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"I don't want this."
"[ ], with your- condition, college isn't a possibility. We can't just let you go out into the world. This is what's best for you."
"How would you know what's best for me? I spent so much time and effort to get a full ride to this school, to finally get out of here, and now you're just going to hand me over to these - these people, that are just going to do whatever they want to me?"
[Sure, I make her life so hard. Too busy trying to hide me away and pretend I'm not here to see anything else in me.]
"[ ], don't act like a brat. Listen to your mother. That's not what they're doing, they're going to help you."
[I wish I could trust that you really were trying to help me. I almost wish I didn't know better.]
"Stop calling me that. I already told you, I want to be-"
"'Ecolo', which is an utterly ridiculous name that means nothing. Just because your online friends want to entertain your delusions doesn't mean we will, and by God, I will not have you just throw away the name I gave you, [ ]." [Pick a better name next time, then.]
"You've already stepped far too out of line today." [There's still a hint of fear in his voice, too. Even when he's trying to discipline me, he's scared of me.] "I don't know what your internet "friends" have been telling you, but you will not be leaving this house on your own, understand?"
"You're going to get help. Please, just go with them."
"I don't want help. I want out. "
[I want out. I want out. I need out.]
"[ ]-"
"We'll take it from here, ma'am."
It was everything Ringo Ando could've asked for; getting into her dream university, living on her own for the first time, her childhood friends at her side, and new ones to make in a brand new town.
Unfortunately, she was struggling a little with the last item on her to-do list.
She'd quickly befriended her new roommate, Amitie, a half-fae girl enrolled in the Magical Arts college (and a total sweetheart, on top of that) and an older student from the same college named Arle that she'd (literally) bumped into at the cafeteria (and making up for the accident by buying her a new lunch). But as the first week of the semester approached, she found it hard to even find anyone to introduce herself to! Many students were still moving into their dorms and apartments, and everyone was too busy to stop for a conversation. Her commitment to making new friends would have to be put on hold until then.
Ringo only really felt like she was getting somewhere when she sat down for her first day of the laboratory section for introductory college physics, and within the minute of the class starting, someone she hadn't seen before slipped in through the classroom's back door.
"Oh, sweet." The laboratory instructor, a grad student named Lemres, remarked. "The lab packets and the syllabus are on the back table, don't forget to grab one. There's free donuts, too. We're just about to start.” Ringo felt like there were strict rules about having food in laboratories, but maybe that was more of an issue in chemistry than physics.
The student nodded sleepily, like they'd just rolled out of bed despite it being four in the afternoon, as they grabbed one of each packet and a chocolate donut. Were they a boy or a girl or something other? She supposed it didn't ultimately matter. They had long, extremely thick, bright cyan hair that was covering most of their face, a blue trapper hat with some strange chemical stains on the fabric and pins stuck to it, and black and blue clothes (pajamas? Definitely pajamas, yeah). They made their way towards her table near the front, dropped their backpack unceremoniously on the ground, and sat down, shoving half the donut in their mouth in one go like they were shotgunning a can of soda. It was only then that Ringo noticed the subtle trail of drool trickling from their mouth.
"Cool. How about we start with introductions?" The instructor continued. "Name, pronouns, major and minor, and a little fun detail about yourself. My name's Lemres Beaunuit, he and him. I got my bachelor degrees in Astronomy and Thaumatology at Aster River Uni, it's way across the country, and I came here for my graduate work. I'm the instructor for the physics lab sections this term, I think Professor Ex is your lecturer, right?"
"Yes!" A tall boy with perfectly parted hair responded.
"Nice. He's a cool dude, he made a lot of advancements in both the science and magical worlds. Try not to bully him too much, though." Lemres laughed. "I like baking in my spare time. Guess you could call me a foodie, or whatever. Alright, who wants to-"
The boy's hand shot up in the air again, before he stood up from his seat and faced the rest of his class. Ringo was almost shocked by how plain-looking he was; with all the magic out there in the world, it felt like it was hard to find boring people, and he even played into it with a smart-casual utterly unremarkable outfit.
"I am Klug Müller! He and him!" He proudly proclaimed. "You'd do well to remember it. I double major in Magical Arts with a dark magic specialty and Astronomy, and I was the top honors student in both middle school and h-"
The sudden clattering of an object cut him off from what was bound to be an annoying speech. Ringo watched, in slight disbelief, as the cyan-haired kid at her table reached into their bag and pulled out a spoon and a ceramic plate with a large flan on it, caramel sauce and all. Lemres' expression shifted from sudden intrigue to immediate approval.
They scooped into the flan, and just as they were about to take a bite, Klug loudly cleared his throat.
"Ahem. Classmate. Do you mind? "
They finally looked up enough for Ringo to properly see their face - they were quite pretty, yes, but that wasn't what caught her eye- it was their eyes. She couldn't decide if their eye color was pink or blue or a mix of both, but there was no pupil to provide contrast against the iris. She had to force herself to stop staring.
"I didn't stop you from talking." They said, before sticking the spoonful of flan in their mouth. "I just thought you'd take a while, so I got a snack." They continued, their mouth full of pudding. Klug glared at them.
"It's rude to interrupt." He growled, but they'd already stopped paying attention and continued to eat their dessert, and a few people giggled at the absurdity of the situation. With that one-sided spat out of the way, Klug continued to list a few personal accolades before he sat down once more, looking more than a little irritated that his introduction got interrupted by pudding. The introductions continued to circle around the room- a gothic lolita-looking girl also in the Magical Arts college called Feli that she could've sworn was glowering at Klug, a boy named Tee in a white sweater vest and a black undershirt, who was an engineering major, and a few more people she immediately forgot the names of as she waited with curious anticipation for the kid in blue to say something.
"How 'bout you?" Lemres called out to them. They didn't seem to respond at first, shifting uncomfortably in their chair, before they straightened their posture and suddenly gave the room a bright smile.
"Ecolo!" They said, and the peculiarity of the name stuck to Ringo. "Don't care how you refer to me! Just don't use 'she'." So they were nonbinary, but more masculine-leaning, like Amitie's new friend Sig? Interesting. They immediately went back to eating the rest of their pudding.
"…You got anything else?" Lemres asked. Ecolo just shook their head 'no', and Lemres sighed, then turned to Ringo.
"…I'm Ringo Ando, she and her." She said hesitantly. "I'm majoring in Physics and minoring in Mathematics… I came here from Suzuran with my childhood friends Maguro and Risukuma." She noticed Ecolo's eyes light up with recognition, which intrigued her.
"Awesome. And with that out of the way… we're gonna go over the syllabus real quick, then I'm gonna go through my PowerPoint and set you guys loose to work on the lab. If you work in groups, that's cool, but you all have to turn in your own individual lab work, so no copying each other’s write-ups, alright? The lab's due next week at the start of class." Without missing a beat, Lemres started going through the lecture slides, beginning with a rundown of the syllabus.
Now Ringo was wondering, though, as she tuned out the sounds of Lemres stating what his office hours were. Ecolo seemed to recognize her name, or at least recognized something she said. Was it the mention of Maguro? Did they know each other? She didn't listen to much of the syllabus rundown, and the lecture itself was very basic introductory physics, beginning with a review of Newton's fundamental laws of thermodynamics and motion. Soon enough, Lemres had turned the class loose to begin working on the lab, and he resigned himself to his laptop, presumably for his own studies.
"Um… do you know me?" She hesitantly asked Ecolo, who had already started working on the lab during Lemres' PowerPoint, and was quickly making his (or their? Did he care?) way through it.
Ecolo smiled happily. "You're Maguro's friend! And he's my friend, too. We're rooming together."
Ringo's eyes widened. "Oh! He must have mentioned me to you, then. And you must be that online friend of his that he told me about, from back when he used to do Boy's Night or whatever he called it." She hadn't been able to see much of Maguro in the last few days, but she remembered that on the drive up to the campus, he excitedly told her that he was sharing a dorm with an old online friend of his, and how this particular friend and Ringo happened to be taking the same major.
Ecolo nodded in affirmation. "Yeah, he and I have been crawling around weird servers for years now, and we get up to a lot of shenanigans on his own server. But you're not really a video games person, right?"
"Not a PC games person." Ringo confessed. "I mostly play console stuff."
Ecolo suddenly peeked over her shoulder, and Ringo followed his gaze to meet Klug's eyes, who looked highly irritated at the two of them having a conversation during the otherwise quiet lab. She gave him an apologetic shrug, while Ecolo did him no such favor.
"Hey," Ringo carefully lowered her voice. "I'd love to talk more, but we should probably focus on the lab…"
"Let's move somewhere else." Ecolo simply said, picking up his lab sheet (the empty plate of flan had disappeared while Ringo wasn't paying attention, apparently) and his bag and headed for the exit. Lemres gave him a friendly wave as Ecolo opened the door and looked invitingly at Ringo.
He was leaving, just like that? What if they needed help from the instructor? Ringo couldn't stop her own curiosity, though, and she grabbed her things and quickly followed Ecolo out into the hallway.
"Where are we going?" She asked him.
"There's a study space that's usually empty on this floor." He explained. Then he was looking for a more out-of-the-way place to continue the conversation without Klug glaring at both of them for being disruptions. True to his word, they both turned a corner and found a small side area with cushy chairs and tables to work at, where Ecolo tossed his stuff into an empty chair and sat back down, lab in hand.
"Sorry. That guy was getting on my nerves." Ecolo explained, stretching his arms out before looking back at the lab sheet again. "Would rather not have him breathing down my neck for the rest of class."
Ringo laughed. "You're really honest."
"I was never a good liar, for better or worse!" He said, and playfully stuck his tongue out. Both of them began working on the lab again, which showed examples of basic motion equations and asked for calculations from given variables.
