Eventually, our tranquil moment came to an end. Esther peeled out of my half-embrace and distanced herself. Not in any rude or dismissive way, it had lasted too long to give that impression. It was a clear gesture of 'let's stop this for now'. My feelings were torn on the matter. I was experiencing that cliche desire of having a moment last forever. However, if it somehow did, we would never get to do more intimate things than embrace. Spending an eternity only touching someone I barely knew, all perception of compatibility aside, would have been rather awkward.
Esther had me show her the rest of the house. Afterwards, she went ahead and picked her dwelling place in our humble abode. It was a two room arrangement, with a comparatively small bedroom (which meant the queen sized bed was a snug fit for the walls) and a living room with a table, a mirror and a few other things. Further, it was closest to the tower and, as I noted with great interest, she would likely be using the same bathroom as me.
As a man of honesty, I could not wait to see her undressed and women were especially sexy after showers. The combination of flushed skin, wet hair and the fresh smell of shampoo was tantalizing beyond even normal nudity. In her case, I was particularly interested in seeing her with open hair. With how unruly it was even with the effort she spent on keeping it bundled up, I was left wondering how wild her black mane would be once left to flow freely.
Such imagery had to be left to my imagination. I was more straightforward in my public ogling than most people, but I was not someone who invaded private spaces. I had enough faith in my ability to win them over through flirting and actions to stay away from such reprehensible behaviour.
Anyway, since she wanted to be left alone for now, I went up to Arlethia and Willt's room on the third floor. We had a few talks about this and that, as friends do. Given novelty, much of the conversation revolved around Welldark. The list of available courses was now viewable through our Ashods and we scoured through in search of things that piqued our interest. We didn't make any binding choices as to what or, in the case of the mandatory classes, when we would be attending yet. It wasn't that pressing anyway. Since we were first years, we got an extra week to decide things before our classes started, while our seniors were already listening to their professors. This time was not only to be used for the write-ins, but also to explore the campus area and get at least broadly familiar with the locations of things.
I highly doubted that this week was put in there purely out of the niceness of the teachers' hearts. My personal theory was that they had gotten tired of people coming thirty minutes late into the first class because they hadn't yet gotten used to the train schedule or the way the universities' room ordering system worked. Whatever the reason, it was an arrangement that worked out for everyone. Write-ins were open until Sunday. If they even called them Sundays around here.
Welldark, like just about every other institution founded on knowledge of the Dimensional Truth, operated on a seven day -- one-week system. While that building block of time management was near universal, months and years could scale a bit differently. A month might only be three weeks, for example, and a year only six months. That seldomly led to difficulties, as far as getting individually situated, as months and years were such large brackets of time. Complications typically arose when a world had a day-night cycle that completely invalidated the 24-hour clock. Those were, thankfully, few and far in-between.
As for where this system stemmed from, I had no idea. I very much doubt it was Earth, it sounded more like the local God had followed it when creating that world. Wherever it originated, it worked and made it easy for people to slot their schedules into a new environment. A figment of familiarity during dimensional travels that reduced stress by a fair amount.
None of us three had entered any courses by the end of our talks, but we had decided we would visit the city tomorrow. Checking out what was on offer and stocking up on supplies was important, particularly because the kitchen was dreadfully empty of foodstuffs. After that, I went directly to bed. I had decided to try and wake up early the next day.
__________________________________________________________________
I blinked a large number of times and focused on reality. Being an extremely vivid and lucid dreamer, many of my mornings started with a moment of confusion. This one was no different. After I spent about a minute yawning, stretching and trying to change the scenery with my mind, I accepted that I must have been awake and sat up. I checked the time, nodded groggily to myself after the numbers made sense to me. 'The sacrifices I make for flirting,' I thought to myself. I wasn't an early riser. I, however, had something to do and therefore went to put on my clothes.
I raised an elongated, slanted cushion of hard foam and put it to the side. Underneath was a row of wooden boxes. They were lowered into the floor and the contents easily accessed by raising the lid. In a room that was one large bed, this was a creative solution to allow for storage space. I took out my outfit for the day which was, since I didn't own anything else that looked good, a school uniform.
Not the same one as yesterday, of course. That one I had stuffed into a plastic bag. Welldark provided several uniforms and did pay for repairing or replacing them, as long as the damage happened during school activities. I would take the bag with me when we headed into the city later. As far as the Welldark app had informed me, the uniforms could be handed in there.
I put on boxers and pants. The shirt I took with me to the bathroom, but only put it on after I had brushed my teeth and showered. I would not risk spilling any toothpaste on my shirt, not if I only had one more replacement.
Freshened up, adequately awake and looking as crisp as I possibly could, I nodded to myself and went to approach Esther's room. I knocked carefully and waited.
