After lunch, we spent some more time in the French resto. After having cleared our table, Em, Ria and I took out our French to get a last-minute study session in, so everything would be fresh in our mind for the French test in the 6th lesson period. Pres and Claire helped us give some pointers, as they’d already made the test yesterday. We would probably not get the same test, but at least it would give us an idea of what Mx. De L’Arbre had focused on. In the meantime, Karin and Anya were keeping themselves busy with small conversational topics while they both read a book.

Being together in a group like this made the time leap forwards immensely fast. So in no-time it was already time to head back to class.

“Thanks for the help.” I thanked Pres and Claire.

“It’s no problem at all.” Claire smiled.

“You’ve studied quite a lot at home. Good job.” Pres praised us, sipping up the last bit of tea in her cup.

“Let’s hope it worked.” I smiled back.

“I’m sure it will.” Claire patted me on the back. “For effort will always be rewarded, maybe not immediately so, but definitely in the long run!”

“That… sounded less motivational than I thought it would.”

Claire laughed. “It happens.”

Claire stayed behind to give Anya a personal and very lovey-dovey goodbye while the rest of us left for class. When we arrived in our classroom’s hallway, Miss Peeters was already there, leaning against the wall while talking with Mx. De L’Arbre. If I had to guess, by Mx’s blush, Miss Peeters was probably flirting a little with them.

They both straightened up when they noticed us walking up to the door.

“Ahum.” Mx. De L’Arbre coughed. “I hope the three of you are ready for the test in an hour?”

“More than ready, Mx!” I called out.

“Good to hear. But don’t get too overconfident. Overconfident students tend to not check their answers enough and make stupid mistakes.”

“We’ll try to remember that.” Em nodded.

Mx. De L’Arbre smiled and gave a nod, both to us and to Miss Peeters, after which she left towards their own classroom.

Miss Peeters then turned to us and whispered. “Did you hear anything of our conversation?”

“No, ma’am.” Ria shook her head.

“Phew, that’s good. That would’ve been slightly inappropriate.”

“We aren’t twelve anymore, ma’am.” I laughed.

She scratched the back of her head. “I know… but still…”

“Educational systems should pay more attention to sexual education anyway.” Claire said when she finally caught up. She didn’t even oversee the situation we were talking about but deduced it incredibly fast nonetheless.

This surprised Miss Peeters as she started blushing. “I… I’m not going to say you’re wrong, because you aren’t….” She coughed. “Anyway. Let’s get the six of you inside.” She tried to herd us inside, we just let it happen. “Ah, and by the way. I hope you three had an interesting and educational couple of days.” Referring to our ‘extracurricular activities’.

“Ah, yeah! Definitely!” I aggressively nodded.

“I heard it was very enlightening.” Claire said, giving me a wink, while making me blush at the same time.

“Oh, well, I’m happy to hear that.” Miss Peeters luckily didn’t notice the wink, so she didn’t search for a deeper meaning, so we could walk into the classroom without even further embarrassment.

History class went by like a bullet train with a rocket strapped onto it. Which, apparently, actually did exist as an experimental form of high speed rail. Luckily for the environment, however, that wasn’t the route they ended up pursuing. That’s what Miss Peeters had told us, at least. But now, time had come for us to stress out for the French test we had to take.

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“Calm down, Auro, it’ll be fine.” Em had noticed I had become a bit more stressy than usual. “You’ve studied plenty.”

“I know. But I just really don’t like making tests…”

“Want a reward for doing the test well?”

“Uh… depends…”

She leant in and whispered into my ear. “I heard that taking away someone’s senses can make other feelings quite a bit more intense.”

I gulped. “H-how is that supposed to calm me down!?”

Claire giggled next to me. “Ah, so Emma’s in charge, huh?”

“W-wait, did you hear what she said?”

“No, but I can read it from your body language, she grins. “Thanks for confirming it, though.”

