[December 10, 2042]

It had been a long day for Ram. Being a superhero wasn’t an easy side gig at the best of times, but on days like this, being Shining Hope Guardian was taking a mental toll on Ram. She had rescued three cats stuck in trees, broke up a kerfuffle at the overnight sneaker convention, and foiled Beetle Boss from robbing the west-sector bank (he had planned to break through the vault with some kind of laser-drill-thing). Then, back to the university for a pair of afternoon lectures that had to be held in person despite the typically online format, and now to the library to return the graphic novels she had borrowed. The comics her father had given her when she still lived with him were made of very thin paper, but everything she had discovered since, starring the genres and characters she had grown to love, was now packed in thicker, glossier tomes. The art was more realistic, less vintage, the storylines darker, less blankly optimistic.

Ram dropped the returned graphic novels into the return slot in the wall, which carried the books out of sight on a conveyor belt. She missed those old comic books, the way they had felt between her fingers. Perhaps she could go into the city one day and find some to bring back to her room in Otter Manor.

Suddenly cognizant of the weight of her body, Ram slid into an empty seat by a table and laid her head down. The bulk of her thick blond curls created a sort of pillow, and she let out a sigh. She didn’t really want to move, but didn’t see any point in sticking around the campus, where the hustle and bustle of students moving around her made her slightly anxious. Nobody would be at Otter Manor. Cal and Ellie had classes until later. Aina and Bridget had gone out for a “day on the town” as Aina had told Ram with a smug smile that morning.

Ram turned her head slightly, enough to directly face the curious face of the boy she hadn’t realized she had slid into the seat next to.

“A~h!” she exclaimed, making a noise between a spoken word and an outward gust of air, straightening up immediately in the seat. Her face turned bright and her blond hair bounced in place as she jerked her body upward. “Oh, I’m sorry! Ah… um…-”

She stopped halfway through her excuses, because she realized she recognized the green eyes, the long dark hair loosely tied in a ponytail, and the friendly-looking face that was studying her with patient attention.

“All good, Ram,” the other said brightly. “It’s not something you need to apologize for really, you weren’t disturbing anything. I’m just here returning something for a friend.”

When Ram didn’t respond, his face fell, and his voice became a little more somber. “Oh, perhaps you don’t recognize me. That’s alright, I’m-”

“Sirius Allange,” Ram breathed quietly. “Cal’s friend. Yes, I remember you.”

She did remember. The night when Cal had brought Sirius over for dinner and one of Mel’s weird movies, she had noticed him glancing at her a few times. It had made her feel self-conscious to have somebody looking at her directly — to acknowledge her existence in such an unmediated way. Those feelings of anxiety had only grown and grown through the night, and when Sirius had tried to talk with her directly, she had clammed up and become unresponsive, only managing a silent nod.

Sirius hadn’t tried to talk with her again after that, and Ram supposed that her meek behavior had bored or annoyed him. Thus, at the first opportunity, Ram had escaped back to her room, where she spent the night reading comics online through a sea-green monitor and listening to the sounds of the movie playing downstairs.

Sirius’ eyes widened when Ram spoke his full name, and broke into a smile. “Oh, that’s a relief! I definitely thought you didn’t. We didn’t really talk very much, so it wouldn’t be so unusual.”

Ram ducked her head again, wanting to hide her eyes suddenly. “N-no, that’s just how I am... I, um, I have trouble talking…”

Sirius laughed, not mockingly, but like he had been witness to some amusing joke. “Yeah, I sort of guessed that.” His face changed then, becoming slightly more serious. “That’s not a bad thing in itself, though. I’m somewhat talkative myself, so I like people who know how to listen and choose their words carefully.”

“Is that why you and Cal get along?”

He gave a thumbs up. “Pretty much. Also because I like to think his fastidiousness balances out my easy-going nature.”

Ram smiled underneath the barrier of her blond hair, but still did not look at Sirius directly. “That makes sense. Most of the girls at Otter Manor are pretty outgoing. Mel, Aina, Ellie — they’re all very… vivacious. Bridget is a little more calm, but she’s confident in herself and can take a leading role when needed. With me… Cal acts a little differently. He's a little more… personable, a little more encouraging. Because I’m shy, I think he feels he has to assume a more active role. I don’t know. Our relationship is weird. It’s like he’s a…”

She trailed, suddenly mortified at how long she had been speaking. She couldn’t remember the last time she had said that many words in a row to anybody besides Cal or Aina. Sirius’ nonjudgmental demeanor had put her at ease in a way she hadn’t expected. In response to this sudden feeling, Ram put one of her small hands over her mouth, as if to stop an unexpected leak.

