A/N : Sorry for making you wait, again. School just won't get any busier. Oh wait, it just did...
Chapter 5 : Conspiracy?
.
.
.
.Lucy.
Natsu was a bouncing ball of energy, I concluded, so much that he could have passed as a kid monkey.
His moving pace was rambunctious—part jogging, part hopping, and very little walking though I was pretty sure we were about a good twenty minutes away from class starting. Sometimes, he'd walk backwards—facing me with his wide toothy grin—towards the front, but still managed to turn at each junction with the perfect angle that he never bumped into a standing lamp post or any house fences. It caused me to take a silly notion if he happened to own a second pair of eyes at the back of his head.
Or it turned out that he might just have a second set of vocal cords planted deep within the wall of his throat instead.
"About ten houses away is Magnolia Park," he announced, pointing straight to the northeast, "...where the Rainbow Sakura Tree is in full bloom," his attention shifted to the eastern side of the road, then a few buildings on the south, then the street junction of the southwest (and every other direction there was) as he explained excitedly, boisterously, and endlessly, "To the right is the market. Oh! And there's the pool. A cool place for summer, really. Then the shopping district—Oh, morning birds! Searching for morning worms, I bet! Anyway then—"
"Onii-san," a voice interjected, laughter slipping within its scolding wake, "Slow down."
And he did, though the action nearly made no difference either. A slight improvement from two words per second to one each.
It was fortunate that the boy's little sister hadn't inherited the same portion of jumping, hopping, scrambling, barely-contained stamina, for I wouldn't know how to handle two clashing spurs of hyperactivity. Funny how Wendy was his exact polar opposite; a reserved, polite girl in exchange of a loud and obnoxious boy and long blue strands rather than spiky bubble-gum pink.
Wendy must have caught my perturbed stare, for she regarded me with a sheepish smile.
"Sorry about that, Lucy-san," she referred to her supposedly older sibling, "My brother is what you call...born-energetic."
I watched as his blabbering continued on, oblivious that none of us had really heard him anymore. There was a lilt of excitement in his black eyes, genuine, almost childlike, as if he was sincerely happy to have another companion in his simple trip to school.
He was like a spirited kid trapped in a body of a maturing teenager.
"Nah, it's okay," a sudden gall made me roll my eyes, "As long as my ears succeed to keep up."
Wendy laughed.
"Wen!" A boy called out in the distance, an outline of neat black hair, red vest, yellow scarf and white grin, "Hurry, hurry, we're up for morning duty!"
"Coming!" Wendy replied, chocolate eyes twinkling. She turned to us, face alight, "I'll be off then!"
She was off in a flash then, a light skip in her run and extra thumps in her heart. A taste of cotton candy melted inside my mouth, as sweet and fluffy as an innocent crush. I tried to suppress a little grin when the boy tugged on her ponytail with a smirk, more as a tease than a bully.
"He's Romeo," Natsu gave him a wave, a moment before they disappeared in the corner we sooner would walked to had we followed the retreating two's pace, "A great kid. He's been Wendy's classmate since like, third grade, I think," he brought his arms behind his head in a carefree manner, "His father is one of our teachers."
"Ah," I nodded, unsure how to pop the nagging question in the pit of my mind, but gave it a shot anyway, "Is it fun?"
Natsu dropped his hands, "Huh?"
I felt like the most idiotic person in the world somehow, "The school, I mean."
At first, I had mistaken the lack of words and the tickling in my guts as his urge to guffaw at me, but he grinned instead—not out of ridicule, not judging or degrading, but out of excitement and pride—then bobbed his head to the front.
"See for yourself."
Without realizing, we had in fact, arrived at the path which Wendy and Romeo had dissipated into.
