Lovers: Boarding School

D:2 + D:3

Violet couldn't breathe. All of her senses were directed at the figure like a cornered animal that had no chance of escape. Her heart thudded crazily in her chest and a million thoughts ran rampant through her head. Despite the rabid torrent of feelings and thoughts inside of her, she stood where she was, petrified.

She didn't feel scared. She didn't feel fearful. What she felt was true, pure terror.

A clap of thunder roared above her and she jumped from the window, dazed. She blinked, then ran to the window to see if the figure was still where she saw it. She looked down and saw nothing but dirt and the crooked roots of a tree.

Violet gasped. The spooked girl finally felt her lungs decompress from the breath she was holding, but her mind was not as relieved.

"What was that?" she whispered. But before she had the chance to think any more of what she saw--or what she thought she saw--the door to her dorm burst open. A blonde girl with a high strung ponytail and bright, baby blue eyes stood at the entrance, her wide smile stretching from ear to ear.

"You must be Violet!" she squealed cheerily. She pulled Violet into their dorm, unaware of how shaken the poor girl looked.

Or maybe that was how Violet's roommate was programmed to be.

XOXO

The character that was to be Violet's roommate and "best friend" at school/in the game was a second year student named Lena Caelini. She check-marked all the boxes of a stereotypical high school side character; she was extroverted, bubbly, naive, egregiously girly, and obsessed--disgustingly obsessed--with the opposite sex. Violet knew--just knew--that her major source of story exposition would come from this annoyingly inflated personality of a character.

"Oh my God!" she shrieked. "You're childhood friends with Jack Invidia?'

Violet nodded with a tight smile. How the fuck do I shut her off? she begged the system but she couldn't find a menu that offered her a muting option.

Lena continued to barrage Violet with questions she couldn't really answer personally (she had to use the Interaction Options menu to answer her new "friend"). Speaking of Jack, the game skipped her first few classes--which included the chemistry class that she and Jack apparently shared--and transitioned onto a cafeteria scene immediately after Lena's introduction and dorm tour.

The cafeteria was buzzing with background noise and the NPCs (non-playable characters) moved and interacted with one another like teenagers--to a certain degree. Some characters in the background like the girl with the glasses and braids that Violet eyed at from time to time did not move at all from her crouched reading position.

"Did you know that Invidia is one of the Cardinal Points?" Lena whispered to Violet. Violet finally looked to her with mild interest. The blonde girl with the perpetual smile on her face grinned wider and the action unnerved Violet a bit.

"Invidia is like, really athletic. And hot. Like really hot. Gorgeous hot."

Just get to the damn point!, Violet wanted to scream.

"But he's not the only one that's smoking hot. There's--"

Just before Lena could finish her sentence, the murmurs around the cafeteria increased in volume and frequency. Several NPCs looked to the entrance of the cafeteria and Violet knew without even looking at their direction that Bachelor Number 2 just entered the building.

Violet slowly raised her head and looked to whom Lena, whose eyes were as wide as saucers, was gaping at. The sight made her eyebrows rise and her lips to twitch.