"Maguro talks about you a lot." Ecolo said.
"Really?"
"Yeah! The two of you must be really close."
"I mean, we've known each other since we were practically toddlers, and our parents are friends, too. We ran a physics club together in middle and high school, too. I’m thinking about joining the physics club here, or the student chapter of whatever physics research center sponsors this school."
Ecolo nodded. "That sounds fun. I’ve never been part of a club."
"I guess I should talk to the student life commission, then? Or whoever's in charge of club applications.”
Ecolo was silent for a minute before he started with, "I'm glad there are cool people doing Physics, too. I wasn't sure I was going to make any other friends while I was here."
"What makes you say that?" Ringo tilted her head curiously.
"I don't really have any real-life friends, except for Maguro."
"O-oh…"
He gave her a strangely strained smile. "It's okay. I'm just glad that I'm starting now."
"I mean, I had a lot of trouble too - I still do, since, um, I'm on the spectrum, and people get kinda weirded out by me."
Ecolo looked at her blankly. "You don't seem weird to me. I don't get what "the spectrum" is, though."
"You haven’t heard of ASD…?" Based on his expression, he hadn't heard of it. "It's a neurological condition- like, it changes your- brain wiring, your neural pathways are altered compared to a "neurotypical" brain. It's kind of complicated and it can be pretty different from person to person- sorry, I shouldn't be sharing all of this when I've only known you for a few minutes, I just find psychology kind of interesting…"
Ecolo ignored her apology in favor of curiosity. "Just the brain? And it's not anything related to magical stuff, right?"
"It affects motor functions and speech sometimes, but yeah, just the brain. As far as neuroscientists know, it's not related to magic, outside of sometimes affecting spellcasting abilities."
Ecolo seemed a little disappointed. "Oh."
"What's up?"
"I've just never known what it was, that's all." He hesitated again. "I suck at vectors. What'd you get for this equation?"
"Oh! Let me show you how to do this one…"
After they'd both focused and gotten about halfway through their labs during the hour, and said "see you later", Ringo reviewed the interaction as a whole.
He was playful and quite friendly, and refreshingly honest about his thoughts towards other people, but Ringo realized for that whole conversation that she had learned very little, if anything, about him. He seemed strangely sheltered, given that he didn't know anything about what was nowadays a quite common neurological condition, and he hadn't spoken of any other friends aside from Maguro. Speaking of, she'd have to text and ask him about his new roommate.
Oh so you met him? ★
Yeah, turns out we're in the same lab section.
Though I'm curious about something now.
Hit me with it ★
How much do you know about him?
Actually ★
Like, barely anything ★
He's never talked much about his family, where he's from, school or whatever. I know he's really good with computers but that's all ★
He gets online and shows us the crazy shit he can do with the game, and we all hang out and have fun but he's not super open about himself ★
Huh, interesting. We talked today and I didn't really learn anything about him, either.
Am I just being too much of a snoop?
Maybe a lil bit ★
The impression I got is that he's more focused on just like, enjoying the moment than anything else ★
I guess if he wants to talk about it he will ★
Fair enough. Thanks for the input.
"I think I remember seeing him in the cafeteria yesterday." Amitie said, spinning in her desk chair. It was late, well past curfew, but she was so fun to talk to that Ringo couldn't really help herself. "Greenish blue hair, kinda tall, right?"
Ringo nodded. "Yeah, that sounds correct."
Amitie giggled. She was adorable, on the chubby side, with fluffy blond hair and little white wings that made her heritage obvious, though she sometimes chose to wear hoodies to not draw attention. "He was mostly just eating desserts. I don't think he touched the dinner they were serving at all."
"…Honestly don't blame him, that fish filet for dinner last night was kind of sad."
Her face then fell into a slight frown. "I tried to talk to him, but…"
"Huh?"
"He seemed… I don't know. Nervous? He didn't say anything back to me. Actually, he looked kinda surprised that I talked to him in the first place."
"Odd…"
The profile she was starting to put together from her slight nosiness was of a person who was fun and honest right out of the gate, but had trouble connecting to others without something to bond over. Maguro was at least a little bit right, she thought. When something piqued her curiosity, she liked to pull and pull and pull at the thread of intrigue until it all came unraveled. Maybe she needed to learn to just enjoy the moment, too.
"Then I guess we should make it our mission to make him our friend!" Amitie stretched out, then picked a loose feather off her shirt. "If he's Maguro's roommate, we're gonna be seeing him a lot anyways, so we might as well try and get him in our group."
"You mean the Church of Amitie?" Ringo teased, and Amitie blushed. "Just kidding. Seriously, though, you're like a magnet. I can't believe how many people you've already made friends with."
"That's why my mom named me Amitie~"
They both got ready for bed, changing into their pajamas, and wished each other goodnight. If Ringo had any dreams, she didn't recall them when she woke up.
The next interesting thing with her new friend happened the next week, at the second laboratory session.
This time, they actually had to stay in the laboratory, since this week’s work involved an experiment measuring velocity and mass relative to each other. They’d been given model cars, string, and weights tied to the end of that string. Klug could glare at her all he wanted, it wasn’t going to stop her from chatting with Ecolo.
“I’m excited about the new pictures, too. That deep-field photo from James Webb is so beautiful… Oh, try adding another block now.” Ringo told him, after recording the first set of data in her lab table. The binder with her notes was positioned dangerously close to the edge of the table, but she didn’t think much about it. The two of them were having too much fun, laughing and smiling as they talked about telescopes and galaxies in-between data sets. “Wait, hold on, let’s weigh this first-”
Before she’d realized, she’d accidentally shoved her binder off the table, prompting a brief thought of you should’ve moved it out of the way first, dummy as she sighed and went to go pick it up off the floor.
The first thing she noticed, before leaning over, was that she never heard it hit the floor.
The second thing she noticed after leaning over was that it never hit the floor at all. In fact, it was just… sitting there, halfway between the table and the ground, frozen in place like someone had captured a photo at the perfect moment. She blinked.
The third thing she noticed was Ecolo reaching across the table, like he’d moved to try and catch it before it fell, and he suddenly looked terrified the second she made eye contact with him.
“Oh.” She quietly said as the realization hit her. The binder fell on the floor. There was a painful few seconds of silence between the two of them. No one else in the room seemed to notice this exchange.
She couldn’t understand why he looked scared out of his mind.
“Please don’t be mad.” He mumbled, almost too quietly to hear, as he buried himself in his oversized jacket.
“Huh? I’m not mad…” Psychokinesis wasn't even a particularly abnormal ability someone could have, and he'd tried to help her out just now. “Why would I be mad?”
“Um…” Ecolo couldn’t seem to think of a reason. “…I don’t know.”
Ringo went to pick up the binder again, but before she could, it gravitated towards her hand and she caught it this time, and she flashed him a grateful smile. “Lots of people here have magic, you know. I do too. Electricity.” She told him. “This school has the best program for magical studies in the country. You’re not the odd one out or anything.”
“Someone say magic?” Lemres walked by their table, scrutinizing their experiment. “Don’t use magic during these experiments, it’ll mess up your data. This isn’t Influenced Physics, that’s an upper-division course.” He chuckled.
“We weren’t.” Ringo reassured him, even as Ecolo gave Lemres a wide-eyed stare.
“Gotcha.” He said, nodding and looking thoughtful. “Keep up the good work, guys.” He pulled a wand out of his inner sleeve, tapped the edge of the table, and a small pile of strawberry bonbons, the hard candies that grandmothers always seemed to have in their kitchen cabinets, fell into Ecolo’s hands as Lemres wandered away to check on other lab groups. Ecolo simply stared at the pile of candy that’d just been unceremoniously dumped on him for a while.
“It’s not common where I’m from.” He quietly said, before pushing half of the bonbons towards Ringo and unwrapping one of the candies from his own handful.
“Trust me, no one’s gonna give you a second look for it here.” She reassured him. “Unless you’re me, and all your friends want to use you as a backup phone charger…” That got a laugh out of both of them. As they kept working through the experiment together, she couldn’t help but feel like his fear was more than just from feeling like he was the unusual one.
The week after that, she caught his eye in the dining hall.
He’d been on her mind a lot, actually, and she couldn’t really figure out why that was. When she looked at it from an objective stance, there wasn’t anything especially outstanding about him she saw - he was cute, but not drop-dead gorgeous, he was talented, but not a prodigy. But when she thought about it from her own experience, she couldn’t help but gravitate towards him. The same interests, maybe? Similar neurological quirks? His pre-existing connection to Maguro, her dearest friend?
It was all that, and the calming but exciting air of unknown depths that resonated with him, she decided. Amitie was both cute and talented, and Ringo liked her a lot, but this “like” felt a little stronger than just that, though it didn’t feel at all like the cheesy crap she’d seen in romance movies that made her roll her eyes. She was drawn to Ecolo in the same way she was drawn to the night sky, where it all felt so familiar and yet there was so much to find at the same time.
"Hey! Ecolo!" She called out. He flinched upon hearing his name, looking for the source, but smiled brightly and waved once he saw Ringo.
"Come sit with us!" Amitie called over to him next, waving wildly and jostling the table a little. Ringo grabbed her glass of apple juice to make sure it didn't spill. He seemed apprehensive still, but Maguro turned around and flashed him a peace sign, and that seemed to be enough to convince him to come sit.
"Whatcha got, buddy?★" Maguro asked him once he sat down. It really wasn't necessary to ask, though. All he seemed to have was a bowl of sherbet.
"Ooh, where'd you get that?" Amitie asked, curiously tilting her head. Ecolo pointed in a vague direction towards the serving tables.
"...You're gonna OD on Vitamin D, dude.★" Maguro remarked.
"Or sugar." Ringo penned an addendum, teasing him a little.
