driver came to pick her up, we then went our separate ways.

Everything was back to normal... except that it wasn't.

Since Weiss's meltdown, I've tried to keep a pretty close eye on her. She's in about half of my classes so we see each other every day, and I try and keep as close to her as I can. I see myself as her sort of guardian in a way, now that I know her secret, it gives me a strange sense of pride and purpose.

We've even been exchanging texts more frequently. Not just the 'I need you to do this' or 'meet me here after school for club work' texts, the more 'How are you feeling' and 'shut up and stop blowing up my phone' type texts. The latter being from Weiss, but one day she'll appreciate them.

Currently, I'm sitting beside the president herself, along with the rest of student council doing various activities in the club room.

Weiss and I were cutting posters for the up in coming chalk-walk that we'd hang next week, Blake was at one of the filing cabinets sifting through some files as Yang, who is sitting next to her on a pulled up chair, was handing her different manila folders to put into the cabinet.

On the other side of the room Jaune and Ren are printing the posters, with Nora setting them in neat piles to be handed over for cutting out. Pyrrah sits at one of the various chairs in the table doing some of the financing for the school budget.

"What is a chalk-walk anyways?" I ask to no one in particular.

"Oh, it's awesome." Yang says while handing Blake a folder. "Last year some guy who didn't know he was allergic to chalk started drawing with one and his face blew up like an actual balloon." Yang breaks out into a fit of laughter, and I can't help but giggle thinking of the image in my head.

Weiss tskd at us.

"The chalk-walk," she begins. "Is a day where the fine arts students can show their talent by drawing on one of the squares in the sidewalk at the front of the school."

"Ooh!" I say, getting excited.

"And we're supervising it." She finishes.

"Boo." I disapprove, with my head falling on the table.

"Hey Ice Queen, why so chalky?" Yang jests, raising her eyebrows. "eh?"

Everyone simultaneously booed her then. Yang erupts into another fit of laughter and Blake rolls her eyes. The others mostly laugh at how horrible of a joke it was as Weiss just sighs and looks down.

I, however, stand up from my chair, letting it clatter loudly behind me.

"Don't call her that."

Everyone in the room simultaneously turns to look at me.

"What?" Yang asks, not getting what I was talking about.

"I said, don't call her that." I repeat, my voice surprisingly venomous.

Yang, along with everyone else, gapes at me while looking quite taken aback. Weiss looks mortified.

"Ruby!" she hisses at me. I look down at her to see a pleading look in those deep blue eyes.

"I'm not just gonna let h!-"

"Geez Rubes, I'm sorry." Yang says, awkwardly scratching the back of her head. "Didn't know you hated nicknames so much."

There were some nervous chuckles throughout the room and Weiss pulls me back into my seat by my uniform's sleeve.

"Don't make a scene you dolt."

I feel a pang of guilt, not for what I had just said, but because just a few weeks ago I thought of her like that as well. Weiss briskly recovered and turned her attention back to her work.

"Blake how are the files on those student academic reports going?"

Blake, who had turned her back to try and avoid being part of the scene I'd made, turns back around and looks over at Weiss.

"Pretty good for the most part except…" She trails off at the end.

"Except what?"

"Well, it looks like we're missing students with last names D through F."

Weiss mumbles to herself for a moment and looks deep in thought as she curls her point finger below her chin.

"Yes… I think I left those in my study when I was making sure everything was in order. I'll retrieve them once I get home and bring them in first thing Monday morning, sorry for the inconvenience." She says.

Blake nods and returns to the filing cabinet.

"Can I come with you?!" I ask hopefully, wanting to see where Weiss lives.

"To where, I might ask?"

Weiss turns he head towards me, but keeps the rest of her body at perfect posture. I should ask her how she does that sometime.

"To get the reports of course!"

Weiss looks hesitant. "And why would I need your help doing that?"

Quick, Ruby, think of an excuse.

"To help you make sure everything's… in the right order and whatnot! So how 'bout it?"

Nailed it.

"It couldn't hurt having someone double checking" Blake murmures.

Yang cut in from her seat as well.

"Totally! And Ruby's got a pretty keen eye when it comes to that sort of thing."

I silently thank Yang, already having forgiven her for her earlier comment.

Weiss taps her heel on the floor and then gives a thoughtful nod.

"I suppose it wouldn't hurt to have an extra hand."

"It hurrrrrts." I complain.

"Well, maybe if you stopped acting like a hyperactive puppy you wouldn't have stubbed your foot on that doorframe."

I make a whining sound as I over-dramatically limp beside Weiss on the way to her house.

I'd been so excited to see where she lived that as I ran out the student resource room's door, I tripped over the bottom of the doorframe. Weiss had actually seemed concerned for a second, right before snorting and stepping over me.

"Listen Ruby," Weiss starts, making me stop limping and snap to my correct posture. "What happened back in the club room… just, don't do it again."

The tone of voice she uses irritates me.

"Don't you hate it when people say things like that about you though?"

Weiss flips her head to the side, moving some perfectly cut bangs out of her face.

"Not really." Is all she says.

She starts walking a bit faster than me and I have to speed up to meet her pace. Turning to her, I gave her a skeptical look and Weiss sends a glare my way.

"Okay, maybe it does bother me a little, but there's no point arguing about it, and with your sister nonetheless."

"It doesn't matter who says it." I huff.

"Everyone has bad things said about them, Ruby," Weiss begins to slow her pace back to normal. "Just don't make such a scene next time."

I slow my pace down as well and, still looking over at Weiss, trace my gaze over the scar running down Weiss's eye. I guiltily nod my head and grip my backpacks straps.

"Sorry, I won't cause another sce-"

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I end up face down on the ground.

