Professor Arturo was the entire reason that Mizuki was even at the Rayedhcraft School, and she was grateful to him on that account … but she found all the research stuff to be incredibly dull, and was growing to outright hate the obligation, especially because it was soaking up even more of her precious free time. At the end of the school day, she often just wanted to go home, but she had promised Arturo, and a promise was a promise, not something that you could just weasel out of.

“I have twenty samples for today,” said Arturo. “We’ll try to get through them quickly.”

Many wizards had a ‘workshop’ of some kind, though most of the students had a shared space. The workshop was a place to keep manastones if you didn’t have extradimensional storage for them, and a place to craft your creations in relative silence with whatever tools you needed — mostly those for measurements and precision, but also for things that interfaced with the constructs a wizard could create.

Mizuki was starting to understand wizardry a bit better now, but Arturo’s creations, which had been prepared just for her, were almost entirely beyond her. Most were small, with a tiny well, and then some kind of assembly to transform that stored mana into some kind of effect. These were for Mizuki to ‘sniff’ as Arturo called it.

“That one is, uh, kind of an earthy warmth?” said Mizuki as the device worked. “Like compost gets when you’ve got a big heap you’ve left there for a bit.”

“Compost?” asked Arturo.

“I dunno, yeah?” asked Mizuki. The sad thing was, she was getting better at describing the flavors of magic to other people, and this was still the best she could muster. “It’s not two things either, it’s specifically the warmth of earthy stuff.”

“And what could you make from it?” asked Arturo. “First thing that comes to mind, please.”

They had done this almost a hundred times now, from Mizuki’s count, and the questions were almost always the same, which was starting to drive her insane. Arturo had two research assistants, one who kept records of everything and another who had made the actual constructs. Rosalind was the recordkeeper and seemed happy to have her quill moving rapidly as she filled a notebook. Mizuki was more or less friends with her, and they’d had lunch together a few times. Garth was the one who’d made the constructs, and he was usually in the workshop when the ‘tests’ were going on, looking bored. She’d talked to him only briefly, and he’d said ‘at least it pays well’, but in a way that implied that either the pay didn’t actually help that much, or that he wasn’t paid well. Mizuki hadn’t asked which.

“Fireball,” said Mizuki.

The professor closed his eyes for a moment, then let out a sigh. “We need to get to the bottom of this. Explain why it’s always fireball.”

“It’s not always fireball,” said Mizuki.

“It’s at least forty percent of the time,” said Rosalind. “More, if we don’t include the times you said ‘I don’t know’.”

“It’s disproportionately a fireball, or something like it,” said Arturo, nodding. He seemed pleased by the correction.

“Permission to use another cooking analogy?” asked Mizuki.

“A wizard does not trade in analogy,” said Arturo with a weary voice. Apparently wizards did trade in platitudes, because Mizuki had heard that one a few times before. “But in the interests of moving forward, yes, give us another of your analogies.”

“Alright,” said Mizuki. “A fireball is like stew.”

Arturo was watching her with absolutely no humor on his face, but Rosalind had a small smile she was doing a bad job hiding, and Garth had a ‘here we go again’ expression.

“Stews are like … fundamental,” said Mizuki. “All a stew is, really, is something solid cooked in something liquid, but without so much liquid that it’s a soup. And there’s gravy involved, I guess. But stew is the one thing that pretty much every culture can agree on, or I guess one of the few things, like sandwiches, which are also pretty much found anywhere that people have bread. So I guess some places that don’t have bread wouldn’t have sandwiches. Anyway, since all you need for stew is cooking solids in liquids, anytime you have something solid and something liquid, you can make a stew, and since water is a liquid, you can make a stew from any solid. Meat, potatoes, veggies … not fruit, but I guess that’s … basically a compote, right?”

Arturo was still looking at her.

“So, basically, same with a fireball,” said Mizuki. She tried to clear her head for a moment, which wasn’t easy. “A fireball is, I guess, just … sucking up all the aetheric imbalance, bunching it up, then throwing it or otherwise getting it away from you so you don’t get caught in the blast. Once it’s far enough away, or when you want it to, you lose your grip on it and all that energy comes out at once. Ideally it’s concentrated in a specific direction, so you don’t lose a bunch of the energy off to the sides, but … yeah, a fireball is just bottled up energy, and the ‘fire’ is just how a lot of things end up coming out.” She looked down at the contraption. “I would need something better than this, it’s only enough imbalance for a wet fart of a spell.”

