With a new day dawning, we explore more of the fallout of Cynthia's confession as she looks at things with a bright, sunny perspective, happy for her confession. Thankfully, fanfiction also looks to be starting things off with a brand-new day, now that all these pesky issues with the chapters not showing up have apparently stopped. Hopefully we can keep things going like this, and hopefully Cynthia's positive attitude will continue to propel her forward!

KedharS: Well, we'll just have to find out.

Rosealine gold: There are a few more lol. Olivia doesn't like boys, Alcea and Marion aren't interested, and Kitty and Julia certainly aren't, either. Not to mention Nikita and Callie, who both have boyfriends. But you're right, there are a lot.

Aquahaze675: Well, we'll have to find out. It should be interesting, to say the least.

Thunder Fire: Well, I mean… it's all pluses for everybody, right?

MikySP: Or a new girl. Cynthia does have a wide variety of tastes, don't forget.

Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings

Chapter 365

Cynthia's heart was pounding in her chest as she braced herself for the difficult conversation she was about to have.

It's okay, Cynthia. It's going to be fine. No big deal.

That morning had been rather packed. She'd woken up early and talked things out with Ayame, then went on to tease Ayame and Blake. Then she'd had to bid the lovebirds a quick goodbye, there was still a lot she had to do.

The walk back to Cynthia's dorm was something out of a dream. She took a deep breath, the scent of snow tickling her lungs as she felt herself relaxing in the crisp winter air. It was like the blizzard and the lockdown order had never existed in the first place. The only evidence that it had ever happened was the large blanket of snow on the ground.

Cynthia took out her phone and checked the campus website. So thanks to the huge blizzard, a lot of stuff had been called off. Due to the campus policy of trying to not interfere with the campus ecosystem as much as possible, the snow wasn't going to be cleared away except on the main campus areas. What that meant was that a lot of their finals were changing. The Pokemon Battling final for Cynthia and her peers was under special circumstances as well. If Cynthia made it to the top 4 of the Tag Tournament, then she would get excused from it since her pokemon were otherwise occupied. For the Pokemon Capturing class, well, it had been a practical final, but now according to their professor, it was being switched to a paper test. That was irritating. One of her other finals was test-based as well, and her caretaking final was an essay. So it looked like Cynthia was having three nice little Fs on her report card for the first term.

…Well, she COULD study, but right now she was in too good a mood to consider doing THAT.

She was in love!

Cynthia did twirls through the snow as she hummed to herself, feeling a lightness welling up in her breast as she thought of Blake. Her heart still stung as her feelings were not reciprocated, but right now the overwhelming pounding in her chest didn't care about things like that. Just thinking about Blake put a smile on her face right now, and that was all she cared about.

An unrequited love was hard. But right now, she wanted to get to spend more time with him. As she climbed up the stairs back to her room, she could wait to share the news with her roommates! It wasn't exactly good news, but still.

Cynthia tiptoed into her room. She noticed three important things. One was that Julia wasn't there yet. Another was that, for once, she was awake before Sango was, the blonde girl snoring away on her bunk. It made sense, of course, since she had probably been up late into the night dealing with all sorts of issues during the blizzard.

What Cynthia was most happy about, though, was the face that her beautiful, sweet little baby Vulpix was purring away right next to Sango, sleeping just as peacefully as a little angel. Cynthia took care to walk quietly over to her backpack, but as if the small pokemon could sense that her guardian and trainer had entered the room, her tiny eyes fluttered open and she let out a yawn and a small yip, picking her tiny self up.

"Vul?" The Vulpix yipped again.

"Hey sweetie," Cynthia whispered, reaching over Sango's head and picking up the small pokemon. She gently stroked the Vulpix's fur, nuzzling her against her cheek. "I'm sorry I was gone for so long, I really wanted to get back to you as soon as I could."

"Vulpix," Vulpix reassured her, licking Cynthia's cheek. Cynthia giggled in response, lovingly tickling Vulpix's belly.

"Sweetie?" Cynthia murmured, scratching the wavy fur on her Vulpix's head, "I had a lot of time to think last night, and I came up with the perfect name for you."

"Vulpix?" Vulpix tilted her head to the side in curiosity. This was fascinating for Cynthia, she wondered how much her Vulpix understood about what she was saying. She was just a baby, but pokemon grew very fast.

