Classmates.

Once the ceremony was over we had forty minutes until our very first orientation class. We explored campus for a brief moment, but soon we had to split up and go our own ways.

“Well, good luck everybody,” Alice said with a nervous sigh of her own. “Remember: you’re all amazing and more than capable of handling anything that comes your way. And if you need anything, Oliver’s a phone call away.”

“Hey.”

The girls shared a much needed laugh. It really was kind of eerie seeing Grace and Sarah being nervous, but Alice’s words helped them relax.

“Lunch in the cafeteria?” I asked.

“Mmm, maybe not today?” Grace said. “We’ll meet new classmates, and refusing to hang out with people on the very first day might bite us in the rear later.”

Noelle winced. “You think? I was afraid of that…”

I groaned. “See, that wouldn’t have even occurred to me.”

“Well, if it turns out your classmates are all assholes, give a shout in the group chat,” Sarah said. “Oliver will come running.”

“Hey.”

Again, they laughed, but even though they were jokes, I was still happy they would rely on me. We said a quick goodbye and went our separate ways.

And you know… I think I understand why they gave us forty minutes after the end of the ceremony. I… kind of got lost in the labyrinth of hallways and stairs. I left the main building through the back, went past the olympic pool and must’ve made a wrong turn somewhere because I ended up in some sort of lab.

Time was ticking down, so I swallowed my fear and approached a random student that seemed to be older than me to ask for directions to the arts building. He was friendly enough and pointed me in the right direction, but still kind of laughed at me for getting lost. Either that or for taking arts in this university. Could’ve been either.

But yeah, the place was big. The hallways were long and wide, and peeking through the opened doors at the sides I saw big, spacious classrooms that could fit about 50 people easily.

The last stretch to the arts building was past the soccer field, which I still think it’s a crazy thing to have here. I mean, it’s a lot more trouble to maintain a soccer field than it is to maintain a basketball or tennis court.

The arts building itself wasn’t too different to the rest of the university. It was smaller, yeah, and it only had three floors instead of four or five, like the rest of the departments, but it was well taken care of. The hallways had more painting than the other buildings, all with small plaques with the names of the artists. Other hallways had photos of campus, of students going through life, of breathtaking vistas… Actually, shouldn’t Isabelle also be in this building? Well, she’s with new friends now, so I better just focus on myself.

I think the email I got said I’d have my orientation in classroom 303, meaning the third floor. I went up, avoiding bumping into anyone, and finally made it to the place. I really need to find a faster route here…

The door was closed, but I could hear faint voices inside. My heart began to pound loudly as I feared that I might be late. I checked the time and there were still 10 minutes left, so even if the teacher was inside and talking, they couldn’t tell me I was interrupting anything. Not yet.

…

Fuck, even though I know that, my chest still hurts. I wonder if the Oliver from a year ago would’ve run away. No, a socially anxious person can’t even find the courage to run away from stuff like this. He’d probably have stood outside the door, pretending to be watching something in his phone while waiting for someone else to open the door. Yeah, that sounds more likely.

Thankfully, I’m not the Oliver from a year ago, so even though my heart was beating painfully and my hands felt cold from the anxiety, I turned the knob and pushed the door open.

Twelve people. Twelve people were already in this smaller classroom, nothing like the larger ones in the other buildings. This was more in line with the classrooms at my high school, fitting twenty to twenty-five people at most. And speaking of people…

“Wait, O-Oliver?”

A familiar voice. I turned from the prying eyes to this voice, and saw Eric walking up to me.

Wait, Eric!?

“Wait, you’re here, too?” I asked him.

“That’s my question! I thought you’d go somewhere better!” he said, eyes wide from shock.

“I didn’t want to leave this city,” I told him.

I sighed. I’ve said before I have nothing against Eric anymore, even if I don’t exactly like him, either. But right now, seeing a familiar face was extremely relieving. However, seeing him grimacing took that away immediately.

“This is like some kind of sick joke…” Eric muttered.

I frowned. “Why?”

“Look who’s sitting in the corner by the window.”

I blinked and turned to look past him. There, sitting at one of the individual desks and looking out the window with a scowl, was Julian Jenkins.

“Oh, come on…” I muttered to myself.

“Oh, come on!” someone else muttered, only loud enough that I could hear it too. It was a woman. “He’s here?”

“I told you you’d jinx it…”

I looked towards the front of the classroom, and if Julian Jenkins for a classmate wasn’t bad enough, it was just confirmed that I’d also be classmates with the lovely pair that were Luna and Ruby, the duo Fern and I watched play at the mall and who had such eloquent feedback for me.

“What? You know him?” a guy standing next to them asked them, raising an eyebrow.

He was… weirdly pretty. I mean that he had something of an androgynous look, with soft facial features, piercing blue eyes, short reddish hair and a slender frame. He was more than likely a man, though. His voice was on the deep side and he was dressed in blue jeans and a black button-up shirt tucked inside them.

“He’s a poser who uses a cat to get people to sub to his music channel,” Luna, the slender brunette, told him.

The guy frowned in confusion, crossed his arms and tilted his head. “And that’s a problem because…?”

Luna and Ruby looked at each other, equally confused, only theirs was at this guy’s reaction. “Because it’s cheap,” Ruby said. “It’s not music that’s drawing people in, it’s the cat.”

The guy pulled out his phone, scrolled for a moment, then showed the screen to the girls. “You mean how you wear light clothes in some of your videos? Or is it mere coincidence that the two with the most views are ones where Ruby is showing a lot of cleavage and Luna’s violin is pushing up her boob? 200k and 120k views, respectively.”

Both girls went red in the face, and the whole conversation began to cause a scene that everyone else started paying attention to.

“That’s…!”

“Oh, I’m not judging,” the guy said, pocketing his phone. “Far from it. It’s a tactic, like any other. People click on videos based on thumbnail pictures, not the first five seconds of a song. You’re both attractive girls, so you get views thanks to that. The guy there has his cat around, so he gets views that way.” He turned to me and smirked. “At least I hope he’s not keeping it there by ****.”

I smiled wryly. “She comes running whenever I start playing, believe it or not.”

“That’s cool. What’s your channel’s name?”

“Um…”

The door opened behind me as if to save me from having to share it in public. The person that came in was a middle-age man about my own height, meaning fairly short. Dark hair now becoming gray, small frameless glasses and wearing a pink shirt tucked into his black dressing pants.

“Hello everyone, my name is Steve Lewis,” he said as he walked over to the desk at the front of the classroom. “I’m the head of the music department here at Hyogen University. We’ll wait five more minutes for everyone else to arrive and then we’ll start, okay? For now, please take a seat.”

Everyone who was standing quickly found a seat. Eric and I ended up sitting next to each other, though…

“Maybe hanging out with you is a bad idea. First day and you’re already attracting drama,” he told me with a small smirk.

I sighed. “Don’t you just miss the days when I was invisible to everybody?”

His eyes glanced at Julian for a split second before he turned to me again. “No, not really.”

Yeah, me neither.

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