Noticing this, Sirius tilted his head downward slightly, his dark ponytail shifting over his shoulder, trying to catch a clearer view of Ram’s face. “You say that a little resentfully,” he commented. “Do you not want to be treated differently?”

Ram tugged at a blond curl, still staring at the table. “I don’t know. Maybe. I guess it’s only to be expected. People get uncomfortable when you don’t talk very much. They think something is lacking that they can fix. And I do want to change, to become more confident. But I don’t know. I don’t necessarily want to change in that way.”

There was a long silence when neither of them said a word. Sirius had interlocked his fingers, apparently thinking about something very hard. Then he took a deep breath, put his hands on his nose, then on his thighs, took another breath, and fixed Ram with a determined stare.

“I know this is super forward and you can totally tell me to screw off if you want, but..” He began to talk in a rather breathless fashion, his green eyes filled with consternation. “But… are you seeing anybody right now?”

That made Ram straighten up fully, revealing her bright red face. She stared at Sirius with a stunned expression as if she had been electrocuted. “What?” she said in a quiet voice. “By seeing someone, you mean…”

“Romantically,” Sirius confirmed. He had the solemn guise of a man who had taken a deep plunge and was determined to see it through. “I mean romantically.”

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Ram’s lips moved but nothing came out. Then she put a hand against her breast, bit her lower lip, and then tried again. “U-um, well, that is to say, I-I mean, what I mean is…”

She could feel her mechanical heart pounding inside her chest, far quicker than it seemed prudent for her father to have designed. “That is to say… n-no. I have nobody like that.”

“Alright,” Sirius nodded. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then to Ram’s amazement, actually blushed as he spoke the next words. “In that case, if you want to, do you want to go on a date with me?”

Ram could practically feel the circuits frying in her head. “A d-d-date? A date?”

Sirius nodded again. “A date. I know we don’t know each other very well, but I’d like to take you on one.”

“U-um,” Ram shook her head, as if trying to dislodge faulty wiring and calm the pounding of her heart against her chest. “This-this would be a r-romantic-?”

“A romantic date,” Sirius said. “As in, a date where two people hang out for fun and learn more about each other. That kind of date.”

There was another silence. Then Ram finally asked the question that she couldn’t ignore.

“Why?”

Sirius frowned. “What do you mean?”

“W-why me? I mean, there’s so many other girls…”

Sirius looked at her incredulously, before his face relaxed from the tenseness it had been holding, turning back into its typically cheerful expressiveness. He almost seemed relieved she had asked the question. “Why you? I mean, I don’t know, why anybody? I find you really interesting. I actually noticed you around campus way back in September, before I knew you and Cal were bunking at the same place. You’re always so quiet, but it also seems like you’re always rushing from place to place. I’ve never seen you hang out with anyone on campus, but you still seem to have a lot on your mind. You’re really shy, but you’ve got this… I don’t know, strength to you. I can’t explain it. But it attracted me. And…of course…” He put up his hands slightly, as if in defeat. “You’re… cute.”

“Cute?” Ram repeated. She remembered that Cal had once or twice complimented her on her looks, but she had never taken the words for anything else than gentle condescension.

He grinned. “Super cute, honestly. You know, I’m the kind of person who goes with the flow. If someone needs a favor, I’ll do it. If I’m asked to go to a party, I’m there. I try to take it easy and not rock the boat. I think I want to please people and be liked. That’s why I try to get along with them, and my actions usually consist of doing what they want or need me to do. But when I saw you around the campus… it was like a camera focusing or something. There wasn’t any reason for it, at first. We didn’t know each other. But I was curious about you, and wanted to know you. Before I knew it, I was thinking about you a lot. I got Cal to invite me over to Otter Manor in part because I wanted to have an excuse to talk with you.”

He pulled back a little, wondering if he had overstepped. “Sorry, am I creeping you out?”

Ram shook her head. “No, it’s just… nobody has ever asked me out before… so I’m not sure what to do.”

Sirius snorted. “Their loss. But you can say yes or no. I get that I’m kind of springing this on you.” He self-consciously picked at his ear, wearing a smile halfway between confident and embarrassed. “But I didn’t think I’d really have a better opportunity, so I just decided to go for it.

Ram’s heart had calmed down, and she found that she could navigate her thoughts with a little more clarity. She didn’t know how she felt. She didn’t find Sirius unattractive or disconcerting, but realized despite her lack of experience that that didn’t amount to liking a person in that way. But how would she ever know what liking someone meant if she never tried to? He wasn’t offering undying love or even a relationship. Just a date.