"I'm going to name you 'Aud'," Cynthia explained. "Now, you don't know this, but Aud is a name that ties back to a very cold region, which is perfect for an ice type like you. Now, it means 'desolate' and 'empty' so you might not like it too much, but…"

Cynthia's eyes began to get a little misty.

"You filled a lot of the emptiness in my heart, Aud, so I think it's perfect. And it doesn't just mean that… it also means fortune and prosperity. And you… you're the perfect example of good fortune in my opinion, Aud."

Cynthia pressed her lips against her Vulpix's muzzle.

"So is that okay, Aud?"

"Vulpix!" Aud let out a yip of approval, nodding her head up and down eagerly.

"I'm glad!" Cynthia chuckled.

"Cynthia?"

Cynthia turned her attention back to Sango's bed, seeing Sango staring up at her with bleary eyes, yawning.

"Oh, hey Sango," Cynthia chirped. "What's up?"

Sango let out a yawn.

"Late night," she grumbled. "You're back? I thought-"

"The lockdown ended," Cynthia said, nodding to the window. Sango glanced out and saw that the snow had settled on the ground, and that the blizzard was over. She sighed in relief, she was worried that things might have gotten worse. She turned to look at Silver, who was snoring next to her. Her Castform was really tired. She smiled and scratched him on the side of the head. She'd let him sleep for a little bit, and smiled. She didn't want him to exert himself the way he had last night.

"Oh! Sango, now that you're awake, I can't wait to tell you!" Cynthia gushed.

"Hm? Tell me what?" Sango asked.

"I think I'm in love with Blake!"

"…Eh."

Sango must have still been asleep. She rubbed her eyes and scratched her ear, not sure if she had heard right.

Cynthia… she didn't actually say… did she?

Sango stared at Cynthia, her jaw dropped.

"Um, did you say… did you say what I think you said?" Sango asked. "I… I did hear that correctly, right? You said that you-"

"I like Blake!" Cynthia repeated, her smile as bright as the morning sun on the snow-covered ground outside. "I figured it out last night!"

"S-so when you say you l-like him, then… like, you don't mean you like like him, you're just talking about as a friend, right? Or, you know, you want to do stuff with him because you're kind of a pervert, right? But not like in a 'boyfriend-girlfriend' sort of way?"

"Absolutely in a 'boyfriend-girlfriend' sort of way!" Cynthia said, nodding her head. "I was talking wit Blake and Ayame about love and happiness and stuff last night, and I realized how jealous I was of Ayame, and how much I wanted to not just be Blake's friend, but really, like, you know? Holding hands with him, going on dates, kissing him, all that other sort of stuff! Blake is like the most important friend in my life, I want to stay with him forever!"

Sango shook her head incredulously. What… what was she saying? Cynthia… she… she liked Blake? Not just in the "I want to bang him/her/them/it" way that she liked people, but like actual, romantic feelings? She liked Blake the way Sango liked Blake? The way AYAME liked Blake? That was… that was just something that Sango would not have believed was even POSSIBLE if she hadn't heard it for herself first.

…

Who was she kidding? She HAD just heard it for herself, and she didn't believe it for a second. It just wasn't something she could so easily accept.

"You're for real? Why? Since when?!" Sango sputtered.

"Since when? I guess… I guess since the very beginning?" Cynthia shrugged. "I just figured it out last night, but I guess my feelings have been building for a really long time, it's the only thought that makes sense."

Sango kept shaking her head. Admittedly, it had taken her a long time to figure out how she felt about Blake, but for Cynthia, after everything she'd done with him and all the teasing and jokes and light flirting, she was just now realizing that she liked him?

Sango had always been jealous of Blake and Cynthia's relationship. They were close in a way that she and Blake weren't, they were rivals that shared a bond in their love of pokemon battling, and it was her desire to see the world the way they did that had encouraged Sango to take her first steps towards battling.

But she had dismissed Cynthia's feelings for those as just being her usual teasing, the way that she teased Sango. But that Cynthia actually had genuine feelings for him, was actually… in love with him? Was that really possible?

Clearly it was, because she was proclaiming it so directly.

