“.......So,” Octavia let out after a ten minutes long silence during which she was embraced by her lover/teacher who was sitting behind her. “You were into boys before meeting me?”
“Really?! That’s really the first thing you ask after I tell you that Ari’s brother is my ex?” Vinyl asked back with a cocked eyebrow.
“Well, I thought you were only into girls,” Octavia replied with a brief pout before her expression slightly brightened. “Does that mean I made you switch side?” she asked with excitement, and a playful glint in her eyes while looking back at her lover’s face.
“..... You drank coffee again?” Vinyl asked in an inquisitorial tone which surprised Octavia quite a bit.
“No!” Vinyl’s cerise eyes narrowed right before hers. “Sul serio!” A light blue eyebrow shot up the teacher’s brow. “...... Just one cup with a lot of cream when I was waiting for you after school,” she admitted softly.
“Brava ragazza,” [Good girl,] Vinyl whispered in Octavia’s ear, making the younger girl shiver. “Always tell the truth to your teacher,” she recommended playfully. “As for your question: No, it wasn’t you who made me realize my attraction for the fairer sex…”
“Oh,” Octavia let out in obvious disappointment. “Then who did?”
“...Aren’t you a little too curious about that?” Vinyl asked with a roll of her eyes.
“No,” Octavia replied softly. “Come on, you can tell me!”
“Well, if you really want to know,” Vinyl said with a brief, chuckled sigh. “It was mostly because I spent most of my afternoons as a teenager in my mother’s studio. A daily exposure to models like : Mi Amore Cadenza, Kiku Sanagi, or Fleur De Lys made me realize that I actually found women just as attractive as guys like Soren of the Wondercolts.” Vinyl paused a few seconds before smiling in remembrance. “The fact that I actually stumbled on two of them fooling around in a dressing room once only made me realize much more stuff… And that, apparently, toes are very important in the bedroom...”
“.....Toes?” Octavia asked with a cocked eyebrow.
“I know, right?!” Vinyl asked back softly. “Chi l’avrebbe mai pensato?” [Who would have ever thought of that?] she added in a whisper, more for herself than for Octavia.
“No one sensible I suppose,” Octavia sourly replied, pouting in disappointment.
“Hey, now! You are my very first girlfriend, Ottavia,” Vinyl added, nuzzling the young girl’s neck tenderly. “So don’t get all gloomy on me over who made who realize stuff.”
“...All right… Did you explain the situation to Ms Heliopolis?” Octavia asked, her voice showing she had been a bit reassured by her girlfriend’s statement.
“Yep!” Vinyl let out with a sigh. “To her, Theresa and Selene. I also said what I did to Neon when we were at the club last saturday.”
“You mean the crushing part?” Octavia asked slowly, earning a puzzled glance from Vinyl. “You yelled about it in Italian when you left the classroom,” she reminded softly.
“Oh, right! I did tell them about that too,” Vinyl explained in a soft groan. “Theresa freaked out as expected. Celeste remained impassible and neutral, like always. And Selene basically cheered me for it…Which was something I wasn’t expecting from her to be honest.”
“Ms. Sedgwick probably didn’t appreciate that last part.”
“Not really,” Vinyl replied with a sheepish chuckle. “I think she’ll do a seminar on violent reactions both for me, and Selene.”
“What happened then?”
“They made me promise to never physically abuse Neon’s parts again, and that I should treat his sister like any other student,” Vinyl explained slowly. “Celeste then told me that she would see Ari after school hours to make it clear that I’m going to treat her like a teacher is supposed to treat a student. She also added that she’d expect the same from her as well.”
“Do you think she’ll do that?” Octavia asked worriedly.
“Only time will tell, Tesoro,” Vinyl let out quietly before letting go of Octavia to stand up. “We should probably go in the kitchen. I doubt that dinner is going to make itself, or that your father would make it for us…”
“He’d have to be here to do so,” Octavia replied matter-of-factly, as she followed Vinyl out of the twenty-two year old’s room. “He had to remain at work tonight.”
