Akko lifted a large stack of books off of her desk faster than she could actually read any of the titles on them.
"I'm going to the library now… by myself…" Akko spoke, obvious strain in her voice from the exertion of carrying the textbooks. "I'll see you guys later…"
"Oh thank goodness, I was getting whiplash," Lotte sighed with relief, plopping down on the lower bunk.
"You sure you don't need help?" Sucy asked Akko, her nice question overshadowed by the naughty twinkle in her grin.
"Nope! I'm fine! Just gonna… spend some time in the library… absorbing information into my brain…"
"Good luck with that," Sucy said, making minimal effort to control her laughing as Akko took off wobbling down the hall. A few moments of silence passed before a loud crash.
"Don't worry, I'm okay!" They heard Akko call out.
"Oh Akko," Lotte said under her breath. "What's gotten into you?"
"I think I might have a small guess as to what it is," Sucy said, sitting herself at her desk and pulling out empty vials and other potion making supplies.
"Really?"
"Something happened between Akko and Diana after that battle with Professor Croix's hate missile," Sucy said. "I think we all picked up on the change when they came back from space, but none of us knew what to say or how to feel about it."
Lotte met Sucy's eyes with a look of understanding, knowing what she said was true. She could tell by the overall energy of the group that none of them questioned or challenged the attachment that formed between Diana and Akko; not even Amanda (who particularly enjoyed getting under other people's skin) would pester them about how often they brought up each other's names in conversation. The most bothersome thing about it was that neither of them acknowledged or admitted to the shift in their friendship. Diana continued to keep to herself and Akko pushed all of her focus into perfecting her magic. Sure, the group still hung out together occasionally, but Akko's newfound worry about when Diana could and couldn't see her practicing made it difficult for everyone to hang out as often.
"I don't know how to bring it up to Akko," Lotte climbed up into her bunk and picked up the crystal ball she left on her bed. "I can already hear her trying to wave it off as competition or something."
"Maybe we should just wait for her to figure it out herself," Sucy said, pulling a bundle of thin mushrooms with dark purple caps out of her cloak pocket.
"You're probably right. I just hope she doesn't go overboard with this whole studying thing," Lotte booted up her crystal ball, typing in the web address for the Night Fall discussion forum she often frequented and looked over at Sucy, who was meticulously twisting the caps off of the stems. "What kind of mushroom is that?"
"I found them in the forest nearby this morning. This particular species is known for putting people in a deep meditative state upon ingestion, surprisingly useless for poison despite its color."
"So you're making a sleeping potion?"
"Essentially, yes. I can make good revenue in the next couple of weeks from stressed out, sleep deprived students looking for instant rest. Although, I'll need to test it on someone first to make sure it works."
"Sucy!" Lotte threw her friend a disapproving look.
"I'm kidding," Sucy said, smiling as she crushed the caps with a mortar and pestle. The stones clinked together rhythmically. "Kinda."
"You know, for all the things you've tested out on Akko, I'm surprised you've never experimented anything on me."
The clicking stopped and Sucy turned to Lotte.
"I would feel bad doing something like that; you're too nice."
Lotte, clearly not expecting such a genuine response, didn't know what to say. She snapped her eyes back to the Night Fall forums, rapidly scrolling through the threads without reading anything, hoping that the heat she felt on her face was just from Sucy lighting up the bunsen burner at her desk.
"Too nice? That almost sounds like a bad thing."
"It's not," Sucy held the vial of fluid over the flame. "We balance each other out. Maybe that's why I don't mind your company so much."
Okay, a compliment from Sucy was rare, but two? That was a real scarcity there. Lotte didn't want to dwell on it for too long, lest she start overthinking, which was a bad habit she and Diana seemed to have in common. She smiled to herself.
"Let's just make a promise now," Lotte said, changing the subject. "That if Akko starts going overboard, we'll have a serious talk with her."
"You know I don't need to make a promise for that," Sucy gently swirled the blue-tinted potion, wafting the fumes with her hand and shivering with delight. "It's the least we can do if Akko starts behaving more of a fool than usual - which is a lot."
