Wherever they went: fencers in every direction. It was a trial to walk twenty feet without tripping over a scabbard. An impractically large number for a team that can only compete in groups of three.

“That girl had a small nose,” Zane muttered, rubbing his bridge. “These glasses pinch.”

“We’re going to get caught,” Nelson fretted, all but resigned to defeat.

“They’re not smart enough to see through my terrible disguise, but if you keep acting like something’s wrong, they’ll get suspicious. Quit worrying, you’re starting to freak me out–”

“–Excuse me a moment.”

Nelson nearly fainted when two fencers stopped them in the hall. Zane’s heart stopped and both their eyes went wide under the steely gaze of these fencing club members.

“Have you seen anyone suspicious around campus lately?” the boy formally asked.

Nelson was too terrified to speak, but Zane didn’t miss a beat, casually replying, “Suspicious? I haven’t. Do you have a picture of the person you’re looking for?”

The girl pulled out her phone and presented an email from Felicia with Zane’s shaggy headed profile picture.

Zane hummed pensively as he pretended to study the picture with clearly disingenuous intensity. “Wow. That is one handsome man. I think I would remember if I’d seen a man that handsome. What do you think, Nelson? Have you seen anyone that handsome in your life? Because I sure haven’t. But if I had, I would tell him just how handsome he is.”

Nelson trembled like a chihuahua in an ice bath as he shook his head.

“We’ve never seen that guy before,” Zane continued “nor do I have any reason to know anything about him, but he looks like a spectacular kisser,” he said suggestively toward the girl. “You should ask him about it if you ever run into him, say… this evening behind the tennis courts?”

“Is he going to be there?” the girl intently asked, hand on her sword. “What time? How do you know?”

“I don’t know anything about that guy,” Zane innocently replied. “Though I wish I did. But you’ll be the first to know if I find anything out. If only I had a phone number to call the instant I learn something.”

To Zane’s disappointment, the guy scribbled his phone number, then thanked him for his assistance with all the emotion of a traffic cop issuing a ticket and hurried down the hall.

Nelson breathed for the first time since the conversation started. “I thought we were done for!”

“This almost isn’t fun,” Zane glumly muttered as he contemplated whether or not he finessed that situation.

“Can we go now? I need to stop by my clubroom.”

Nelson took Zane across campus to a wing of the main building where the clubs met, relatively empty right now due to the early hour, but Nelson’s club seemed to be in full swing. Five girls turned toward the door when Nelson walked in.

“Welcome back,” said a mature and sophisticated girl sitting at the furthest end of the table, facing the door. She lowered the pencil over the forms she was filling out. “I nearly suspected you wouldn’t show.”

“Yeah, some stuff happened, but we made it, somehow,” Nelson explained, nervously scratching the back of his head.

“Good morning, Nelson!” another girl energetically proclaimed as she jumped upon him and latched onto his arm.

“Hey, don’t suddenly cling to people first thing in the morning!” a steamy girl with pig tails scolded as she pulled the stubborn energetic girl off Nelson.

“What’s the big deal? Nelson and I have been friends since elementary school!”

“You’re in high school now! You should mind how you act!”

“Serena is just jealous because she’s been waiting in the clubroom since sunup and Chiho is monopolizing Nelson again,” a small, blank faced girl who had yet to look up from her college level textbook expressionlessly stated in empty monotone.

“W-W-What are you suggesting?!” the pig tailed girl stammered, red as a tomato. “I just wanted to make sure all of our club forms get filled out before the due date! It’s not like I’ve been waiting to see Nelson all summer break or anything, moron!”

“B-But didn’t you get here before Serena?” asked the timid wallflower in heavily rimmed glasses sitting across from them, peeking over the magazine she hid her face with.

The blank faced girl’s expression did not waver, but her cheeks reddened ever so slightly. “Irrelevant.”

“Come on now, no fighting first thing in the morning,” Nelson admonished, and the girls began to relax.

“Nelson is right,” the sophisticated girl replied, placing her documents in a manilla folder. “This is no way to start the first day of the new semester. Did you bring your club enrollment form?” Nelson pulled a slip of paper out of his bag and the sophisticated girl added it to the folder. “Now we only need to submit them to be approved for another year.”

“Nelson should do it,” the pigtailed girl declared.

“Y-You can’t just decide that on your own!” the timid girl struggled to be heard without standing out too much.

“It’s his punishment for being late.”

“Come on, do I have to?” Nelson pleaded. “I’m really busy right now…”

The pig tailed girl looked away and wrung her hands behind her back. “Well, maybe if you apologized, I might go with you… But only so you stop complaining!” she hastily insisted.

“It would be a great help to me if you did,” the sophisticated girl replied. The air hung heavy between them as Nelson relented and accepted the folder. “Don’t be late to the first official club meeting of the semester,” she said with a coy smile.

“I’ll try,” he answered, grinning self-amusedly.

“So, who’s the tall boy with the dumbstruck expression?” the blank girl colorlessly asked.

Their attention fixated solely on Nelson, the girls were startled when they realized someone was occupying the whole of the doorway, face painted with a mix of confusion and disbelief.

“Oh, this is Zane,” Nelson explained. “He’s my new roommate.”

“He’s tall,” the energetic girl observed with little regard for personal boundaries.

The timid girl squinted at Zane’s face and asked, “Isn’t he the one the fencing team is looking for?”

The pigtailed girl shirked away as if he exuded some foul smell. “I think you’re right! Should we call someone?”

Nelson put himself between Zane and his accusers. “They’re looking for him, but Zane’s a good guy! Really! He’s just having a rough first day! Please don’t tell!”

