Rising Shards

Oka stood on stage, trying to hide that her legs were shaking. This was how it felt every time her lines had come up in play practice so far. She stared at the bright lights above the auditorium and squinted. Did the lights need to be this bright for a rehearsal?

“Alright, Oka?” Reit Kilander, the play director/Oka’s technical uncle said. He was sitting a few seats back in the front area.

“Yes!” Oka said.

“When your line comes up, you say it. Out loud.”

“Got it!” Oka said. “That’s really embarrassing that I didn’t get…such a basic thing…right…”

“Stop talking about it,” Reit said. “And do it.”

“Right, right, right,” Oka said. She froze again.

“Do you remember your line?” Reit sighed.

“Yes!” Oka said. “I mean, no. But if you give me a second…or, uh, tell me maybe…”

“Alternatively, you could look at the script you’re holding.” Reit said.

“Oh!” Oka said, noticing the script in her hands. “Right right right!”

”Let’s see...” Oka said. ”Oh, oops...” She turned a few pages ahead, the sound of paper sliding against paper was horrendously loud in the silence of the auditorium. ”Had the...wrong page there. Or, wait.” She flipped a few pages back. ”Nevermind, found it!”

The start of rehearsals and practice for the spring play had been shaky for Oka, and not just in her legs when she was on stage. She was happy to be acting and finally be in a play for the first time in her life, but she wasn’t expecting so much of it to be as hard as it was. At least she had Lillia, who wasn’t as cold as she usually was as she gave tips.

”I!” Oka said, reading her script. All she had to say was that she was the discoverer of fire. She made a fist, which wasn’t in the direction but she really liked doing it when she did this line. ”Am the discover...of fire. Er, wait, that’s discoverer. Of. O-of fire.”

“Well, I suppose that’ll do for today,” Reit said. “Dismissed. Everyone remember, as I always say…respect the arts.”

Reit clapped as the student cast and crew filed out. Oka found Lillia, who was staring as Naomi Ratuna said bye to her friends in the club and left. After she was gone, they went to their usual post practice spot, a small little social nook next to a vending machine.

“The usual?” Oka asked.

“Obviously.” Lillia said.

Oka scanned her wristband on the machine and got two ice cream chocolate chip cookie sandwiches. The vending machine had robot hands inside of it that grabbed the sandwiches and dropped them into the opening flap part. They didn’t get ice cream sandwiches every day, but it was their heading into the weekend treat. The two sighed as they sat down in comfy poofy chairs with low backs.

“Any updates on yours?” Lillia asked as she opened the wrapper for her ice cream sandwich. It was their usual post practice crush talk starter line.

“Well,” Oka said. “Nothing really after the Feral Flu thing.”

“Still jealous about that,” Lillia said as she took a bite of her sandwich.

”Well I still chalk that up to Feral Flu weirdness,” Oka said. ”Everything was kinda foggy, and things stayed normal afterwards anyways so it’s not fully a win.”

”Still. I’m jealous.”

“I still feel kinda itchy, but it was still definitely worth it.” Oka said. “How about yours?”

Lillia shook her head. “You can see it. I can’t even work up the nerve to talk to her.”

While the two were united by their mutual pining, Oka quickly noticed her crush on Zeta was vastly different than Lillia’s crush on Naomi Ratuna. Naomi was a second year and she wasn’t Lillia’s roommate, so they had much less time together than Oka and Zeta did. Oka’s crush felt more like a train that had its brakes cut off, while Lillia’s was like two trains that were very far apart that could one day end up at the same station.

“You know, we haven’t even talked about this yet,” Oka said. “When did your crush start on Naomi start?”

Lillia thought about it for a second as Oka finished her ice cream sandwich.

“Outside of like within the last few months, I guess,” Oka said. “I guess more how did it start?”

“I met her on the Golden Tour of Rising Shards,” Lillia said. “So I suppose it started there. She was leading my group, and she just seemed like everything I want to be in life. Dignified, composed, successful, a people person. Ever since then, I’d get that fluttering feeling every time I saw her.”

“I get that,” Oka said, not sure if she should ask what the Golden Tour of Rising Shards was. “Even when she’s being all strict and writing people up and stuff?”

“Well, I actually behave, so that part’s not an issue for me.” Lillia said.

“Ahhh, that’s fair.” Oka said.

“And you?” Lillia asked.

“I want to say when I first met her, but I didn’t really know it was her then,” Oka said. “We met at this dance thing over the summer.”

“You told me that part,” Lillia said. ”Also jealous of that.”

“I think it was…a bit ago, I guess,” Oka said. “It’s weird because it was right after we had a big fight.”

“What do you mean, big fight?”

“Well, it ended up fine,” Oka said. “It wasn’t even our biggest fight. It was just one of those little blow ups in that roommate kind of way. You know the deal, like you’re stuck with these people all the time and eventually your tolerance fuse runs out. You know?”

“I definitely do,” Lillia said. Her roommate was Elisa Burwell, a dragon Kanibari who was obsessed with some singer. The two personalities couldn’t be any more different between her and Lillia.

“Zeta got really steamed about Laenie accidentally spoiling something from that Tower show, and I sided with Laenie because she was crying after Zeta snapped at her about not wanting to hear show leaks or something. Then Kalei sided with Zeta and we all just kinda blew up.”

“So you fell for her…when she talked about Tower of Hate and Love leaks?” Lillia asked.