"Yeah."
A few minutes of comfortable silence were shared between the two of them. Sucy would argue that Lotte's mere presence made the room more relaxing, as she was simply a gentle personality to be around. As much as an introvert as Sucy proclaimed herself to be, she would probably pick spending time with Lotte over being by herself any day. She didn't know why that was, nor did she really give it much further thought. When Sucy liked something, she liked it, and that's all there was to it.
However, the peace was interrupted by a knock on the door. Lotte, perking up at the sound, hurried down the ladder and opened the door with a dorky, cheek-to-cheek smile on her face.
"Barbara!"
"Lotte!" Barbara was at the door, beaming with excitement. She held two of the volumes of Night Fall that Lotte let her borrow the other day. "I brought back volume eighty-one, but I forgot how amazing volume eighty-two was until I finished reading it!"
"Wow! You read both of those books in two days?" Lotte's mouth popped open in shock.
"I know, I got really into the way Edgar and Arthur's relationship builds throughout both books!" Barbara exclaimed, hugging the novels to her chest. "They go from working together to save Belle to pretending they still dislike each other, but it's so obvious there's unresolved tension between them!"
"Exactly! For a while, it's almost a romance story between the two of them!"
They both giggled. Barbara noticed Sucy at her desk and lowered her voice.
"Oh, I hope I'm not interrupting your work Sucy," Barbara said. Of all her new friends, Sucy was the only one she didn't know well and therefore, didn't want to accidentally bother her.
"You're not. Did you forget we share residence with Akko?" Sucy said without turning around. "At this point, I'm an expert at tuning out noise."
Lotte grinned and side-stepped, allowing her friend inside, sharing a entertained look over Sucy's deadpan insult. If only Akko was there the hear it; fireworks would've gone off.
"Speaking of Akko," Barbara said, setting the books down on Lotte's desk. "I passed her on the way over here. I was going to say hi, but she seemed in a hurry - mumbling to herself and all that, so I didn't want to hold her up."
Lotte just sighed in response, she didn't have a good feeling in her gut about Akko.
"It's cruel and unusual punishment - that's what it is," Amanda complained aloud, Constanze and Jasminka matched her slow stride as they headed toward the cafeteria; Stanbot perched silently on Constanze's shoulder.
"I thought you didn't mind chores," Jasminka teased, her voice deceptively sweet. "When we stole those cakes, you said 'a week's worth of punishments would be worth it'."
"I-I don't remember that!" Amanda winced and rubbed at one of her hands, her bottom lip sticking out in a pout, resembling a wounded puppy.
"My hands are so chafed. I feel a huge blister coming in too, I just know it."
"They look fine to me. Want me to kiss them better?"
"Oi!" Amanda reflexively folder her arms behind her head, clicking her tongue. "Not funny!"
Jasminka and Constanze both giggled in response. Amanda gave them both a side-eye before smiling, as well. Usually, Amanda was the openly affectionate one of the trio, so when Jasminka was feeling exceptionally sly, and the tables were turned, Amanda would get flustered and try to play off her surprise, which always made for good fun.
"Amanda is cranky because she's tired and hungry," Stanbot chirped from Constanze's shoulder. "Just like a small child!"
"Oh, come on!" There was a slight whine in Amanda's voice. "You two are always ganging up on me!"
"Wait - is that Hannah?" Jasminka tilted her head, looking past the two of them. "By herself?"
There were only a few students lingering around the cafeteria when the three of them entered, which made it easy to spot Hannah sitting at a table alone, resting her head in her hand; the only other company with her was a book that she had no visible interest in reading. The green team, almost by instinct, shared a puzzled glance with one another.
Amanda didn't hesitate to take off running. She glided down the stair railing and plopped herself into the chair next to Hannah, maintaining her cool visage as she ran a hand through her flame-like orange hair. This impressive entrance, however, went unnoticed as Hannah seemed fixated on the unopened book in front of her.
"Hannah with no Barbara? Not even Diana? What kind of bizarro universe did I just wander into?" Amanda said, trying play off the fact that her coolness went unappreciated.