I had been so busy staring at Weiss, I hadn't noticed the bright red fire hydrant that had come up to trip me. It had awkwardly caught one of my legs making me fall halfway on top of it and then onto the ground.

I look up to see Weiss has stopped and was looking at me, wide eyed with her mouth half way open, like she was about to ask if I were okay. At least, that's what I thought until she burst out laughing.

"You really are a dunce." She says, holding her chest from how hard she was laughing.

All I do is stare at her.

Something about her laugh left me breathless.

Weiss's home was huge.

Maybe not, like, mansion huge, but it was a ginormous. From the outside it looks like it has to be at least three stories tall and was painted a brilliant bright white that's accentuated with marble pillars and railings.

We walk up to the front door and Weiss opens it with a key that was under a plant on one of the window sills. She pushes the door open and tells me to leave my shoes at the door while she goes to get the reports from her study. She then points for me to go sit in the living room and makes a mention not to touch anything.

I go and sat down on one of the couches, marveling at how grand everything was. The living room was pretty roomy and is right off to the side of the entryway; At the end, there's a big stairway Weiss had gone up that separated both sides of the house it seems.

As I'm waiting, I look over and see a single picture hanging next to a big flat screen on the other side of the room. It strikes me as odd that there wouldn't be many pictures on the wall so I go over to take a look.

It's a picture of what appears to be a younger Weiss, a little bit older than a toddler it seemed, and an older woman. It looks like they're wearing puffy white outfits, and holding a sort of sword in both of their hands. However, the one thing about the picture that stood out to me more than anything was that Weiss didn't have that scar over her eye.

"Nosey as always, I see."

I jump back from the picture and turn around to see Weiss walking down the stairs. Upon doing a double take, I notice she had changed out of her uniform and was now wearing a plain blue shirt and a skirt.

"I didn't know you fenced?" I say, pointing to the picture.

Weiss doesn't respond. She just walks over to me and shoves some papers into my hands.

"I used to."

My eyes widen with interest at the idea of Weiss wielding some sort of weapon.

"That's so cool! Why'd you-"

"Ruby, the faster this gets done, the faster you can go home and do… whatever it is you do in your free time."

Knowing this is Weiss's way of saying 'I don't want to talk about it' I shut myself up and nod. She goes over and sits down on one side of the coffee table in the middle of the room and I make my way over to sit down on the other side.

"All the reports should already be in order, we're just doing a double-check."

We go through papers for a while, mostly in silence, except for me occasionally asking if something was correct or not. At one point, Weiss even brings us some juice and crackers from the kitchen to munch on while we worked.

I catch myself looking back at the picture on the wall a few times, questions racing in my head. I decide now is as good a time to investigate as any.

"Is that your mom?" I say, nodding to the picture and simultaneously shoving a cracker in my mouth.

Weiss glances over and stares at it a moment before responding.

"It's my sister, Winter."

"You have a sister!?" I almost spit out the cracker in my mouth.

Weiss looks at me distastefully before responding.

"Please don't speak with your mouth full, and, yes, I do have a sister. A younger brother as well."

I swallow and raise my eyebrows at her.

"Where are they? Come to think of it, actually, where are your parents?"

Weiss gets a faraway look in her eyes and I immediately feel horrible for asking.

From what she told me in the bathroom a few weeks ago, her family situation isn't exactly good. I feel like I'm getting Weiss to open up a bit and I don't want to ruin it by asking a wrong question.

Weiss seems to recover quickly though, continuing to rifle through more papers as we speak.

"Well, as you know my father runs a big company, so he's generally out for business. My mother helps him with it, which means she's away most of the time too." Weiss's paper shuffling slows, but she still appears to be unfazed by my questions.

"And your siblings…?" I question.

"My brother prefers to be with my father, learning the tricks of trade and whatnot. Winter joined the military when I was about six."

"Were you close?"

"Very close…" Weiss, unknowingly, puts a finger to her face and slides it gently, perfectly, down her scar.

I feel myself gulp. I can't help but ask the question that's been nagging me since I saw the photo.

"What happened?"

Weiss looks up and actually meets my eyes for the first time since we started talking. I can feel my face heat up from her empty stare, but I'm not sure why.

"Nothing really-"

"That's a lie." I cut her off, pointing to the spot on my face where she had been touching her scar a moment ago.

Her eyes widen and she violently jerks herself around so that she's facing away from me. Weiss looks down and holds her head in her hands.

No going back now.

I get up from my spot and gently walk over to other side of the table to lean down onto the floor next to her. I put my hand on her shoulder and give it a quick squeeze of reassurance.

"I'm so pathetic." Weiss states into her hands.

"You are not pathetic, Weiss. Just tell me what's wrong." I plead.

She sniffs and lifts her head up a little. I could tell she wasn't crying, but she must be close.

"It was only a sparing incident. I was the one at fault for not wearing a helmet. The whole thing was just stupid."

She hiccups and I can see tears threatening to spill down her eyes.

"It's okay, Weiss. You don't nee-"

"No. I do need to talk about it. My father was furious, that's how my training got cut off. He told me and Winter we would never spar again, and a month later she enrolled herself into military school. She didn't say anything about it, no, I had to hear it from mom a week later. She didn't even tell me goodbye. She just left, Ruby. She left me."

I pull Weiss into a full on hug as tears threaten to spill over my eyes as well. The hug's kind of awkward since I'm on my knees and burying my face into Weiss's stomach. However, she doesn't seem to mind since I feel her head rest on top of my back.

"I won't leave you." I murmur.

Weiss is silent for a moment. She looks up to me, tears glistening on her pale cheeks. I feel my heart skip a beat and my chest is enveloped in an unknowing pain.

"Promise?" she asks, her voice almost cracking.

Another beat.

"I Promise."