“Again?!” Vinyl asked with a frown. “That’s the tenth time this month, and we're only the fifteenth of November. Has your dad ever heard about the word 'rest'?”
“Yes, he has,” Octavia replied matter-of-factly. “He calls it bi-monthly golf weekend.”
“He should take it easy,” Vinyl commented with a sigh. “He’s not getting younger…”
“First of all, Carina,” [..., Sweetie,] Octavia raised one finger at her teacher. “Don’t ever say that in front of him. Second, My father’s not that old…”
“He’s the same age as my Nonna,” Vinyl retorted with a shrug.
“Oh, because your grandmother is fifty-one, huh?” Octavia asked with a cocked eyebrow.
“....Okay, Nonna is fifty-four, but still, that’s close enough,” Vinyl admitted sheepishly.
“Wait, what?”
“She was sixteen when she had my mom, who was sixteen and something when I was born,” Vinyl explained casually. “Mom never liked the feeling of rubber….” she let out, shuddering in discomfort when she remembered her mother’s unwanted explanation.
“I did not need to hear that,” Octavia whispered as cold shivers ran down her spine.
"I can assure you that you weren't the only one."
**********************************************************************************************************
The following week had been a bit tense for the Class Pon-3, thanks to the auditions for the Grand New Year Gala coming up, the daily rehearsals it implied, the rocky arrival of Arietta, and her past with their teacher. Her feud with Vinyl had warranted Ari a lot more attention from the other students, but not exactly the kind of attention she had hoped to get at her new school.
Between Gilda’s crew, who kept praising her for talking bad to a teacher, and her actual classmates, who were giving her the cold shoulder during the school breaks, the only pink-haired student of Celestia’s Royal Academy wasn’t enjoying the change of school. And it started showing in her playing during Thursday morning’s rehearsals, when she kept missing notes on the flute solo she was going to audition with- a solo of her own composition-.
Vinyl sighed slowly as Ari took her breath back to continue her performance from the note she had missed a couple of seconds ago. It was the fifth time she had interrupted her song, and she had only been playing the first verse of it. Most of her classmates remained stoic whenever a mistake happened, but the other flautist of the class sported a genuinely compassionate expression at her struggles.
“Arietta,” Vinyl called softly when the performance was once again interrupted by a missed note. “Do you want to take a short break?”
“....” Ari opened her mouth a couple of times before her voice came out. “...y..Yes….Huh… Can I go to the toilet?” she asked, her cheeks red of embarrassment and her voice barely above a whisper.
“Sure!” Vinyl said with a nod before Ari put her instrument in her case, and walked out of the classroom. “Okay, guys. This has to stop,” she stated calmly to her other students.
“....What has to stop?” Harpo asked after they all looked at each other in confusion.
“We’re not doing anything,” Laura let out slowly, earning a few nods from her classmates.
“That’s exactly the problem,” Vinyl retorted slowly. “Do not think that I didn’t notice how you’ve been ignoring her since her first class with me.” Henry, Beatrice, and Nathan turned to look at Octavia who was as shocked as them by that remark. “No, it’s not Octavia who told me: I saw it for myself.”
“Well, she was horrible with you,” Beatrice reminded sheepishly.
“Yeah!” Octavia let out strongly. “She kept saying you didn’t have any real talent.” she added, earning approving nods from the majority of her classmates.
“Among with other things about you that weren’t real,” Laura added in whisper before Diana poked her side with her flute. “Ouch!”
“Shush, you!” Diana whispered in a threatening tone.
“Guys,” Vinyl called, waving for the calm. “I can appreciate that you’re siding with me on this. I really can, but it’s neither necessary, nor fair for Arietta.” Vinyl looked at her students with calm. “Yes, she doesn’t like what I did as a professional, much like a lot of you when we first met!” Vinyl reminded slowly. “It did take a while for some of you to fully accept me as a teacher,” she added, glancing at Viola who held her gaze for a few seconds before looking down in shame.
She paused to let that sink into her other students’ heads.
“She doesn’t like me, and she probably has reasons to do so. Let her have those reasons, and act normal with her,” Vinyl demanded softly. “Just give her a chance, like you did with me.”
