Magic and tests.

We gathered around the table with the board in the middle. I said hello to Frey, and she greeted us back by moving the piece to the word ‘HELLO’. We had made contact again.

“Frey, can you cast the enchantment you told me about?” I asked her.

“Sh-Should we really just ask that straight out?” Noelle asked.

“I bet she would rather not waste time,” I told her.

The wooden piece moved.

YES.

S-H-O-U-L-D-I-?

“Please,” I said.

T-H-E-T-E-R-M-S

A pause.

M-I-L-A-N-A

D-O-Y-O-U-A-G-R-E-E-?

She was asking Mila explicitly. The Russian girl flinched when she read her name, but soon she steeled herself.

“Yes,” she answered.

G-R-A-C-E

D-O-Y-O-U-A-G-R-E-E-?

“Yes.”

S-A-R-A-H

D-O-Y-O-U-A-G-R-E-E-?

“Yes.”

N-O-E-L-L-E

D-O-Y-O-U-A-G-R-E-E-?

The redhead swallowed nervously. “Y-Yes.”

A-L-I-C-E

D-O-Y-O-U-A-G-R-E-E-?

The president breathed in deeply and let it out slowly. “Yes.”

The wooden piece then began to move… I want to say erratically, but I doubt that’s what it was. It went from one letter to another, and while we tried to make out what it was spelling, we couldn’t. Maybe it was another language, but later Alice proposed that Frey might have been drawing a shape on the board instead of spelling words. We couldn’t confirm any of it. We were too distracted.

Little by little I began to feel something, and when we talked about it, the others told me they felt the same. It began with a warmth in my chest, then a sudden chill down my back. I started shaking, my vision blurred and my head spun. It was like all of that lasted a couple of seconds at most, then it all stopped, leaving only the warmth in my chest spreading throughout my body, then slowly cooling until I was feeling normal again. The wooden piece had stopped moving by the time the… symptoms were over.

I felt normal. No dizziness, no stiff limbs, no euphoria, nothing out of the ordinary except for a single, harmless thing. A belief in the back of my mind, an idea I had full trust in, even while recognizing it was brand new and knowing it had come from Frey’s magic. It clashed with old memories, but it wasn’t as bad as one would think. Still, I was sure the same question was going through our heads.

‘Why did we ever bother hiding our relationship?’

We knew why, of course. Before Frey did… whatever it was she did, revealing we were in a polyamorous relationship would’ve caused word to spread. News would turn into rumors, rumors into gossip, gossip into bad mouthing. We would’ve faced criticism, and very likely pushback from our families as well. Now, though… We knew we wouldn’t be hearing much of that.

“Is it done?” Mila asked.

D-O-N-E

I swallowed. “Is there anything else we should do?”

NO.

W-E-A-R-E-D-O-N-E-H-E-R-E

“Then… Goodbye, Frey. See you around?” I asked, unsure of my own farewell.

P-E-R-H-A-P-S

GOODBYE.

We remained quiet for about two full minutes, maybe more, getting used to the new knowledge, making sense of how it meshed with older paradigms. The bell rang, and as we looked at each other, we saw Mila smirking.

“I wanna test it,” she said.

So did I.

We performed the first test that first recess, or rather, Mila and Sarah went ahead and did what they always wanted to do without regard for possible consequences, catching even me by surprise.

I was in the middle of putting away my books when I noticed the two girls were flanking me. Then, Sarah sat on my left leg and hugged me by the waist while Mila sat on my right, wrapping her arms around my neck. Grace sat on my desk, watching the reactions of our classmates, and… yeah, they were watching us alright. Their wide eyes and loud whispers made my face burn, but the girls seemed to be enjoying it.

“So they really were dating?” said someone.

“Sheesh, go get a room,” said someone else.

“Is Grace dating him too?”

Maybe to clear away all doubts, Grace turned to me with a sweet smile and began to caress my cheek with the back of her fingers.

“You’re so red,” she told me, giggling.

Of course I was!

So… These may not have been the reactions we would’ve gotten before, but that didn’t mean people were indifferent to what was happening. Old rumors had just been confirmed, and even if the polyamorous aspect of the relationship was accepted, the fact remained that three of the school’s most notorious, most attractive girls were clinging to the class’ outcast.

A group of people came up to us. Amanda, Mark and Lena, the girls’ friends, looked less shocked than the rest of our classmates, but they seemed a little more outraged.

“So you ARE dating!” Amanda, the slender blonde with the pixie cut, pointed an accusative finger at us. “Why’d you keep denying it?”

Sarah shrugged. “We had our reasons. Now we don’t need to worry anymore.”

Lena crossed her arms and frowned. “You could’ve told us, at least. We would’ve kept it a secret.”

Mila smiled wryly. “Sorry, Lena. It was complicated.”

Mark rubbed the back of his neck. “So… how long were you hiding this for?”

“Mmm… About four months?” Grace answered.

Mark flinched and winced. “Shit. No wonder you got so mad at me when… uh…”

“Nah, I would’ve chewed you out regardless,” Grace said easily. “You were a plain asshole that time.”

“Question,” Amanda said, looking at me this time. “You guys have been hanging out with the student council president and her secretary, too. Oliver, are you…”

My chest tightened. I didn’t need to hide it anymore, but having to say it still caused me some uneasiness. “Y-Yeah. I’m… seeing them, too.”

Amanda whistled. “Man, you caught yourselves a big group of beauties, didn’t you?”

“No, no. Amanda, you don’t get it,” Mila told her. “We caught him.”

Amanda and Lena laughed. “Yeah, that makes more sense,” Lena said.

Word spread like wildfire throughout school. Soon, everyone knew I was dating five girls, yet it wasn’t the number of girlfriends that stirred conversation, but the people I was dating.

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