“Not that,” Oka said. “It just went how our fights normally go. We each went off to go cool down, then after that we all apologized in our own ways, and things were good. We all still took some time to keep cooling off though, and when I was walking around the grounds, I saw Zeta doing her homework outside, which was weird, she doesn’t usually study outside our room. She was sitting under a tree, and she didn’t see me looking at her. And it just hit me then that I really, really adore her.”

“There has to be more to this, right?” Lillia asked. “Like a romantic seeming gesture or something?”

“Nope,” Oka said. “I just saw her sitting under a tree. She just…looked cute. It woke it all up in me and made all the other feelings I had for her clearer.”

“I would have guessed the dancing would have caused it,” Lillia said. “The first or the second time.”

“Well, they definitely helped.” Oka said.

Oka crumpled up her ice cream sandwich wrapper.

“Alright, if I make this…Zeta and Naomi will ask us out this week.” Oka said.

She shot the wrapper ball towards a garbage bin on the other side of the alcove. She missed. Lillia crumpled hers up. “If I make this…er, the thing you said.” Lillia threw hers, and while her shot was a bit closer, she missed too.

Oka went to pick up the wrappers. Once they were in her hands, she turned to see Lillia searching through her backpack.

”Hey, that’s mine!” Oka said.

”Sorry, I’ve been curious about something in here,” Lillia said, sounding not at all sorry.

”You could maybe stop,” Oka said, knowing from experience that it was pointless to try and interfere with whatever had piqued Lillia’s curiosity.

Lillia pulled a magazine out of Oka’s backpack and set the bag down. ”Why do you carry this issue of Teenly Teen Magazine around? I’ve noticed it ever since play practice started.”

Oka sighed. She figured that’s what it’d be.

”I...it’s a long story?” Oka said, nervously pressing her pointer fingers together. ”It’s...got some good articles...”

”Uh huh,” Lillia said, paging through it. ”It’s fine if you don’t want to tell me, I can probably find the reason in a second here.”

”That’s not fair, I don’t look through your stuff!” Oka said.

The guilt trip technique didn’t work on Lillia, who continued paging through the magazine.

”Are there really 500 boy bands that this magazine ranks yearly?” Lillia asked.

”Apparently,” Oka said.

”I assume that’s not the reason you keep this with you.” Lillia said.

”No...” Oka said.

”Ah, here we go,” Lillia said. ”Crash Course in Crushes: Our Ready to Go Questions to Get Your Crush Swooning.”

”Yeah, that’s it,” Oka said. ”I thought it’d help me. The advice about dealing with a crush is nice, at least.”

”’How many partners have you had? Did you make out with them? With tongue? How far did you go with them past that?’” Lillia read. ”You did not ask Zeta these.”

”I...I maybe kinda did, yeah...”

Lillia glared at Oka, then stifled a laugh. ”I’m guessing she had a complete meltdown over it.” Lillia said once she composed herself.

”I didn’t notice, I was too busy having a meltdown.” Oka said. ”It’s one of those things that sounded good on the page, but then once it left my mouth I realized I might be about to hear Zeta talk about making out with someone and I started to picture that and I got super flustered. But then she just told me more of the stuff they went through, and it was so sad. They barely even got to make out, and that’s the farthest they went! On top of all the gaslighting and emotional abuse she put Zeta through.”

”Oh, that’s a lot less funny than I pictured.” Lillia said. ”You’d hope there’d at least be some physical respite going through that torment.”

”R-right, that’s what I thought!” Oka said. ”Only you’re...a lot better at...putting words together about stuff like...”

”I get it,” Lillia said, fanning Oka with the magazine for her reddening face. ”But you are at least decently comfortable about it if you really did ask Zeta these questions.”

”That’s true...thanks,” Oka said. ”Then I just kept the magazine because I didn’t want Zeta to find it. You can keep it if you want. She wouldn’t suspect anything if you had it.”

”I’m good, thanks,” Lillia said as Oka sat back down next to her.

”It might help you with Naaaoooomiiiiii,” Oka said in a sing-song voice. ”You could ask her how many partners she’s haaaaaad.”

”I’d rather not,” Lillia said, neatly returning the magazine to Oka’s backpack.

Oka realized she was still holding the crumpled wrappers in her hands. She tossed Lillia’s back to her and readied another shot.

”If I make this one...I’ll ask Zeta out this week.” Oka said. She missed again.

”You weren’t trying that hard that time,” Lillia said.

”I know,” Oka said. ”I’m kinda relieved.”

”You’re that scared about it?” Lillia asked.

”Well, how would you feel if you had to ask Naomi out?” Oka asked.

”Terrified,” Lillia said. ”But it’s different for you two.”

”I guess,” Oka said. ”There’s just still a lot I’m scared of. And I know there’s a lot of stuff she’s working through. I don’t know if I’m rushing her, and even if I was I’d probably choke up if I had to really talk to her about it.”

”If I make this one, I’ll ask Naomi the questions from your magazine,” Lillia said, crumpling her wrapper again. ”And you have to ask Zeta out.”

Oka gulped. She didn’t want to look as Lillia threw, but she had to. Lillia purposefully biffed it and only through it a bit past her feet. She looked back at Lillia, who had a sly smile on her face.

“We’re hopeless,” Oka said.

“Indeed,” Lillia said.

The two were quiet for a second.

“Wanna get one more ice cream sandwich?” Oka asked.

“Definitely.”