Rising Shards

Kalei stared in awe as Syval presented one of the rented party rooms in the boys’ dorm to her, Ko and Kai Matora, and Roux for some reason. The party room was about half the size of the big theater rooms in the school, but it had comfy chairs, couches, and a really big screen. The big screen already had Syval’s eGame plugged into it, and it was just waiting for Kalei and the others to connect their consoles to it for the ultimate splitscreen game day.

“Syval, how did you pull this off?” Kalei asked.

“Well, usually the seniors get first dibs on this room,” Syval said. “Then third years, but there was a sudden schedule change from that one guy, the guy with the uh, the you know—"

“I’m bored already, can I hook my console up to this already?” Roux asked.

“Yeah, sure,” Syval said.

“Syval, you don’t have to be polite to Roux, especially when she’s being all Roux-y.” Kalei said.

“Maybe he likes it,” Ko said. “But alright! Some Beam chasers first, right?”

The Matora sisters rushed to join Roux in setting up their systems.

“It’s not fair the boys’ lounge has party rooms.” Kalei said.

“Well, you still get to use it.” Syval said.

“Yeah, but, still.” Kalei said. “We get. I don’t even know what we get.”

After about an hour of play, the group had finished a tournament in the latest beam chasers game, with the last round coming down to a pretty intense bout between Ko and Kai that resulted in some hurt hands and some swearing that almost got them in trouble with a prefect.

“OK, I need to see what Tyrant Rangers looks like on this screen now.” Kalei said.

“Nooo…” Ko said.

“Yeah, we need a rematch.” Kai said, stretching her wrists to try and recover from the last round.

“You got your Beam Chasers tourney win,” Kalei said. “And second place win for Kai.”

“And my humiliating first round defeat…” Syval said. “Let us play some Tyrant Rangers.”

“You said that really weird, Syval,” Roux said. “But yes, can we please stop the jock games now? That felt like nine hours of continuous boring gameplay.”

“Fiiiiine.” Ko said.

Everyone got logged into Tyrant Rangers (everyone except Kai Matora, who frequently claimed that Tyrant Rangers M was “really very confusing and nerdy”), and Kalei was instantly engrossed seeing her character on a big screen. The group started a glistening crystal dungeon that looked incredible on the screen.

“It’s a shame Lillia couldn’t make it.” Syval said as his wizard started break dancing for mana regeneration.

“Yeah,” Kalei said. “Lillia’s really high level, but she must be playing whenever we’re not, she’s hard to schedule.”

“We could use one more account for this hat drop today.” Syval said. “Hey, didn’t you get…Zeta? To play? Maybe you can grab her console.”

“Do you not know Zeta’s name?” Roux asked.

“I just wasn’t 100% confident!” Syval said.

“Oh yeah,” Ko said. “Zeta got you guys that gold armor drop. That must’ve taken her forever to grind on that.”

“Good idea!” Kalei said. “I gave her my old eGame, it should be in our room still. Be right back!”

Kalei quickly dashed back to her room and found the eGame in one of Zeta’s stuff piles. She knew it hadn’t been used much, but she also wanted to give Zeta a more direct lesson on how to play before she learned any bad habits. She loaded up Tyrant Rangers M and looked at Zeta’s character.

“Hm, Azet Starlight, huh?” Kalei said. “That’s—”

Kalei felt a jolt as she paged through Zeta’s in game character sheet. She expected to see some really detailed but derivative descriptions of a character Raina Starlight played or just Raina Starlight herself, but instead was greeted with Zeta potentially letting out some info out to the world unintentionally (presumably).

Interests – “Oka”

Outspoken desire – “Oka”

Hidden heart desire – Oka O.

Favorite Food - Oka

Favorite Drink – “Oka”

Intended Love Interest – “Oka for sure”

And there were even more on there.

“Hoo boy.” Kalei said. Her heart was pounding almost immediately.

If it was just a few times she said Oka, Kalei wouldn’t worry. But this was a lot of confessed via video game character sheet personal secrets. 

Holy crap, Zeta’s very into Oka. That’s…

On its own, it was something that was pretty big, something she’d suspected of Zeta but hadn’t thought about it in enough detail to investigate.  But with looming nosy friends about to see the account, it became something much more stressful.

Of her friends playing now, she estimated a good 76% of them would instantly search Zeta’s character info and find out about this the same way Kalei had. And having all of them know something Zeta probably did not want out would be very, very bad and could really mess a lot of things up if any of them decided they wanted to make fun of Zeta for it.

Kalei felt her phone buzz. She checked to see that she’d already gotten a few texts from her friends.

“Hey, are you going to be back soon? Roux’s starting to get a big head without you here and I don’t want to deal with her getting worse.”

“hrury up”

“Koridia…if you take much longer, I’m deleting your save data”

“hey just send her username so we can add her while we wait for your slow ass”

Kalei groaned. She was supposed to have a fun day, now it felt like she’d just opened a time bomb.

“Damn it, Zeta…why couldn’t you be private?” Kalei said. “Private about…liking…wow.”

