The Book of Firsts

Eleven

"Mika, share a room with me on the school trip."

"Not going," I said, sliding my laptop into my backpack.

Lania hesitated, then ducked her head closer to mine, and whispered: "Is it a money thing or a too busy studying thing?"

"Studying," I said, laughing.

Lania pulled a face, then grabbed her bag. "Walk to assembly with me?"

"Sure," I said, wondering if she was unconvinced about the money.

We slipped out of the classroom, and joined the throng heading toward the day’s Special Assembly.

"Celeste says you’re really smart."

"Nice of her."

"I mean, really really smart. A hundred percent on all the class quizzes in calculus so far."

"Maths is fun for me. I’m planning to take a bunch of course credit exams so I can skip some units when I get to Helios U. Which will hopefully help me with the getting into Helios U part."

"You don’t have much problem with the other classes, either, though. It’s all easy for you. So why are you studying so madly?"

"Everyone applying for the course I want will also be really really smart. The Marden Institute, where I want to at least intern, does cutting-edge development, and only takes the absolute cream. Meanwhile, my academic record is skim milk."

"And so, a regular study routine makes sense and no doubt will pay off. But, Mika, you need to give your head a break every so often."

"I do. I give myself time to play games practically every day. Usually on the bus, because the endless stop-starting makes studying impossible."

"I bet you have it all scheduled on a calendar, too. But the school trip’s not just a break: it’s specifically about being with your school friends, making memories that last a lifetime. Look, I know that we’re all more or less still strangers to you, and none of the things that happen this year, none of these end of an era events, are going to feel quite the same way to you. But give it a chance Mika. Is it really going to make that big of a difference if you spend four days not studying? Look, all I’m saying is that you can still submit the form by five o’clock today, and I’d really love it if you were my roommate."

Lania touched my shoulder lightly, only to be jostled away by the crowd, leaving me alone to find a seat in the auditorium. The subject of the assembly was the senior class trip, and so only the oldest two grades had been required to attend. I was unfamiliar enough with the school to not even be sure if I was sitting with people in my year, and that was of course one of the reasons the class trip held no real meaning for me. If I went, I’d have to attach myself to the members of the Art Club to have anyone to talk to.

I closed my eyes, wishing the air conditioning was set higher on this muggy, unseasonably warm day. The senior advisor gave us a summary of the standards of behaviour expected of Corascur students when on outings, and the consequences of stepping over lines. Then came a short lull, followed by a familiar gentle voice, describing some of the group activities planned for the island resort that was the year’s destination. Our Student Council President, looking like a model who had drifted away from his photo shoot. How Rin managed to transform a standard school uniform into couturier fashion was beyond me.

Bran, standing behind him, was studying his feet. It was definitely an achievement for someone so generally unsociable to be voted vice-president. By contrast Kyou, a few steps away, was scanning the audience methodically. He only stopped when he reached the point where I was sitting, and then he turned his attention back to Rin.

Kyou’s expression had been entirely appropriate to the occasion, and he didn’t look at me again, but a certain aura of anticipation left me unsurprised when I found him later that day in the garden, contemplating the vivid sky.

"Worried it will rain?" I asked.

"Almost wishing it would. The summer house is very unpleasant today."

I went inside, and had to agree. Muggy air, baking sunlight, and no trace of wind. I put down my backpack and opened the window, but it made no difference.

"Let’s work with it," Kyou said, and took the picnic blanket around to the far side of the summer house, then returned and began rapidly shedding clothes, folding everything on the coffee table. I looked at him a moment, then followed suit: in this weather, nakedness was a better option, even if the idea of physical activity was less than compelling.

He closed the window, then went back outside, and after a moment’s confusion I followed him around, only to be met with a stream of water to the face.

Managing to stop myself from shrieking—the water was actually hot from the sun—I dashed forward and we wrestled for control of the trigger nozzle. Gouts of water, thankfully cooler than the first spray, drenched us and our surroundings, and then cut off abruptly as Kyou and I dropped the hose and grabbed for each other instead.

He was hard and I was ready, and we more or less crashed down onto the blanket he’d prepared, and wasted no time fitting our bodies together. This was a different Kyou to our previous encounters, abandoning gameplaying for a straightforward enthusiasm that I happily matched. He kept trying to kiss me deeply while pumping, but had some difficulties, and I found myself having to stifle giggles and gasps. And I very much hoped there was no-one wandering out-of-the-way paths when he came, because our panting in the aftermath seemed highly obvious.

