I wasn’t an expert on flirting. If I ever did with Jeans, it was on accident, or completely didn’t land with her. As Oka and I passed the energy ball for our challenge back and forth, I tried to think of my flirting experience. Or at least the happier ones because thinking of Jeans wasn’t very productive for flirting help. For my first few crushes I was really aware of, I remembered a few very painful conversations that I guess were attempts. For Oka, I guessed our prior flirting was mostly accidental on my part.

“Ooh, that was close.” I said when Oka nearly dropped the ball, serving it back to me at the last second.

“Well, I do always want to get closer to you.” Oka said. “How was that? Wait, asking that immediately afterwards kinda…that isn’t super great flirting, huh?”

“I’ll be honest, I am not entirely sure how to flirt, so this…might be good practice for us?” I suggested.

With my past being a not-great source here, I tried to think of other flirts I saw. In hindsight, Dr. Diast and Stella flirted with each other a lot when I first met, and now they were flirting more as they were more comfortable being a couple around me. Their flirting mainly seemed like just having really good, smooth conversation with lots of jokes.

“What uh, so uh, so you like.” I said, immediately doing the opposite of good, smooth conversation. I shook the negative thoughts away as Oka and I smacked the ball back and forth between each other. This could be my winter! I can do flirting. It’s with Oka! Just verbalize things you think about her all the time.

On the next pass, the ball spun in Oka’s outstretched hands for a second. I said the first thing that popped into my head, defeating the filter that would have kept it locked up.

“Is that what it felt like when you grabbed my butt?” I said.

Oka’s eyes went wide as she immediately dropped the ball to the ground. It shattered, and her wristband blinked red as mine was green.

“Not fair!” Oka said. “I mean, well played, but not fair! Do we get another round? I have to top that. I didn’t even get started.”

Caya whistled, calling everyone back to her.

“Frick,” Oka said. “Dang it.”

I felt bad for maybe cutting off our flirt session, especially seeing Oka pout as the rest of class moved toward the teachers.

“We could…flirt more later?” I said quietly. “I’ll let you, um. Do some…grabbing again whenever you want as my apology.”

“OK.” She was pouting. “Tonight.”

“You want to tonight?” I asked.

Oka nodded, still pouting. “And then on our date we can do more.” She said. We both froze, each lost in an immediate daydream about what ‘more’ meant there.

“When…do you want that date?” I asked. “I said soon at the sleepover, but we didn’t plan further than that.”

“We’re picking a day and a time tonight,” Oka said. “And then I’m doing some grabbing. Got it?”

Her trying to sound commanding while saying that made my insides feel like they were melting.

For the next round, the field energy wall deal covered the whole class. With the extra space and extra students, we were given a ton more of the energy balls. Diast said it was so we could all have something to do, but I got the sense they wanted this round over quicker with class close to being done. As the round started, Kalei got one of the balls and dribbled it near us with her feet like a hacky sack.

“Alright, I’m about to go full tilt on everyone here in a second, but,” Kalei said. “What’s up with you guys? You good? Oka looks a lot more pissed than she did like five minutes ago.”

Oka shrugged. To me her anger here just looked super cute, but I could see that not looking so to anyone else. Kalei seemed to see Oka's anger as me screwing something up going by her judgmental expression.

“We were going to flirt in the partner round, but it ended too quickly.” I said.

“Yeah, you never wanna end too quickly, am I right?” Kalei snorted. “Here, just take this ball and go to the edge of the zone or whatever you call this shield thing together.” She tossed me the ball, and ran in the opposite direction, sprinting towards the nearest students.

“Kalei can’t get the flirtiest line here, that’s not fair.” Oka said.

“Then come catch me.” I said. I served the ball to myself as I led Oka away from the chaos of the class all throwing energy balls around, making sure to put that chaos between us and the teachers so they didn’t see us kind of sneaking off. We got some glances from the other students, but fortunately nobody blocked us from some almost alone time.

“This should be far enough…” Oka said. She served the ball to me. “I got plenty to hit at you that I totally didn’t come up with in the last minute or so.”

“I hope you have plenty more to hit on me with.” I said, serving back to her. I was going to ask if that one was any good, but I didn’t want to ruin the line per volley thing we were getting to. My face was burning, partially from the exercise and mostly from the flirting.

“Oh, I got plenty more hits,” Oka said. “If you can keep up.”

“I think I most certainly can,” I said. “I like the back and forth we have going here.”

“We do have a good back and forth, not just here.” Oka said. “I think we have lots of good back and forths.”

“What’s your favorite?” I asked.

“I think I like the back and forth between our lips the most.” Oka said.

“I uh,” I started. I couldn’t work up the nerve to say the next part until I saw Oka start to pout again, not wanting our flirting game to be done yet. “Just our lips?”

“Well, other parts there too,” Oka said, her pout thwarted. “Our tongues have a good back and forth, I think.”

“Maybe we should test that later today.” I said.

“Good plan, I’d definitely like to test a few back and forths between us tonight.” Oka said.

“Picking a day for our date, and some tests in, that sounds like a very good time.” I said.

"My room or yours?" Oka asked.

"Hmm, depends on who's there I guess," I said. "Wait, that's not a flirt. Uh, which room do you prefer?"

"As long as it's someplace I can be alone with you, I'm satisfied." Oka said.

"Somewhere nice and private, just for us." I said.

"Uh huh," Oka said. “By the way,” She let the ball swirl in her hands again. “To answer your question from earlier, no, this doesn’t feel as good as squeezing that cute butt of yours.”

“Oh gosh,” I said, turning to mush instantly and dropping the ball.

“Though I may need some more testing there to really compare.” Oka said, winking at me.

“You win.” I said. “You very much win.”

“Nah,” Oka said, taking my hand. “I think we both won here.”