**********************************************************************************************************
“Theo, can I change school?”
“Sis, Alard did me a huge favor to get you enlisted in that school’s music program which YOU told me was the best there was.”
“That was before I knew your stupid ex was the teacher!”
“Who are you talking about?! I’m pretty sure I never dated a teacher.”
“PON-3! She’s my music teacher!”
“What?! You’re joking right? How could she of all people have become a teacher?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care! I’ll not have her as my teacher!!!”
”So, did you phone to the school?”
“Yeah. But I don’t think I can have her fired.”
“What?! Who do you want to get fired?”
“Well, Scratch DID assault me last Saturday, if you remember! I had to tell her employers that one of their teachers is prone to violence.”
“That’s not why you said you’d call the school. You said that you’d try to see if I could be authorized to not attend the classes with her, and have like a private teacher.”
“I know, but I’m already paying for that school, I’m not going to pay a private teacher just because you can’t stand her…”
“Says the guy who wants to get his ex fired from her job because you and her had a spat at the club…”
“HEY! Don’t backsass me, Ari! Either way, I talked with your Vice-principal, and she explained in full detail why the school can’t get rid of her at the moment. She held me on the phone for more than forty minutes. I even hung up at some point because I couldn’t stand it.”
“YOU WHAT?! THAT’S MY VICE-PRINCIPAL, YOU MORON!”
“She just phoned back to continue her explanation. She kept talking, and talking… I didn’t escape it...”
”What do you mean, you’re not going to school today?!”
“I mean that I’m not going!”
“How, come on! Suck it up a little, Ari! You can stand having two hours of class with her, can’t you?”
“That’s not just Scratch the problem! I... I don’t want to go to that school anymore! I hate it there!”
“Why?! Because of Scratch?”
“I JUST SAID IT WASN’T JUST ABOUT HER!!!”
“Then, why? Are the other teachers mean to you?”
“No.”
“Someone’s bullying you?”
“No!”
“You asked a boy out, and he said no, and now you’re embarrassed to show up at school again?”
“NO! OF COURSE NOT!”
“THEN WHAT’S THE…. Raaaaghh…. Look, Arietta. I have a busy day planned today, so I don’t have the time for this. Either you go take your bag, or you decide to remain here alone for the rest day. I’ll wait in the car, but I’m leaving in two minutes with or without you.”
“I’ll be alone even at school….”
Two sheepish knocks on the door of the stall Ari was quietly crying in broke her out of her memories of this morning. Ari hadn’t even heard someone come in the restroom. She quickly wiped her tears from her eyes, before she took a short breath to try to sound casual.
“It’s occupied,” Ari let out softly in response.
“I know,” Laura’s voice whispered from the other side of the door. “I… I sorta heard you,” she admitted slowly.
“What are you doing here?” Ari asked dryly, doing her best to ignore what the lyrist had just said as she opened the door of her stall.
“You’ve been in there for more than ten minutes,” Laura explained matter-of-factly. “Scratch asked me to see if you were doing okay….”
“Great, that bitch sends her lackeys after me now,” Ari muttered under her breath as she examined her eyes in the restroom’s mirror.
Laura simply sighed in response, and crossed her arms as she looked at Ari’s back.
“She asked if one of us could go see how you were doing, and I volunteered to do so,” Laura stated slowly.
“Why?” Ari asked, confused that Laura, the Pon-3 fangirl of her class had volunteered to do so.
“Well, mostly because Henry going into the girls’ restroom to see how you were doing would have been creepy,” Laura explained with a short chuckle. “But it was also because, out of all the girls in our class, I’m the most diplomatic one.”
“.... Your jokes are really not as good as you pretended them to be last monday,” Ari stated after a short pause, seeing Laura’s reflexion in the mirror shrug at her. “Anyway, as you can see, I’m perfectly fine so you can…”
“I may not be an expert, but I seriously doubt that crying in a toilet is being perfectly fine,” Laura remarked calmly.
“I wasn’t crying!” Ari snapped as she turned around to face angrily the pale-haired lyrist.
