Did he just say that out loud?

The door to the computer lab closed behind him with a deft click. John winced. ’Of course I had to say that out loud, in the middle of school, where just anyone could hear me…’ He scanned the room to gauge his embarrassment, hoping beyond hope that it was empty. Luckily, the only other person in the lab at the time was a girl that looked almost nerdier than he was. Uniform, hair tied in a neat bun with an ornamental pin in it, black-framed glasses, and earbuds. It seemed that she was engrossed with whatever was on her screen. Tossing an Observe her way, he scurried to a seat in the corner, his usual one to sneakily play Fightcraft on school grounds.

’Hey, that’s not too bad a score, either.’

In the same row of towers as April, John glanced her way. The computer he’d chosen was on the other side of the room with an aisle dividing the rows. She was pretty cute, actually. Fairly short, obviously part Asian, with almond eyes and deep brown hair, curvy but not fat. ’I wonder why I don’t remember her. Just yesterday, she’d be considered my perfect type…' He looked back up at her face that, at the moment, had her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth as she typed furiously away on the keyboard.

He bit back a chuckle at the look on her face as he focused back on his own screen. ’I guess Tala broadened my horizons,’ he smiled to himself, using the generic student login to get the machine to groan awake. Pulling up his favorite search engine, he pondered his options. With a quick glance in April’s direction, he started typing. ’May as well start looking. Well, we,’ he paused, fingers hovering over the keys, ’we?’ He flexed his fingers and shook his aching head to refocus, glancing back at April as he typed up a search. ’I am going to need more of those herbs. And probably a less toxic, and more reliable, way to control it…’

Every search he did brought up dead end after dead end. He rubbed his sore eyes as he clicked through dozens of pages filled with warnings about how lethal wolfsbane could be, even when using other herbs to temper it. Frustration built up each time he had to accept cookie permissions while gaining no new information. John switched focus instead on looking for herbal medicine shops or something similar in the local area. His first search pulled up results for witchcraft and Chinese medicine. Occult sites containing myths and legends about silver and moonlight made him scoff and click away. It took a few more clicks past warnings, rewording the search, expanding and restricting criteria, but he found a couple locations in town that were possibilities. One of the two was an old witchcraft and herbal medicine store that didn’t require a zip code or cookies. The other did, but it actually had a pretty professionally done website with some research about lycan control that was worth looking into later, when John didn’t need to be careful about who could see what he was reading.

Reminded of April’s presence, he watched her as he wrote both websites on the inner cover of his Chemistry notebook. It looked like she was playing Globe of Fightcraft, judging by her finger movements, and had a drink and snack on the table, though they weren’t supposed to be allowed in the lab. He smiled and cleared his search history. ’Alright, now let’s see if we can find this Despaxas guy. Any info is better than “follow the hedgehogs”, no offence to Kiana.’

Doing a quick few searches using the only information he had, all he could find was one online author profile for the guy with no other information. It seemed the paper from Kiana was actually his only hope.

John growled in frustration before slamming his fist on the table. “Dammit!”

April squeaked in surprise, knocking over her drink all over her keyboard. “Oh no!” He watched her jump up and unplug it from the tower. She snatched up her snack, setting it out of the way of the liquid, picked up the keyboard, and brushed black jelly orbs off it and into the trash can between them. ’The hell was in her drink?’ She shook the keyboard until the plastic rattled, trying to shake the milky liquid out of it. He could smell coconut and tea, but there were also scents he didn’t recognize. Instinctively, he catalogued them for later.

“Dang,” she clicked her tongue, looking over the ruined device, “now I’ll have to pay for a replacement…” Her face turned into a slight pout as she turned to John. “Not even going to help me?”

He quickly closed his tabs, covered his notes, and stood fast enough to knock over his chair. “Sorry,” the young man muttered, picking it back up, “sorry.” He cleared his throat nervously and went to grab another trash can to contain the liquid and strange bubbles from the table where she was sitting.

“Why’d you have to scare me like that? When did you even get in here, anyway?” She dropped the ruined keyboard into the trash negligently, focusing on the other student there.

“Before the second bell.” His answer was clipped, only responding to the second question, as he took off his jacket to mop up the rest of her drink.

“Aaaand?” It seemed she wasn’t going to let him off that easily, and he sighed.

“And I died on GoF.” He saw the glimmer of recognition in her eye and raised an eyebrow. “Happy?”

“For the answer, yeah.” She glanced at his blank screen, “Where’s your corpse?” She looked a little guilty, and he shrugged.

“Not too far to run,” he smiled at her, glad to find another nerd at the school. “I’ll get it when I get home, no big deal, just costs me time.”

She smiled back at him and stuck out her hand. “April Nguyen, I main on Pigeonhold, currently guildless.”

“Uh, John Newman,” he took her outstretched hand, “I also main on Pigenhold. My guild’s called Lunar Sentinels and our leader’s a dick.”

“Never met one that wasn’t.” They both chuckled at the shared joke before the bell rang and she sighed. “Well, you owe me a tea, so,” she walked over to his seat, opened his notebook, and wrote something down while John barely resisted staring at the plushness of her ass, “here’s my number. I’m free Saturday morning.” She winked on her way back past him, picked up her bag, and walked out the door, leaving a stunned gamer alone in the computer lab.

’Did I just get a girl’s number? Legitimately?’ The click of the door made him blink, and he rushed to his corner, checking that he had, in fact, just gotten April’s number.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he mumbled to himself, alone again. After putting her number into his phone, John stowed his books back into his inventory and stepped out of the room.

He spotted April slipping into the computer tech class and groaned. ’Damn, she really is hot. I wonder what her title means. Snowball…’ He distractedly mused to himself while he worked his way back to his locker, not paying much attention to where he was going. In the middle of pulling his phone from his pocket, the gamer bumped right into the person in front of him. It felt more like he’d walked into a brick wall, and the stench of stale sweat suddenly permeated his senses, stunning him more than the hit itself.