“Don’t you remember that old Super Show drug PSA that we play on the server’s Youtube thing all the time? If you do drugs, you go to hell before you die.★”
“Thank you for your words of wisdom, Captain Lou Albano, which I am about to completely ignore.” Ecolo said, like it was some kind of dinner blessing, before he started cramming his mouth full of orange sherbet. Amitie laughed.
"Can't say I'm digging the food they have today…★" Maguro mumbled, picking at his cafeteria mozzarella sticks. "Man, next time we should just say "screw this" and go get conveyor belt sushi. I saw a place with good reviews while we were moving in the other week. I'm down to take y'all there.★"
"With my car?" Ringo asked, raising an eyebrow.
"It's basically our car by this point. Not like I won't pay for gas, Ringie.★" He chuckled.
"I've never had sushi!" Amitie said, to no one in particular, as she happily ate her mozzarella sticks while Ringo worked through her own salad. "Is it good?"
"Oh, god, you poor thing, you've never had sushi…★" Maguro looked horrified. "Well, now I think we have to go. My treat. It's gonna blow your mind, even if it’s not top quality. Don't eat the packaged crap here, though, the rice is always gross and dried out. Fuck that.★" Maguro definitely took his fish seriously; as a fishmonger's son, he wouldn't settle for less.
"I've never had sushi either." Ecolo added.
"Don't you live in, like, the middle of nowhere? No wonder. Probably only eaten unseasoned steaks, greasy asparagus and dry biscuits your whole life.★" That sounded like an insult, but Ecolo still laughed at it. "God, that sucks, but no worries, I'm about to revolutionize your tastebuds, both of you.★" He pointed at both Ecolo and Amitie, before he made a disgusted face and pushed the rest of his mozzarella sticks away. "Ugh, I can't eat these anymore, can someone else finish them for me?★" Amitie cheerfully took ownership of the abandoned mozzarella sticks.
“So, uh, how's everyone's classes going?★” Maguro asked, then coughed into his elbow. "Mine are cool and all that, but I still can't decide on a major. I might just end up rolling with marine sciences if I can't make up my mind by the end of the year…★"
“They're going good!" Ringo quickly finished the cherry tomato she was eating. "Ecolo and I share Introduction to Physics, and Astronomy. I wanted to do observations for astronomy labs tonight, but I don't think this cloud cover is going away anytime soon, so I might just work on physics instead."
"Ooh, sounds fun~★"
“Dang, you guys work hard!” Amitie said, eyes wide. “I have a practical quiz for my magic class on Monday, but I’m kinda nervous…”
“Ask Arle to help you practice!” Ringo told her. “She’d be more than happy, I’d imagine.”
“You sure? I feel like I’m just bothering her…”
“Well, not tonight, she does a tabletop game with her sister and Maguro and some other people on Wednesdays.”
“Yeah, I’m running an Ice Mountain Magicians campaign right now. The other Arle made this awesome jester bard character, but our Arle’s just running the same regular paladin set she always runs, at least, according to her sister, you know, the other Arle.★”
Amitie groaned, squishing her face in her hands as she leaned forward on the table. “Don’t we have a better way to tell them apart? Seriously, why do they have the exact same first and last name?!
“Jock Arle and Goth Arle.★” Maguro said, and everyone at the table laughed. “I mean, I’m not wrong!★”
“I talked to the other- well, Goth Arle is what we’re calling her now, I guess.” Ringo started. “Apparently, they’re fraternal twins that grew up separated, with different sets of grandparents. Goth Arle transitioned at some point, somehow picked the exact same name, and now that they’re living together again, neither of them are willing to change or back down, apparently.”
“Wait, really?” Ecolo asked through a mouthful of sherbet. “That’s hilarious.”
“Jeez, they look really identical, too. Is that why they’re always arguing with each other?” Amitie wondered.
Maguro put a hand on his chin.“They’re just those kinds of twins, I think. And crazy stubborn, if the name fiasco says anything.★”
"What about that little bunny guy our Arle always has with her, what's the deal with that?" Ringo wondered.
"Carbuncle? I think he's a fae." Amitie said thoughtfully. "I'm kinda surprised the school lets her bring him to campus, since people aren't supposed to have pets, though maybe it's because she doesn't live on campus. I've seen him with both Arles, so I guess they share him?"
"Yeah, I kinda figured that normal animals can't eat whole servings of curry in thirty seconds flat… Hey, Ecolo, how about you, how're your classes going?★" Maguro asked, wanting to include him in the conversation; he hadn't said much of substance at all thus far.
Ecolo, who looked like he'd been spacing out for most of the conversation, was suddenly brought back down to Earth. "Oh, um, they're fun. There's an annoying guy in the physics lab, but I can deal with that."
"Klug?" Ringo said, then laughed. Amitie's eyes widened.
"You have Klug in your lab section? Oh no…" She buried her face in her hands a little.
"You know him?" Ecolo tilted his head curiously at Amitie.
"We went to high school together with some of my other friends." She explained. "And, I mean, he's definitely someone I consider a friend! He just takes his magic studies really seriously, like pulling crazy all-nighters, and um, it's not like he's just a total jerk, he's like, the nice kind of jerk, if that makes sense…" It didn't make sense, but Ringo had to take Amitie at her word. "Um, my point is, he gets pretty annoyed when people don't take their education seriously, or him seriously, and I don't think that's a bad thing, but he can be a little weird about it sometimes…" She laughed nervously. Ringo couldn't help but scan the area around them for the plain-looking boy, because he would've absolutely interpreted Amitie's explanation as trash talk.
"So what you're saying is that normally he's cool, but he tends to have a stick up his ass.★" Maguro said.
"Yeah. That." Amitie sighed, playing with her own hair a little. "He can be really, really nice, he just tends to get caught up in, well… you get the idea."
"Wait, doesn't he work at the campus Starbucks?!★" Maguro suddenly realized, then started laughing. "Oh my god, last time I went in there, he was arguing with this green-haired chick with a parasol over, like, whether or not frappuccinos were "real" coffee, and he was getting pissed at one of his coworkers for constantly putting protein shots in people's drinks without asking-★"
"That would be Raffina… She works there, too." Amitie looked thoroughly embarrassed now, blushing like crazy.
"How many people do you know? " Ringo asked in bewilderment. It was more of a rhetorical question, though, she wasn't expecting Amitie to give a number or anything.
"A lot?" Amitie sheepishly answered. “Look, I went to high school with Raffina too, and I’m trying to get to know the names of everyone in our dorm, at least-!”
Ringo sighed. “A noble pursuit, I still can’t remember anyone’s names to save my life.”
“Rin-rin has always been bad with names.★” Maguro confessed, making her blush from the use of one of his many nicknames for her. “But I’m bad with faces, so together we make one functioning human being!★” Ringo snorted at this.
“Well, I’m done.” Amitie had finished the rest of the mozzarella sticks, and Ringo had finished her own salad a long time ago. Somehow, Ecolo had gone and put his empty bowl in the dish pit while no one was looking. “I’m gonna go watch a movie! The anime club is showing Whisper of the Heart tonight.”
“Aw, I’ve seen that! It’s a super cute movie.”
“I gotta run and get set up, campaign night starts in thirty minutes. Thanks for hanging out, y’all! ★” Maguro checked his watch and grabbed his satchel, which was presumably carrying his manual and all of his other game pieces. Ringo and Ecolo both waved at them as they dumped off their trays, then Amitie slipped out the door and Maguro dashed away into the commons area attached to the hall.
Ringo smiled happily.
There was no way she could have ever anticipated how much worse her night was about to get.
The dorm buildings were co-ed; they'd done away with sex-segragated dorms ages ago when more nonhumans started attending, and given that gender roles were much less prominent in fae society and the like, it made the most sense to just desegregate the dorms. It wasn't like segregating the dorms was really going to put a stop to couples visiting each other's rooms… regardless, Ringo and Amitie's dorm room was, by some stroke of luck, right next to Maguro's, and by extension, Ecolo's room. Living next to her best friend was always comforting and convenient, and it was especially convenient in this case, since she and Ecolo were headed in the same direction.
Between the dining hall and the bulk of the campus dorms was a non-insignificantly sized parking lot where her own car currently lived, unless Maguro had parked it somewhere weird last time he'd used it. She pretty much always cut through this lot to get between the buildings, going around the long way took twice as much time, if her mental guesstimates were right.
Immediately upon leaving, she’d strung Ecolo into a conversation about quantum physics. Their classes weren’t going to cover it anytime soon, and certainly not in-depth, but she still found it fascinating.
"Okay, which one: string theory or loop quantum gravity?" Ringo proposed.
Ecolo looked betrayed. "You can't make me pick just yet-! I'm only an undergrad! Well, I think both are good starts, but neither of them are really getting to the heart of the problem, I guess."
"What do you mean?"
"They're both trying to fit spacetime in boxes that humans find nice and tidy. Strings connected together and little bits of information that form webs? I don't really think it's that simple. I think it's like- it's like-"
Before Ecolo could elaborate on his own ideas, he was cut off by the opening of a van door.
“Good evening, students! How convenient. Might I borrow your time?”
Already, the alarm bells were going off in Ringo’s head. A young man in a black coat covering his shirt and tie, blue pants, calf-high boots and some weird high-tech headset stepped out of a black van, carrying a boxy-looking backpack with the same kind of strange aesthetic as his headset. He looked like he’d just walked off some kind of sci-fi movie set. And his hair bore a remarkable resemblance to a dollop of toothpaste.
Ringo’s brain immediately jumped to two things. One, he was simply someone who got lost and was going to ask for directions. That idea immediately got nixed in her head, most cars came with a built-in GPS these days, and this van looked new, on top of him already carrying a bunch of gadgets. Two, he was either a religious recruiter, a multi-level-marketing scheme recruiter, or some kind of bizarre door-to-door salesman, but it was nearly eight in the evening now, most students would be going back to their dorms by this time. Maybe he was looking for a more direct marketing strategy. Either way, he was probably going to waste their time, and the whole thing was creepy, to boot.