“Right, sorry! You weren’t exactly crying. I heard sniffles, and sobs..… You were snobbing then,” Laura explained slowly under the cold glare of her pink-haired classmate. “... Though, at least you weren’t snobbing like we did with you for the past week and a half....”
“....What?” Ari asked back, her gaze filled with shock at what Laura had just said in a sheepish, non-comical chuckle.
“Scratch gave us a good view of our attitude toward you, and I’d like to apologize for giving you the cold shoulder,” Laura stated slowly, looking up from the elbow she was rubbing to see the surprise in Ari’s face.
“So… Because that bitch tells you to feel sorry for me, you just do it?!” Ari asked angrily after a few seconds.
“Well, that bitch, as you say, didn’t tell us that. She just let us know that we should give you the chance you deserve in her opinion,” Laura explained sheepishly. “Now, if you consider that it’s feeling sorry for you....” she paused for a short moment before shrugging. “Meh ...Can’t do much about that, can I?”
Laura expected Ari to hold her glare against her casual demeanor, only to have the pinkette turn her back to her. Ari whispered that Laura could just leave her alone as she looked down at the restroom sink. Laura rested her hand on Ari’s shoulder before the pinkette jerked it away. The pinkette wiped her eyes one last time before she went out of the restroom, leaving Laura on her own.
“..... Yeah, I guess I was a bit too optimistic on this one,” Laura said to her reflection in the mirror. “But, I know better than to quit after one try! To victory!” she stated with confidence as she bumped fist with the mirror image of herself. “....... I’m talking to, and fist-bumping myself…. Meh!” she shrugged calmly before heading out of the restroom to go back to her classroom.
**********************************************************************************************************
At lunch time, Ari took her plate to an empty table, as far away as possible from the one occupied by Beatrice, and Viola, knowing that the rest of her classmates would join them. She took a forkful of her plate of pastas as someone sat across of her. She ignored that person, thinking it was probably Gilda or Delilah, who both had often come to dine with her, until she noticed from the corner of her eye that it was a much frailer girl that had sat before her.
“Bon Appetit!” Laura waved with a warm smile as Ari stopped chewing on her food just before the lyrist took a large bite of her sandwich.
“....What are you doing?” Ari asked with a cocked eyebrow.
“I’m eating a sandwich,” Laura replied matter-of-factly, nodding at her food. “...Something wrong?” she asked when Ari kept looking at her as if she had something dirty on her face.
“You usually sit with Diana at lunch,” Ari reminded slowly.
“Don’t worry. There she comes!” Laura said, pointing at something behind the pinkette’s right.
Ari turned around to see the petite blonde sheepishly walking toward their table with her plate in her hands. Diana stopped right next to the empty chair beside Ari before looking in the pinkette’s direction.
“Can I sit here?” she asked in a calm, soft-spoken tone.
“....I don’t see why not,” Ari let out after a few seconds.
“Thanks,” Diana replied as she sat next to the puzzled pink-haired girl who soon started to look around. “It’s just us today,” she stated with a small smile.
“What do you mean by just you?”
“Well, Laura told me how you reacted to her apology in the toilets,” Diana explained, lowering her voice so that only Ari and Laura could hear it. “It’s probably for the best we don’t come all at once to apologize for the rather bad welcome week.”
“So, you’re all going to apologize for it just because Scratch says you have to?” Ari asked with a cold tone.
“Didn’t it occur to you that we might have other reasons to apologize?” Laura asked back in Diana’s stead, before pulling a large piece of chicken breast out from between her sandwich’ slices of bread. “The teafff gotch influenfe, but not thaf mufff!”
“The slob’s right,” Diana nodded slowly. “We’re not willing to apologize to you because we pity you, nor is it because Scratch asked us to...”
“Then what’s your opinion on the matter?” Ari asked with narrowed eyes. “What’s your reason?”
“Well, I personally think you’re wrong for telling us that Scratch doesn’t have any skills to teach us,” Diana admitted slowly. “But, I still shouldn’t have acted like that with you just because of that. I want to apologize because what I did was wrong. I’ll understand if you don’t want to forgive us on the spot, but I just hope we could be really good friend with some time.”
