Rising Shards

A snowy wind howled outside. There was a thin window by where I was seated. I pressed a fingertip against the cold glass. For some reason, this reminded me that I needed to get Oka a new Safe Silver present, since I gave her the phone I intended to be a holiday gift early. I didn’t regret giving her the phone, she took to texting really quickly and was a blast to chat with, and it was nice to be responsible for her having more of a means to connect with the modern world after her original school denied her a lot of that. I spun in my chair to see Oka looking my way inquisitively. I wondered if she could tell I was plotting gift giving.

“Would it kill Diast to be like on time, for like, one meeting?” Kalei asked.

Kalei, Oka, Lillia, Iris, Maia, the Matora sisters, and I waited in one of the meeting rooms at school. It was one that third and fourth years usually got to use, and it was super fancy, with none of the chairs having holes or creaky busted wheels like the ones in the rooms us lowly first years got.

“Ooh, this is our first Dr. Diast meeting like this,” Iris said, elbowing Maia. “What you think about that, MaiMai?”

Maia shrugged.

“Better or worse than Letoh?” Iris asked. “Cuz I kinda miss having Letoh as an advisor.”

“Ehh,” Maia said. “I mean they’re both teachers, so they kinda have that baseline level of suck for that, but I guess Diast is less nervous?”

“She’s cocky, but always late,” Kalei said.

“I bet you I can do five laps around the hallway here before she shows up,” Kai said to her sister.

“I bet I can do five laps before you finish three.” Ko said.

“You’re on.” Kai said before the two sisters darted out of the room. Lillia kept a close eye on Ko as she left.

“Well, while they’re gone…we can uh…” Iris said.

“I bet you’ll finish that thought before Diast shows up.” Maia said.

“I wouldn’t take that bet, I think you’re right,” Kalei said. “Maybe the pressure finally got to Diast and she quit. One too many snowstorms and she called it. Maybe her car is stuck in a blizzard.”

“Nooo,” I said, not wanting to think about any of that, but especially the last few, because if she was stuck in the snow, that meant Stella likely was too. I realized that didn’t make much sense because Stella was working that day, and I saw her in the girls’ dorm library earlier. “Can we do something else than talk about Dr. Diast being late here? I mean, look at this room! I feel all business-y here. Like this is what it’d feel like if we all worked in the same office building!”

“Real thrilling imagination you got there, Zates,” Kalei said.

“I wouldn’t be opposed to like…playing pretend office while we wait,” Oka said. “What would our jobs be? I think you and I would absolutely be on the same floor, but maybe different positions? Like I could see…wait, what kind of office building is that? That’s important for the scenario here, I can think of job titles better.”

“Maybe like a…” I started, trying to think of something good.

“Like a fart directory,” Kalei snickered. Iris burst out laughing.

“What does that even mean?” Oka asked.

“I dunno, like we regulate farts, but in like an office way,” Kalei said. “Can we just skip to the part where Zates makes it a Raina Starlight related business that we do office work for?”

“Oooh,” I said. “We could work for the publisher that puts the Raina Starlight books out! I could…edit Raina Starlight books…”

“There we go.” Kalei said.

“And if you’re an editor,” Oka said. “Then I would be in like…some kind of book role on the same floor as Zeta but not the same exact job, so we’re not in the same cubicle, I can stop by with my morning coffee, and we can chat about like work junk and catch up on what’s going on with each other.”

“Are we still dating in this scenario?” I asked.

“Oh hmmm,” Oka said. “On one hand, it’d be nice to, on another, in this scenario we could like slowly work our way to each other. Like I’ve been working there for a while, but then you get hired and I feel a spark of interest towards you, but I’m not sure how to express it right away, or if you’re even interested in me back, so I start stopping by in the morning with my coffee and shooting the breeze about like television programs that were notable or some such.”

“Oh, and I’m like shy but I really want to climb up in the ranks of the publishing world, so I take a liking to your…what’s another job in the publishing world?” I asked.

“You should know this, you’re always reading!” Kalei said. “Maybe Oka like picks the book cover colors and fonts.”

“Sure, Oka’s in book cover division,” I said. “And she comes over and shows me the latest covers.

“Oh and it’s a snowy day just like right now!” Oka said. “And our whole division is late on Safe Silver and holiday deadlines, so we’re all stressing.”

“And as we’re stressing about deadlines,” I said. “Our hands brush against each other as you hand me the paper, and a flutter is in my tummy for the first time, and I start thinking about you differently.”

“I love this.” Oka said, getting her notebook out. “Is it weird if I write some of this down?”

“It’s like a slowburn AU fic…but like for our own lives.” I said wistfully. Oka caught me staring at her again and was about to say something, but then looked like she was waiting for me to speak, her mouth hanging open slightly. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I kept staring at her. Her notebook was just a school one, I wondered if she’d be the type to like a fancy writing journal for Safe Silver.

“As if you guys weren’t slowburn enough already.” Kalei said.

“Hey!” I said.

“I’d be like high level so when people see me, they crap their pants in fear cuz I could fire them like that.” Kalei snapped. “And Lillia’s the manager of your floor.”

“What? I did not agree to be roped into this.” Lillia said. “I’m trying to do some classwork here.”

“She’s the tough but stern boss, but she’s not on the firing committee so people aren’t as afraid of her as they are of Kalei.” Oka said.

“I don’t know all this book junk, but I’m invested in this office love story between Zeta and Oka here.” Iris said. “I’d want some job where I could observe this and gossip about it. Maia would probably be top level executive stuff, maybe not like firing guys like Kalei but still like super powerful. Oh, and she’d wear a pants suit, because you would rock a suit, MaiMai.”

“Uh, er, I…” Maia laughed nervously. “What?”

“Oh, yes, we’d all be in suits here, that’d be amazing.” Oka said, jotting down ‘ALL IN SUITS’ in her notebook and underlining it three times.

“Oka, if you did the thing like, where you’re in a suit, and you take the suit jacket off,” I said, my tail involuntarily flicking behind me through the back of the chair as I imagined Oka in a nice suit. “And then you set your latest covers down at my desk and slung your jacket over your shoulder and like propped a foot up. That’d be…that’d be really cool.”

Our wristbands lit up with a notification that we were getting a call. It was Dr. Diast.

“Aw, we were in the middle of this great story…” Oka said.

Lillia pressed answer on her wristband, which connected the call to all of our wristbands without duplicating the audio a bunch of times. “Hey, where the hell are you guys?” Diast asked.

“The meeting room?” I said.

“OK, because I’ve been sitting in one for a while here and wondering why no one’s here. What number are you in?” Diast asked. “Did you guys wander out in the snow and get lost or something?”

“No, we’ve just been here.” I said.

“OK, where is here?” Diast asked.

“Uhh…” Oka went out to check the room number. “Room 314?”

“Room three one four? Oh my god, I’ve been waiting in 214 for the last fifteen minutes. I told you guys 214, right?”

“You absolutely said 314.” Kalei said. “I wrote it down in my notebook and everything, and I never do that.”

“Ugh, fine,” Diast said. “I’ll be up in a few minutes.”

“You might want to wrangle Ko and Kai on the way, they’re doing laps.” Oka said.

“Of course they are.” Diast said.