"Good adaption to environmental conditions," I murmured, when I could, and he laughed, and rolled off me, then pulled me to him and kissed me hungrily.

We wrapped ourselves together and kissed until I felt we were cooking in the heat. Kyou briefly shifted to his favourite preoccupation of trying to swallow my breasts, then rolled me onto my stomach and found the fading hickeys he’d left on our previous encounter and renewed them, then began biting the small of my back, my hips, my buttocks, my shoulder blades, the back of my neck. He held me in place when I tried to roll over, and I could sense that his mood had shifted. He began rubbing against the small of my back while continuing to nip and bite at me lightly, until my whole back felt like it was burning.

Finally, he rolled me over, and knelt over me, looking very hot and flushed. Sweat was shining on his forehead and cheeks, and his eyes were black. He very deliberately captured my hands and pinned them beside my shoulders, then lowered himself and pushed slowly back inside me.

It had grown cloudy while he toyed with me, and a roll of thunder accompanied his descent. The wind picked up as he began to move, but it wasn’t until I was writhing in sweaty ecstasy beneath him that the heavens opened and drenched us.

Kyou spent himself completely soon after, and made no effort to keep his weight off me. I didn’t mind. I needed to cool down, and was not sure I was capable of standing anyway. It was only when the downpour shifted from stinging hard to sheets of water that he made some gesture toward moving, gave up on it for a few breaths, then managed to get to his knees and help me up.

We staggered into the summer house and dripped all over the floor near the door. Kyou fished in the under-seat compartments while trying not to soak everything in sight, and, finding myself dizzy, I sat straight down on the floor after he gave me a towel.

"Dangerously close to heatstroke," Kyou said, dropping beside me and feeling my forehead.

I felt his in return, since he’d been the one putting out the most energy. "Maybe a sprinkler would have been the optimal solution."

He smiled, and began to dry his hair. "Let me know if you start to feel sick," and we sat watching the rain.

"Did Bran try to compete this week?" I asked. "We’re getting very far ahead of him."

"I think so. It’s not necessarily surprising that there’s a week without Bran, but Rin and I discussed what to do if he keeps losing." He glanced at me. "If he hasn’t progressed by the time of the school trip, we’ll ask him if he wants to stop."

A jolt of disappointment made me pause, but then I nodded, and kept towelling my hair. "Do you ever regret becoming part of the student council? All these school events seem to involve a lot of work for you three."

"For the trip, it’ll be an advantage," he said, his eyes hooded in a faintly derisive expression. "It gives us some control over events, and also a ready-made excuse to leave whenever someone’s scheming to throw themselves on us."

I laughed. "You three aren’t the only good-looking boys in this school."

"I know. A group name apparently gives us mystique. But there’s no denying we’re a target for a lot of people, for all manner of reasons, and being busy and always needing to rush off is very useful." He shrugged, then added: "Because so many people are watching us, we’ll have to avoid you like the plague on the trip. I’ll apologise in advance."

"I’m not going, so there’s no effort involved."

He paused, putting down his towel, then shifted his face into a comically disappointed moue. "I was very much looking forward to seeing you in a swimsuit."

I stared at him, then down at my naked self, and raised my eyebrows.

"I know, but it still counts." He stood up and started sorting out his clothes. "Do you truly need to study eight days a week to get into your course?"

"I don’t know," I admitted. "It depends on the calibre of the other applicants. But because I can’t control the possibility of people being smarter than me, it becomes one of the things I can’t mentally put down when I’m trying to sleep. I want to be able to pass my exams with my eyes closed, because I’m scared I won’t be able to prop them open during exam week."

He pulled on underpants and trousers, then sat down on the heavy coffee table. "You thought we’d help your sleep issues. Haven’t these last couple of times made any difference?"

"It has." In fact, there’d only been a single night in the last week when I hadn’t managed to sleep in less than half an hour after turning my lights out, which for me was an excellent week.

"So, your concern is actually lack of sleep during the exam? Then my recommendation is to make this first term a clear, full experiment on the impact of regular sex."