Arturo rubbed his chin. “So if I put chicken and carrots in front of you, you might say ‘oh, you could make a stew with that’. But if I put lizzo meat and potatoes in front of you, you might also say that you could make a stew. And the same with rice and cabbage.” Mizuki took this as proof that he did understand metaphors, despite his protestation. “So is there perhaps a problem here where I’ve been asking the wrong question?”

Mizuki shrugged. “I guess I don’t really know what the point of the question is. If you ask me what I would make from a specific flavor of magic, aren’t you just learning more about me than you are about magic? Like, you ask someone what they would make with carrots and they say ‘oh, I don’t like carrots’, that’s kind of useless, right?”

“Mmm, quite,” said Arturo. “But we don’t want to get too far off-track with metaphor, do we?”

“We could investigate the fireball question,” said Rosalind. “Or have that be separate. Which moods are good for fireballs, which aren’t? That’s interesting, and possibly important.”

“You think a new typology might come from it?” asked Garth.

“It’s possible,” said Rosalind. “We’re seeking multiple typologies, aren’t we?”

“Sorry, that’s … a Qymmos thing?” asked Mizuki.

“Mmm, technically yes, technically no,” said Rosalind.

“Categorization is Qymmos, emergence is Oeyr,” said Garth. “So it’s both, but we’ve already had a cleric in, and neither has been able to give us much in the way of answers. We’ll go to them again once we have some data, which might help.”

“Huh,” said Mizuki. “Well whatever, we should get through these, I have a party tonight, and if you’re going to change the questions, we’re going to have to redo some of the other ones, right?”

“This is true,” said Arturo. “I think it’s been productive chatter, for a change. But you’re right, let’s move on.”

Mizuki answered the questions as best she could, trying to stay away from analogies as much as possible, but it was hard sometimes, because analogies and metaphors were helpful. Arturo seemed to think that everything could be distilled down in some way, or if he didn’t think that, he at least wanted it to be true. Maybe because of how specific everything needed to be in wizardry, Qymmos was a little bit over-represented, though it was well-known that Qymmos didn’t have all the answers, even if she was that God of Answers.

There seemed to be a theme of biology among the moods she was being asked to sample, and she wondered whether that was by design or not, though she didn’t think to ask until after it was all over. There was a particular one that she thought she could use for rapid plant growth of some kind, but it was so weak that she would have needed a hundred times the amount. That she had found interesting, because it was something she’d never come across before, and making plants grow faster wasn’t something that wizards could do.

“It’s weird,” said Mizuki afterward. “Why can’t wizards do it? Ectads can do it.”

“Are wizards ectads?” asked Arturo with a sigh. He was putting on his cloak, which went on over his robes.

“Is this a trick question?” asked Mizuki.

“No, wizards are not ectads,” said Arturo.

“They give off pretty much exactly the same moods though,” said Mizuki.

Arturo froze. “They do?”

“Yeah,” said Mizuki. “I’ve never seen a wizard pull a void like an ectad can, but everything else has seemed pretty similar. Ectads, the proper ones, hardly disturb the aether at all, but they do just a bit, enough for a sniff.”

“Well, I don’t want to be late for a dinner party, but we will definitely have to take this up later.” He frowned at Mizuki, a serious fatherly frown. “Thank you for your work today, and every day. We’re still in the opening stages here, but your contributions are invaluable.”

“Er, no problem,” said Mizuki.

MIzuki had thought that she was somewhat of an annoyance to Arturo, for almost as long as they’d known each other. Part of it had been her delayed entry into the school, but there were a few other bumps, and he hadn’t been terribly gracious about it, no waved hand while he said ‘it’s fine, don’t worry about it’. There had been a mixup with her mailbox, where she hadn’t even known she had a school mailbox, and certainly hadn’t been checking it every day, because she hadn’t known that it existed. She’d been a week into her time at the school before a rather annoyed Arturo had asked him why she hadn’t stopped by, which she of course hadn’t known to do. Now she was checking her mailbox twice a day, which is what most people did, but she’d felt like the damage had been done.

Apparently she’d been wrong about that, which was nice. Arturo did seem to find her a bit annoying sometimes, but so far as she knew, he was like that with everyone, so that was okay.

“Plans for tonight?” asked Rosalind.

“I got invited to a party,” said Mizuki. “Not the other newbies, some advanced wizards that I know.”

“Mercette House?” asked Rosalind with an arched eyebrow.

“You know it?” asked Mizuki. “I mean, you know about the party?”

“They’ve got a lot of parties,” said Rosalind. “And yes, I'm going. Garth too.”

“Oh, cool,” said Mizuki. She brushed her hair from her face. “I guess I’ll see you there. It’ll be our first time seeing each other outside school.”

“We might not see each other,” said Rosalind with a shrug. “It’s a big party.”