Hannah's head snapped up, as if she had been broken from a trance, and her eyes sparkled and darted around excitedly. Upon registering the new person as Amanda, the light abruptly dimmed and she lowered her lids.
"Ah, yeah… Barbara had to return some books to Lotte. She invited me to come with her, but I said no."
At this point, Jasminka and Constanze had finally caught up and sat themselves at the two free chairs left at the table. Stanbot hopped onto the table and did a cute twirl, handing a peppermint candy to Jasminka, who happily popped it into her mouth.
Amanda could sense something was off about how Hannah was behaving and while she realized this immediately, she wasn't one to just up and ask someone about their feelings. Instead, she decided on a more indirect option.
"Well, I guess that means you're hanging with us now."
"Huh?"
"Hannah spending time with us? What a treat!" Stanbot chirped in a singsong voice, offering a peppermint to Hannah at the cue of 'treat'. She stared at the candy for a moment, unsure if robots were capable of sarcasm or not.
"I appreciate what you're all trying to do," Hannah said, fixing her gaze back on the book in front of her. "But I'm not the funnest person to be around right now."
"Oi, what's this?" Amanda snatched the book up and examined it, her face contorting with disgust. "Ugh, it's that Night Fall crap Barbara and Lotte like! Don't tell me you're getting into it too?"
"Hey, give me that!" Hannah grabbed at the book, but Amanda was faster and held it up out of her reach. She quickly gave up, not having the energy to feed into Amanda's teasing. "Oh, what's the use! I couldn't get into it anyway…"
"You're telling me you don't even like Night Fall?"
"I can't bring myself to like it. I keep trying, but," she held an hand over her mouth to hide her laugh. "It's just- it's just so bad! I can't get past the first three pages!"
"So why the hell are y-" It took Amanda a second for everything to click together. "Oh…"
"I feel so guilty. I talked so much crap about Night Fall right in front of Barbara. She felt like she couldn't tell me she actually liked it - not until she found out how much Lotte enjoyed it anyway," Hannah sighed, her shoulders slumping and her head hanging pathetically. "Some best friend I am, insulting her interests. No wonder she would rather spend time with Lotte."
"You didn't know then!" Amanda said. "So she can't hold that against you."
"You also shouldn't force yourself to like something because Barbara does," Jasminka added. "You're her best friend, after all. Surely you have more things in common."
"You guys are right," Hannah said. "Even Barbara said I was overreacting. I know I'm being stupid about such little things and yet-" Hannah cut herself off, feeling a sudden surge of sadness pull at her chest, swelling and throbbing like an open sore. She had to stop talking completely, lest her voice give away the immediate rush of heartache she felt. A feeling she still couldn't completely comprehend, or better yet, didn't want to.
Amanda clapped Hannah on the back; it was clear that whatever Hannah was about to say was on a more personal level than she had realized. Amanda took it upon herself to steer the conversation in a more upbeat direction.
"Constanze, Jasminka, and I have very little in common - besides our trouble-making tendencies," Amanda added quickly. "But we're still really close, just like you two. Barbara wouldn't throw that away over some book! And if she did, that would be the dumbest decision she could ever make."
Jasminka and Constanze both nodded in approval.
"Maybe I just need to get out of my head for a moment. Yeah…" Hannah trailed off, deep in thought for a moment.
"Where are you guys going after dinner?" She added, her tone rapidly shifting from despondent to slightly curious.
Amanda closed her eyes and shrugged, putting the book down and leaning back in the chair.
"Probably gonna bug Akko's crew since we've been 'missing in action' all day," Amanda snickered. "Don't want Akko to worry too much about me!"
"Amanda, you can say you missed Akko, we won't judge you!" Jasminka piped in.
"Oi!" Amanda shook her fist playfully at her fellow team members and Hannah couldn't help but smile at their antics.
Astrology was a confusing subject.