Her phone rang. It was Ko.

“Hey, what’s Zeta’s username?” Ko asked.

“Yeah…Zeta’s account…she didn’t finish it yet.” Kalei said.

“Aw, bummer.” Ko said. “Well, just bring the eGame and we’ll finish her account.”

“R-right.” Kalei said.

She felt shaky as she returned to the boys’ dorm.

“Kalei, you wanna just finish Zeta’s account and hook it up?” Ko asked. “Even if it’s just idle we can get some stuff.”

“Wait, then how’d she get us the gold armor sets?” Syval asked.

Kalei silently cursed Syval for that.

“Wait, yeah,” Ko said. She snorted. “What is it, just something embarrassing on her account?”

“Ha ha…yeah…” Kalei said.

"What, like bad understanding of Tyrant Rangers lore?" Syval asked. "Or more of a 'I threw up during a speech once because of my fear of giving speeches about mushrooms and ran out of the room crying' kind of thing?"

"More...more the latter, I guess?" Kalei said.

"Hold up, what the hell was that specific thing there?" Ko asked.

"Yeah Syval, did that happen to you?" Kai asked.

With the pressure shifted to goofing on Syval rather than Zeta, Kalei was able to relax a bit. Somehow she managed to get through the rest of the game session without the others seeing Zeta’s secret, which involved a few awkward moments blocking Roux and Syval from using Zeta’s eGame. She felt like the coast was clear when they wrapped up, and Kalei started to head back to her dorm.

Kalei tried to hide a wince when Ko walked up beside her.

“That was pretty sweet, huh?” Kalei asked. “Big TV. Video games with our bros. And stuff.”

“Alright, fess up,” Ko said. “What was up with Zeta’s account that you got all defensive?”

Kalei knew her expression gave away that Ko saw right through her. 

“You can tell me,” Ko said. “I won’t spread it around. If it’s really embarrassing, I won’t even tell Kai.”

When Ko wanted to know something, she went in. Not wanting to have a sudden wrestling match in the hall, Kalei looked around to make sure no one was listening or was close enough to listen.

“She put a lot of stuff in…about her crush.” Kalei muttered.

“Oh,” Ko giggled. “That’s it?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Kalei said.

“You’re so wound up.” Ko said, moving behind Kalei to rub her shoulders. “It’s just your friend revealing their crush via video game, it’s not a big deal. If you’re gonna get good at this stuff, you can’t get all…like this about it. Remember how I said I’d help you practice? Looks like you need more lessons than just flirting, dude.”

Kalei remembered that Ko was gonna help her learn how to flirt, but she’d been putting off asking her about that because it would make her own Nikki feelings feel more real.

“How about this, let’s practice,” Ko said, stopping her back rub with one last series of pats. “Tell me who Zeta’s crush is.”

Kalei was still processing the info about Zeta, but she felt immediately that this was the kind of moment that would ripple through a lot of things in the future if she wasn't careful.

“It’s Lillia,” Kalei said. She knew she was lying, but it was a lie to protect Zeta.

“No way,” Ko said. “Ohhh, that’s why you didn’t want to say it.”

“Yep, yeah, you know it’s just like,” Kalei scratched her head. “I didn’t want to make things awkward for the group, especially with Lillia only there sometimes. Like, then we all know that, and we’re all thinking about it when Lillia’s playing with us.”

“I get you,” Ko said.

Ko poked at the bandage on her cheek as she thought for a second.

“Lillia, huh…” Ko said. “Hm…maybe I’ll go have a word with her. If you know what I mean.”

“I…I dunno if that’d be—”

“I’m just joking. Or am I?” Ko winked and left.

Kalei deeply sighed when she got back to her room.

“Ko Matora, you are a very terrifying person…” Kalei said. “But you still have much to teach me, even if I’m concerned that your response to hearing about this was to rush and find who you thought her crush is. Or…just joke about that. Crap, that might really come to bite me later. Who the hell am I talking to?”

“Who the heck are you talking to?”

Kalei flinched to see Zeta entering the room.

“Isn’t so great when the shoe’s on the other foot, is it?” Zeta asked.

“Shut up,” Kalei said.

“You goof on me for flinching and for talking to myself a lot, you can handle it once,” Zeta said.

“…right.” Kalei said. She wished Zeta could be a little grateful that Kalei protected her secret, but she also couldn’t just drop on her what she read in Zeta's character sheet. "You weren't standing there a while, were you?"

"I just got here, all I heard was you saying 'who the'...heck...'am I talking to?'"

"Right, good." Kalei said. 

"I'd press you because it sounds like you were maybe talking about something embarrassing, but I have a worksheet about Cani fur patterns I really need to do."

Kalei got a sudden idea as Zeta got settled at the desk to do some homework.

If Zeta’s feeling that stuff about Oka like right now…maybe she’d be the best person to talk to about Nikki…

Kalei wasn’t ready to yet, but she felt a sudden comfort at having someone she could tell about her confusing feelings.