“How big of a party?” asked Mizuki.

“Um,” said Rosalind. “Usually something like two hundred people.” She was fiddling with her magical staff, which was laden with all kinds of things, a setup that wizards sometimes used to give them a lot of flexibility for minor things.

“Two hundred?” asked Mizuki as she realized what Rosalind had said. “That’s like … as many people as a major festival in Pucklechurch.”

“Oh, it’s a huge party, you’re expected to pitch in a few rings for food, drinks, stuff like that,” said Rosalind. “Huge house too. But there are so many people that we might miss each other.”

“They do this a lot?” asked Mizuki.

“Every other week or something like that,” Rosalind nodded. “I’ve heard that from the donations, it’s actually pretty lucrative for the house, but it feels like you’re giving a pittance.”

“Huh,” said Mizuki. “I’ve never been to a party of that size. Good?”

“Fun and games, lots of people to chat up, very easy to find a partner if that’s what you’re after, or maybe even if you’re not,” said Rosalind. “The younger kids aren’t allowed in, it’s adults only, so if you’ve got little friends —”

“Hey, don’t make fun of my little friends,” said Mizuki. “They’re great, they get me.”

“Well, as far as being uneducated in wizardry, you’ll be in good company,” said Rosalind. “They tend to be about half wizards, half other people from around the city, young adults who know someone who knows someone. If I see you, I’ll say hi. You’ll get to see me out of my robes for once.” She looked down at them with a frown.

“Oh, I didn’t realize it was that kind of party,” said Mizuki with a grin.

Rosalind gave her a playful slap, then looked at Mizuki’s robes. “You’re changing though, right?”

“Absolutely,” Mizuki lied, though it was the kind of lie that became true because she decided right in that moment that it was true.

The problem with Plenarch was that Mizuki didn’t really have a place to stay. The house was on its way, extremely slowly as was Alfric’s way, but that meant that Mizuki didn’t have a room to get changed in, nor had she brought along a spare set of clothing. She’d thought that she’d just go to the party in her robes, like a proper wizard, but if Rosalind was saying not to … well, it was time to call in help.

Mizuki said into the party channel.

asked Isra.

said Mizuki after a moment.

asked Alfric.

said Mizuki.

Mizuki left campus while she waited, biting a nail and thinking about how she was going to occupy herself for the rest of the day. She could have gone and had a very early dinner, but Gina had said that there would be food at the party, which meant that Mizuki needed to find some other way to occupy herself.

She decided to go flying.

Mizuki zipped up into the sky as soon as the helmet was on, pushing it as fast as it would go, which wasn’t all that fast. She was longing for a better flying entad, maybe a staff of some kind that she could sit on. The ideal, in her opinion, was something that made her feel like she had more control, an entad that didn’t feel like strapping into a chair or being pulled along, but until Verity was able to churn out custom entads, it was a bit of a pipe dream. Flying entads, especially ones that were fast and fun to use, cost insane amounts of money, mostly because they were great for leisure and they were useful for commerce.

Mizuki chased a flock of birds for a bit, listening to them caw at her, then threw them some oat nuggets, which were apparently a better food for birds than bread, at least according to Isra. She looked across the sea that Plenarch sat on, waiting for the sunset, then got bored when the sun wasn’t setting fast enough and let herself fall. Falling was great for getting up a good speed, much much faster than the helm could handle on its own, especially when Mizuki shaped her body like an arrow pointed downward. This was fun for a good twenty minutes until her stomach started to rebel against her, and at that point she dropped down to the ground, trying a new landing method where she would look like a leaf twisting in the wind rather than a stone dropping down into a cool pose. She wasn’t sure that it was a success, but it was nice to do new things.

On the ground, the chest was waiting for her. She popped it open and took the lute out, gave it a strum, and then was elsewhere.

The party had done right by her, and she gave a heartfelt ‘thanks guys!’ into the party chat. A mirror was set up so she could see herself, there were three different outfits laid out, and Verity had loaned a carrying cart of makeup, since Mizuki still didn’t have one of her own.

Mizuki had tried on all three outfits by the time she realized that she should have asked Rosalind what the dress code was like. Her ‘temple best’ seemed too reserved and formal, the outfit she’d worn to Verity’s last concert was way too fancy, and her everyday wear seemed like it wasn’t quite right either. Eventually, she settled on the everyday wear anyway, but gussied up with some makeup, a fancy braid in her long hair with a little clip for an accent, and some extra jewelry. She picked a pair of boots to go with it, and hoped that she wouldn’t look out of place, or that if she did look out of place, that it would seem like that’s what she intended.