“Just for that?” Ari asked in a whisper.
“YEP!” Diana nodded with a warm smile. “THAT, and, to be completely honest with you, also because I’m afraid of what Scratch would do if we continue to ignore you like the plague,” she added sheepishly as she poked her forefingers together.
“Huuuh, what are you talking about?” Ari asked in confusion.
“Well, she might tell my Mom, and that would lead to a deprivement of muffins,” Diana explained quickly, a hint of fear lingering in her voice. “I don’t want that to happen!”
“So you want to be friends with me just for not getting deprived of pastries?” Ari asked incredulously before turning her head sombrily to Laura who was swallowing her piece of chicken. “What’s your excuse then, Laura? No more weekends at the ranch if your parents learn that you’re not nice with the new girl?”
“Lighten up. I was j…” Diana started before Laura interrupted her.
“Nah, I’m just being nice with you because you’re super hot, and I figured you wouldn’t want to engage pleasing physical contact with me if we’re on bad terms,” Laura explained matter-of-factly, causing Ari to freeze in shock, and Diana to slam her hand on her face.
“Why? Why? Why do you always have to take it down to THAT level?!” Diana asked the white-haired lyrist in a long, desperate sigh.
“I’m a hormonal teenager without a girlfriend, and two of the prettiest girls I know became lesbian with one another… So I think I have every reason to be a little bit frustrated,” Laura explained before she saw Ari’s fork fall in her plate.
“You’re kidding, right?” Ari asked in a whisper a few seconds later. “You’re not into me like that, right?” she said worriedly.
“Of course not. We were both messing with you a bit” Laura assured mirthfully. “I admit that you’re pretty good-looking, but I noticed how you checked the boys out last monday.” She winked softly as Ari blushed in embarrassment. “Just don’t get too close to Nathan, because little Muffin here would terminate you with her Kung-fu gimmicks!”
“Wha…”
Before Ari could finish her sentence, Diana had moved her food off her tray in order to slam the grey plastic violently on Laura’s left hand. The lyrist let go of her three quarter eaten sandwich to try to push the tray off her crushed hand, but her enterprise was doomed to failure as Diana kept pushing it down with one hand. Ari’s eyes widened in shock at the sight of a whimpering lyrist trying to free her hand from the trap held in place by the flautist who had started to eat her salad with her unoccupied hand.
“....So you do kung-fu?” Ari asked, causing Diana to shake her head as she swallowed.
“Kickboxing actually,” Diana corrected softly. “I started a couple of years ago. It’s a great way to let off some steam.” She nodded at the still struggling Laura. “It’s also great to keep that wild animal in check,” she added playfully as she let go of her tray.
“Huh-huh,” Ari let out while Laura cradled her left hand softly. “...So it was all a joke?”
“The part about the muffins deprivement was just a joke,” Diana replied softly. “The part about us wanting to be friend with you is one-hundred percent real,” she added with sincerity. “Pinky Swear!” Diana called as she extended her little finger to the pink-haired girl.
“...You know that I still don’t think too highly about Scratch, right?” Ari reminded slowly after eyeing the offered little finger.
“It took some time for all of us to get used to her,” Diana replied warmly. “Except Laura, but she was a huge Pon-3 fangirl to begin with,” she added, nodding at the lyrist who was blowing on the reddening back of her left hand.
“And if I never get used to her?” Ari asked slowly.
“Then we’ll try to avoid talking about her with you,” Diana stated with a shrug. “Just try to avoid saying she’s a bad musician in front of Laura.”
“....I think I can do that,” Ari said calmly as she entwined her little finger with Diana’s.
“I’d gladly join that pinky swear,” Laura stated in a slightly pained voice. “But I think Diana broke my little finger.” Instantly Diana, and Ari turned their heads to her to see her extending her little finger up in the air while staring at it with intensity. “Oh wait…” she said as it crooked repeatedly before the two other girls. “I’m not left-handed, so I can join even if it is broken!”