She looked at him then, in the way someone looks at a picture they had seen many times but never took the effort to discern the particulars of its contents. He had a nice face. And a nice laugh. Sirius laughed often, it seemed; he had laughed a lot during that night at Otter Manor. She liked how his long dark ponytail hung over his shoulder at this moment, and the way his green eyes, looking at her diligently, didn’t seem to have an ounce of cynicism or coldness in them.

“Okay,” Ram said, trying to keep her voice steady — to not stutter over her words. “It’s a date. I’ll text you a day that works, I’ll ask Cal for your number. I need to… check my schedule.”

“Seriously?!” Series stood up, excitement on his face, and did a little fist-pump. “That’s great! It’s a date!”

“On one condition.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Ask and you’ll receive. I said I was a people-pleaser, right?”

Ram smiled then, despite herself, both how sincerely thrilled he appeared and at the words that were coming out of her mouth. “For the date, we’ll go to one of the vintage comic book stores in the city.”

A look of surprise came over Sirius’ face, and then another smile. “My perspective of you is changing already. A comic book store, huh? Interesting. Yeah, I’m down. Let’s do it.”

Ram had to control herself. Her first instinct upon exiting the university library, confirmed to go on a date for the first time in her life, was to make some sort of squealing indeterminate sound and use the robotic strength in her legs to leap all the way to Otter Manor. She managed to bury the instinct, and instead briskly walked (perhaps a little faster than an average human would have been able to) back home, trying to hide the redness of her face by burying her chin into her coat against the wind.

When Ram walked through the front door, she still felt strangely restless. Typically when arriving back at Otter Manor she would go straight into her room, but this time she turned right into the living room. Mel was in there, the only other person currently in the house, watching TV as she usually did at a volume a little louder than was strictly necessary, her knees tucked into her sundress as she watched.

Mel noticed Ram come into the room and sit heavily on the couch, which piqued her interest. The two girls weren’t particularly friends despite the closeness of their cohabitation, and this unusual behavior grabbed the ghost girl’s interest.

“Everything good, Ram?” Mel asked, in a casual tone.

“Mmm, yeah.” Ram said, looking at the television in a fashion that suggested she wasn’t absorbing anything on it. “I got asked out on a date.”

There was the sound of a frantic slam of a television remote, and the television went black. “What!?” yelled Mel, who had propelled herself through the air and was now hovering next to Ram’s face, her body floating horizontally in the air. “By whom!? Who?”

“It-it was Sirius,” stuttered Ram, uncertain why Mel was so animated. “Remember, the boy who came for dinner? Cal’s friend.”

“Oooh,” Mel said, every muscle in her body relaxing and relief clear upon her face. “Okay Sirius, I gotcha.”

Then the ghost seemed to realize what Ram had actually said. “Wait, my fellow horror aficionado?!” She blinked, her blue eyes alight with wonder. “I didn’t realize you two knew each other that well.”

“W-we don’t, really. But he happened to ask and I h-happened to say yes… that’s all.”

“Wow, you’re bolder than you look, Ram.” Mel shook her head in wonder, her body slowly turning in the air. “I can’t believe you’re the first one out of us to get a boyfriend.”

“W-why would you say it like that… and besides, it’s just a date, we-we aren’t really together, yet…” Ram couldn’t seem to speak coherently. “A-and Aina, she has a f-fiancé back home, that’s much more impressive-”

The lively conversation was interrupted by a knock at the door. Mel peered out the window before ducking behind the back of the couch, the bottom half of her body actually sinking into the cushions. “It’s not anybody we know,” she hissed. “You should take it.”

Ram, unused to being the greeter of guests, blushed deeply but did get to her feet and shuffled out into the hallway, spurred by an energy created from this long, somewhat surreal day that she was experiencing. She patted down the immensity of her curly blond hair, which had become disordered from the walk home through the wind, and opened the door.

Standing in the doorway was a woman. The woman had long black hair, stood quite tall, was maybe twenty-five or twenty-seven, and was wearing a fashionable yet practical coat of blue cotton. It was nobody that Ram had ever seen before, yet there was a strange impression of familiarity created by the profile of the woman standing against the white sky.

“Um…” Ram said, unsure what to say in this scenario. “Hello?”

Ram met the woman’s eyes as she spoke. They were dark eyes, a little playful in how they shone, but clearly were hiding a keen intelligence. Cold eyes, not in a way that was alienating, but simply in a way that suggested pragmatism and ability.

And then suddenly, inexplicably, before the woman even opened her mouth, Ram knew exactly who she was.

“Hi there,” the woman smiled, clapping her hands together softly in an awkward type of greeting. “My name is Adelaide Clermont. Um… how do I say this? As far as I know, my little brother is the current caretaker of this house. Do you know him?