My heart was still beating quite fast because of what just happened between me and Ms. Lyst.
The image of Ms. Lyst's face close to mine, me embracing her, all of it replayed on repeat through my mind and I felt the heat spreading again through my entire body. I wondered how those red lips would feel.
I was sure this must be the aftereffect of the aphrodisiac éclair that I ate. I would never be interested in stuff like that. I only care about cooking! I only care about cooking! I ONLY CARE ABOUT COOKING! I repeated to myself.
With all that, my extra time from coming in early this morning had passed quite fast so I knew the bell was about to ring. Time to make my way to the assembly point.
Just as I arrived there, the bell rang. Gazette walked up to me and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
“Good morning Claire!”
“Hey, Eline, ready for this afternoon?” I did my best to sound casual but I remembered the video the second I saw her face. I felt the warmth spread over my face again and had trouble looking her in the eye.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Oh no, I was wondering if you guys had fun yesterday after I left?” Now it was her turn to become embarrassed and turn crimson.
“I'll tell you all about it later.” she said a bit shy, then she added while giving me a wink “You deserve to know.”
She was gonna tell me herself. It seemed that she considered me a close friend now. I always avoided having close friends but within 3 days this FBY business had blown up the walls of the path between friends and close friends that I so carefully threaded.
Well, it was through my own actions that it happened and I was reaping some benefits from what happened in the communications room yesterday, so I would have to take responsibility for it and if I was honest to myself, the feeling of having closer friends was not that bad as I had always imagined either. But that would not mean that I would allow it to cut into my time for cooking! That I could never allow!
It seemed like our teacher for the first hour was late because we were the only class remaining in the courtyard and a little while later Ms. Lourdes came to tell us that our regular teacher was absent and that we would have free study time under her supervision.
“We could have slept an hour longer.” I overheard Eve say to Therese. “I doubt teachers get detention if they are late 3 times.” Those two were as close as ever but I noticed Elsa wasn't taking part in their group this morning. Normally she would be at the center of it. Was Elsa just nervous for this afternoon or did something happen between those three?
In my eyes, it was not a bad thing that we had an hour of free study. I had been putting all my time into the FBY and cooking lately so it helped to catch up a little with my school work.
During the study hour, Ms. Lourdes passed my desk and saw my open satchel. “I'm borrowing one of these from you during this class. I need to catch up on what lives inside young girls' heads these days.” and she took one of the yuri manga. “Ugh, aunt Bernie, why?” I thought. My face turned red for the umpteenth time that morning. What was this today? The ‘let's embarrass Claire marathon’?
Chloe and Julie clearly recognized the kind of manga Ms. Lourdes took from my satchel and whispered something to each other and then started giggling while they watched Ms. Lourdes devour the manga with big eyes.
When class was over Ms. Lourdes returned the manga to me. “Cough cough, That was rather interesting. I might pass by the FBY office to borrow some more from time to time. After all, I need to keep up-to-date with what lives among students.” she said with a little blush on her face. Really? Now Ms. Lourdes is reading and clearly enjoying yuri?
Well, who am I to refuse the headmistress? “Okay, pass by whenever you like,” I said with an accommodating smile. Ms. Lourdes looked really content with my answer.
While we were waiting for the next teacher to arrive, Chloe and Julie came to me clearly with the intention to gossip. “Did you see her eyes when she was reading that manga? '' Chloe said. “She totally started blushing while reading,” Julie answered. “We always kinda knew about you, but to think Ms. Lourdes is into girls.” I didn't bother anymore trying to straighten things out and say I was not interested in that stuff. That gossip had gone way too far to try to reverse it. Then out of nowhere the gossip sponge, Gazette, popped up and said “Well seen her circumstances, was it not expected? I bet she has some high school or college crush she never got over.”
“My mom and she are childhood friends, maybe I could ask my mom?” I said.
“Or maybe it is your mom!” Chloe shouted everyone around my desk started laughing. But for some reason, I couldn't. I felt a bit nervous about what was just said.
But then not leaving my mind to think about what was just said. Ms. Debusier arrived in class. “Silence ladies, everyone go to your own seat and take a piece of paper. We are having an unannounced test.”
I was lucky that I revised my math during the study hour because otherwise, I would have been in serious trouble now. What was it with math teachers and unannounced tests? Talking about threading the needle's eye...