“Um… we’re kinda busy.” Ringo laughed nervously.
“That’s quite alright, I’ll be quick.” The young man clarified, and Ringo cursed herself for not being more forceful right out of the gate.
“She means it, we’re really busy.” Ecolo was lying through his teeth, not sounding entirely convincing. “We’re, uh, we have to finish lab reports.”
“Ah, fellow scientists!” He exclaimed, and Ringo was sure Ecolo was cursing himself now as well. “In that case, I think you’d be quite a bit more interested in our cause. My name is Eight, though I’d really prefer Zero-Eight, er, that’s not relevant. I’m here today on behalf of my employers, a corporation where we strive to develop the technologies of the future for the benefit of all.”
“That’s great and all, but… what does this have to do with talking to random college students?”
“Oh, everything!” Eight grinned. “Green light, proceed to target."
In that second, hell broke loose. Men in body armor suddenly flooded out from behind cars - how did Ringo not notice the strange black cars with tinted windows parked everywhere?! Both her and Ecolo turned to run, but of course there were guards for both of them that roughly grabbed Ringo and held her in place. Ecolo got caught just the same, pinned back by the wrists with the guard gripping around his neck. Ringo screamed, but they were too deep in the parking lot now for anyone to quickly reach them.
“Finally!” Eight cheered. “Weeks of searching, weeks of planning. Good god, this operation has been annoying, but I’ve finally done it! This’ll land me that promotion for sure. Could someone grab the carrier, please?”
“Who are you?! What do you want from us?! If it’s money, I’ll give you money!!” Ringo shouted, trying to wiggle out, but the guards just held her tighter and tighter as her blood flow began to cut off to her arms. She tried kicking and lost her balance, now hanging forward, she tried charging up her power, but her heartbeat was too erratic and her mind too scrambled to concentrate on her magic. She had to get out, get help, she wasn’t the only one in danger here, Ecolo-
“Were you not listening? Eight, Zero-Eight, Agent Zero-Eight. Kids these days, no conversational skills…” He scoffed. "Ah, yes! That." Eight’s eyes sparkled with excitement. "You see, to elaborate simply, your friend here- I believe they called themselves "Ecolo"- is actually quite a subject of interest for our organization. We have reason to believe they possess an immense, incredible power... the power to rewrite spacetime! A power that could, potentially, solve many of the problems that plague modern man. Hard to believe anything of this world is even capable of that. Fascinating stuff, of course- ah, forgive me. I suppose this kind of thing is beyond your level of study as an undergraduate, isn't it? Regardless, we've been authorized by their guardians and our director to track them down and take them back to our laboratory for further investigation." His grin was genuine, but there was a deep impression of casual cruelty behind it. "You wouldn't want to get in the way of a scientific revolution, would you?"
All of this information was such a fucking brain overload and it was turning her thoughts into mush. Ringo yelled hoarsely, struggling fiercely against the grip of the security that this agent had brought. "I don't care about any of this "scientific revolution" shit you're making up. He's my friend-!" A rough hand clapped over her mouth, and she screamed and squirmed in place, until she noticed the plastic inhaler being shoved firmly over her nose and mouth in replacement of the hand and desperately forced herself to stop breathing.
"Sorry, kid! Orders are orders, y'know?" Eight started, then mumbled, "And I really need this next pay raise..." under his breath.
She glanced over at Ecolo, only for her heart to sink in her stomach when she laid eyes on him. He was unresponsive, not making any effort to fight back, trapped in a dissociative trance. The only sign that he was still conscious was that he was trembling and liquid was dripping off of his face, obscured by his hair.
"With that problem soon to be taken care of…" Eight indicated towards Ringo, and that comment alone confirmed her suspicion about whatever was in the inhaler being some kind of chemical, or something magically augmented, that she did not want to breathe in, "Would one of you hand me that carrier already? We don't have all-"
Ecolo's head suddenly snapped up towards Eight, causing him to go silent mid-sentence. Once Ringo got a good look at him, she froze, and a horrible chill spread through her veins even as her lungs screamed for air.
There wasn't anything there .
Huge patches of sticky, bubbling darkness spread across any exposed skin, he was starting to look less like a solid person and more like a facsimile made of liquid, and all that was left of his face- if it could even be called that anymore- were two bright cyan circles, like eyes, boring straight through Eight.
And then he suddenly pitched forward, slipping out of the hands of the guard, and his body splattered onto the ground in a puddle.
Ringo nearly threw up in her mouth.
The liquid was black. Not even pitch black, void black, absorbing every photon that touched it, with faint glimmers of light swirling around in it at impossible depths. The hollow pockets of the universe stared back at her. Eight simply stood there, slack-jawed, and his backup stumbled away in pure terror.
The surface of the puddle rippled, then rose, and the rest of the liquid followed, spinning and swirling in the air, free of gravity, moving without friction; like the quantum superfluids that fascinated her as a teenager. Forming unfamiliar shapes, then familiar ones, becoming pudgy, ill-defined limbs, torso and chest, and a wispy round head, all held together by a crackling, spinning, jagged star, the same brilliant blue as before.
The featureless face opened its small, circular eyes, and its mouth split apart, wide and blue, frowning and dripping a luminous substance out of it. The void bubbled and floated around the being, its limbs and head tipped in cyan fluid, and it all moved like a liquid and solid and a gas at once, as though it couldn't decide which state of matter it wanted to be in.
This… thing, this unearthly entity, turned their unflinching gaze towards Eight; they weren't looking at him, but through him, unfocused and distant and giving him the same kind of regard one would a tiny insect.
"A… amazing!" Eight was awestricken. "This is so much more than what I was expecting! Ah, but how are we to capture it in this sta-"
"Stop it." Was this still Ecolo? It was his voice, but it sounded so strange now, like Ringo was hearing it directly in her mind rather than out loud. They spoke, but their mouth didn't animate with it. Without even lifting a hand, Ringo felt an immensely powerful shockwave propagate from them, one that knocked Eight clean off his feet and forced the backup he'd brought with him to stumble.
As the rest of the security force began to scramble, Ringo commanded her body to move, her lungs at their limit, and as she burst out of the guard's grip she accidentally breathed in an overpowering, unfamiliar scent that felt like it burned against the inside of her windpipe. The adrenaline in her body fueled both her strength and electric powers, and she decked the guard that had loosened his grip on her in the face as hard as she could. He guffawed, the shock hitting him harder than anything else, and collapsed onto the asphalt. If that hit didn't make him faint, his head making a loud crack upon hitting the pavement hopefully would, and the rest of the calvary simply stared in horror.
"Would one of you morons do something?" Eight yelled, trying to get back on his feet. Ringo held out her hand in the right-hand-rule position for Fleming's generators, and put all her energy into her fingers. The voltage alone was easily enough to knock someone else out.
"Get away!" She shouted as she fired off a crack shot at the next guard trying to rush her down, scoring a direct hit and knocking him off his feet too. The guard following him was suddenly held tightly in place by invisible force, and she whipped her head around to see that goopy-looking thing staring him down, silently watching him contort slightly under the pressure until he fell alongside his shocked comrades.
The rest of the assistance that Eight had brought, upon seeing Ecolo(?)'s sheer power and Ringo's complete lack of regard for human life, broke formation. Even Eight looked like he was scared out of his wits as the organization fell apart, and all they could seem to do to rectify the situation was to start dragging the unconscious people away and scramble for cover deeper in the parking lot in order to regroup.
"Hey!" Ringo shouted, instinctively trying to give chase. Her legs felt like jelly and she wobbled and fell, scraping her shins on the asphalt as she landed on her side and cried out in pain. Whatever she had breathed in was getting to her now. Her heart was racing, her lungs were burning, but her head felt horrible and distorted and what little grip she had on reality left now was slipping.
"…Ringo? No, no, please-"
This voice again, Ecolo's voice but Not-Ecolo's voice at once, reached out to her, though her senses were quickly becoming muddied, dulling by the second. God, it was so hard to keep her eyes open, but there was black substance in her vision, blue eyes and a terrified frown, and she fought to hold on just a tiny bit longer.
"…Ecolo? I'm…"
"No, no, no." She faintly felt pressure on her arms, something cold but soft touching her hand. "This can't be happening. No. I can't- I thought I could-"
As she lost the battle against her own drowsiness, the ground seemed to give away from under her, her senses fizzled, and all she could get out before the radio silence drowned everything out was a hoarse, whispered,
"Sorry."
Ringo floated through a void, deprived of any and all senses, thoughts lost in space.
Ring spun hopelessly around a black hole, her being torn apart by its immense gravity, her insides getting twisted around themselves and the light in her eyes being pulled deep inside.
Ringo’s lungs blazed with fire too great to contain in her body, every breath adding more fuel to the flames.
…
Ringo found herself lying face-down on cold rubber.
She groaned, covering her mouth in case her nausea got the best of her, with her own heartbeat still pounding in her throat and lacking the wherewithal to try and turn over. Her head felt like it’d been crammed full of fluffy cotton, her lungs ached, her stomach ached, her heart ached, and even though she would have been fine with just lying there and doing nothing for the next hour, she forced herself to at least open her eyes.
Au contraire, she didn't earn anything in terms of visuals when she did so. The place she was in now was totally dark and the only lights she picked up on were dim floor lights running around the room and a faint blue glow coming from somewhere she couldn't discern. Wherever this was, she didn't recognize it, but if she had to make an educated guess, she was somewhere in one of the campus buildings, maybe a laboratory or a hallway. Labs tended to have non-slip surfaces and floor lighting to reduce accidents.
