Rising Shards

My first impression: it smelled nice. The kitchen was a lot bigger than my LE one, but the wares and such didn’t look as fancy. I got out my phone to send a picture to Oka right away, but saw I had a bunch of messages from her. They all seemed like really anxious messages, and I wished I’d checked my phone sooner. I hoped her play rehearsal was going alright. I wished her good luck with the play thing and tried to come up with some supportive things to help her out. It looked like she was offline, so my attention turned back to the apartment, where Stella looked like she was a salesperson with the biggest deal of the year on the line.

“So this is the kitchen,” Stella said. I was surprised that she was so nervous here that she started doing her anxious habit where she introduced a bunch of stuff with “so…” She pointed to a door in the far corner. “So this is the bathroom…those other doors, so they’re something we’ll come back to in a bit…”

I nodded, finding Stella nervously introducing the place kinda sweet. This wasn’t as fancy as our apartment, but it traded fanciness for coziness.

“So this,” Stella said. “Is the living room.”

Among the boxes Stella had brought over stacked up around, I could still see the general layout of the room. There were some framed art prints. The bookshelves looked to have a lot of boring stuff, but more interestingly there were action figures and statues posed in front of them. Most of them were from anime and cartoons I only kind of recognized, but there were a few I did know.

“Oh!” I said, pointing to a figure with greenish skin that was in a sporty uniform. “Is that Irvanis from Twilbusters?” 

“Yeah, dude!” Dr. Diast said. “I keep my better figures here; I brought a more expensive one to the school I was interning at once to put it in my office and it got jacked immediately. I dunno if it was a student or a teacher and that will always haunt me. So I only bring my figures I’m OK with the idea of someone stealing, and…I’m rambling. Continue the tour!” Diast pointed to two doors adjacent to the living room TV. “The room on the left is mine, right’s is—” Dr. Diast started.

“So the one on the right is my room.” Stella said. The doors to their rooms were shut. I was kind of curious to see them, but I assumed Stella was just gonna have her room the same as her old one, and also assumed Diast’s room was probably super messy like her office. Which left another question.

“So…” I said. “Where’s my room?”

“Right!” Stella said. “So that’s probably an important thing, huh?”

“Do I…sleep in the living room?” I asked, looking between the couch and a recliner.

“You can thank Evy for this,” Stella said, leading me back into the kitchen. “She put a lot of work getting this ready.” One of the doors she’d mentioned earlier led to a basement. The walls were stone and cobwebby, which didn’t paint a good first impression. Was I to be shunted off to some dungeon-y basement? That seemed like a definite downgrade to the Litus Empirica apartment. I followed Stella downstairs, with Dr. Diast behind me.

Fortunately, the stone walls were only cobwebby in the stairwell. Down the creaky wooden stairs was a fairly open room. The lights were a bit dim, but there was the neon glow of a ColaBlu sign mounted on the wall. There was a familiar couch on one side of the room, and a familiar TV as well.

“You brought our couch down here!” I said. “And our TV!”

“I figured you’d rather use the one you know how to use for your space,” Stella said.

"How'd you get the couch down those stairs?" I asked, peering over to the small stairwell.

"That part was not pleasant," Diast said. "I almost got to the point where I thought about spending hours and hours plotting out a path to move the couch from upstairs to the void, then from there to this basement. But then I just used my powers to mush the metal in it up for a sec and pretty much rolled it down, but that shouldn't mess with its sturdiness or anything."

"Wow..." I said, testing it out by sitting down. "It feels sturdy to me?"

“You can watch new Tower eps with us upstairs, if you want.” Dr. Diast said. “Or down here is cool too, whatever works for you.”

“I forgot you watch Tower!” I said. “As long as you abide by the Faleur New Episode Watching Rules, alright?”

“Don’t worry, I’ve briefed her on them.” Stella said.

“Only talking during commercials, no spoiler talk, chew quietly.” Dr. Diast said.

“Right, good,” I said.

I stood in the middle of the basement, spinning around a bit as I got a feel for the place.

“Wow,” I said. “This whole basement is mine?”

“I figured you could use a pad of your own, yeah?” Dr. Diast said. “Wow, that sounded painfully dweeby, sorry. I hope the neon light makes up for it, I thought it was the coolest thing when I was your age, and it still works!”

“I am more of a ColaBlu girl, so I do appreciate it!” I said. “Is the couch my bed now, or…?” Stella pointed to a room connected to the den of the basement. I rushed in and was greeted with bright sunlight coming through a big window. It was a little smaller than my old room, but it had the same coziness the rest of the apartment did.

“You brought my bed down too!” I said.

“Yep,” Stella said. “You can handle the rest of your stuff, I know you don’t like it messed with.”

“Well, thanks!” I said. “I feel kind of bad you guys moved all this stuff without me.”

“Nah, don’t worry bud,” Diast said. “I got a lot of it out of preemptive guilt about dropping the ‘me as your roommate’ news on you like this so that energy powered a lot of the big furniture moves.”

“You don’t have to feel bad about that,” I said, getting my phone out to document this occasion. I sent Oka a picture of the basement and one of my new room.

“And now…I have to drop one more teensy thing on you, Zeta.” Stella said.

I gasped. “Is it the rare Cani dise—”

“Not that,” Stella said. “I have my orientation today. So for a bit I asked Evy if she could hang out with you.”

Like all the news Stella and Diast were giving me, it took a few seconds to process.

“Oh. Sure, yeah!” I said.

“Great,” Stella said, suddenly hugging me. “So what do you think?” There was a low note of worry in her voice still. Did she think I’d hate this place?

“It’s cool!” I said. “I’m gonna have to spend a night here to judge it but I already have way more space down here than I did before.”

“Awesome,” Stella said. She checked her own phone. “Crap, I better get going.” Stella flinched weirdly for a second, like she was about to move towards Dr. Diast, but caught herself mid motion. It almost looked like she was going to hit her. Was Stella even capable of hitting someone, and why Diast? Did they suddenly take up wrestling each other since they moved in? Instead, she gave me another hug and headed upstairs. Dr. Diast and I saw her off, and then it hit me that I’d be hanging out with my teacher. It looked like it hit her a lot harder, because Diast suddenly started scratching her face a lot and moving between the kitchen and the living room a lot.

“Are you nervous, Dr. Diast?” I asked.

“A bit, yeah.” Diast said.

“It’s kind of weird to see you nervous like this.” I said. “Sorry, that doesn’t really help things.”

“You’re fine,” Diast said. “I just…haven’t come up with a good game plan for the rest of the day?”

“I’m sure whatever we figure out will be fun,” I said. “I thought I had some rare Cani illness so while this is a lot, it’s a lot of…fun? Potentially? I think?”

“I’ll try to be better than a rare Cani illness for you at least.” Diast said.

“Pfft, you’re way better than that.” I said. “Are we just gonna be here, or…?”

“Whatever you wanna do,” Diast said. “If you just wanna hang out in your new den and watch TV, or hang out up here, whatever is cool with me.”

“Alright…” I said. I couldn’t really think of anything either. As Diast continued going back and forth between rooms, I didn’t really want to leave her alone. Plus, Stella asked if we could both hang out, so if I immediately abandoned her that’d kind of suck. I checked my phone for ideas and was greeted with some big news.

“Wait.” I said. “No way…”

I almost couldn’t believe what popped up on both my Tower of Hate and Love news sources and my specifically Raina Starlight ones. I was making weird noises as I stared at the screen but I couldn’t help it and I didn’t care even if I could help it, it was news about a limited edition hair clip drop featuring Raina Starlight.

“Dr. Diast!” I squealed.