The Book of Firsts

Forty-Three

It annoyed me to need to take an attitude of caution to school, to check my surroundings before heading down flights of stairs, and think about the few places I frequented in terms of booby-traps and pitfalls. It irritated me especially to continue to stay away from my model, but a discussion with my doctor had convinced me not to stress my wrist with too much fine motor work at least until a full week had passed.

Friday brought a frost-decked morning, but at least no wind, and so the summer house didn’t seem such a horrible prospect as I took an extra-cautious route around to meet Kyou at the gate. He glanced briefly at my wrist, though the brace was hidden by my bulky coat, then moved to swiftly replace the bars while I went into the garden, not waiting for him before heading straight to the summer house.

"Environmental factors really can have an impact on these challenges," I said when he caught up. "At least it’s not completely wretched today."

"Luck’s a part of every competition," Kyou said. "Though I’d probably be less equable about that if I was dealt worse cards. Let me help you with that."

My coat had caught on the brace. I let him ease it over my wrist, though it really wasn’t that much trouble.

"Does it still hurt?"

"Mainly only if I poke it, or accidentally pick up something heavy, or twist it beyond a certain limit. I’m not supposed to wear the brace constantly, so I put it on when I’m wrangling my school bag or doing things where I think I need a reminder not to put weight on it."

He hung up my coat, mouth a little turned down, but moved on without further comment.

"Are you in a coffee mood today, Cheshire? Cold weather always puts me in a mood for Vienna Coffee."

"Is that the one with Irish Cream in it?" I asked, a little startled.

"No, just pouring cream, and a dusting of cocoa powder."

"Oh. Sure. Two sugar."

The heater had made enough of a difference today that I didn’t feel the need to immediately bury myself under blankets, and so I curled up with Kyou to sip some unexpectedly delicious cream coffee.

"Do you drink?" I asked curiously. "If you’re humourless about drugs?"

"Socially," he said. "Not enough to lose my senses. So many things are technically drugs—caffeine for instance—that there’s a limit to how humourless I can be. What about you?"

"I’m not humourless, just a coward. Even when they’re legal, I’m too worried about what they’ll do to me to think of them as fun. I can drink socially, but have only been drunk a couple of times, and the aftermath took all the fun out of it. There’s too many other things I want to do to be wasting my time with hangovers, or forgetting the night before." I thought about things that were my idea of fun, then asked: "How’s the spy game going?"

"We’ve logged his passwords, infiltrated his personal laptop, and explored various email inboxes, but we haven’t managed to get hold of his phone yet. We know the unlock code, though, so it’s just a matter of creating an opportunity."

"Very efficient."

"We’re crawling in our own skins with impatience," Kyou said, chuckling. "We had a serious debate yesterday about whether it would be simpler to just put a sack over his head and give him a kicking."

"So, you’re sure now?"

"Getting there. A trawl through his email didn’t give us anything, but we discovered a few sock puppets he uses on forums to…make remarks. Mostly about Bran."

"You already knew he probably didn’t like Bran, though. It’s a big leap from forum sniping to trying to give you hallucinations."

"That’s true for every single suspect. And anyone who is willing to push you down a flight of stairs for possibly hooking up with Bran isn’t exactly being proportionate."

"I think lots of people would at least consider giving me a sly shove for hooking up with any of Corascur’s notables." I took another sip of coffee. "Lania says Carr thinks it’s his fault."

"You told them you were pushed?"

"I asked Lania to put my model somewhere it can’t have an accident," I said. "Combine that with being jostled at the top of a flight of stairs and we have Carr’s more possessive admirers as culprits. Lania, who was respecting my privacy quite against my intentions, has promised to talk excitedly about Christophe at every second opportunity. Or at least tell Sean, who apparently will tell the world, and then ask me to supply him with autographs." I wriggled, because Kyou’s free hand had strayed inside my clothes. "I’m skipping Art Club this week, so they’ll have a good chance to gossip."

"Not going to have fun watching Carr trying to maintain his expression?"

"I thought you liked Carr."

"I do. I’ve been relentlessly friendly toward him this past week. He’s so confused."

"Only you could turn being nice into a form of trolling."

"I try my best. I’m enjoying knowing more about you than he ever will. You’ll be wanting to work on your model a lot next week, I’d bet."

"I want to finish it."

"Then we’ll skip next Tuesday. Thankfully I have today—it’s been too long."

Kyou put down his coffee, took the last of mine away from me, and drew me to my feet.

"It’s rare that I feel disinclined to remove all your clothing, Cheshire, but even on milder days like this, a single heater is not truly up to making this place comfortable. Let’s see if we can make each other forget about the temperature."