She tried to spit out a "Hello?", but it came out as more of a slurred mess as her motor functions did their best to recover to something resembling full capacity. Ringo decided to give herself a minute for her body to wake up, even as confused and afraid as she felt; she had no idea what was going on or how she got here. It was completely quiet, though she thought she could hear the humming of a computer.
As she reached out to try and push herself into a sitting position, she accidentally stuck her hand right into something that was decidedly not the rubber floor, making her jolt.
Now she could see where the light was coming from. The substance she'd just thrust her hand into was a pitch-black puddle, paradoxically emitting a faint glow. "Shit!" Ringo slurred slightly, then bit her tongue as she forced herself to curb her reaction. She pulled her hand out of the puddle, thankfully none of the liquid stuck to her, but this could be some kind of dangerous chemical spill and she'd have to find a sink to wash it off before it burned her hand, or worse, especially considering the puddle was glowing -
Wait.
[ co ]
Ringo stared at the puddle blankly. What had she been doing before she got here? She forced herself to run through the events of the day, went through her mental class schedule. She'd eaten dinner with her friends. She left late with someone, cutting through the parking lot between the dining hall and her dorm to save time. Something had stopped-
[E ol ]
It all came crashing back down onto her. The men in body armor. The scientist in the black coat, the drug that had been forced upon her, and,
[E co lo]
This wasn't a chemical spill. Ringo let out a horrified gasp once the realization practically blindsided her, pulling herself to her scraped knees crusted over with fresh scabs, and plunged her hands in the puddle as though she'd find Ecolo submerged somewhere in its depths. All this accomplished was making black liquid splatter further away.
"Ecolo!" Ringo screamed hoarsely, desperately, at the puddle, not able to fight back the tears coming to her eyes. She fell backwards when a vivid blue star suddenly burst from its depths, fully illuminating the room, but she didn't bother to discern her surroundings as all her attention was drawn towards the glowing core. The matter of the puddle was pulled toward it, too, and for the second time that day Ringo could only watch in awe, tears streaking down her face, sitting with her knees knocked together as that nebulous entity she'd witnessed her friend become reformed, their eyes horribly distant as they looked through her.
Ringo sharply inhaled, trying to stand up, but whatever that scientist had used on her clearly hadn't finished running its course through her body. Combined with the pain throbbing in her shins, it forced her back down kneeling on the floor, and she gritted her teeth in exasperation.
"Ecolo, please-" She started, choked up, her throat sore from screaming. "If that's you- say something, tell me you're okay…"
Rather than respond, they backed away in quiet horror, a blobby paw covering their mouth as their eyes widened. Their body looked like it was oscillating now, shifting and changing form.
“Ringo-” They barely managed, the mental voice that was intruding into her head sounding weak, and then they fell back onto the floor, bubbles and gaps of darkness manipulating their silhouette. Ringo suddenly realized those paws were trying to reform into hands more like a human’s, but failed to keep their shape.
“I’m not Ecolo.” They told her. They grabbed at their head, burying their face in their paws. “Go away. I’m not what you’re looking for.” Then, they properly collapsed back down into a puddle.
“Come back!” Ringo cried. The edges of the liquid crept outwards, and Ringo began backing away, but it kept spreading across the floor faster until she couldn’t avoid touching it, and faster still it engulfed her and her surroundings entirely. Now the room really was pitch-black, and she froze in place as a force lifted her from the ground and held her tightly in the air, her heart pounding in her throat. “What are you doing…?”
“You don’t get it.” “Not-Ecolo”’s voice bemoaned, this time feeling like she was hearing it from her own heart. “He wasn’t a real person. I tricked you. Ecolo never existed to begin with.”
“Okay,” Ringo started, trying to keep a level head through all the literal and metaphorical pressures on her. Relax, she had to relax to make sense of anything. Ecolo, or whatever he'd become, did not seem to want to give her explicit answers, and was trying to frighten her on top of that, so she’d have to get tricky herself if she wanted to understand what was going on. “So, um… who am I talking to now?”
It sounded like “Not-Ecolo” didn’t expect her to get this far, because she felt a deep sense of confusion that felt very distinct from her own confusion; not baffled by the situation, but her reaction. The nervous pulse in her subsided a little.
She almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the whole thing. “You really are a bad liar, aren’t you?”
“I’m not Ecolo.”
“Doubling down isn’t going to convince me.”
“I’m not!" They sounded temperamental now, stubbornly trying to get their way. "I’m just a monster. Go away already. Shouldn’t you be scared?”
“Oh, I forgot the name of that physicist we were talking about earlier, the quantum electrodynamics guy." She shifted the conversation, in a sing-song voice, despite being physically restrained and afraid. "Whatever, probably doesn’t matter, Paul Culdesac or something?”
“Paul Dirac, you-” The voice suddenly cut itself off. “…I really fell for that…”
Ringo, despite the nightmare she had just been through and the confusion she was dealing with now, couldn’t help but smile to herself a little. She was sure it was him now, no one else would know who she was talking about. Ringo was let go, gently dropping back down to the floor. The walls of darkness fell and receded into the air, not taking any particular appearance just yet.
"Ecolo, please. Talk to me. What's going on?"
It took a while for Ecolo to decide how to respond. Ringo watched, with mildly disturbed fascination, as the nebulous void shifted around, then suddenly reattempted to take a human shape. For just a few seconds, he was able to hold onto his original appearance, grabbing at his head, shutting his eyes tightly and looking like he was in pain, until he gasped and fell back apart into indiscernible dark matter.
"…I'll never get to have a normal life, will I?" He bitterly said, assuming the blobby humanoid form once more, though he seemed increasingly unstable. "It doesn't matter what I do."
Ringo wracked her brain, trying to bring to mind everything she knew about him that could maybe give her even a shred of context. "What do you mean?"
"Doesn't matter." He shook his head, and she could have sworn tears were coming to his eyes. "Just… go, please. Forget about me, or at least try to. That's what everyone does."
Ringo didn't know what she was doing, but that word alone, "forget", evoked something powerful inside her. She didn't even make herself move; her body moved on instinct, and before she was really aware of any of it she'd pulled Ecolo into a tight hug and started speaking to him.
"I am not going to forget you, ever. You're my friend. I will never forget my friends."
He was cold and semi-solid to the touch, with a sort of sinking, squishy cloud-like texture, but it felt like any suggestion of a reaction would make him dissolve into fluid or just evaporate into smoke in her hands. Still, she held on tightly, trying her best to physically reassure that she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Ecolo seemed to not react at first, but slowly he hugged back, and even slower than that, he restabilized, finally reaching a point where he was mostly still.
“You don’t know when to give up.” Ecolo quietly said, then laughed a little. “That’s nice.”
Ringo cracked a smile. “I’ve always been stubborn as hell when it comes to friendships, for better or worse. Just ask Maguro.”
"You've only known me for two weeks."
"Like that matters."
She let go of him after a while, and he drifted backwards, still staying within arm’s reach of Ringo. Even with all of that, he looked shaken up- she couldn’t blame him, though she was outwardly calm, her heart was trembling. Still, there was one thing she needed to know.
“…Um, how’d we get here?”
“Teleported.” He hesitated, then looked confused for a moment. "…Probably."
“…Huh.” Ringo mumbled to herself. He’d pulled both of them to safety, not just himself… “I think we should talk.”
“…About?”
“What just happened. The men in the parking lot… and you.”
It was clear at this point that Ecolo wasn’t going to be able to hide any more secrets from her, but the distant expression on his face morphed into a guilty one, and he curled in on himself a little.
"You don't have to tell me everything.” She reassured him. “But you helped me. You could've just left me lying there, but you helped me. And I want to help you, in any way I can."
He seemed apprehensive at first, not sure how much trust he could really put into Ringo, but something else in him won out in the end. "…Where should I start?"
"Anywhere you want.” Ringo shifted on her feet, sitting on the floor in a more comfortable position. The extra light Ecolo provided made it clear that this was one of the campus laboratories, maybe a relatively unused one. If he still had to hide from those men, this wasn’t a bad place. The idea of getting into trouble made her anxious, but "sorry, we almost got kidnapped!" was a great excuse to dodge any issues otherwise. “Unless you need some help starting. Maybe questions can help. What happened to your body?"
Ecolo tensed up again. “I don’t know how to explain that.”
“I could make an educated guess… Let’s see, this is some kind of shapeshifting power, and physical and psychological stress makes you lose control of that power. And this-” She indicated to him. “Is a form that requires less energy, maybe your default one, and the form I’m familiar with takes more energy to maintain. Is that close enough?”
He stared at her in awe. “I don’t know how you explained it.”
"I mean, I'm sure it's a little more complex than that in truth."
"You got it mostly right, but that's, well… not what anyone's ever thought."
"What did they assume…? Do I even want to know?"
"That I'm an alien that's stolen someone's body and is planning to kill all life on Earth, usually." He said, with a heavy hint of telepathic sarcasm as he started counting stupid theories on his paws. "Or some kind of escaped lab experiment, or a blob monster that eats people…"
"That's-" Ringo had to pause for a minute to process that, the absurdity of it literally brought her thoughts to a halt. "That's so fucking stupid. Do people think they're science fiction protagonists?!"
Ecolo shrugged.
"Though," She couldn't help but ask. "Are you… human?"
"…I don't know." Ecolo seemed sad for a moment, or rather, Ringo could feel the sadness coming from him as he spoke in her mind. Maybe this was too much of a loaded question for him. "I think I used to be. I don't think I am anymore."
There was suddenly a flash of a memory there in her head, one that didn't belong to her. It began to play back; hazy and fleeting as it was, she saw from the perspective of a child, no older than twelve or thirteen, overwhelmed, stressed, and horrified, watching their own hands and body liquify and evaporate into dark bubbles.