The first thing I saw was a gate—a row of slender metal poles with black paint that seemed to crack here and there—pushed aside halfway onto the creamy brick wall. Beyond it, a wide building of pastel colouration stood, topped with glistening rails of the rooftop, a big analogue clock of what many schools would own, and surrounded with a length of lined sport field and a row of various green shrubberies and trees nearing the inner and outer entrance. The school insignia shone proudly in the center of a metallic shield-a weird creature in orange with a fat snout and a pointy tail. The place itself wasn't even extravagant or glamorous, there were no majestic sculptures enraptured or a fountain made of pretty marbles in sight.
It was weird how the whole simplicity comforted me in a way.
"Welcome to Fairy Academy," I barely felt Natsu propping his elbow over my shoulder, a proud smile in his voice, "Lucy Connell."
I readied a mental shield the moment we came out the principal's office.
The principal was a late-aged man, with short figure and white beard of an elf's. His cheeks wrinkled as he grinned merrily and his experienced eyes spoke of countless extracted knowledge. He was very welcoming—he explained the bit of rules I had to keep in mind and handed me my schedule and locker number—alike a father to his child coming home, but didn't have to fake any overly-strict, frowny attitude many principals would in order for him to be respected. I would just pretend I never knew that the stack of suspicious magazines jutting out of his drawers wasn't there for students' restrain purpose alone, though.
"Come on," Natsu's voice was a split of white noise beneath the others that I had to loosen my personal bubble by a brick to simply open my ears and listen. He tugged at my wrist lightly, dragging me in a nearly zigzaging pattern as I swallowed back a repetition of apology to every bumping shoulder, "Our homeroom teacher has an evil knack of punishing tardy kids!"
The corridor was a mass of emotional torture in my case, spanning wildly from arousing panic of arriving a late to class, typical morning laziness and hesitance to involve one's self with the tedious education, excitement of meeting the friends they'd actually also met the previous week, the spurs of all teenage dilemmas and forgotten homework, or simply an abstain to all care in the world (oh what I would not give to forever feel the latter).
That was why when the bell rang and the crowd lessened, I was all gratefulness and relief wrapped into one rather than the cussing mess that was Natsu Dragneel.
Ironically, the long ring ended the moment we stopped at the right door. Natsu's tone turned serious then, an expression I never expected him of all people would show.
"Lucy, trust me that I've got your back," he squeezed my shoulder, grip ferocious and posture determined, "But if ever I don't survive the punishment, please tell Wendy that she can find my will in—"
I held out the tiny memo kept inside my skirt pocket and gave him the blandest stare I could manage.
"Oh!" As he gawked in a hyperbolic manner, I inwardly sighed. Could this boy be anymore clueless?
The door snapped open with the nudge of his shoe. He gave me a cheery thumb up, almost cocky, "Watch me."
I rolled my eyes the umpteenth time that day.
"Yo!" His unceremonious entrance went, topping the already-noisy class resonantly. Many waved him good morning. The other kept on blabbering like they heard nothing. This strange condition startled me a little. Sure, it had been a while since I stepped into a real school, but weren't students in classes supposed to be silent and orderly?
Right after I wondered where in the world the teacher was, a man I had first thought was a gypsy in messy formal of some sorts peeked from his newspapers. His orange, wavy hair was partly tied to the back, his chin was poorly shaved and a gray tie was loosened around his neck. A thin stick of tobacco hung between his lips. By the lacking of smoke, I figured it was unlit.
He folded his paper into roll and whacked Natsu on the head. Hard, and it was thick too.
The boy whined pitifully, "What was that for?"
"Lousy manners, lousy entrance, lousy uniform," the man flicked his finger with each penalty mentioned, then smirked. A thin line of mischief and unspoken desire of (dark) punishment, "Oh never mind that. I'll give you ten seconds of reasoning your tardy before—"
"Actually," Natsu waved the memo I'd handed him right in front of the man's nose, wiggling it proudly, "I got a permission slip from Jii-chan himself."
He examined the paper, scrunching his nose as if deciding if it was some poor prank of signature forgery but then saw me leaning slightly against the door frame and blinked.
