I finally stepped through the door of the giant building I was about to spend the most of the next three years of my life in. While it wasn’t an unusual state for me, I was feeling rather nervous -- after all, I was about to start attending a magic school, one that so far appeared to be rather impressive. The building had a footprint of a mall rather than any regular school, most of it was seven floors tall, and almost the entire thing was in a style that was popular several centuries ago; that’s when it was constructed after all.

The insides were astonishingly well-maintained, with many modern touches visible, which made me just the tiniest bit more optimistic about the living arrangements. Of course, just like with the other thing about them, I had to quickly squash that thought, and hope it wouldn’t return -- I already learned that lesson many times, being optimistic and hopeful mostly led  to hurt and disappointment.

Following signs laid out around the building, I, as well as countless people who were going the same way, eventually found my way to the main announcement hall -- they actually had a huge room dedicated to just that one purpose -- and began to search for the seat number that I received in mail along with other useful information a couple weeks earlier.

When I found my designated place, I discovered with disappointment that I was to be surrounded by two random guys, one of whom was already busy chatting with someone nearby. I decided to count my blessings, since the chairs were actually spread apart a bit, and rather comfy too, but I still couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable being so close to other people. Despite being taller than both of my neighbors, I felt like quite the opposite was true, and not in a good way, either.

Surprisingly soon, a confident woman in a suit walked on stage and started speaking. She explained why we had been given pre-assigned seats - apparently, during her ‘introduction to the school’, cards with our room numbers would appear on our laps. It was supposedly the easiest way to have them distributed.

What was really interesting was the way people were assigned to their rooms -- you see, every magic school had one special thing that no other school had, that they showed off for various reasons. Here, it was an ancient magical being with empathic powers that volunteered hundreds of years ago to help the students with their emotional growth during this supposedly so important time in our lives.

And that apparently meant mostly helping with assigning people to rooms with people they were most likely to get along with, regardless of any other things that would be traditionally considered during such assignments. Since each room housed four people, it was rather important to get it right. Although knowing my luck, I’d probably end up stuck with some random guys that’d merely tolerate my existence at best…

The ‘introduction’ speech was impressively generic, starting with a welcome, and then going through some basic administrative stuff, with one self-aware and ‘relatable’ joke thrown somewhere in there for good measure. Needless to say, I was one of the people who didn’t laugh at said joke; what can I say, it just felt rather empty… If this place really wanted to prove it wasn’t just a soulless facility like any other school, it had to do so by actions, not words.

At some point I received the small card with my name and room number, though I noticed it appeared significantly later than for most of the people around me. Not like it was actually important, just another small thing for me to needlessly worry about.

When we got dismissed, I quickly realized that my plan to get to the room before my roommates to somewhat reduce the awkwardness wouldn’t work. Now that I thought about it, I didn’t know how I exactly expected myself to somehow get ahead of most of the crowd of over three hundred excited teenagers. Despite my size, I wasn’t much of an energetic teenager, and any movement I made really lacked confidence.

With that, I decided that the best course of action was to go slow about this, and be the last person to show up in the room. I didn’t know what advantages it would give me, besides a minimal amount of control about how the whole thing went. Along the way to the dorm area, I was asked by one of the teachers why I was walking so slowly, and even after explaining I just wanted to avoid the crowd, she still gave me the look. The look some teachers give students when they see they’re different; there usually were problems where different people were. I tried my best to ignore it and keep on walking.

I arrived in front of room number two hundred and forty-three. I looked at the number, and then once again at the card in my hands. Even if I hadn’t triple-checked my seat number in the hall, the card also had my full name, including the second name, clearly written on it. Yes, I was stalling; what happened next would probably define the next three years of my life, after all. There weren’t exactly any procedures for changing your room; it was never a problem. I was well aware that it was incredibly unlikely that I’d somehow be the only one in several hundreds of years to get a really bad deal out of it, but I doubted rationality had much to do with how I was feeling at the moment.

A lot of possible scenarios of what could go wrong were running through my head when I finally gathered enough courage to grab the handle and start to open the door way too slowly. The part of my brain that was always just a moment too late yelled at me that I should have knocked. No amount of fear induced speculations would have prepared me for who my roommates turned out to be.

Three rather different, but nevertheless pretty girls looked in my direction when the door finally properly opened. I tried, and failed to produce any words, partly due to surprise, and partly due to my awful social skills, so I opted for showing them the card that led me there instead. They got that I was about to be their roommate, and looked to be surprisingly okay with it. The rooms weren’t strictly separated by anything other than age, so everybody in the room probably acknowledged possibility of guys and girls sharing some rooms, even if I didn’t really expect to be that lucky, but I was still surprised that any normal person wouldn’t look visibly disappointed at prospect of having to put up with me.

After I finally managed to introduce myself, my roommates started to do the same. First was Emma; she was probably around average height, and she looked exactly like one of those girls who always looked stereotypically feminine, had creative and cute, yet conforming outfits, always had makeup on and perfectly styled hair. The exact kind of girl you looked at and couldn’t help but wonder how she managed to do that every day.

The second was Faye; her style was pretty tomboy-ish, clothes not even completely matching her size. Her hair was definitely short for a girl, but it was really wild too, with bangs that seemed to defy gravity, and those colorful highlights. She had an air of the person who would definitely be up to breaking some rules and acting irresponsible, but still knew when to stop when it mattered.

And last, there was Lilith. Now, there were a lot of things about her that stood out, probably intentionally, but the first I noticed, and really couldn’t stop thinking about, was the fact that she was actually taller than me, and not, like, just a bit, but significantly. I actually had to look up at her! I didn’t know why, but it felt kinda great. Her hair was also certainly something; it was very dark blue, it looked to be transformed instead of dyed, and it was shoulder shoulder length except for the left side of her head, where it was cut entirely. The clothes she wore made me think of the word ‘goth’, but I actually didn’t know enough to be sure of that; they also looked like they were practical, but also elegant, and feminine, but also not, all somehow at the same time, without looking like any stereotype I knew of. I was halfway convinced she had to use magic to achieve that effect.

After the awkward introductions, I shyly examined exactly what living conditions we’d be dealing with, and I had to say, it was rather decent. The main area of the room was open, and shared four beds, because apparently we were too young for privacy, but the spaces between them were decent, as well as the furnishings, including desks of course, because even when school was our home, we still got homework. There was a part of the room that served as a mini-kitchen; it was obvious that it was only to be used for beverages and simple meals, but it was good that we had it at all. Then there were the toilet room and the bathroom, which were mercifully separate, and both of rather comfortable sizes. It obviously had many flaws, but it could have been much worse, so I, again, decided to count my blessings.

I really hoped that after my awkward entry, I’d eventually get less anxious, but unfortunately it wasn’t the case. In my fear-filled considerations of how sharing a room with three other people would work out, I’d somehow managed to miss the fact that three is a lot of people when you are used to zero. My roommates made some attempts at smalltalk, but whenever they tried with me, I had nothing meaningful to say, or I panicked, or ended up sounding weird, and eventually it got too weird to continue; I told them I wasn’t feeling too well and I’d just rather lay in my bed, where I spent the rest of the evening looking at unfunny memes.