Rising Shards

The adventures of Azet Starlight officially began with me taking a really long time to finish figuring out how to move around while also not making the camera zoom way into my character’s butt. Since this was multiplayer online, I hoped that others couldn’t see this practically up buttcrack camera shot.

Once I finally figured that out, I had to make my way to a stable. Apparently, the items I needed for Kalei were all able to be found before I left the starting region, a big farm area. It made me think of Raina Starlight’s Farm Adventure, which I made a mental note to search for on the system to see if I could play that afterwards.

Suddenly I was reminded of a time when I was in elementary school where I was out playing in the snow at recess. One of the helper teachers came over to me and asked if I wanted to ruin someone’s day. But in like, a fun cool way. Then he gave me a bag of sand to spread out on the ice. It took me a few days to realize I’d been bamboozled there, but at least I protected some kids from slipping on the ice, I guess.

I couldn’t think of an ice equivalent for the game, because as I was remembering that some girls walked by. One made eye contact with me and turned away quickly.

“Crap, she saw me,” one said.

“That’s her, isn’t it?” the other said. “The one that Ovie fought?”

I had really been trying not to think about Ovie that morning. As the two girls continued to whisper and left, I tried really hard to just focus on the game, collecting a bunch of random materials that would somehow make gold armor. Even with such a mundane task, doing it in a fantasy world made me long for an adventure like that. I’d take a trip to a fantasy world even if it was just collecting boring items. Even going to that stupid naked guy comic convention would have been better than being stuck at school all alone.

After finishing my collecting mission, I felt a bit of elation for helping out, then a lot of emptiness. I finished my whole weekend plan in a morning. And now I didn’t have anything or anyone to talk to.

In my mopey wandering, I ended up at my club room, but it was empty. Even Latte’s coffee maker was gone. Was everyone I knew on vacation this weekend? Another group of girls walked by, whispering while looking my way.

I went back to my sad thinking fountain, which was empty compared to the day before. 

Was I a bad person? I didn’t know, right? I didn’t know who Ovie was until I met her at Rising Shards. 

But I could have done more, couldn’t I? 

Maybe all the times Jeans was gone, I could have asked where she was instead of just assuming she was busy.

It’d be easier if Oka didn’t have her camp. I knew it was a selfish thought, but I felt so lonely without her there. Or anyone. I felt too overwhelmed about it all, a wave of emotional exhaustion hit me suddenly.

“Hey, Zeta, glad I caught you, Ms. Letoh said she was going to give a pretest for that class she subbed for...” Dr. Diast asked. I tried to look away from her as she approached, but she caught a tear streaking down my face. “Oh, crying…”

I sniffed, hating when anyone noticed I was crying, especially people with authority like teachers. It just made me feel immensely worse.

“Did it go that badly?” Diast asked. “I know Letoh can have a real mean streak when she’s playing poker, but in class…if she was mean, I can get to the bottom of it and make sure—"

“It’s not that,” I said. I didn’t even remember the pretest Diast was talking about. “It’s…something else.”

“Do you need to talk to someone about it?” Diast asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “I don’t wanna go to the nurse’s office though.”

“Understandable,” Diast said. “You wanna come into my office?”

“Sure,” I said.

Diast led me to her office, and somehow did a good job shielding me from anyone that would be looking my way as we moved to a more populated area. I would have felt even worse if all eyes were on the crying girl being led away by a teacher.

“I don’t have a great selection of drinks right now, there are a lot of Volleyball Muscles in here which I don’t think would help.” Diast said as she searched through her mini fridge.

“Can I just have a water?”

“You got it.” Diast said.

Diast got me a cold water bottle and a box of tissues. I could only manage a sip right then, but it did help.

“I’m just gonna be correcting some papers, but you can hang out here as long as you want.” Diast said.

“OK,” I said.

I sat and cried for a while, intermittently blowing my nose when I got too snotty. I cried like I did when I was all alone, which was incredibly rare when someone else was around.

“Hey, Dr. Diast?” I asked.

“What’s up?”

“Am I a bad person if the person I was dating was actually cheating on their real partner with me, only I didn’t know it that whole time?”

Dr. Diast leaned back in her chair.

“That is an incredibly loaded question,” Dr. Diast said. “Did that…that didn’t happen to you, did it?”

I waited a second too long to answer and Diast stopped working on her corrections.

“Ah geez,” Diast said, rubbing her hair. She thought for a long while. It reminded me of Stella’s reaction to Jeans. Their concern about it made the crying floodgates open a bit more, but it also brought comfort that they reacted with such concern. “That’s…a lot for a sixteen-year-old. I’m really sorry.”

I blew my nose again.

“Like, I know deep down the person I was dating was the root of it,” I said. “That Jeans is really responsible. But she made me think it was always my fault, and I haven’t unlearned that yet. So this whole news of the ‘she was cheating on her partner all along with me’ thing is hitting really hard. I keep having dreams about it, I’m not sleeping good.”