After the test, math class passed and was as boring as ever. I mean what was the chance that I would ever need to calculate a discriminant in my kitchen?
Then we had to go to the courtyard for recess. We had to drag our satchels with us because the next class was physics. Physics was taught in a special classroom.
During our 15 minute break, a first-grader approached me.
She was a small blonde girl with pigtails and bright blue eyes. At the age of 12, she was at the start of the developing stage. Although she was young and small she had a demeanor like she owned the place. The way she approached an older student was without a doubt proof of her unmatched self-confidence.
“I am Fien Anciers from 1L, could I talk to you?”
She was Dutch. That explained a lot about her directness.
She had a strong Dutch accent and pronounced Anciers like you would read it in Dutch and not in French as most people would. So she pronounced both ie's like the ee in need. Well, nobody is perfect.
“Nice to meet you, Fien, I'm Claire Brossé. Sure thing, what is this about”
“Well, I saw you on the stage a few days ago, and ever since that moment I have been thinking about you.”
What was this? A confession? In the middle of the courtyard? This could not be happening. Do these young girls have no sense of shame? I kept silent, preparing words to reject her as kindly as possible.
“I thought you were so cool, I'm a super big yuri fan too. I even went to the BXL manga expo last year to sell a fanart doujinshi of Fireworks Warning, my favorite yuri novel. I made a special edition focusing entirely on Chiya. I could never get enough of her while I was reading. I mean, being so tall and shy at the same time. How cute is that? I made it all by myself. Here is a copy.” She pushed the book into my hands, the way she looked at me with those puppy eyes, it was clear that there was no way I could refuse it, but she was right about liking that story. It was a yuri staple after all. After I accepted she quickly continued. “The way you guys try to bring 2D to 3D is just marvelous!” Her eyes lit up and she got super excited. The speed at which the words came out of her mouth would even put Marc Uyterhoeven to shame. Fien reminded me of a cute little chihuahua that was over-excited because you held her favorite toy. “Please oh pretty please let me join the FBY?” she ended her excited waterfall of words.
Luckily it was a different kind of confession than I feared. Well, she didn't lack the enthusiasm that's for sure.
“Well today is gonna be difficult because we got an operation planned, how about you pass by the FBY office tomorrow after school? Then we can decide at that moment if it is something for you.” But directly after the words that we had something planned left my mouth I saw her eyes go into ‘shoujo girl seeing stars’- mode. I could swear her pupils changed into hearts there for a second.
“Please let me come today? I promise I won't be in the way!” I knew I was gonna regret this but who could resist those eyes? So I got suckered into it and told her to meet up at the FBY office during lunch break.
After that, she kept following me like a puppy talking nonstop about her other favorite yuri novel Sleeping Princess. Her enthusiasm put a smile on my face. Fien was clearly the kind of girl that called everything she got really excited about her favorite. She was explaining to me why obviously everyone should be on the Yuko x Sophia ship and that the author would suffer an insurmountable pile of flamed fan letters if she would not oblige. The author had released an image of the ship together herself and Fien showed me she used it as the background on her phone. The two girls looked cute together, I had to agree with Fien on that part.
I had only read the first volume of that one. Only reading yuri for a couple of days, I was lucky it was such a mainstream must-read yuri staple or I would probably have never heard of it. I made a note to read the rest soon otherwise Fien would just spoil it all for me.
The bell rang, she stepped up and gave me a kiss on the cheek and we went our separate ways.
I felt like I had just been hit by a hurricane.
https://youtu.be/tQkqdkwFmcc
a great chapter, Fien seems to be a cute character
Fien became one of my favorite characters over time. Her role got a lot bigger and she will eventually get her own arc, just because I love her so much
@Yati I wanna see her cling to her Yuri senpai even more!
Free ad, nice, someone who is into yuko x sophia is already a good character, soon enough they will be canon.
Yes, Yairy would not want to disappoint us, now would she?
I'll accept the flame letters, thank you very much!
That you would disappoint me, I could understand that. But would you really disappoint Fien?
@Yati I can still sleep well at night.
@Yairy maybe I should ask Ren, to draw a puppy eyed Fien, that can haunt you in your sleep
But then again... you almost never sleep...
@Yati Hehe, try something else! That won't work on me.