The upright chair they’d brought in was already set near the radiator, and he sat down, making an inviting gesture, but instead of joining him I took off my shoes and sensible winter trousers, leaving mint green thermal underwear covering my legs.

"Technically I’m wearing underwear, but since I knew today was you, I left off the usual sort."

"No panties?" He investigated, looking pleased, and then pulled me forward so that I had no choice but to straddle him or fall across the chair.

"Just think," I said, adjusting my position slightly. "At any random day, I could be wandering around this school without my underwear, and you would never know."

"I’m willing to do spot checks." He slid his hands up my back, but then laughed, and bent his head so his forehead rested on my shoulder. "Cheshire, we’re supposed to be trying not to ogle you when you walk by. How am I going to keep my eyes off you now?"

"It’s a good thing we’re not in any of the same classes."

"There speaks someone failing to appreciate the effort I put in to not go anywhere near Art Club." He turned his head, and began nuzzling my throat. "And the things I might do to you in that storeroom."

"Probably wise," I said, responding in kind. "With Carr there, the temptation to mark territory might be a little too high."

Kyou chuckled, and began sucking my neck, just enough to make me wonder if he meant it. Then he switched to kissing me, and we lost ourselves in that. It wasn’t long until we reached the clothes-shedding stage, which took a little longer than usual because we were being careful of my brace. The bouncing stage, however, proved difficult, because resting my injured arm on his shoulder made it ache, and holding it down by my side made it throb.

"Cheshire," Kyou said, as I lost my rhythm. "I would rather forfeit this challenge than watch you wincing."

"I think this position might be too aerobic for me right now," I said regretfully.

"Let’s try something else," he said. "Hold on."

Arms supporting me, he stood up, brought me over to the sofa, and lowered us both down.

"Tell me if your wrist keeps hurting," he said, and continued on where I had left off.

With Kyou doing most of the work, my wrist stopped throbbing, so I rested it on the arm of the couch above my head and let myself enjoy him.

"How is it?" Kyou asked, a while later. "I could get some ice if that would help."

"I have a gel bandage in my bag," I said.

We cleaned up, and I took off my brace and let Kyou examine my arm before I wrapped it in the cooling bandage. When comparing the two, my right wrist was still perceptibly swollen, and for some reason I’d ended up with bruising down inside my elbow, which had started to fade.

"It bothers us a lot, the idea you were injured on our behalf," he said, settling us back on the couch and drawing up a layer of blankets.

"What about if I was injured on Carr’s behalf?"

"Well, that would bother me too, but in a different way."

"Have you had that kind of issue in the past? People bullying girls who are connected to you?"

"It’s happened. The second year we were here we made several forum posts about how much we dislike people who harass friends and acquaintances. That had a fairly strong effect, but sometimes even girls who’ve never even spoken to one of us get hassled because it’s somehow wrong to admit to a crush. More than we’ll ever know, since the subtle stuff like Sirocco and Lania is easy to miss."

"What about Meggan?" I asked, curiously.

"So far as I know, mostly not. She and Bran were together from the start of high school, and he’s always been very clear about not being interested in anyone else. Thankfully, most of our admirers are not as extreme as Tomas. Corascur would be a little challenging if everyone set boobytraps." He snuggled me comfortably against his chest. "Do you want to play a few matches in Tyranny, Cheshire?"

"I can’t. The doctor told me not to do anything that involved extended fine motor control. Otherwise, I’d be at Art Club working on my model."

"So, you’ve been off school, but not able to play? Now that’s true pain."

"I’ve been reading a lot instead. Tell me about the games you three are going to make. Rin said you were working on two, but that one was enormous."

"Echoes of Samerkel, an RPG that’s been our shared ambition since primary school. Fantasy with an advanced tech frame. Echoes is in pre-production, and we’ve arranged a series of rolling internships with a major developer to give us exposure to the challenges we’ll face. Currently we’re working on One Step More, which is much smaller, and Rin’s pet project."

"Journey remake?"

He laughed. "Not quite, though there’s elements of Journey, along with things which we hope are unique."

"Are you more into character design or environment?"

"I love both. I very much like the idea of people being able to step into images I create, and games give me that."

He grabbed his phone and showed me concept art he’d done for One Step More, and tried to describe the kind of game they wanted it to be. The art was brilliant, using great washes of colour along with delicate line detail, and I found myself a little sad that I probably wouldn’t get to see the Three Kings go through the stages of bringing this world into being.

I’d play it, though, and think back to warm blankets on a cold day, and Kyou’s beautiful voice building a painted world.