I didn’t have a lot of time to retort, as the Mx. De L’Arbre came walking in and immediately decided to spread us apart, so we couldn’t look at each other's tests. I ended up in the complete back of the class, while Em and Ria were both split and put on the sides.

The test itself, however, wasn’t worth the panic. Most of what was on it, we’d discussed in depth during lunchtime, and the contents didn’t differ that wildly from what the others got at all. She even used a couple of the same questions, just jumbled into a new order.

After I handed in my test, I went back to my seat next to Claire. Em and Ria followed suit not that long after, and telling by their faces, their tests went well as well.

Mx. De L’Arbre then swiftly continued with their lesson. It went by as fast as a lesson of French normally did. Not necessarily exhausting, but I was still happy when it was over so we could move on to more interesting courses.

“How did the test go, Rora?” Ria poked her head behind Em’s back to look at me.

“Good, yours?”

She smiled. “Mine went well too!”

“I had figured, otherwise you wouldn’t have been smiling that much.”

“But what if she was thinking about you?” Claire mixed herself into the conversation, yet again.

“Who says it can’t be both?” Ria pouted.

“Fair point.” Claire nodded with approval.

I smiled as Claire and Ria started to have a bit of small talk, using the distraction to just lean back and enjoy the situation as it unfolded around me.

However, that moment of rest was fairly short-lived as Mister Lykaios walked into the room for the final lesson of the day.

He started the lesson, lamenting how the three of us had missed the guest speaker on Monday, which I had honestly completely forgotten about. Though, I felt sorry for it as well because it could have been a really interesting lecture to have had. Five minutes of lamentation later, the proper lesson had started, but most of it was about self-explanatory diplomatic etiquette, so it could have been quite a bit more interesting.

Mr. Lykaios left the classroom at the end of the lesson, with Pres close in tow, as she had some paperwork to discuss with him in the teacher’s office.

Once they were gone, Claire poked my shoulder. “Are you ready to go to Maya with me?”

“Sure thing.” I nodded.

“Don’t you want to have some time alone with your girlfriends, first?” Claire winked.

I looked over to Em, she was packing her bag but looked up when she heard Claire talking about Ria and her. “Hmm?”

“Do we want some alone time before I leave?”

“Not really.” She shook her head and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek before continuing the packing of her bag. That did result in a couple of gasps from our other classmates, though.

-Right, this is the first time they’ve seen that between us.-

“I’ll ask Helen to drop Ria off at her house first.” She was seemingly ignoring our classmates, but the slight blush on her face told me she definitely wasn’t unaware of them.

“See you tomorrow, Rora! Message me before bed, okay?” Ria flew in for a hug and gave me a quick kiss as well. This resulted in even louder gasps from the others.

“Keep on moving, ladies.” Claire spurred our classmates on to leave the room and to stop staring.

“See you tomorrow. Love you both.”

“Love you too.” Ria replied while Em smiled and nodded with an even blushier blush.

I then grabbed my bag and followed Claire out of the classroom. A couple of classmates were waiting around the corner of the door to overhear what we were talking about, but they skedaddled pretty quickly once we walked out.

“So much for secrecy, huh?” Claire laughed as one girl almost slipped as she ran around the next corner.

“Eh, it was going to come to light sooner or later anyway. Just hope no one tells it to Ria’s parents.” I shrugged.

“There’s rules against that, especially from the teacher’s side, so I doubt that would happen.”

“Really? I didn’t know that.”

“To add to your long list of things you didn’t know.” Claire chuckled.

“Yeah… But why is the rule there?”

“It’s not hard to figure out. This is a girl’s academy, right?”

“Mhmm.” I nodded.

“Any romantic relationship that happens between students, is therefore a queer relationship, is it not?”

“Well… I guess….”

“And because some parents are still really shit about everything queer, the school decided to not tell parents about those kinds of things. They are luckily quite progressive about that.”

“Ohh…”

-That does make a lot of sense…-