"Finally! School again!" Diosa and RJ exclaimed as RJ parked the car in the school parking lot.

"Uhg, I don't know how you two are so excited about this." Elena groaned from the back of his Jeep.

"It's not that bad, it's the first three days. Last year just started off bad for you because they have to instruct Freshmen about literally everything." RJ explained.

"And come on! At least we're not stuck at home!" Diosa smiled.

"Right," Elena rolled her eyes. "I forgot you used to be homeschooled." She grabbed her bag and exited the vehicle.

"Yes, and it was miserable." Diosa says as she exits the car, rolling her eyes sarcastically and sticking her tongue at Elena. She slides her arm through the strap of her backpack, groaning irritatedly at its weight despite her enthusiasm to be back on campus.

The trio walk into the looming building before them, the grounds being comfortably void of large groups of people since they'd arrived early.

They wordlessly begin walking through the halls towards the music room, repeating the same routine they'd procured since their previous year in the campus.

In the morning, without the notice of anyone, without the care of any rules or guidelines, they played instruments as loudly or softly as they wanted, filling the rarely empty hallways with an aesthetic of their creation and choice.

It was usually Diosa and Elena who played the instruments while RJ drew and conversed every now and then. They took their places in the music room again, like they always did, expecting nothing to be different.

However they paused their prepping of instruments as RJ walked past his usual spot next to the tuba, sitting instead somewhat embarrassedly on the pianist's stool.

"Uh.. whaaaaat... what are you doing?" Diosa asks, raising an eyebrow slightly in surprise as she looks at her friend.

"You guys said I was good," RJ looked at her. "You're the ones who told me to practice at school."

Elena and Diosa exchange looks of surprise before simultaneously smiling at their friend supportively.

"I suppose we did." Diosa says, pulling her violin out of its case and adjusting the knobs, sliding her bow against the strings to make sure it's tuned properly. "You choose a song to play, RJ, we'll follow along."

Elena nods, sitting in a chair beside her, holding her electroacoustic in her lap as she smiles enthusiastically.

RJ nods, adjusting his posture and facing the keys, scanning the daunting board, muttering a quiet, "Here we go..." before beginning to play.

Both girls take in the melody and tempo before, one after the other, they seamlessly enter the song themselves with an eloquent crescendo.

RJ felt happy to play with his friends, it felt better than alone.

|━━━━━━━━{♫}━━━━━━━━|

It was always immeasurably stressful the first day back. Even for people as ecstatic as RJ and Diosa, it was all just a bit much. All the confusion, the running around, the lost freshmen. All a bit much.

Finding and figuring out a schedule was hard enough, but the difficulties were intensified three times over as the trio attempted to work out two Junior schedules and one Sophomore.

Eventually, to their disappointment, it turned out that Diosa and RJ would only share two classes, and his lunch period wasn't in sync with the band's.

First days were always stressful and disappointing, though RJ reminded the other two that things would buffer out and get better.

The one thing they could agree was good, was that their lockers were still in the same spots.

Lockers had actually been the reason the three had become friends. RJ and Diosa had locker's cross from each other in their freshman year, sparking the friendship between the girl who had been homeschooled her whole life, and the dude who'd moved there only three years prior.

Then Elena had gotten the locker to the left of RJ's the previous year, making her transition into the group easier, especially with her being in a band alongside Diosa.

The trio were putting their stuff in their lockers. They doubted they would need much of anything, so they got to leave them there.

Elena was already done and stood next to Diosa, talking with the other as she organized her locker. RJ closed his locker, turned to his right, and ran into someone as he tried to walk to his friends.

"Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry!" RJ's anxiety spiked as he and the stranger fell to the ground. He started to panic as the stranger rubbed their head.

"No no, it's fine." The brunette shook their head. He opened his eyes to look at the blonde.

"No, it really is my fault." RJ spiraled a bit before he registered the accent on the voice. "You're british."

The brunette chuckled lightly. "Yeah, I am."

The two stood up and RJ realized what he said, gaining a pink hue. "I mean- sorry, I didn't-"

"It's okay." The guy chuckled again. "You get used to it after being an exchange student."

"Exchange Student?" RJ stilled as he processed. "Oh! Yeah, ok, ok." He froze absentmindedly for a second. "Well I guess I'll introduce myself, I'm RJ... well it's actually Artie John, but i prefer RJ, you know, wordiness." He rambled

By this time, the slight commotion had caught the eye of RJ's friends, who ceased their conversation to watch him, most likely to joke about this to him later.

"Well, it's nice to meet you, RJ. The name's Ken." He flashed a smile to the blonde.

RJ smiled, about to leave when he saw a piece of paper on the ground. "Oh!" He bent down. "Your schedule. Sorry, I must have knocked it from your hand." He said as he scanned the schedule quickly.

Ken smiles, reaching out to take the paper from RJ, looking at the schedule for the last time.

"Wait, do we have the same schedules?" He checks the name at the top of the paper. 'Ken Walker-12th'.

The blonde pulls out his own schedule, comparing the two as Ken moves closer to see, the smiles growing on both of their faces as they realize the papers are basically identical, ignoring names and grades of course.

"Cool!" Ken says. "It should be nice already knowing someone in every single one of my classes."

RJ nods, handing Ken's schedule back to him. "Yeah, it should be fun." Even if he had hardly any classes with his old friends, atleast he already had a new friend.

"RJ!" Elena calls from across the hall, picking up her backpack which she had previously set onto the floor. "We've got to go, classes are starting soon."

Diosa was already beginning to walk away, calling salutations over her shoulder as she sped towards her class. "Bye guys! Sorry, I gotta go! See you later!"

Elena began speeding away after Diosa, waving enthusiastically at RJ and Ken before disappearing around a corner.

"Your friends?" Ken asked with an amused smile on his face as he watched the two leave, turning back to RJ and wordlessly asking him to lead the way to their first class. "They seem nice."

"Yeah, they're the best. It sucks, though, because we don't have many classes together this semester." RJ says as he begins to walk towards their assigned classroom, Ken falling into a step beside him. RJ smiled, This was nice.

|━━━━━━━━{Notes}━━━━━━━━|

Hello again, a double update! Diosa really cranked out a lot of this one so it's really good.
Just some more setup before everything really kicks off, but we hope you enjoy regardless.
We hope you enjoy and remember to stay safe! (1279 Words)