Maturinus: School Days

Enrolment

The shoebox apartment was pretty nice, all things considered. It was one of a few hundred identical rooms in the student accommodation, the towering building sitting in the bullseye of the ringed schooling complex. There was even a lovely view of the sea from the slit of a window provided to her, albeit one dampened by the obsidian walls of the island somewhat. The apartment was rather pokey, but had all the necessities any of the students could conceivably require. A bare-bones kitchen attached to the living room, with the small bathroom and bedroom joined side by side at the end. 

The coffee table sitting in the middle of the room was covered in all the papers given to the trio throughout the morning, many of which seemed to have been printed simply for the sake of having the information on paper, a handout that made even less sense by dint of the personal tablet computer they'd found upon deciding to bundle in Katie's new room to sort out their files. It looked fairly out of date and bore a couple of scratches on the screen, but it still booted up easily enough. According to the opening screen, the tablet was to serve as proof of her identity and the means by which all work would be recorded, as well as allowing students to communicate via email. It only accepted student addresses though, as they found when Cherri's letter to her parents bounced back immediately. The pointless quirks of academy bureaucracy aside, they'd at least been able to certify that the futon was suitably comfortable. Katie and Cherri had claimed either end for themselves as they separated and filed through about an entire redwood tree's worth of introduction materials. A voice floated in from the bedroom.

"Man, the beds here are surprisingly good."

Sabrina sauntered in with braid undone, her hair flowing behind her, creating the idea that she'd been enlisted for an impromptu advert for conditioner during her short departure. She chanced a look at the futon, but instead vaulted up onto the kitchen counter, her discomfort at the hard surface clear.

"U-um, y-you can s-sit here if-if you want."

There was a spare space between the other two girls, and Katie tentatively patted the fabric as part of her invitation. Her stomach sunk at the slight look of hesitance on the elder girl's part, than lightened a little as she hopped off and walked across the spartan room, kneeling across from them to lean over the table. Katie wouldn't have pushed further even if she had the guts for it. Having Sabrina across from them was better than nothing, and she didn't want to scare her away by looking clingy. The three continued to organise the papers in a somewhat awkward silence until a heavy sigh broke it, sending a page to the floor. Katie and Cherri followed the path of it as it transitioned to the ground, then focused on the origin of the breath that had sent it into motion. Sabrina met the dual gazes, fiddled with one of her bangs and sighed again.

"I'm sorry."

The response was a shared blink and more silence. It was to Katie's surprise that she was the one to break it.

"What for?"

Sabrina straightened up to look at them better, nervously smoothing out her hair.

"If it wasn't for me, you guys wouldn't have been shut out by the rest of the group."

Oh, that. As Alexander had planned with Angela, they'd made a loop around the school grounds, an hour-long tour involving a full showing of all the classrooms and facilities. Upon the two groups meeting, the five that had gone with the psychic had been strangely quiet, even the antagonistic northerner that had butted heads with Sabrina. Instead of provocation, a silence had been instituted and any accidental eye contact with the trio had been diverted away before it could settle, as if afraid any minor glance could be a declaration of side-picking. As a result, the student housing had been shown off without incident, other than the sudden snowstorm of paper that currently coated Katie's table curtesy of Alexander. That said, the campus had been eerily absent of any other students or faculty, with the exception of the soldiers posted on the walls and the ground squadrons that had passed them by in lock-step. The way Sabrina carried on, one might be led to think the earlier altercation had been the original sin.