My plan was simple. I would start with a simple joke, asking if she wanted to take a shower with me. Snowballing the predictable, hopefully amused, denial into some smalltalk, I would nonchalantly offer that she accompany me, Willt and Arlethia on our trip into the city later.
Worst I expected to get was a disciplined no on the initial joke. Sure, that would have gotten myself in a bit of a bad standing, but she already knew what I was about and still decided to move in. Therefore, that would have been a recoverable disadvantage. Alternatively, I could have misread her character and she was still sleeping and would be rather disgruntled that I woke her up. I heavily doubted that, however.
For a while, I heard nothing and I was afraid that I had miscalculated in the opposite direction. 'Did she wake up so early that she already headed out?' I asked myself and pondered. 'No, there were no signs of usage in the bathroom... she would at least brush her teeth before heading out, anybody would. Maybe she used the other one?'
I was attempting to figure out what reason would drive her to walk all the way to the other bathroom, when I finally heard some movements behind the door. Then it flew open so suddenly my mental preparation was slightly shaken. In front of me stood Esther. She was as beautiful as before, no signs of make-up, and wore a fresh uniform of her own. Her hair was less orderly than yesterday, but still bound together and partly hidden by her tricorne. The tip of it pointed at me like the end of a dagger.
I managed to quickly gather myself, and smile with the warmth of the morning sun. "Good morning," I mused in a tone that was both friendly and had that masculine depth I had found a lot of women to be weak too. It switched to something less serious as I continued, making it clear I was joking. "I was wondering if you would be interested in taking a shower with me. Being clean is very important, after all."
The reaction I got was none I had anticipated. Her amber eyes, although they struck me more as sulfuric yellow in that moment, stared at me with such an intensity that it could have killed a small animal. After several seconds of that stare drilling into my skull, I felt an unpleasant tingling at the back of my neck. "Keep your foolish advances for someone with patience, overacting Karitas," she loudly hissed at me, before stepping back and slamming the door shut with such intensity that a gust of wind blew back several strands of my white hair.
I blinked multiple times, failing to properly process what just happened..
'What did I do?' the questions echoed in my mind repeatedly. Her hair hadn't been as groomed as yesterday, but it hadn't been disorderly either and I would have heard it if she put on her uniform in a hurry. She clearly had been awake for quite some time, so that wasn't the issue. Was it the joke? No, she hadn't mentioned what I had actually said at all. It felt like she hadn't even heard what I said and was simply annoyed with my very existence. I continued to blink rapidly.
The door opened again, giving me a brief moment of hope. I expected an explanation at worst and an apology at best. The difference between the content happiness we had experienced yesterday and her venomous utterings just now was just too stark.
What I got was a stare that could have killed a medium sized animal. It almost killed me, I can say that much, as it stopped my heart for as long as it took all of the enthusiasm I had put into this morning to wilt away into nothingness.
"Step away from my door, insistent Karitas," she warned me. The accent I had previously found so unfathomably attractive had now been tempered into a beautiful blade that slashed my pride into ribbons. "I do not appreciate your attempts at conversation at this hour. Your failure to move makes you appear like a stalker above anything else. Go and bother someone else." The door was again slammed shut. I was just as confused as before, perhaps even more so, but I could recognize a signpost if I was beaten over the head with it. Salvaging what I could, I decided to hurriedly retreat to the kitchen and continue my pondering there.
I spend thirty minutes alone, looking down on my hands and occasionally creating tiny things to fidget around with, before my friends joined me. "You look like you had a terrible nightmare," Willt said first thing, as he and his girlfriend sat down opposite of me on the wooden table. "Did the crazy ex appear in your dreams?"
"No," I drily stated, "I had a terrible morning. Worse than memories of that girl."
"She tried to stab you once, so what the fuck could be worse than that?" Arlethia asked. Before I could answer, Esther walked into the kitchen. Without any word or acknowledgement of our presence, a quick glance in our direction aside, she approached the fridge. Her hair was now in the same orderly state as it had been before her fight with Aclysia yesterday.
Critically analyzing the empty inside of the fridge, she slammed it shut and then looked to the table, which was just as empty. I had stationed myself in the kitchen because my own room lacked a table to desperately brood on. Since we hadn't bought any provisions yesterday, there was no food to prepare. I was happy that I had gone here, right at that moment, as I could at least try to ask her if she wanted to tag along later. My plan was completely shattered, but as long as I got that done, there would be plenty of hours in the day to make up for it. "Esther do you want to..."
"I'm heading out," she declined by interrupting me, causing my insides to shrink to the side of a goldfish. With determined and impatient steps, she left the kitchen and headed for the front door. A few moments spent putting on her shoes later, the raven-haired woman had left the building.
