A question with only one answer!

You nod, and smile back at her. As usual, her eyes are bright and sparkly, as if her energetic enthusiasm is leaking out of them a bit. She goes about the awkward process of turning around in the vent, which is made tougher by her long acrobat's body, and then begins crawling back down the other way and leading you in a direction. Well, looks like you're following her for now!

She leads you through a long path of twists and turns through the vents. At first, you try to keep track of where you're moving so that you can figure out exactly what spot you end up above, but you lose track pretty fast and also it doesn't matter because there are grates you can see through to figure out where you are at pretty regular intervals.

After a short commute, Lexi takes you to a cozy little spot just above the Gym, where the vents go up for a bit (probably to reach up to the roof), allowing you to sit upright. The vents weren't narrow or confining up until now, but if you'd tried to sit up you'd definitely bump your head. This part of vent shaft is shaped like a box, to make way for a fan in the wall that blows ever-so-gently, creating a nice five metre by five metre area with a vent roof too high to reach if you stood up and jumped for it.

"Set this place up last night." Lexi turns to you, smiling, and gets out of her all-fours-crawl to scooch into a sitting position in the back corner of the metal box. She's got a stash of water and food and snacks all set up here, beside where she's sitting back -- there's even a little ice box, too.

The gaps in the gently-blowing fan lets you get a nice view of the interior Courtyard of the university, from your angle right above the Gym. The airflow is also nice, because otherwise it'd be a bit stuffy in your school uniform and blazer. As you sit up to admire the spot and its view, Lexi suddenly lunges out towards your hand and grabs it without warning, pushing something down onto your finger.

"Eh?!" You cry out, yanking your hand back. You look down at your left hand -- where a ring now sits at the base of your ring finger.

"Gotcha!" Says Lexi. "We're married now!"

What?? No way! Lexi smiles and sits back in the corner of the box again, looking gleefully at your panicked expression.

"Dude, I'm gonna treasure the hell out of you. Get ready." She teases.

"Hold on-!" You attempt to interject.

"We won't even need to worry about feeding our children, between my stash and your chest."

"Hold on!" You object pleadingly. "That doesn't count! We aren't really married just now!" You hope you're right. You're not ready for something like this just yet. You're only just starting out at a university, isn't this normally considered too early?

"Fine, fine." Lexi concedes, to your relief, lifting her hands in surrender. "You win this time, Debbie."

She turns to her side and digs through the stash of food and supplies as you sit back against the opposite corner of the box in sheer relief. Phew.... that was close......

Lexi takes a blue slushee out from the small icebox, which she hands to you.

"That ring's just steel, by the way." She admits, grabbing another slushee for herself and opening a big packet of chips which she sets on the vent between you. "I'll wait to spoil you rotten when we're actually together for real. Because then I'll be the richest lady in the world, with you for treasure." Lexi takes a long, slurping sip from the straw of her slushee to conclude her thought. "Until then I'm broke though."

"Was there any reason you wanted to bring me up here?" You ask, before politely sipping on your own drink. It tastes pretty good! You think it's blue raspberry flavour, which you've found out is not a real fruit. It also does not taste like raspberry, even if it may be blue. They should call it blue sour-but-not-too-sour flavour.

"I was getting kind of lonely. And bored. I sort of just wanted to hang out." She replies simply, digging a hand through the bag of chips. She's definitely still a bit sick from whatever she had, since you can hear a slight blocked nose when she speaks.

"Oh, okay!" You say. "How long have you been up here?"

Lexi shrugs. "Since about dusk last night. I came on the night bus after taking the morning to get better. Well, the morning and the whole weekend, which I missed out on by being stuck in bed." She sniffs. "The world sucks."

You pause.

"All the time?"

"Nah. Probably not even most, if you don't let it." Lexi says.

You put your hand in the bag of chips and take out a couple to crunch down on. About halfway through the operation, Lexi gets an idea and quickly moves her hand towards the bag so that your hands will touch inside, but she's too late and you're already out.

"Dang."

"Sorry you didn't get to have any fun over the weekend." You say, meaningfully.

"It's fine. Gave me a chance to write some new music though. *sniff*"

"Oh!" You say. "Can I hear it?"

"Yeah, for sure." Lexi gives you another big smile, then goes back to munching handfuls of chips. "But I need my guitar to do it properly. If you like, and you've got the time, meet me back in the computer room again tonight and I can play a bit for you."

Noted. You probably shouldn't forget to keep up the exercise, so that classes don't get ahead of you, but hopefully you'll have time to hear her stuff. It's a hard balance, choosing between doing things that need to get done but are constantly available and doing things that are just for fun but on a time limit.

"Hey, how was yesterday?" Lexi asks between mouthfuls of chips. She puts her mouth over the slurpee straw and looks up at you from her drink as you answer.

"Fun!" You reply, munching down on your own handheld chips. "You'd have really liked it. We had a combat class against some simulated monsters that were really hard, but we still won anyway because we're awesome."

"Truth."

Lexi sets her half-finished slurpee back into the ice box, and burps loudly, before patting the shirt fabric over her fit belly contentedly.

"Alright, I reckon I've met my minimum quota for Debbie-time today. If you wanna go out and enjoy a normal lunch now, it's all yours. I'm gonna go spy on some peeps."

Oh! You were really getting into these snacks. Hopefully you'll be invited back here, you're not sure if you could navigate your way here on your own.

"You can keep the slushee, by the way. The tip of your nose gets cuter when it's a bit cold, so I'm thriving."