NOVEL NEXT Chapter 7: Table pour Quatre
The third and fourth lesson period went by without much of an issue except for the little pop-quiz we had we had for Maths.
“How did the test go, Rora?” Ria asked me after the lesson was over.
“I think I passed it, but not by much.” I sighed.
“At least you could fill in something…” Emma rested her head on the bench.
“Didn’t go well?” Karin had already stood up and walked up to her sister.
She shook her head. “I completely blanked. And I had studied so hard for it too...”
Karin patted her sister on the head to calm her down.
“You’ll definitely do better next time, Em.” I reassured her as well.
“I hope so… By the way, where do you want to go and eat?”
Our school had multiple cafeterias that specialised in a couple of different European cuisines. The most popular was the Italian one, because it offered some amazing pizzas and we were students after all.
“I’m not really hungry.” I smiled. “So why don’t you pick one, Ria?”
“Me?” Looks like my question startled her a little. She did often just follow the group when it came to our lunch decisions, unless the french cafeteria was having the macaron special that day. She always would get a bit annoyed when I called them hamburger cookies, but that’s just what they look like to me. On top of that I just loved to tease her.
“I think I’d like to have a croque monsieur today…” She shyly tugged the sleeve of my uniform.
“Alright then, French it is. You coming too Claire?” I called over to Claire who was standing by the door.
“Ah, no, I’ll be eating with my girlfriend, sorry.” She looked back over to our group, a blonde haired girl sticking her head through the door.
“Oh, hey Anya!”
Anya smiled and waved at us. Claire and Anya made such an amazing couple, united by their love for the arts. While Claire was more focused on theatrics, her girlfriend held the classics very close to her heart, especially ballet and opera. If I recall correctly, they met each other at the audition for some kind of musical, the name of which I’ve long since forgotten. I occasionally got a bit envious of their relationship and imagined how it would be if me and Ria were like that. But sadly I’m not a lesbian so those dreams will have to stay dreams.
“Have fun, you two!” Emma commented when our little group passed by them.
“And have a nice meal.” Ria added.
“Thanks, you too.” The two of them smiled and continued their conversation.
Our walk to the French café took us through the center park of the school, which was nice on lovely days like these, but quite much less so when it was raining. Basically, if you didn’t take an umbrella with you, you were screwed. Although the park didn’t lose any of its beauty on those rainy days - you could even say it had a special kind of beauty then. A couple of ducks quacked as we passed one of the ponds, a couple of fallen leaves floating on the water’s surface.
“Do you think they are hungry too, Rora?” Ria-chan stopped for a second, crouched next to the pond, and looked at the ducks.
“I think they get plenty of food from the school and the students.” I stopped right next to her.
Right as I said that, a couple of girls from another class started throwing them little pieces of bread.
“They definitely won’t starve.” I laughed, but Ria-chan kept looking at them. “Want to come feed them a bit later?”
“Can we!?” Her eyes sparkled when she looked up at me.
“I don’t see why not, I’ll bring a couple of slices of bread from the cafeteria. But first make sure you eat enough yourself, okay?”
“Mhmm!” She happily nodded and got up.
“Hey, what are you waiting for?” Emma called to us. She and Karin had walked on while we were at the pond and probably only just noticed we were lagging behind.
“Just enjoying nature.” We quickly caught up with them.
“Could you do that after lunch? I’m starving.”
“Hey, Ria, what about we check out that pond over there too?”
“Noooooo!” Emma whined as the rest of us started laughing.
Soon after we arrived at the café, although the interior looked very much more like a palace than a school cafeteria. Tables were set up for groups of 4 with frilly tablecloths and fancy tableware. Three big crystal chandeliers lit the entire room, or at least they could when they were necessary on some of the darker days. Today plenty of light filled it through the enormous windows, which overlooked the park and its duck-filled ponds. Quiet classical music filled the room, though from speakers rather than a string quartet which would have looked perfectly in keeping with the decor. The only thing that really resembled a cafeteria was that you needed to get your food yourself at the buffet, though I heard this was a pretty recent development too.
“Don’t you sometimes feel out of place here too?” Emma poked me while we went over to the buffet table.
I laughed. “Pretty much all the time.”