[After that, it was hard for anyone to look at me and call me human.]
Ringo couldn't help but cover her mouth in shock.
[They always worried about the "magical potential" the doctor pointed out. But I kept getting older, and nothing happened, so they thought they were in the clear. No one could have dreamed that I was going to be so explos-]
"-I'm so sorry." Ecolo suddenly said, and both the memory and the rapid internal monologue that wasn't her own were cut off. "I didn't mean to-"
"No, it's- it's okay." Ringo reassured him, though she was stunned by what she'd experienced. That question was far more loaded than she could have anticipated. "I don't, um, I'm assuming you're having trouble controlling things right now… and I don't blame you. I'm not upset."
"I mean, it's just-" He curled in on himself further, his mouth hidden under his crossed arms. "…Embarrassing."
[To not have that control anymore. Not exactly great with people, but I doubt I'm supposed to dump all this crap on anyone. Mom always hated that.]
Ringo raised an eyebrow as Ecolo winced again; clearly, he was dealing with a lot that kept accidentally leaking out in the moment. Like a faulty dam, or something.
"It's fine, I don't mind. It's probably better to get it off of your chest, anyways." She took off her red letterman jacket and draped it around Ecolo's small frame. "Here. We can take a break, or talk about something else, if you want. Whatever's easiest for you."
"…Thanks." He clung to the jacket like it was a blanket, and Ringo smiled. "You don't find me scary…?"
"I mean-" She thought about it a little harder; outside of a specific phobia, she didn't fear much at all. But clearly, people found this Ecolo deeply frightening, if her reaction really seemed that different to him. What was the word she was looking for? "I don't think you're 'scary' like this… I think you're cute, actually."
Ecolo sputtered, and his body got loose for a moment, like Ringo's comment had a physical effect on him, and she could have sworn she heard a telepathic keysmash in her head. It only took her a second to rethink the implications of her remark to understand his reaction. She jerked back.
"Ah-! I'm sorry-"
"No, it's just-" He desperately tried to collect himself. "That was the last thing I expected you to say. I thought I was going to dematerialize for a second there-!"
"Please don't dematerialize on me!" Ringo pleaded. "I'm sorry!"
"You didn't do anything wrong! I was just, um… surprised." Yep, the awkwardness with which he spoke while flustered was still absolutely, definitely him. Ringo could tell that much. She couldn't help but laugh, and it finally brought out a smile in him, he did have a cute smile, especially like this.
“I hate to ask,” Ringo started, once she was through with giggling. “But… who were those men?”
“…I don’t know.” Ecolo admitted, after a lot of silence. “I’ve only seen them once before. I thought I got away from them, but I guess they followed me… and it got you hurt.”
“You mean this?” She pointed to the freshly scabbed-over cuts on her legs. “I did this to myself when I tripped and fell like a dipshit in the parking lot, this had nothing to do with anything but me.”
“You’re not a dipshit, and I’m not talking about that.” He said quietly. “I meant what they used on you. They tried that on me the first time, too…” Ecolo trailed off after that, his expression getting distant.
“The first time?” She asked, and he looked like he was zoning out again. “Um, if you want to talk about it, but can’t- you could try showing me again, like you did a little bit ago.”
“I really don’t want to subject you to my screwed-up mind-”
“You’re not screwed-up. If you need someone to just listen and understand, I’ll do it.”
“…Just say something if you can’t take it.” He told her with a slightly guilty tone.
“Will do.” Letting his stream of consciousness into her own head was jarring, sure, but not really uncomfortable. And she really did want to understand what was going on here, a little bit to satisfy her own curiosity, but really to empathize as best as possible; a support he was clearly lacking and desperately needed. There was something else playing back in her mind’s eye now; this time, it was rushed and panicked, like a music disc that kept skipping in places, but she could tell it was that same child arguing with their parents as unfamiliar figures stood around the room. Fragments of songs and bits of conversations from long ago permeated the whole thing.
[-Don’t know still.] The internal narrator, Ecolo’s own thoughts, kicked in again. [I didn’t tell them, but they found out somehow. They called me down to talk, saying they wanted to help me. “Trying” to help for years, apparently. Wouldn’t even look at me for most of that time. I don't know if I blame them. Don’t know who the people they told to come are. They want my magic. I don’t know what they want it for. I don’t know if I can get away.]
[Maguro was the one who told me I could leave, actually. I did high school on my own online, wasn’t allowed to leave after the accident. I did well, he said I could probably get in for free if I filled out some stuff. I just needed out. Wanted my own out, not theirs. Tried to restrain me, but it’s hazy after that, sorry.] A mirror of what she’d just experienced, that horrible plastic thing being shoved over her face, played back, and everything from then on was even more fragmented and jumbled. [I have a bad habit of spacing out, huh?]
“That’s called dissociation.” Ringo responded without thinking, still trying to process everything she’d just been shown. “You don’t need to say sorry for dissociating.”
[Didn’t know that. Oh-] It cut off again, and Ringo cursed herself for accidentally speaking. “No, you’re fine. Keep going.”
[Why am I doing this? I don’t want to make her upset or scared, I can’t lose this. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You heard that? I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be weird. I didn’t think anyone would want anything to do with me after they found out what I’m hiding. Even Maguro doesn’t know, I don’t want to lose him. Most get scared, try to forget. Others want my power. Run away or try and “help” me. Why are you different?]
Why are you different?
Ringo didn’t know how to answer that question. She didn’t get to.
While she was trying to grapple with everything she now knew, she didn’t hear the keys jangling outside, someone fiddling with the knob, until the door was already starting to open.
Her heart rate practically spiked to double what it was before, and she gasped sharply, before getting into a low squat, holding her hand out in that same generator configuration and praying she’d be able to charge up a decent shot for whatever was on the other side. She expected someone in black body armor, masked to conceal their identity, or Colgate Guy, she’d already forgotten his stupid codename, holding god knows whatever awful contraptions and tools he carried to try and detain Ecolo and do horrible things to him.
No black, or blue, or toothpaste green. White and yellow. The man on the other side of the door was dressed in white and yellow and very fancy leather suspenders.
“I don’t know what I expected, but this certainly wasn't it." The head of the physics department casually remarked. "Good evening. Both of you are currently missing, you know." The charge she had been building up completely dissipated as she looked at him slack-jawed.
Without elaborating, Ex dialed a number and held his flip phone to his ear. Ringo only then realized someone had stuck a label to it jokingly stating it was "Ex's Jitterbug", and she had to actively stop herself from staring.
"Hello?… Yes, it's Ex… Yes, Magellan, do you know anyone else employed here named Ex…? Well, I found both of them… it seems like they went to hide in one of the department laboratories to escape from the perpetrators, though how they got in without a key is beyond me. No sign of the perpetrators themselves… no, I haven't asked yet. I will… I'd keep searching the south parking lot if I were you. Thanks."
"Sorry for the interruption." Ex apologized as he hung up the phone. "Normally, I'd ask that you two check in with security, but it seems like there's a lot going on here."
"Please get to the point." Ringo, her heart rate still soaring through the roof, said through gritted teeth.
"No one here is in trouble!" Ex quickly stated. "Far from it." He quietly approached and knelt down, his attention focused behind Ringo. "Ecolo, can you hear me? We’re going to get you help. Just hang in there.”
While Ringo had steeled herself for round two against Colgate Guy, Ecolo had frozen in place. He barely seemed conscious, not responding at all to Ex, or when Ringo whirled around to look at him, and her heartbeat certainly didn’t settle down whatsoever. She wasn’t even sure if he was there to respond to Ex, or if he was just lost in the pits of his own mind.
“I don’t want help.”
Then he did respond, quite violently, to Ex using the one word he probably shouldn’t have in this situation. His form suddenly burst into trailing appendages of void, encircling protectively around Ringo and pulling her away from the perceived threat. Ex crossed his arms and quickly set up a magic barrier, expecting Ecolo to lash out at him.
“Ecolo, it’s okay!” Ringo shouted, trying to reach out to his brightly sparking core hanging above her head. “It’s okay, it’s okay, please!” Please hear me, please-
Her fingertips barely managed to graze the edge of the core as it rapidly spun, she could feel the raw energy it emanated, but it didn't hurt her. As soon as she touched it, the spinning quickly slowed down and the trails of dark matter shrank back to a less nightmarish size, shifting around anxiously until Ecolo actually resembled himself again. Ringo exhaled in relief as she held onto one of his paws. "It's okay…"
Ex dismantled the barrier he'd created, looking at Ringo with surprise. "Would it be intrusive of me to ask exactly what happened here…?"
“Somewhat.” Ringo straightened herself out, trying her best to exude an air of confidence. "Tell us what you know, and we'll tell you what we know."
Ex shrugged. "Fair deal. Campus security received reports of suspicious individuals carrying dangerous equipment in the southern parking lot roughly an hour ago, who seem to have now disappeared. They also received reports from two particular students that their friends headed that direction from the dining hall and never returned to their dorm." Ringo's heart sank- Maguro and Amitie were looking for both of them, and she'd left her phone, the only way either of them could have contacted her, back at her dorm room with her school supplies. "We could only assume the worst from there. My question for you is: what happened? I can’t fathom how you two would have normally gotten in here in the first place, and while I have my ideas, I'm going to need explicit confirmation from you.”
"We were walking back, we got stopped by some guy with toothpaste-looking hair-" Ex raised an eyebrow. "I mean, he used a codename, but I can't remember what it was… there were men in body armor, too, and they were, um…" Ringo looked down at Ecolo, who was holding onto her arm, shivering, and obviously dissociating again. "After him. He panicked… and teleported both of us into here.”
Ex looked at the two of them, a hand on his chin as he nodded thoughtfully, then he sighed. “So even you two couldn’t identify them… Does Ecolo possibly know-?”