He smirked.
"Come on in then, transfer."
Classes dragged on, even on first days. The existence of that aspect I knew was always a constant.
Like strained crouching turtles, like sluggish snails on their slimy marathon, the periods crawled from homeroom (which practically consisted of with my brief introduction, free time for us students and newspaper time for Clive-sensei) to Humanity to Biology with such crammed, lecture-filled, homework-assigned pace I had to endure each and every ounce of myself not to bury my head into my lengthy sleeves due to the extremity of muffled sleepiness or newly achieved pressure of unusuality. I briefly wondered if it was because of my brains corroding to the new routine of being trapped in a room full of curious stares and snark whispers masked with a reluctant sense of attentiveness even the teachers could figure out. Maybe it had something to do with the rarity of transfers in mid-May, or my necktie being tightened too high, or my glasses too thick, or my pigtails way too shady or nerdy to their taste. But somehow, it didn't even matter anymore that my purposely plain appearance did nothing to immerse myself within the crowd but had acted out the opposite impact.
I snuffed out my sixth yawn of the day.
Turned out that I was just bored. Simply so very bored.
Natsu was off to Physics and Levy (the friendly class representative who somehow insisted she should tour me rather than Natsu) was having Chemistry, so I was practically alone with no one else I really recognize, or be entertained with. The relieving factor that I was sitting by the sunny window was not even enough, for not only I had already learned about the skin and core of Taxonomy from Caprico-sensei just a couple of months ago, old Eugene-sensei's unenthusiastic teaching was the flattest croaky baritone that could miraculously tugged your eyelids, along with the spell of squeaking marker on slick white board and repetitive implying that 'fungi was not a plant'(maybe he had a periodic dementia or something, with his assuming that we could forget about the fact simply after every twenty minutes). Most of the class seemed to share this opinion, for when their who-the-heck-is-the new-student fad finally had died down, I could no longer see most of their heads poking upright anymore, meaning : they had dropped dead and kissed their desks in the deepest of slumbers. I for one, would have been very pleased joined them, if the wrinkly teacher hadn't sent me jolting in and out my drowsiness by asking what my name was every chance he (for)got.
Small wonder if the whole class had gotten sick at the sound of my name right about then.
I propped my cheeks, arm and elbow acting as a steady pole to the wobbling shamble that was my concentration that refused to simply burst into sleep. My hand seemed to recognize this syndrome for it had ceased whatever undoubtedly misspelled notes my pencil was writing and had resorted into patterns of random circles and curvy mess of lines. Half-sleep always presented the stragest reaction to one's mind and tended to mentally mix what you vaguely hear or see, so I wasn't surprised that the scratches had turned into doodles and doodles into a face and the face into a frog-dissecting Eugene-sensei...with a giant spotty fungi for a hat.
I would have been reduced to laughter at the ridicule that was now on my notes, had not I heard a snort I was perfectly sure wasn't mine.
And I saw him, cursing myself why I hadn't, earlier.
My seatmate, previously napping, now awake. My seatmate, whose face previously hidden between nook of arms, looking as if he was going explode with amusement any second. My seatmate, with tousled locks of raven I hadn't clarified, and the after taste of hot dogs and quirky laughter as well as the one and only possible eye-to-eye witness of my cross-dressing disguise, sitting inches to my right like it was arranged so normally, and I did not. Even. Notice.
This was certainly a cruel conspiracy.
.Gray.
Incidentally, Biology had nominated itself onto the very peak of my top favourite subject.
(Though rather than 'favourite', 'tolerated' would be much more fitting, because really, there never was such term as a favourited aspect of school.)
Not that I had the label of science geek pasted with giant fonts on my forehead. Scientific inclination after all, did not mean that I should be a crazy scientist wanna-be prancing around on high with a sharpened scalpel and a dried, dead frog in hand. That would just be sick. And even more disturbing, if I engaged said depiction with the ever as-happy-as-a-rock old Eugene.
