Leviticus: Return back home

Ch.12: Honesty

《Nick’s POV》

Nick started walking next to Felix first.
His friend instantly set off rambling about the trip. “Jesus, I’m literally already dead inside, and it’s only the second day here. These assignments are so draining. Didn’t they tell us this trip was supposed to be fun? Because at this point I’d rather go to a family gathering.” 

Nick grinned. “Honestly, same. But I had already suspected it was going to be this way.”
Felix let out a dramatic sigh. “Right. I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.”

He turned his head to look at Nick. “But actually, I’m still glad to be here. Since we all get to spend more time together.” 
Nick’s gaze inadvertently shifted to the boy with light-blonde hair who was walking in front of him. “Yeah. Me too.”

Riven was walking next to Matt, who was babbling nonsense to him while Riven was trying to actually do the assignment.
They came to a halt in front of a big statue.

Riven walked over to a small sign in front of the statue of a man on a horse, with his hat in hand and a proud smile on his face. 
He started reading what was written down on the sign.

Matt, however, didn’t follow Riven towards the sign.
He instead turned around and joined Alex, who had been walking behind Nick and Felix.

Nick took this as his chance to walk over to Riven and stand next to him. Riven barely seemed to notice, he was frowning while trying to decipher what was written on the sign. 

"Pumpkin, can you read this?" He turned towards Nick and his face dropped when he realized who was standing beside him.
"OH! Eh, I thought you were Matt." He awkwardly chuckled. 

Nick felt a bit weird seeing his reaction. "Pumpkin?" 
"Eh, yeah. We had a conversation recently about how people have these cringy nicknames…"
He sighed, clearly not sure how to explain this without sounding strange.

"So we just started calling each other nicknames. Well, I call him pumpkin. And sometimes babycakes. And he just calls me chicken. Even though I told him that's strange because I'm pretty sure chicken is not a nickname people call each other often."

"Ah. I see." Nick did not totally 'see', but he wasn't in a place to judge. 
Riven smiled, clearly a bit uncomfortable, and turned back to the sign.

He finally found the information he was looking for and scribbled it down on the paper. 
"Alright. Let's go then." 
He quickly walked back to the group and Nick followed him. 

Riven starting walking in front again and the group followed them.
With a bit of Nick's help, he answered all of the questions and after some intervention from the rest of the group they found their way to their final destination: the park, situated close to the center of the city. 

"So this is it, right? We finished the entire paper?" Matt said, while they were sitting on a picnic table in the park, copying Riven's answers off his answer sheet. 

"Yeah, I think so." Jay said. He had already finished writing and was leaning back, warming his face in the sun.
They were pretty lucky the sun was even shining, considering it was January. 

"No." Levi shook his head. He looked up from his sheet for a moment. "We still have to interview some people here. About what it's like living here and stuff." 
"The fuck? Why does that even matter?" Felix frowned. 

Levi shrugged. "Don't ask me." He pointed at the bottom of the sheet. "Look. We have to come up with 3 questions and write them down here. And then add the answers of course." 

"Yeah, no. I will not be doing any interviews." Riven clearly didn't feel much for talking to strangers.
Nick didn't share his social anxiety, but he also didn't particularly look forward to bothering people who were just trying to live their lives with some stupid questions.