“Look at him, do you think he can tell you anything like this?” Ringo loudly snapped at Ex, and there was a tense silence between her and her professor for several seconds. “...Sorry.”
“…Magic power of Ecolo's caliber is incredibly rare and highly desirable, even among pure fae populations.” Ex finally said. “Shape-shifting, space-time manipulation. I’m not intending to pressure answers out of either of you, but if these people are targeting magic users, even if just uncommonly powerful ones, then we are dealing with extremely dangerous individuals that could threaten the safety of the entire school populace here, not just you two.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Ecolo suddenly spoke up, the tone in his voice one of anger simmering beneath a calm surface. “You could investigate my family. They would probably know.”
Ex stared at him, his expression becoming progressively more horrified by the moment as Ecolo's implication dawned on him. “…I’m so sorry.” He muttered.
After a long, tense standoff of Ringo and Ecolo staring their professor down, both of them slightly pissed off, he cleared his throat, trying his best to establish his authority even if he had all the confidence of a wet washcloth at the moment. “Maybe this investigation would be better saved for tomorrow, when everyone present has a clear mind. An incident report has already been filed, but our main concern is always the safety of our students, and if neither of you are in danger, then there’s no need for immediacy.”
“I agree.” Ringo said, as the hand of hers that wasn’t holding Ecolo’s balled up with tension.
“I’ll walk both of you back to your dorm building. Until we’ve swept the entire campus, and we’ll send out an SMS once we’ve done so, please stay put there.”
The walk back was long, silent, and almost painful to Ringo’s anxious mind. Ex was hyper-vigilant of any possible interlopers, even with the bright street lamps illuminating all the eerily empty footpaths, probably using some spell or another to detect anything that could potentially endanger them. She held onto Ecolo’s paw tightly, almost fearing that he’d disappear if she let go at any second. Unlike Amitie, she really wasn’t much of a hand-holder, but this whole situation was dire, and it felt strangely different with him.
Speaking of Ecolo, “worried” couldn’t even begin to describe how she felt about him right now. She suspected that he’d told her very little about his situation overall, but what she’d heard was absolutely horrifying, borderline abuse at best and a violation of basic human rights at worst, all over something he had no say in and little control over. He hadn’t been able to live anything resembling a normal life since his so-called accident, which sounded more like a magical awakening than a catastrophe. And he wasn’t handling any of this well, he hadn’t said a word since they’d left the physics department. Ringo wondered if he’d really wanted to share all those things he told her, or if she’d just used their friendship to pressure him and satisfy her own selfish curiosity, and her stomach turned in on itself with guilt. Had she made all of this worse?
The things he’d said about himself still rattled around in her brain. That the Ecolo she knew was an illusion, just smoke and mirrors, and the “real” Ecolo was something so deeply upsetting that no one even wanted to remember it.
Ringo noticed right away when his hand slipped out of hers, and her heart lurched for half a second as she feared the worst. Before she could do anything about it, he wrapped his arms around her collar and squished his face into her shoulder, and she relaxed again. Even without the full range of human expressions, he looked absolutely exhausted as she peeked at him from the corner of her eye. Ringo was starting to feel that same exhaustion too, now that her adrenaline boost and that godforsaken inhalant were done wreaking havoc on her body. At some point in all the chaos her jacket had gotten returned to her own shoulders.
“How are you holding up?” She asked Ecolo, the first thing she’d said in several minutes. Ex briefly glanced back at them before continuing to look outwards.
“Down.” Ecolo faintly replied, and Ringo just snorted, lacking the energy to actually laugh at his quip. Some of her strength returned to her body as she found herself on the familiar dorm route, her building within sight and walking distance. Ex picked up the pace a little, they were technically approaching the original crime scene as well, and she followed along with him.
“Here.” Ex told both of them as he took out his ring of many, many keys (being a department head probably necessitated it) and quickly unlocked the side door for them. “Hurry in and get some sleep.”
“Thanks.” Ringo said. She paused. “Sorry for snapping at you.”
“It’s quite alright.” He reassured her as he gently pushed her through the doorway. The second the lock clicked behind Ringo and Ecolo, the relief started creeping in.
Quickly, to their dorms. Third floor, the climb up the stairs fucking sucked, but Ringo had one last burst of energy to give to get both of them up to the top and right into the hall they lived in. As she quietly approached Maguro’s room, she heard something she hadn’t really been anticipating to hear - the sound of a girl crying, and a boy comforting her. Amitie.
She pushed on the handle. Maguro had left the door unlocked. The people inside fell silent.
The room behind the door was a mess on one of its halves, which didn’t surprise her but did disappoint her because she knew exactly whose mess it was. The thing that immediately drew her attention was Amitie and Maguro, sitting on Maguro’s bed, looking at both of them with bewilderment. Amitie’s poor face was red and puffy from what was probably several minutes of nonstop sobbing, her wings sagging on her back, and Maguro seemed like he was having the worst tension headache he’d ever experienced in his life from the way he clenched his jaw. Only then did Ringo wonder how she herself looked - like she’d walked through hell, probably, the crusted over scabs on her shins certainly couldn’t have helped.
“R-Ri-Ri-” Amitie choked up, stuttering, as Ringo quickly shut the door behind her. “Ringo!!!”
Before Ringo was really even cognizant of her name being spoken, Amitie shot across the room and slammed into her, nearly forcing all the air out of her lungs, wailing like she’d just been shot. “W-we got a t-text about people going missing in the parking lot and I know you always cut through there, we ran back here to check and I tried to call you but you left your phone in our room, and you weren’t here and you never came back to the dorm, and, and-" She cut herself off there, full-on sobbing into Ringo’s shirt as she tightly hugged her.
“Holy shit, you’re okay. Oh my god. Thank fuck.” Maguro clutched at his chest as he quickly stood, subconsciously avoiding stepping on any of the crap on the floor around his bed. “Fuck. Ecolo’s still gone. Where-”
At that moment, both Amitie and Maguro finally noticed Ecolo’s presence in the room. Maguro inhaled sharply before he bit down on his tongue, while Amitie stumbled away, her hands tightly clamped over her mouth as she stared in shock and tears streamed down her face. Ecolo himself looked beyond terrified, but Ringo grabbed his paw in her hand and gave him her most reassuring look; that simple action alone answered the burning question on the minds of Amitie and Maguro.
“No way…” Amitie croaked.
“I… what happened to you? Both of you…?” Maguro breathed.
Ringo took a deep breath, steeling herself for whatever reaction came next. "I can explain. Let's sit down."
Approximately fifteen minutes, some crying from Amitie, and a headache later, Ringo felt like she'd filled in Maguro and Amitie well enough on the entire situation. The explanation didn't do anything to put anyone at ease; the initial shock came from Ecolo's changed appearance, the genuine horror from what he and Ringo had been through. Both of them were near-speechless, and Ecolo hadn't said anything that whole time, he'd buried himself under blankets on his own bed, where he and Ringo were sitting, and just listened in on her recounting, too out of it to really contribute.
Amitie was sitting on the floor, clearly shaken up. She had the bathroom trash can in front of her; the stress of it all was making her literally sick to her stomach, though she thankfully hadn't thrown up yet. She had her hands on Ringo's leg as she used Accelerate to try and speed up the natural healing process. Maguro was holding a glass of water in one hand and a bottle of painkillers in the other.
"Ecolo?" Maguro finally asked, after Ringo had fallen silent for a moment to collect herself.
"…Yeah?"
"Fuck your parents."
That was, in all honesty, the last thing any one of them could have expected to hear after such a serious revelation. Ringo shook, too tired to vocalize her laughter, Amitie laughed and sighed, and Ecolo finally smiled a little again.
"Word." Was all Ringo could manage.
"Dead serious. It sounds like this whole thing is their fault anyways, or they at the very least started it."
"I thought I was the problem." Ecolo quietly admitted. "Not them…"
"Can I be honest? I've literally never fucking liked them. We'd be doing our thing; crawling servers, checking out dupes, ruining shit, having fun, and then your mom or dad would walk in while we were on call, and every single time you'd feel like garbage afterwards. So yeah, fuck them. Come live in my basement."
"I think he deserves better than your basement." Ringo said hoarsely, and Maguro let out a low chuckle.
"Yeah, actually, it smells like shit down there 'cus it floods constantly. Live in Ringo's basement, hers doesn't flood."
"I don't know what I would have done if my mom shunned me when my wings came in…" Amitie started, looking into the bottom of the trash can. "She baked a cake to congratulate me… but your mom cut you off from the world. I think that's the best I can do, sorry." She took her hands off of Ringo, showing that the area under her scabs were significantly less bloody, and then started wiping any dried-up blood from the initial scrape away with a wet paper towel.
"No, you did great. Thank you." Ringo said. Amitie dumped the stained wipe into the trash can in her lap, then kept fixating on the bottom of the can. "You're not gonna throw up, right?"
"I'm not sure… I still feel kinda sick." Then she suddenly smiled. "I haven't felt this sick since the time I ate a whole pack of Oreos by myself as a kid and puked in my mom's hair in the middle of the night."
"Holy shit, Amitie." Ringo barely managed to speak while she held her stomach, which was already hurting, as she laughed.
Maguro, who had just taken some painkillers and was washing them down with water, spit it and the pills back into the glass. "Fuck, you're gonna make me choke- I have to chug this whole glass of water now, thanks." Amitie giggled again.
Importantly, Ringo noticed, Ecolo was laughing, actually laughing, for the first time since they'd all eaten dinner together; as exhausted as she was, it brought a rush of joy to her. Amitie kept laughing as Maguro desperately chugged all the water in one go, trying to get the painkillers to come back, which he eventually succeeded at.