A bit laughable, still.
At least in this class, I wasn't the only one disconnecting myself off the world. With the lengthy, wide laboratory table, pillowed spinning seat, and a teacher who seemed to hold tightly onto the illusion that 'as long as one got their mouth zipped, their ears were definitely open', no one would give the slightest damn even if we circulated a packet of popping bubblegum around or stuffed our ears with flashy, blaring headsets as long as we shut up.
Or dare say, taking a nap so blatantly.
At least, almost.
But that strangely did not matter, for everything that was worth, Biology right then mainly meant no certain strawberry blond going all hawk eyes on me and boring holes through my head behind his deceptive mask of subtle disinterested side glances even when I tried/pretended to sleep. Granted, the astrology freak took space science. Something about how absolutely romantic the stars were, he winked, and I never cared to clarify if it was the cheesy pick-up line of the day to gross me out or if he was actually telling the truth, though it wouldn't be that surprising if it were to be both. I got the same feeling this time when he didn't bother the decency to compress his much too enthused curiousity unlike he usually did with our previous little bets. Either that he discovered something thoroughly interesting that render his observation strangely fiercer or that he had purposely done it to get me spit up something, crack anything of a clue that would lead him into figuring out much, much easier. And quicker. Then again, knowing Loke, it could be both. He was annoying like that.
It was bizarre that I would prefer flame head anytime in this case. At least, if it wasn't something painfully obvious, Natsu would play the dumb part, and the interrogation tended to come later.
I couldn't remember if I fell asleep in the end, but when I came to, the air around me was thin with scribbling pencil. Weird, because it was rare for high school students to jot with pencils, let alone jot any in Bio. It usually only involved those real science geeks that came to class early and took a grand seat at the very front, writing as if their lives depended on the lecture, that if they missed even one word, they would suffocate miserably on the lack of information, or something like that. It was not like pencils had been discriminated into a child's stationary either. Many still brought mechanical pencils, yes. Graphite pencils? Not really, unless it was those art students we were talking about.
It was then I realized that someone was sitting beside me, either I wasn't aware because I attempted to "disconnect" as soon as I had arrived on my seat, or that I had forgotten altogether. I had never seen her around before though—a girl with blonde hair neatly bunched to the front. A pair of thick-rimmed glasses rested on her petite nose and by the way she was lazily propping her chin and the direction her graphite pencil was moving, I knew she wasn't writing. This in itself was a contradiction. In physical term, this girl was practically screaming "nerd" with her tight tie and thick lenses, but in the other hand she was sitting on the back instead of gluing herself to the whiteboard and was practically doodling shamelessly instead of well, listening.
All assumption was lost in a hurricane anyway, as I caught glimpse of her so-called doodle.
It was a caricature, the big head said it all. The subject was truly recognizable, wrinkles folding his face so accurately it looked real. Squinty steely eyes, a big nose, thick olden brows, and shiny baldy head, though instead of being bare there was a mushroom growing on its top like his skull was acting as smooth soil. His expression was flat, singed with just a little bit of craze, and he was holding a dead dried frog and a scalpel—
I must have vocalized my disbelieved choke for the blonde had halted her shading, looking at me as if I had burnt my pants. The silence was pregnant for another few seconds until atmosphere shifted from shock to awkward to expectant.
"Sorry," I blurted, encased with the absurdity of my act that in a stranger's view literally spoke different degrees of 'creepy', "It's not like— I mean, uh—"
"Mr. Thirstbuster!" I cooped back a groan, "And you, miss over there, what's your name?"
A heavy sigh, "Lucy Conell, sir."
"Are you two aware of the significance of classification? Are you?" Eugene scrunched his nose so irately to a level one was incapable of. Of course we did. The answer was so huge on the board titled with 'Benefits of Taxonomy' even anyone on the last row could see. Fortunately, the girl too seemed to think that it was best not being a know-it-all in this issue. Unless, someone wanted a reward of after school essay...
