A friendly interaction, and the punishment for a moment’s peace.

Chapter 1 – Discovering the App (continued)

Jason didn’t run into Kate again before it was time to leave, and said a quick goodbye to his sister before hurrying to class. Traffic was good, and he found himself walking into the classroom for his digital art class four minutes before the bell.

He sat down next to his desk mate, the brown-haired brown-eyed Lillian Jackson, who already had her tablet plugged in and Photoshop loaded on her screen. “What do you think of her hands?” She asked, turning her monitor towards Jason before he’d even had a chance to log into his computer.

On her screen was an impossibly busty anthropomorphic cat woman in a skimpy bikini that looked just about ready to burst trying to contain her generous curves. Jason resisted the urge to look away from the half-shaded lewd digital drawing, and instead focused on the character’s hands. Lillian, to his knowledge, never asked any other student in the class to critique her work. He had wondered if she just enjoyed embarrassing him, but he was determined to give her useful advice, no matter how red his face became at the indecency on display. One of the feline woman’s hands was giving something akin to a peace sign, while the other rested on her hip, fingers pointed to draw attention to the bikini bottom’s center, which, he felt certain would be showing a distinctive camel toe once Lillian had finished her shading and highlights.

There was something a bit off about the posing of the fingers, and Jason experimented with his own hands, trying to match the pose, if not the positioning, before shaking his head, “You’re definitely getting better, but those fingers on the left hand look off. Can’t quite place how.”

The brunette pouted, turning her screen back to her and taking a long moment to regard her work. “Thanks for the honest answer.” She said after a moment, almost as an afterthought.

“Any time.” Jason quickly pulled up his own Photoshop program, and retrieved his tablet from his bag.

Their professor was a few minutes late, and by that time Lillian had closed out of her cat girl picture once some of their other classmates started asking for a look. Neither of them seemed to have a good excuse for further discussion until the lesson was complete and they were working on their class projects.

Nearly two hours later, they were packing up, and Lillian waved for Jason’s attention, and once more turned her screen towards him, “I couldn’t quite fix the hand…” She explained. She hadn’t made a lot of additional shading progress, but she’d masked out the left hand so now it appeared to be held behind her back, out of sight.

“Gave up on making it work?” He asked. “It may have been a little wonky, but I think it still looked better with the hand.”

“I got tired of struggling with it. Hands are still hard, but I’ll do better on the next one.”

Jason nodded and offered an encouraging smile before bidding Lillian goodbye then heading off. He had a little time before his final class of the evening, so he found his way to a bench in the quad and pulled open his computer sciences textbook.

Suddenly, pain bloomed in the back of his head and he was rocked forward. His book and bag tumbled to the ground. “Hey shithead!” He heard a vaguely familiar voice.

He blinked stars out of his eyes, glancing around, and spotting a tennis ball bouncing away from his position next to the bench. “I heard you’ve been macking on my girl again.”

Jason now recognized the approaching voice as belonging to Lillian’s on again, off again boyfriend, Marcus Jeffreys.

Jason got carefully to his feet and turned towards Marcus, still ignoring the pain in his head and doing his best to look unfazed and unconcerned. Marcus was a member of the school’s rowing team, and was in amazing shape, but while Jason hadn’t done much running in a number of years, he had once been a solid athlete himself back in middle school and high school, and he was taller than Marcus by over half a foot to boot.

Marcus drew up short, and scowled at Jason. “I’ve told you to stay away from Lillian.” He growled after a moment.

“I sit next to her in class. I don’t see her except during class, and she sometimes asks for my opinion on her art. Nothing more.” Jason advised the jealous athlete, not for the first time.

“You could find another seat.” Marcus suggested, doing his best to look intimidating. But Jason was just tired at this point. These sorts of interactions had been going on for months now, and most of this had been hashed out before.

“They don’t let us change seats. We have to use the same computer each time.” Jason reminded the sandy haired man.

There was a tense moment where neither of them was willing to back down, then Marcus sighed, “Fine. Just make sure you don’t talk to her more than you absolutely have to.”

Jason said nothing. He wasn’t interested in capitulating to Marcus’ threats, but also felt like he already didn’t go out of his way to interact with Lillian, but neither did he shun her. She was… sort of a friend. And he didn’t care about Marcus’ opinion on who Lillian could and couldn’t be friends with. Though it would have been nice to know why he seemed to always single out Jason, rather than anyone else Lillian talked to on a semi-regular basis.

Thanks to the delay, Jason was almost five minutes late to his computer sciences class, and he definitely had a bit of a goose egg on the back of his head, just above his hairline, but it didn’t seem to be bleeding at least.

Fortunately, there was no further drama for him there at the school, and his injury seemed to be fading by the time he was driving back home around 10pm.