Free Web NovelChapter 24: D-Rank Amor!
I made it to the classroom before the bell.
The seats were already half full when I walked in. The usual cliques had settled into their usual spots, the E-rank groups at the front, the stragglers in the middle, and the F-ranks pulled toward the back wall the way they always were. Tom Avery was already in his seat, three rows from the back, his notebook open in front of him and a sharpened pencil in his hand. He waved at me when I came through the door.
I waved back.
Then my eyes found Kira.
She was in the same seat as yesterday, three rows ahead of the spot I usually took. Her tablet was on the desk in front of her, but the screen was dark. Her hands were folded on top of it.
The second I entered through the door, her head turned.
Her eyes found me before I’d taken a full step into the room. They tracked me as I walked down the aisle between the rows, all the way until I stopped at the end of her seat. Usually, she would be reading no matter what. Now, she was just watching me.
I leaned a hand against the back of her chair.
"Morning, sunshine."
Kira’s mouth twitched at the corner. The full lips pressed together for a beat before she let the small smile out.
"Morning."
"You look better today."
"I slept."
"It shows. You’re prettier when you sleep."
Her cheeks coloured a fraction. She looked down at her tablet, then back up. The smile was still trying to hide itself in the corner of her mouth, and it was losing.
"How’s your brother."
"He woke up." Her voice softened on the word. Her eyes went somewhere past my shoulder for a second, then came back.
"He woke up last night. A few hours after you left. He was confused. He didn’t know how long he’d been out. He, he’s still at the hospital. They want to keep him for extra checks today. The healer wants to run a full core scan now that the damage is gone. But he should be out by this evening. Hopefully."
"That’s good. That’s really good, Kira."
She nodded. Her eyes held mine for a beat longer than they needed to, and the gratitude in them sat heavier than anything she could have said out loud.
She broke the look first, glanced down at her hands on the tablet, and cleared her throat in a small way that meant she was changing the subject before it got somewhere she wasn’t ready for.
"We still don’t know who the other two are."
"On the team."
"On the team."
I tapped my fingers against the back of her chair.
"Yeah. That’s tricky. Soren said he’d fill the slots himself, which means we get whoever didn’t get picked elsewhere. Could be anyone. Could be the boy who said S-Rankers have better security yesterday, for all I know."
Kira’s mouth flattened. "If it’s him, I’ll request a transfer."
"You and me both."
She glanced at me sideways. "Did you memorise what I gave you yesterday."
My mouth twitched.
"Yeah. I didn’t. I got a little busy."
"Busy."
"Yeah."
Staring at her expression, I immediately said, "I’ll do it today. I promise. I’ll have all fifteen gates memorised by the end of the day."
Kira gave me the look. The one that started flat and ended somewhere closer to amused, the look of a person who knew she was being managed and had decided to let it happen this once.
"You’d better."
"I will."
She tapped the corner of her tablet, woke it up, and slid it toward the centre of her desk so I could see the screen. The summary sheets from the library were open in a clean stack of files, the first one already pulled up.
"Do some memorisation before Soren comes in."
I nodded, slid into the seat beside her, and took out the printed summaries.
I worked through it slowly, ran the details through my head twice, then closed my eyes and recited them back internally to test the recall.
By the time I’d locked the second one into memory, ten minutes had passed and Soren walked through the door at the front of the room.
The lesson moved through theory for the next ninety minutes.
I took notes when he said something worth writing down and tracked Kira out of the corner of my eye when he didn’t. Her tablet stylus moved across her screen.
The bell for the lunch break rang.
Students filed out in the usual clumps. Tom packed his notebook into his bag two rows behind us and shot me a small wave on his way past. I waved back.
Kira didn’t move from her chair.
I leaned my chin on my hand and waited for her to finish packing up.
After a few seconds, she finally cleared her throat. freēwēbηovel.c૦m
"What are you doing during the lunch break?" She asked.
"Nothing in particular."
"Oh."
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
"Are you, are you meeting anyone? Tom, maybe? Or, or someone else?"
"No."
"No?"
"No."
"Oh."
Her fingers moved to the corner of her tablet again. I could tell that she was fidgeting around, clearly nervous.
"Then." She drew the word out, the breath behind it a little uneven. "If you’re not meeting anyone, would you want to have lunch together? With me. I mean. If you, if that’s something you’d want."
[CHOICE A: Have lunch with her. She has no one else to spend the break with, and she’s just worked up the courage to ask you for the first time in her life. Reward: +5 Affection (Kira), D-Rank Armor.]
[Choice B. Reject her politely. She will feel that she was too pushy, and return back to her reserved nature. Reward: -5 Affection(Kira), D-Rank Armor]
[Choice C. Reject her without explanation. Reward: -20 Affection(Kira)]
I closed the screen on my way to my feet.
"Yeah."
Kira looked up.
"Yeah?"
"Let’s go eat together."
The small smile she’d been fighting in the morning came back. She gathered her things into her bag with quick neat movements, slung the strap over her shoulder, and stood.