Moon in Scorpio, Venus in Taurus, Mercury in the fifth house? There was too much to remember. Akko flipped through the pages with desperation, attempting to write notes on the few sentence fragments she could make sense of; the rest dissolved into convoluted and unreadable characters and settled like slimy, stagnant water around her brain. Something something constellations, something something star clusters. Her eyes whirred in and out of focus on the text like a camera lense as her head began to droop forward, her quill leaving a long line of ink on the paper where her notes should be. Eyelids lowering, she feebly tried to fight back and keep focused, only to succumb to the growing sleepiness.
I'll close my eyes for just one minute! I'll even count the seconds to make sure! It's not a nap if I count, right? Right. Okay.
One… two… three… f…
The constellation of Cancer is the dimmest constellation of the zodiac yet, full of open clusters. Thousands upon thousands of stars. Up, up, up in the galaxy. Clusters of stars in her hands, dissolving, lifting, rising into space. Loneliness sets in for a moment, but someone else is still here, gazing deep into infinity with her. Someone else. Someone bright. She takes her hands as the stars splinter. Warm tears - warmer hands. Cancer is full of stars, but still the dimmest- Why isn't it enough? Why is it still compared to the others? Why is she crying when this is the happiest she's ever been?
"Akko," a gentle voice spoke, accompanied by a hand patting her shoulder.
Akko's head shot up from her book, her parchment glued to her face by the string of drool that had leaked out of her mouth.
"Huh? Wha-?" Akko craned her head around, her paper tapering off of her face and swaying back down on the desk. When she didn't see anyone, she turned around to look behind her and was greeted by a warm smile from her favorite Professor.
"Professor Ursula!"
"Hard at work, I see," Professor Ursula said with a tiny laugh. "I hope you aren't pushing yourself too much, Akko."
"Nuh-uh," Akko shook her head. "I'm doing alright! Diana agreed to help me study tomorrow, so hopefully I'll have an easier time- uh- focusing."
"Ah, that's awfully nice of her," Professor Ursula said, her eyebrows raising at the mention of Diana. "She's kept herself quite busy as of late, I hope she can manage the time. Though, knowing her, I'm sure she can make it work."
"Honestly, I still can't believe she even said yes, knowing it takes me a while to pick up these things," Akko said, motioning her quill to the assortment of open textbooks before her.
"I think Diana would be more than understanding of that. She cares about you deeply, even if she doesn't say it outright," Ursula said, ruffling Akko's hair. "You shouldn't dwell on what you still haven't picked up yet. Instead, celebrate how much you've grown."
"Yeah. I guess it's just hard to see things positively when my progress is still so slow!"
"But progress is still progress nonetheless!" Professor Ursula said, internally proud of how philosophical she sounded. "You're extremely brilliant Akko. I don't think you give yourself enough credit."
Akko grinned at those words, the sincerity in her voice made Akko feel light in her chest, so light that she hadn't realized that she had been feeling so - heavy. Professor Ursula had made a good point. She was capable of extraordinary magic. She knew this. It wasn't something that could be argued, even if she wanted it to be.
Then why do I feel like something isn't enough?
"Thank you, Professor Ursula," Akko replied. "You always know what to say!"
"Ehehe, now you're giving me too much credit."
"Akko?" Another voice called out to her from further away.
Pivoting in her seat, Akko looked over toward the library entrance and saw Amanda and her posse, as well as… Hannah? What an unexpected addition!
"Amanda!" Akko called out, before quickly remembering she shouldn't be shouting in a library.
"Akko, let's go practice flying! We still have a couple of hours before it gets dark!"
Akko gave Ursula a look of uncertainty. She was obviously torn, and as much as she thought she would be able to study without issue, the black splotches of ink all over her notes said otherwise. Professor Ursula could already tell where Akko's head was at and gently closed one of her textbooks with a soft chuckle.
"Go on, Akko," Ursula smiled. "I'll make sure these get back to your room."
"Professor Ursula…" Akko started before Ursula shook her head. "I understand. Thank you - for everything."
Akko waved goodbye before speeding up her pace to catch up with Amanda's group. Professor Ursula watched as her protege took off with renewed energy. She sighed and looked down at the mess of books left on the table. She picked up one of the pieces of notepaper and made out a couple of words through a sea of scribbles:
Constellation of Cancer.
Warm hands.