The class room introduced itself as 1-3 to the two prefects waiting at its doorstep.

One of them held a slip of paper in her fingers, roughly the same off-white colour as the bandaging wrapped around her cut palm. Disappointed in not finding a 'you're doomed' message at the back of the timetable slip Emilio had left for her on the desk, Kritika bit back a sigh and a burp. The burnt cheese sandwiches had saved her from the brink of insanity in the cafeteria.

Rizal had set his gaze on an ongoing hacky sack match down the corridor. The children had grown the gall to ignore their presence completely in the last few hours. One of them had looked up mid-pass, only to go 'shark' at the development and continue. The hacky sack decide to bail out of the open window at the end of the corridor within minutes of the pass. It must've thanked the strong air-lash that had helped it accomplish its escape into the poplars fringing the seaside. (The hacky sack was later recovered from a pod of grey seals in Finland by a national footballer. The following week saw its owner rising to glory as a Hootpod streamer, receiving a brief taste of long denied Internet fame.)

Kritika, snugly confined within the present timeframe, crumbled the piece of paper and threw it into the dustbin on entry. They had exactly one period between lunch and three pm; a two-hour long period of mathematics. "Now that's how you score a goal! Baba didn't raise no klutz," Rizal muttered while the crowd dispersed. She waited till he quit the Fortnite dancing and pulled on his war face. "Can you handle sixth grade?" he asked, hands awaiting command on the door handle. On the inside, raged what sounded like a boisterous game of Charades. "This is the only class we have unsupervised today, Kriti, sorry. Emil was supposed to handle this one, but someone had to keep an eye over the glitchy Office security cams. The cops would need the video evidence."

Kritika inhaled and nodded, trying to bury her memories of the first encounter deeper with each movement. "No probs. Just remember to come check on me once in every while, please. And uh, Emilio offered to take us to his parents' Grilleria tomorrow." She shrugged under his quizzical stare, locking her hands onto her hips. "My parents used to be regular customers, and their opinion on it is pretty glowing. Five star-ish out of five. Pappy's Grilleria's got some pretty sweet lobster burgers from what I hear."

Rizal's brows fused together into a monobrow below the three frowning lines on his forehead. His lips burst into chuckles that shook his scrawny frame with an obscenely loud pfft, that collapsed his eyes into wrinkled semicircular slits.

"Pappy's Grilleria hasn't been open in like. . . ten years or something, Kritika, what are you on? Emil's parents are doctors, the both of them."

"What?!"

Kritika felt her headache disorienting her stance again. The cuboidal memory charm dug into her chest bone, thanks to her tight-fitted shirt and jacket. Her 'okays' and 'sures' dismissed a Rizal doubtful of her digestive health. She wished she had Esther alongside her and her mind immediately chided her for behaving like an insecure little child. She entered the class, passive as an automaton of human built and introduced herself. As a gift, she was granted the solitude to think on one of the the free first desks. Someone in the last desks had been trying to mime 'Cassandra Halyconis and her suitor from beyond', a classic dragon romedy with a cult following of its own in Falghurur.

The hairs on her forearm had miraculously regenerated in under an hour, with no smell of their charring remaining. A neat trick of the shadows, neater than mine even, she thought. What is his game in this school though? He knows about the Happy and the conditional darkness dome tricks. But what is he trying to accomplish? What's his push?

She watched Rizal standing outside the closed door, with his head faced towards his right, through the glass window on it. He smoothly slid his arms over a disgruntled junior's shoulders and escorted him to class. Two of 'Emilio's' sentences stood prominent in her doubts.

"What would happen if there were a bunch of those guys?"

And.

"Now is not the time to play peacekeeper, Kritika."

Some words left unsaid peeped from behind the gaps in her mind.

"What if there were an organised group of umbrokinects? Imagine what we could accomplish together."

"Now is not the time to play peacekeeper, Kritika, between Falghurur and Lyonesse."

Behind her, the game had hit the peak of excitement, with the team nearly guessing the entire movie. They quietened down when Rizal's knuckles drummed on the glass door. She caught his hazel eyes looking at her and noted the quick upward jerk of his eyebrows.

Kritika stowed her tiresome doubts at the back of her head and shook her head. Rizal looked away once he caught the wave of her hands and the pushing forward of her desk. The temptation was just too much to ignore and she had work to do. Feeding two birds with one scone, Esther would say with a show of her dimples. The words left her mouth faster than she could comprehend, and the weight on her shoulders seemed to ease.

"Hey guys," she asked, "can I join your game?"

⑅ ♾️ ⑅

Fin.