"As I thought," I swore old man just looked so very smug. A pen into his nostril would be a fine specimen, maybe? "Listen and keep your voices down, would you?"
And he continued, in the sort of way that nothing had happened. The class seemed unfroze with this motion, back into blaring music and passing bubblegum and silent pens. It tingled a little with the intensity of the girls' glare though.
Hating to owe any form of guilt, I opened my mouth to further apologize, but the girl (what was her name again? Lucy?) had already appointed a lazy gaze towards the window as if any more matter was simply dismissed. I shouldn't have bothered, and acting on a base of simple curiousity wasn't really my trait (it was Loke's through and through), but something about the girl bugged me like a sore thumb I couldn't pinpoint. Weird, different, but familiar.
Before my mind could run else where, I wrote "Sorry" between the lines of my notebook and passed it to our through the long table with a swish. As if broken from a trance, the blonde blinked in surprise.
(Oddly that too, felt familiar.)
She observed my face for a while, back to the book, then back to me with a single raised brow and expression so bland that got me feeling so very utterly stupid.
Too late to back down, I wrote more.
For laughing.
She stared at me, still. I gulped.
For snooping into your notes too, I guess.
Lucy shook her head (out of...amusement? Exasperation?), pigtails shaking slightly in every other way, then scribbled on her own notes, directly below her doodle.
It's fine.
Two words. Short, neat, curved, but that was that. I didn't even know what I was expecting either. A request for a phone number? Gushes and flattery giggles and pink blushes? I wasn't around girls much, and the ones I was constantly with were one who would point a kitchen knife if I so much as strip my t-shirt and the other one had a hobby of harassing little brother (cough, Mom and Ultear). The rest were the epitomes of rabid fan girls.
It seemed rude to keep the conversation hanging (or was it not? I didn't really know), so I continued anyway.
Great drawing though.
Lucy's eyes widened minimally as she read, then reread. Her complexion was pieces and bits of puzzle. Shifting, arranging, and suppressing so fast I couldn't keep up.
You think so?
It is funny. And appropriate.—On second thought, I scratched the latter with a cringe. Where had that word came from again?—I wouldn't find anyone else who can copy his wrinkles so perfectly. And nice mushroom too?
There was a twitch nudging her lips. Almost a smile, but not quite. Then it was gone.
You have your way with words, Thirstbuster.
I flushed. Hey, I was being rarely honest here! Deal with it. And it's Fullbuster.
Not any much different.
The conversation was pretty much dead after that, simply because neither of us knew what else to say. Or maybe it had got something to do with the ever so ominous glare the girls were sending. It was about five to ten minutes later that the bell rang and the students scrambled noisily with their bags. Lucy's table was one of the firsts to be empty, so I assume as I stood to my feet that she had left.
She hadn't. It seemed doubtful, and so so abrupt, but when our gaze met before leaving, she bowed. There were no distaste, no estrange, no adoring in her eyes, simply a steady acknowledgement. She didn't look away either.
I didn't know what expression I was wearing, because the moment Loke and I met up in the hallways later, he was giving me the same kind of particular look as this morning and was resuming, or possibly, re-positioning his hawk-like stance.
Not that I mind as much, for I was bloating on the proud fact that albeit only for a half period, it was my first time being awake and kicking on Bio.
For whatever reason, it felt rather...nice.
"Sometimes there is such beauty in awkwardness. There's love and emotion trying to express itself, but at the time, it just ends up being awkward."
― Ruta Sepetys, Between Shades of Gray
A/N : I hope their relationship doesn't shift too fast? It's not that they're already in love or something though. At least, not yet :)
Anyway, the ratio between the alerts and reviews frustrates me a little, where in the world are your voices people?
*cough*
Thanks for reading anyways :)
(Reviews are love, still.)
~snowdrop03