Go outside to share lunch with Lao

"Fuck it, let's go. Lunch will be over before we get inside."

The girls headed down the corridor to the left and down the stairs. There were nigh hundreds of people roaming the large corridors during the break; chatting with friends and filtering through the groups of people standing around various random places. It felt like a concert or at least a really big rave. The doors that Zhou and her cousin left out of led into the park that the students used to hang around. Of course, it was much busier than usual but not nearly as much as the corridors.

Lao was a good five steps ahead of Zhou, strutting cheerfully and scanning the park's pathway, looking for somewhere to sit. When she spotted a bench being vacated by the group of girls that had just finished eating, she took off towards it. The lack of warning disoriented Zhou for half a second before shouting out to Lao, "Slow down!" She picked up a light jog to keep up with her. It wasn't as if they were competing with anyone to take that seat; there was nobody around. Lao, now close to the bench, hopped and turned in the air to sit down. As Zhou approached her a moment later, she had already took out a sizeable lunchbox out of her burgundy colored backpack and laid it on her knees, ready to be opened. Looking at the lunchbox made Zhou noticed how much bigger her cousin's thighs have gotten. This gave Zhou, with her modestly thin legs another bout of jealousy at her increasingly more voluptuous counterpart - at this rate she could even become a matron, the Party's most prized rank for a Non-White woman. During the post war repopulation programs, these women would be specifically picked to have as many children as possible. That era is gone and the world population has stabilized a long time ago but Matrons, becoming rarer were still seen as an exotic wife to have and are still to this day very much respected.

Zhou sat down next to her without a word as she pondered both of their futures. She had never actually thought about what to do with her own life. Since the age of 5 and enrolling in the general education centers, her life has been study and family-life and now, that graduation is closer and closer, the thought of being cut off from it was beginning to dawn on her. Lao always seemed to be the 'follower' in their relationship. Despite being cousins legally, coming from different mothers (whom were sisters themselves) but the same father, they had a much more sisterly relationship. Zhou was born eleven days before Lao and ever since then they were inseparable all the way through school days. In recent times, they grew to have more independent social lives but even then they often spoke and even shared some friends.

"You gonna eat or nah? I can give you my croissant if you carry my stuff the way home" Lao said with her mouth still holding whatever she was eating. Without even saying a word, Zhou took the clear packet with an Old Parisian Skyline on its label and opened it. "I'm gonna guess that this means yes?" Of course, there was no intention to do that.

The rest of lunch break was spent by mundane chatter between the two girls. That was interrupted by the familiar sound of the bell which got them to pack up and start heading towards the building. "You remember what we had now?" Lao asked Zhou with a quizzical look on her face. "Yeah, it was..." It did not come to her. Zhou was racking her memory of Mrs Peterson's diagram and timeline...

"Computer lab" With that, the girls went to their destination with a brisk pace. By the time they got to the school building the corridors were much more sparse than before, with a few stragglers nervously speedwalking towards various doors and turns. She had been attending this school for years but sometimes, the maze-like layout eluded her. Unfortunately for her, this was one of those moments; no signs, no students to ask for directions, only two ways they could go to attend their class.

"You remember which way was it to computers?" asked Zhou while turning her head back towards... where is she?
Lao was gone. She was now left alone, late once again. Now she was royally fucked. "No time to waste" she thought to herself as she headed...