"Um, but… wh-what about Ayame?" Sango asked. "She's Blake's girlfriend, and if you like him that way, then does that mean you want to-"

"Nah, I'm not like that," Cynthia laughed, dismissing Sango's worry with a wave of her hand. "I like Ayame too, you know? Oh! But only 'like', not 'like like'. Ayame is so cool and so nice, and honestly she and Blake are such a great couple, there's no way I could think about trying to break things up between them, you know?"

"Yeah, that makes sense," Sango agreed, sighing in relief. "So… what are you going to do, then? You're just going to… hide your feelings?"

Sango felt a shot of pain run through her heart. Her own feelings for Blake hadn't exactly disappeared yet, either.

"That sounds like… it would be really hard."

Especially for someone like you…

"What? Pft, nah, he already knows about it!" Cynthia laughed, shaking her head. Aud didn't know why her trainer was laughing, but she stared up at Cynthia and laughed, too. Cynthia petted the Vulpix and set her down on the bed, sitting next to the stunned Sango.

"He knows?!" Sango exclaimed. "What?! How?!"

"I told him," Cynthia replied.

Sango's jaw dropped again. She hadn't even realized her mouth was closed this time.

"You… told him."

Cynthia nodded, her eyes shining brightly.

"I just couldn't keep it in!" Cynthia gushed. "I love him after all! And when I realized, it just sort of all came pouring out!"

Not only did Cynthia love him, but she had confessed to him immediately. Of course she did, she was just that kind of person. She had guile, but she also wore her heart on her sleeve. She'd never conceal how she felt from the boy she liked. It couldn't occur to her, she'd never even see a reason to do it, Sango bitterly noted.

Compared to Cynthia, Sango was…

Sango was the kind of person who was so afraid of things changing that she hadn't even been able to confess herself. And that had been BEFORE Blake had gotten a girlfriend. And Cynthia, she hadn't even cared, she'd just gone right ahead and done it.

It made Sango angry. She didn't even care that Blake had a girlfriend, or that revealing her feelings might hurt their relationship. She'd just confessed because that's how she felt, and that's what she'd wanted to do.

Why couldn't Sango be like that?

"Then you…"

"He shot me down completely," Cynthia replied. Her expression turned solemn. Sango scooted beside her, looking the redhead in the eye.

"I'm sorry…" Sango had been envying Cynthia's guts, but she had completely overlooked the fact that what Cynthia had done was probably incredibly painful for her. A love confession to a boy that had a girlfriend, a confession that you knew was going to end in failure, something like that must have been hard for her to go through.

"Well, I mean, it wasn't exactly a confession," Cynthia admitted, shaking her head. "It was more like… stuff happened, and it just sorta… came out."

Cynthia looked away from Sango and studied her twiddling thumbs.

"But you know… Blake and Ayame, they understood. They knew how I felt, and even though they both knew that Blake didn't feel the same way, they still hugged me and told me that everything will be alright. And I know now… I know…" Cynthia held her hand over her heart, fighting back the tears that were coming out. Her emotions were in such a tizzy she had no idea if she was crying because she was happy, or crying because she was sad.

"I know we don't have to change. That we can still stay best friends with each other, even though right now I really just want to kiss him. And do… other things."

Cynthia giggled her wicked giggle through her tears, wiping her face.

"That was a joke, Sango. You're supposed to laugh."

Sango smiled softly and placed her hand on Cynthia's shoulder. She mused what would happen if she had done what Cynthia had done. If she had told Blake how she had felt. Or if she told him now. Right now. Told him that she'd liked him for months.

What would happen if she did? She knew that there was no way she would be able to take Ayame's place in his heart. Blake was smitten with her, and nothing Sango could do would change that. And she wasn't the type to do it, either. Seeing Blake and Ayame smiling and laughing happily together, as much as they stung, when she thought back to how she remembered them, and the pain she'd seen on their faces before, it made her…

It made her happy in a way that she just couldn't bring an end to. So she never would. But if she had confessed…

Would Blake and Ayame make her feel better? The way they had made Cynthia feel better? Her biggest concern with addressing her feelings was the idea that things would change between her and Blake. That she wouldn't be able to laugh with him like before, that their precious memories together (though only a few months' worth) would be tainted. They'd drift apart, and no longer be friends, whether out of uncomfortableness on her end or guilt on his.

That was why she hadn't confessed to him. And why she still didn't want to, even though the knowledge that she would be rejected should make her feel better.