"Hang on." He told them, and dashed back into the bathroom, where Ringo could hear the faucet running as he washed out the cup. Maguro returned with a newly full glass of water and handed it, and the bottle of medicine, to Amitie. "Here, you've been crying like crazy, you probably have a killer headache now, too. Take two of 'em."
"Thanks."
"I might need some." Ringo sighed.
"Gotcha. Ecolo, do you need to get on the migraine train?"
"Nope."
Maguro sat down on his own bed, massaging the back of his neck. "...You don't feel pain, right?"
"Not really. Or at least, not that much."
"Wait, have you ever even been to a doctor?"
"Yeah, as a kid, but not in a long time…"
Amitie frowned and got quiet. "Not even for mental health stuff…"
"I don't think they believed in that."
At this point, everyone in the room knew what he meant by "they"; calling them by what they were supposed to be implied they actually cared about their child's health, beyond the shallow desire of wanting him to go back to normal.
Amitie handed Ringo the glass of water and the painkillers next, and she gave her a grateful nod. She read the instructions on the label of the bottle; the recommended dosage was two pills every six hours, no more than four at a time.
She took out two pills. The recommended dosage was two pills every six hours. She put them in her mouth and washed it down with water. No more than four at a time. She handed the glass and bottle back to Amitie. The recommended dosage was-
"…Ringo?" Amitie whispered.
The dosage, the drug. She felt her mind cracking. Should she be taking these? Would it interfere with the other drug that'd been forced upon her, the one that knocked her out cold for the better part of an hour? Was she about to die?
Could that other drug have killed her if something had gone differently?
"Hey, Ringo-" She heard Maguro's voice.
"I-" She started, her voice warbling. "I'm sorry." Her face stung and her eyes watered, she'd finally been tipped over her limit. Everything hit her at once. "I'm so sorry."
It probably wasn't much of a shock to anyone else when she burst into tears and covered her face with her hands, but it was deeply troubling.
"I-I'm just-" Ringo sobbed. "I don't know what that drug was, or what the dosage was, it literally could have fucking killed me for all I know, if anything had gone a little different, if I'd breathed in a little too early, I could be dead right now!"
That was it; any facade of strength she'd built up, any illusion of being the anchor, all collapsed in this one moment, and she folded over on herself. She could have died, she could have died and left her friends and family behind to pick up the pieces all because she wanted to save time by cutting through the stupid god damn parking lot and walked right into an ambush. The room fell silent, Maguro and Amitie not knowing how to respond. What was the right way to respond to something like this?
“Ringo…"
Something soft and warm wrapped itself around her. She would've normally assumed it was Amitie, but it came from behind her, not in front of her, where Amitie actually was. When she looked through her goopy tears, she saw Ecolo's hands and sleeves, the ones she was familiar with, and felt his chin on her shoulder.
"Oh…" She croaked. "You turned back."
"Just to give you a hug. Can't hold it for long." Ecolo explained, she sensed the vibration of his voice, it was nice that it felt real. When she glanced at him, his eyes were closed and he seemed focused, putting all of the strength he had left into giving Ringo something he felt was meaningful comfort, even if it was only for a moment. She cherished the warmth, something that she'd had trouble coming across the whole evening.
She could've died, yes. She didn't know what was in that inhalant. One whiff was powerful enough to knock her unconscious for nearly an hour, even a few seconds of exposure could have been insanely dangerous. Ecolo could've been ripped away from her under the instruction of the people that supposedly loved him, he could've lost control and gravely injured her without realizing in his dissociative reaction.
But he didn't hurt her. She didn't watch her new friend get torn away from her, and she didn't die. They'd made it out of the nightmare alive and relatively unharmed, and now she was here, being subjected to a cuddle pile by her friends as Amitie and Maguro also got in on the hug.
"I love you guys." She managed to say under the pile. Amitie nuzzled her cheek against Ringo's, while Maguro gave her a confident grin. Ecolo said nothing; he just held on until he couldn't anymore, until the last bit of energy he had left in him ran dry.
“Love you too, Rin-rin.” Maguro responded, and Amitie looked at her with a soppy smile. They finally let her go, and she flopped backwards onto the bed, too tired to bother sitting up anymore.
“I just need a minute. I’ll head back to my own room soon.” She mumbled.
“Alright.” Maguro responded, and that was the last she heard out of him.
Whether it was by chance or design, she and Ecolo had come out of the night alive and together.
Ringo's first thought when she woke up was: Tired.
So, so tired. She'd definitely slept fine, but it didn't stop her from feeling like she'd been beaten with a stick. Physically tired; her body ached, emotionally tired; she couldn't fathom doing anything in the moment, but she wasn't quite sleepy enough to just go back to bed, so she sat up just enough to peek around the room.
No sign of either Maguro or Amitie; though Maguro's backpack was gone too, so he must have gone to a class. Amitie had likely slipped back into her own dorm room at some point, worn out and emotionally drained from the night before. Ringo, obviously, had not made it back to the dorm with her; she was still in her day clothes and letterman jacket, though she'd at the very least taken her shoes off at some point, and she was lying on Ecolo's bed. If she had to guess, she'd intended to go back to her room, but she'd just up and passed out from exhaustion in here instead, like a toy with a dead battery, too tired to walk the few yards it'd require to reach her own bed. Maguro had hastily thrown one of his blankets on top of her, she could tell it was his without even looking because it smelled slightly of sea salt.
More importantly, she realized: Ecolo was in his lower-energy state and pressed up next to her- not really cuddling per se, except that she'd fallen asleep with one of her hands outstretched and he was holding onto it, too. Ringo decided she didn't really mind this situation. She kept lying there, staring at the popcorn ceiling, which totally had asbestos in it considering this dorm was built at least a few decades in the past, and that thought led her down a whole unrelated mental rabbit hole about hazardous construction materials.
The door opened, and Ringo lifted her head up to see Maguro, in his day clothes and wearing his backpack, walk in with a fistful of granola bars and some very nice-looking chocolates in a handmade package tied with a green and pink bow. He made eye contact with her.
"Gay.★" Was all he said.
"Fuck off."
He grinned and dumped his spoils on Ecolo's desk. The chocolate had a note strung to it with big, loopy, heart-embellished letters that she recognized as Ally's handwriting, the girl who lived down the hall and was always writing encouraging notes on the whiteboard in the common space, and more normal-looking handwriting underneath Ally's, probably her girlfriend's. Rafisol? That sounded right. They must have bought it or maybe even made it for them. That was sweet, she'd have to thank the couple later.
"I'm non-binary, everything I do is gay." Ecolo said, not opening his eyes. Had he been awake this whole time, or did he just now get woken up by Maguro?
Maguro cracked a wide smile. "He's right, you know. It's at least a little gay.★"
"Will both of you shut up? It's too early in the day for your nonsense." Ringo groaned, and both Maguro and Ecolo laughed a little. "God, what time is it?" All she could tell was that it was morning.
"It's like, ten.★" Maguro checked his watch. "Ten-thirty. Amitie begged Klug to let both of you copy his Physics notes, by the way.★" That's right, they did still have class, but no fucking way was Ringo going to be able to go anywhere today, except maybe dragging herself to her own bed to pass out again. "He's supposed to bring photocopies later, or something.★" There was also the concern of her calculus class, but she still had the textbook that she could study from, and she couldn't really bring herself to give a shit about missing freshman inquiry, which mostly felt like a waste of her time.
"Thanks."
"Don't thank me, I'm just the messenger~★"
"I mean, you brought us food, I can at least thank you for that."
"Yeah, I gotta skedaddle now, though. Class in fifteen minutes. Have fun being gay.★"
"We're not-" He closed the door behind him before she could finish her sentence, and she sighed. "I'm gonna kill him."
"He has a point." Ecolo sleepily mumbled.
"Sharing a bed with someone doesn't automatically make you a couple." Ringo argued as she put her head back down on what was definitely her pillow, Maguro must have taken it from her room and put it under her while she was asleep. "I've shared beds with friends before during sleepovers. I've shared beds with him. Besides, dating is the last thing on my mind."
"Oh, same." He hummed thoughtfully. "But…"
"What?"
"I feel like I can trust you. I've never felt like that before."
"We did get through the worst night of our lives together." Ringo remarked, then got quiet again. There was one question she'd been asked last night, one she never got to answer.
Why are you different?
She still didn't have a real answer for it, but it prompted her to be upfront about how she felt.
"I like you a lot." Ringo suddenly confessed. "Sorry, that probably sounds weird. And I don't mean in a romantic way. It's hard to explain." She paused. That nagging cloud of guilt was still hanging over her head a little. Ringo supposed now was the time to get any lingering regrets of hers from last night off her chest. "I'm sorry if I pressured you into telling me things you didn't want to."
"No, it was- I'd never talked about any of that to another person before." Ecolo admitted. "Not even Maguro. He knew a little bit about my life and thought something was off, but that was it. It was nice to finally say it to someone." He also paused, looking tired and thoughtful. "I like you a lot, too. I get what you mean. I feel the same way."
"Okay, thank god, I was worried that I'd screwed up." She sighed with relief and put a hand on her chest. "Hey, maybe we can go to that sushi place tomorrow night. Bring some of our friends. You haven't met Risukuma yet, he's cool, we could ask him to come with us. Amitie will probably want to bring Sig. We'd have to take two cars in that case… I think Sig has a car. Maybe the Arles will want to go, I think they have a car too…" Ringo trailed off. You might be unusual, but you deserve to have the normal life you want. I want to be that for you.
"That sounds fun." Ecolo sounded like he was drifting off.
"You should get some more sleep." Ringo said. "You need it. We need it."
"Sure." He agreed, then curled into Ringo. Almost immediately, he was sound asleep again. Ringo stared at him for a little while.
"I'll be the change you need." She quietly said. Then, she closed her eyes and let herself drift off, too.