“I hope you’re not planning on getting Nelson into any trouble!” the pigtailed girl accused, standing on her toes to get in Zane’s face.

“No, I’m just… he’s just showing me around on my first day” Zane replied, still a little dazed by what he was looking at. He might be the center of attention right now, but the room revolved around Nelson. He was an intruder, a passing distraction at the crux a fixation normally centered on Nelson.

“If Nelson says he is a good person, I believe him,” the sophisticated girl calmly stated. Some of the lingering tension resolved.

“We can’t just ignore someone the head of the fencing team is looking for, can we?” the pigtailed girl unsurely asked.

“Under normal circumstances, we would let them know right away, but seeing as how the person they are looking for is a friend of Nelson’s, turning him in would cause trouble for Nelson as well.”

“I suppose…”

“It’s good that you are making friends,” the sophisticated girl wistfully reminisced. “I remember when you first enrolled, always sitting alone, always worrying about everyone but yourself.”

“There’s no need to bring that up!” Nelson bashfully retorted. “In any case, I’ll see you all after school.” He turned to Zane. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah, let’s get out of here,” he replied, seemingly oblivious to or ignoring the energetic girl dangling from his arm like a jungle gym. When they were out of earshot, he suddenly stopped. “Which one?”

“Which one what?” Nelson curiously asked.

“The girls! Which one are you dating?”

“What?” he gasped. “They’re my club members, my friends! There’s nothing going on between any of us!”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“I’m serious!” His cheeks were becoming flushed. “We’re just friends!”

“You can’t get me to believe you spend time alone with five attractive young ladies so you can ‘just be friends.’”

Nelson’s face flushed redder and he had difficulty maintaining eye contact. “I don’t have ulterior motives! Girls as cute as them get enough attention from other guys to care about me!”

“They’re prettying themselves up to get your attention!” Zane fumed, just short of pulling his hair out. “Have you noticed there aren’t any other guys in your club?”

“You’re imagining things! Even if I thought of them romantically, none of them see me that way.”

“Are you blind? They could not be thirstier for you if your dick was the last oasis in the Sahara Desert!”

“Now I know you’re making this up. I’m not tall, or good looking, or a smooth talker like you. There’s no way any girl could like me, let alone anyone as great as my club members.”

“So you understand my frustration,” Zane growled through clenched teeth.

“Whatever,” Nelson glumly replied, kicking the dust at his feet. “Dating’s not allowed anyways, so it doesn’t even matter. We should get to class.”

Zane sighed and agreed. Nelson led him to the building and room, then gave him rough directions to his next class before heading to his own homeroom.

He took off his ill-begotten glasses and ruffled his hair back to its natural state. He was through the door only a few seconds before the bell. The only empty seat was in the third row from the front, second column from the right. To the immediate right of a student with a training rapier case leaning against the wall.

The moment she saw Zane she went rigid and put her hand on her (training) weapon, but she didn’t draw it, so he saw fit to disregard her for the majority of class, only giving an aloof “hey” when she continued to stare.

Class went about as quickly as he expected. It was pretty much the same as his old school, except everyone was paying attention. Except the fencing girl, who occasionally stared daggers out of the corner of her eye.

When it almost came time for class to end and Zane started thinking about where his next class might be, a neatly folded piece of paper landed on his desk, courtesy of the angry fencer to his left.

Inside was a note that read, “don’t even think about leaving!”

Not quite a death threat, but Zane decided to humor her.

The bell rang, the students left, and the teacher went to run some kind of errand, leaving Zane and the fencer alone.

“I’m not about to be asked out, am I?” Zane surmised.

“You have some nerve showing your face here!” she sneered.

“You have some nerve getting my hopes up, but you don’t see me complaining.”

She brandished her training rapier and pointed at Zane. “You lost any right to convenience when you angered Lady Belafonte!”

Zane regarded the blunted sword with the same attitude he would a stick or a straw. “I’m getting real tired of telling people I didn’t do anything! If you don’t have a reason for keeping me here, I’ve got better things to do! If you’ll excuse me–”

Zane got up to leave, but the girl held him at sword point.

“I don’t know what you did, but you’re not going anywhere! Lady Belafonte is on her way right now. You aren’t getting away this time.”

“Hmm… I wonder how crazy tits found out I was here,” Zane said sardonically.

“I alerted her,” the fencing girl said obviously.

“I wonder how that happened? Email? Text? Correct me if I’m wrong, but, isn’t using your phone in class… against the rules?”

Anger poorly masked the alarmed realization, but she held firm. “It was an emergency.”

“I guess it would be alright if the situation demanded it– I’m a big deal, I know– but that wouldn’t excuse the note I was passed during the lesson. It sure would be a shame if I… told someone.”

It was pitiful. This was easily the weakest dirt Zane ever held against someone, but the girl pointing the, albeit fake, sword at him was trembling as if he had a knife to her throat. Taking your rules seriously is one thing, but this is ridiculous.

Zane took one cautious step toward the door, but the flustered fencing girl made no move to stop him. She just stood there painstakingly holding back a flood of tears. Knowing now that she was basically powerless, he bent her training sword in half, messed up her neatly brushed hair and sauntered out of the room with a mischievous cackle.

When Felicia arrived, the defeated fencing girl was collapsed on the floor, flushed from holding back the shame seeping from her eyes.

“I-I’m sorry, Lady Belafonte. He… He got away.”

“What… what did he do?”

She only shook her head in response.

The two fencers accompanying Felicia shared a glance full of malicious intentions and a hint of excitement.