But Cynthia had confessed anyway. Or Blake had figured out her feelings, because Cynthia was basically an open book.

Cynthia had confessed… and it looked like nothing was going to change.

Could… could Sango really believe that it would be that easy? Ayame already knew how she felt. Before Blake had told her how he felt and they had gotten together, she had originally wanted things to be a competition between the two of them. But as good a runner as Sango might have been, the track star Ayame Toujou had won the race before she had even gotten to the starting line, and the notion of Sango revealing her feelings had died with Ayame's victory.

But… what if she did?

If Blake found out now, if she told him… it would be just like Cynthia, right? Or was it different because the two of them had a special bond? Would Blake not want to end things with the redhead, but see no problem cutting Sango out of his life?

No, no, that was stupid. There was no way that Blake would think about her that way. She was an important friend to him, just like Cynthia, even if they were important in different ways. That was just her insecurity talking.

"Cynthia, actually, I-"

Cynthia glanced back at her curiously, and Sango felt her voice die off in her throat. Now that she thought about it…

Did she even actually want to reveal her feelings now?

If Sango understood right, Cynthia's love of Blake had exploded because Cynthia couldn't keep it under wraps. But does that mean that Sango needed to do the same? Cynthia didn't mind that Blake and Ayame knew, and it seemed to put her in good spirits. But did Sango really need the same? She didn't have to confess. While it was nice to know that if she did, nothing would have to change between her and Blake, she wasn't that naïve. Something would change, even if it was just a tiny thing. Even if it was just the way Blake looked at her. Cynthia and Blake's relationship hadn't changed, but Sango wasn't so sure things would "go back to normal" either, especially not with the way that Cynthia would always flirt with people.

Part of Sango knew deep down that she was just being a coward. That she was refusing to confess because she WAS scared, even with all the evidence to the contrary that told her that she shouldn't be, that she didn't need to be…

All that didn't change the fact that she WAS.

Sango pushed those murky thoughts aside and returned the focus to Cynthia.

"Actually you what?" Cynthia asked.

"Actually, I was thinking we could talk some more about this over breakfast," Sango quickly adjusted course, patting her stomach. "I did a lot of hard work last night, and I'm pretty famished! Do you mind if we get a bite to eat? I'm pretty sure the Snorlax Commons should be open now that the blizzard's stopped, though I don't think we'll be able to sit outside."

"Hah!" Cynthia laughed. "That's you alright, here I am talking about love and feelings, and boyish Sango cares more about eating!"

Cynthia playfully touched her knuckles against Sango's cheek in a mock punch, giggling playfully as she got out of bed, picking up her Vulpix and holding the pokemon gently in her arms.

"Maybe when you fall in love someday I can help you through it!" Cynthia suggested. "I'm sort of a love expert now, after all! It'll be great!"

"Hah, yeah… maybe someday…" Sango murmured, not having the heart to tell Cynthia that they both had an unrequited crush on the same boy, and had both been rejected by him (even if Sango had not actually confessed). It was easier for all parties involved if Cynthia just thought that Sango wasn't interested in boys yet at all.

"Oh, hey, I just thought of something!" Cynthia said, getting dressed in a new change of clothes as Sango got dressed as well. She picked Aud back up and slipped her backpack over her shoulder as Sango left the snoozing Silver to rest, putting her coat on.

"Yeah, what?" Sango asked.

"Let's invite Caelia to eat with us, too!" Cynthia said.

"Caelia?" Sango asked. "Sure, I guess that's fine, but why? You guys want to talk strategy or something?"

"Nah, nothing like that," Cynthia laughed. "Just thought it would be a great idea to tell her that I confessed to Blake."

Sango froze, her jacket partway zipped up.

"Uh… no, it's not."

"Sure it is," Cynthia said. "That was we can commiserate together. You're too judgmental, Sango, Caelia's not as bad as you think she is."

Sango didn't really know what to say to that. Indeed, Cynthia knew Caelia better than she did.

Still…

Sango wasn't exactly feeling like this was a good path forward for anybody. This had the chance to really blow up in everyone's face. She swallowed, hoping that this breakfast was going to go alright.

Once again, Sango wished she had Cynthia's positive attitude, while the realist in her was still happy that she didn't.

I'm right there with you Sango, I am also not sure how this breakfast is going to go.