"It’s not that this doesn’t sound tempting…"

"No arguing. Years of being expected to spend my holidays at the family business tells me you’re a typical high-achiever who burns out. Lack of sleep isn’t the only consequence of stress—work some proper breaks into your schedule." He hauled his laptop out of his backpack and soon had the application form for the school trip on screen. There wasn’t a lot to fill in, and he had most of it done in a moment, before passing the laptop over to me.

"You won’t see much of any kind of swimming costume if you keep covering me in hickeys," I remarked, but took the laptop.

"What do you usually do when you’re not trying to study yourself into a competitive field?" he asked, as I filled in the final details.

"Design fantasy cities, read novels, play games, go running or swimming. Lots of things." I handed him his laptop back.

"And have you been doing any of those this year?"

"Just Battle of Lothra on the bus."

"Oh? What’s your ID?"

"Isambard."

He found his phone, and while he poked at the screen I slowly dressed, watching him occasionally glance at me with appreciation.

Kyou’s game ID was Tiny Glittering Flower, which I did not comment on. For the next hour we waited out the rain and played the MOBA, first with some light duelling, and then randomly grouping in the five-man teams that were the mainstay of the game. He was good, I was good, sometimes the rest of the party was good. I enjoyed myself a lot, in part because he insisted I sit next to him with my legs across his lap. And also because the random players decided Tiny Glittering Flower was my girlfriend, and kept complimenting me on her skills—along with a lot of less polite comments. Since neither of us were using voice chat, and typing took too much time, I would just laugh and queue for another battle.

Just when the downpour was finally fading to a more regular rain, Kyou received a call, and chose to exit the game rather than ignore it. While his current champion stood uselessly before the enemy tower, I worked frantically to make up for the sudden absence. We were too close to victory to just give up.

"Hey," Kyou said to the phone.

I couldn’t hear precisely what was said, though I guessed from the voice that it was Bran. Kyou, previously warmly relaxed beneath me, turned to ice, and rapped out a series of terse questions.

"What happened?"

"How bad?"

"Where are you now?"

"On my way."

At that I abandoned the game and lifted my legs off him. Kyou grabbed his tie and looped it around his neck, then looked for his shoes.

"Rin’s been injured; he’s unconscious. Ambulance coming."

"I’ll tidy up here," I said.

He lifted a hand in acknowledgement, grabbed his backpack and hurried out. Whatever mystique the Three Kings did or didn’t have, there was undoubtedly a deep bond between them.

Hoping the rain would stop, I took my time drying the floor and hanging towels on hooks, but it looked like it was going to drizzle on interminably. Retrieving my folding umbrella from its pocket in my backpack, I detoured to fold the picnic blanket over the back of one of the outdoor chairs, then headed out of the garden. Gate locked, bars removed and replaced, and then a quick walk down to the dovecote to decide how I wanted to get home. While it was only five minutes to my next bus, the stop was on the far side of the campus. There’d be a twenty-minute wait until the next.

I contemplated my contact list, which held precisely two local numbers: Lania and Carr’s, which I had thanks to the outing to Trafala.

Experimentally I texted Lania: "Still need that roommate?"

She called me back immediately, speaking from somewhere loud with voices. "Mika! You decided to come? Have you put the form in?"

"Yes, an hour or so ago."

"That’s so great. I promise … show…time."

"Where are you? I can hardly hear you."

"Sorry." The noise dropped a little. "It’s a madhouse here."

"Are you at the mall?" I asked, trying not to be too obvious about the reason I’d contacted Lania.

"Nope, still at school, watching the show."

"What’s going on?"

"Our beloved student council president was doing a facilities tour with the Theatre Club when about twenty years of old props fell on their heads. Rin shielded the others and took the brunt of it, and he’s out cold. We’re all watching a couple of Theatre Club members redefine the term histrionic while waiting for the ambulance. Though I’m feeling a bit guilty about being such a gawper, so perhaps we should shuffle off. Do you want to come out with us tonight, Mika? We’re going bowling."

I was about to agree gratefully when she added: "Come over to the auditorium if you’re nearby and you’ll see Kyou with the funniest sunburn. He looks like he fell asleep outdoors lying on his side."

My voice froze in my throat, and I looked down at my hands, then cautiously touched my face. I did feel warm.

"Another time," I said, regretfully, and called a taxi.