Back to reality

You were used to having fewer moments alone to yourself now and you wouldn’t want to change that if it meant you were gonna be going back to how things used to be when you spent way more time by yourself.

That being said, as you made it to your assigned seat and the test paper was put in front of you, you realised this would be the first time in what felt like a while where it was just you, your thoughts and a task set out in front of you that needed completing without any of the worries of your subjects that had been on your mind for a while.

The thought had been there that this test and all the others that came after it would be one of the great challenges you needed to get through but after all the revising and the mock tests you had been running through with your new KDK intelligence upgrades, it started to feel a little… trivial.

It was still a time-consuming process to get everything that you wanted written out on the pages but it was almost a calming process of letting all the accumulated knowledge flow out onto the paper after all this time of preparing it.

The only sounds in the room of over 30 people were the scratches of pens filling in work and the occasional tapping whenever you knew someone was stuck on a question, each sounding so quiet in comparison to the usual atmosphere that had filled the room for the entire year.

You seemed to be the first to finish and you allowed yourself a moment to breathe and check your surroundings before going back to double check all your answers. Granted, this first test was on a subject you were better at but it still wasn’t your best, knowing that the rest of the tests were likely to be as smooth sailing as the one you felt you had finished.

The changes you made on your second pass-through were more to kill time and it was the perfect environment to just let your mind go blank.

The time passed while you avoided thinking about any worries.

No KDK-related things. No subjects. No plans.

No thoughts for the first time in a while.

Just a moment of clarity.

The second test passed similarly to the first. And the same with the third, the only difference being that your thoughts were turning towards getting to eat lunch as hunger started to kick in.

Normally you did everything you needed to first and then you would think about food, but with a clearer mind than you had had in what felt like weeks, one of your baser needs was coming to the forefront. Now that the last test before lunch was over, you were tempted to immediately start eating what Mom had prepared for you but you had promised Emma that you would go find her and that took precedence over having a quick bite to eat.

You hadn’t been able to get her timetable to figure out what classroom she would have been in last but with a function on the KDK you rarely used, you opened up the map and used the radar feature to track her down.

You had only really used this twice before but you had seen the same layout of the school when you had previously tried to find Sarah and you were quick to get your bearings, figuring out where she was before putting your phone safely back in your pocket. You had also checked where Sarah was and it looked like she had already gone off in another direction to go be with her friends, letting you relax knowing that she wouldn’t be spending the time waiting for you either.

The hallways were pretty crowded with everyone wanting to leave as quickly as possible but you managed to find her, seeing her face light up when she spotted you which made you glad about choosing to go to her first.

“Wanna go outside first?” you asked.

“God yes” Emma quickly replied, letting you take her hand as you both filed your way out of the building.

Only when you had made it out and had managed to find a spot away from everyone else did you feel her grip on your hand relax, still not letting go but now having the comfort to enjoy your touch rather than need it.

You had seen that Sarah wasn’t in the area so you settled down at the place she had shown you previously, the spot in the grass with the tree to your back being the best place to enjoy your lunch.

“What do you wanna know first?” you asked between bites, waiting for Emma to eat as well before she replied.

“I honestly don’t think we will have time for everything but… Just tell me about my Mom last night and anything new with the KDK. I should hopefully be able to catch up with everything the next time I sleep but I really wanna know about what happened at the gym” Emma excitedly asked, knowing that something good must have happened for Grace to get in that state when she was home.

You tried to tell the story as plainly as you could but even you got excited going over the details again, seeing Emma's reaction and getting caught up in reliving the events made you give more details than you probably should have while at school.

Occasionally you did look around to make sure nobody was close enough to hear but the spot that Sarah had picked out was fairly out of the way and nobody really came close to where you were sitting.

“So you told her to show me?!” Emma exclaimed as you were getting to the very end of the story.

“I wrote that on her yeah, I didn’t know if she would actually go through with it though. If she did I felt you would enjoy it and if she didn’t, it gave me a reason to punish her later. I guess technically we got the best of both worlds as I still got to give her a punishment this morning” you replied, seeing the positive side of what happened.

“Wait, what was her punishment?” Emma asked, not hearing the events from the morning yet.

“Well she didn’t fully reveal herself to you so I said she would need to go without her underwear today. So she isn’t wearing her bra and panties today” you answered, keeping a neutral expression as you watched Emma process the new information.

“...So in the car she was…” Emma said with a far-off expression, thinking back to earlier.

“Yep, and I’m sure she must have been struggling up in the front while all three of us were messing around in the back seat” you joked, knowing that Grace had already said she was finding it hard to concentrate on the road.

You were happy to watch Emma now figure this out but her eyes turned to you as if she had made up her mind about something.