Human Design | Sirius Black

xiii. Wanting More Out of Life (and yet there's this thing pulling me back)

THE LIST WAS a permanent stain on the front of his mind for the next two weeks. Reece couldn't shake the feeling that he was some kind of impostor because he felt so ostracised from the rest of his year, and it continued to press on his mind until, just as he entered the castle coming from a workout with Alex, Connor, and Aaron, he asked, "Have you all got lists?" They all looked at him quizzically and he elaborated, "You know, of people you want to sleep with before we graduate?"

"Yeah, obviously," Alexander said, his voice making it clear he thought it was a stupid question. He glanced over at Connor and Aaron and the prior nodded, reflecting Alex's expression.

Aaron shook his head as he shrugged his bag further onto his shoulder. "Well, I haven't, nor Kevin, 'cause we only graduate next year."

They continued down the corridor, then up a staircase and Reece nibbled on his lip. "Don't you think that's a bit, you know, gross? Cause they're human beings and not items in the shops to cross off a list," he said after a few minutes of silence.

"You look too far into things, Reece," Aaron said with an eye roll whilst Connor said, "Are you saying that girls can't have casual sex? Cause if anything, that's sexist," while he unzipped his track jacket now that they were inside.

"That's not what I'm saying," he responded irritably. "Girls can engage as much sex as they well please, I'm just saying that they should have sex with people who respect them."

"We respect them."

"Do you?"

"Yeah, their bodies," Aaron sniggered.

"But that's exactly the problem cause they're not just bodies, are they?"

None of them responded because Yrsa turned into the corridor they had just entered from a perpendicular one halfway through and when Reece called for her, she turned her head and smiled, stopped walking and waited for him to jog to catch up. She seemed to have grown several inches. "Hey." Glancing over his clothes, she added, "Where are you coming from? Didn't you have class?"

"Work out," he said. "We had a free period."

"Right, obviously. I forgot you do that." Yrsa added something under her breath that sounded a lot like you fucking menace.

In addition to her regular uniform of black robes and red tie, she was wearing a thin belt around her waist that collected the fabric and tightened it, creating more of a natural figure in contrast to the box that the loose uniform usually rendered everyone to be. "What's with the belt?" Reece asked as they continued to walk (and the dull clicking against the stone floor with each of her steps informed him that the belt wasn't the only uniform transgression she was currently committing), the other three following some distance behind them. "That's not allowed, you know?"

"That's not allowed," she mocked, "live a little, for Godric's sake." A laugh bubbled from her throat and though Reece couldn't see due to them not facing each other, he guessed she had rolled her eyes. "I'm not Marylin Monroe; I don't look good in a potato sack. I have the body of a fourteen-year-old boy and unisex robes with not even a bit of cinching at the waist don't help."

"You don't," quipped Connor from behind and they both glanced over their shoulders to look at him. "Just saying, as someone who's actually been one, you do not have the body of a fourteen-year-old boy." He bit down on his lip a little

"Well thanks, but either way," Yrsa shrugged her backpack better onto her shoulders and turned to face the front again, "these robes swallow me up, nobody's going to find me attractive with these on, hence the belt."