“It’s been two months and I still get overwhelmed.” Emma and Karin came from a substantially wealthier family than mine, which to be fair, was probably true for the vast majority of the school’s students. But at least it was somewhat reassuring that even they thought this was ridiculous. Ria on the other hand felt a lot less out of place here, and was already loading her plate up with croque monsieurs.
“Hey, Ria-chan. I know I said to eat enough but please don’t overeat either.” I walked up right next to her and took a plate for myself. Grabbing an apple and a croque monsieur too.
“I know, but I just love them.”
“I’ll eat the rest if she has enough, Auro, don’t worry.” Emma patted my shoulder.
“If you say so….Holy Mother, Emma!” I looked over to her plate and saw that it was completely loaded with food. Several croissants, a couple of beignets, grapes, a kiwi and a banana. And she somehow even managed to add a croque madame on top of that.
“Told you I was starving.” She pouted. “For some reason I’ve gotten a very big appetite since this morning…”
“Ah…” I started blushing. -Maybe I should ask Viktor about that too-
“But, Rora…” Ria-chan pulled the sleeve of my uniform again. “Is that really everything you are going to eat?” she nodded to my apple and single croque monsieur.
“Mhmm. I’m not really that hungry, I had a... uhhh... big breakfast this morning.”
“Okay but if you get hungry you can have some of mine too!” She enthusiastically stated.
“Thanks, Ria-chan.” I patted her on the head and moved towards one of the tables next to the windows. Quickly followed by Ria and Karin.
Emma came a bit later and put down a glass of milk in front of me. “I saw that you forgot your drink.” She smirked.
“Ah, right, thank you so much...” I had to control myself not to put on the biggest scowl ever.
“No problem.” Her smirk only grew bigger and bigger. -Emma, why do you do this to me?-
“Bon appétit.” Karin broke her silence for only a second before starting to eat.
“Have a nice meal.” The rest of us replied and the others started eating as well.
When I looked down at my plate I really couldn’t find any piece of me that wanted to eat which was definitely a weird feeling this time of day. Eating without hunger isn’t something I generally did, but it looked like this was something that I’d have to get used to if I didn’t want to draw suspicion to myself. So after staring out of the window for about two minutes I finally put myself to eating the food that was on my plate. Luckily for me it did still taste pretty good. By the time I had finished my only croque monsieur Ria was working on her third and Emma had already cleared half her plate. Now it was time for the apple. I debated to myself if it would be better for me to cut it into pîeces or just bite into it as I usually did. But taking into account that if I wanted to bite into an apple regularly I’d have to expose my teeth, that might not have been the best idea. So I started peeling the apple on my plate and cutting it into pieces.
Ria had been staring at me while I’d been cutting the apple. It must’ve looked weird to her since she knew how I’d normally eat my apples.
“Want a piece too, Ria?” I took a piece and tentatively hovered it in front of her mouth.
“Yesh!” She swallowed her last bite of croque monsieur and quickly nommed the apple out of my hand like a cute little chipmunk.
I fed her a couple more pieces before finishing the rest, I even drank the vile milk that Emma so gladly provided for me. Right in time for the others to be finished as well. To my surprise, even with the help of the apple, Emma and Karin only needed to share half a croque monsieur each that was left over from Ria’s plate.
“So, what do you want to do now?” Emma stacked all the plates on top of each other so we could go and hand them off.
“Someone promised me to go feed the duckies!” Ria was almost jumping with excitement.
“Library.” Karin dryly commented.
“Can I come with you to the pond then?”
Before me and Ria could accept Karin had already taken her sister’s arm. “Homework.”
“Which homework?”
“French.”
Emma looked over to us with a confused look.
“We got it on Friday, remember? Me and Ria did it yesterday.”
“Oh… OH!” Emma started nervously laughing to herself. “Looks like I’ll be going to the library too then.”
“Alright, see you at History class then?”
“Yep! See you later!” Emma hurried away with her sister closely behind her.
I looked at the time on my phone. -I hope she’ll get it done in time. That wasn’t a small task at all.-
Ria must’ve noticed because she immediately reassured me. “She has Karin with her, so it’ll be fine. But more importantly…”
“Duckies?”
“Duckies!”