That still left her with some time to kill, so she sat inside Lutopia One and practiced some rock-petting, which got her nowhere. She was certain that she’d get it eventually, and was equally certain that it was going to catch her so off-guard that she was going to have no clue how she'd actually done it.

The party was taking place at a large house, so huge that it was basically a mansion, except that it also had so many people living in it that it was a lot less impressive. It was three stories, built with heavy stones and timbers for the upper level, a somewhat more simple place than Mizuki would have expected, and less styled than the others in the neighborhood. The university was big enough that it needed a lot of housing for students, and this was the more independent option once people ‘aged out’ of the dorms.

Mizuki walked in slowly, feeling more nervous than she felt she should be, but she didn’t know the people whose house this was, even if she had quite a few friends who’d be going.

“Welcome!” said a slender man with a cup of wine in his hand. There were a few people milling around a central entryway room, which had balconies looking over it, but it was the man who stepped up to speak. He had long blonde hair that hung down in pleasant curls and a womanly way about him, which Mizuki had always been a fan of in guys. “I don’t know you, have you been here before?”

“I’m Mizuki,” Mizuki said. “I was invited?”

“Oh, I’m sure you were,” he replied, waving the cup. “You’re a wizard?”

“In training,” said Mizuki. “But … sure.”

“Come on, I’ll give you the tour,” he said, puffing himself up.

“You live here?” asked Mizuki.

“Name’s Grim,” he said, placing his free hand on his chest. He was dressed in a green tunic that was unbuttoned enough that she could see some of his chest. “Come with me, I’ll show you around.”

The first place they stopped was a long dining room, which had a table filled with food. There were at least thirty pots and a stack of plates at one end, and there were all kinds of smells coming up from the table. It was clear that they had done this before, because there were both chillers and warmers, keeping preserved meats and fruits cold and the pots warm, though both rather mild. Mizuki was a bit surprised that there weren’t entads for eating, though she supposed that it was possible the foods were created with the assistance of entads.

“Food,” Grim declared. “Take what you want, be careful not to put your plate down though.”

“Why?” asked Mizuki.

“They’re magic, they’ll disappear, along with all the food, and that can be a huge waste of food.” He pointed to a small sign on the table, next to the plates. “See? ‘Plates and food will disappear when set down!!’ But of course we have so many people in here that it doesn’t really help anything.”

“We’re supposed to donate, for the food and stuff?” asked Mizuki.

“If it’s your first time, don’t worry too much about it, we mostly get by on one or two people who really find the parties worth it, or have enough money to keep us going,” said Grim. “No, the real money is necessary for the drinks, which are in the other room.”

Grim led her there, and Mizuki stood in awe of the selection. There was a full bar with a bartender, and along with the usual assortment of wines there were hard liquors, enough to get her entirely too drunk. Grim was looking quite pleased with himself as he watched her take it in.

“This must have cost a fortune,” she said.

“Well, yes,” said Grim. “But we’re mostly students, we drink cheap, there’s very little of any quality, and then only for special circumstances. We go to the bottle shops and buy up the cheapest by volume for whatever strikes our fancy, or go off what’s on discount, or what we can get in bulk. There was a rather dire period a year ago when we had this horrible spirit made from a variety of potatoes. We drank through it, in the end, as one must.”

Once Mizuki had gotten a glass of wine to match Grim’s, they kept moving through the huge house. There was a music room with a piano and a few other instruments in it, along with a number of couches for people to sit on, a ‘sitting’ room which was essentially the same, and a games room that had a large table for a game played with balls and sticks, in addition to a second table for cards.

“This one will get hopping in short order,” said Grim. “You’re on the early side, the whole party has begun but hasn’t really begun.”

“Where do people sleep in this house?” asked Mizuki.

“On party nights, we don’t sleep,” said Grim. “There are sixteen of us living here, and we’ve all got entads that can shave off the need for a night of sleep. Mercette House is something of an institution, and the rooms accumulate favors over the years, entads that are tied to them, along with certain pieces of furniture that get donated by former residents.”

“So … how do people end up living here?” asked Mizuki.

“You’re interested?” asked Grim, raising an eyebrow.

“Nah, I have my own house,” said Mizuki. “It’s trundling along toward Plenarch, on its way.”

“Well, here you have to apply, and they check to see whether you’d be a good fit. We have entads for that.” He looked up at the ceiling. “The rooms are nice, all perfectly soundproof, which can be a godsend.”

“If you don’t need to sleep, why do you need the soundproofing?” asked Mizuki. She was playing along, interested in whether he would demure or go along with it.

“Maybe I could show you later tonight?” he asked, giving her a sly smile.

Mizuki laughed. “Wow did that not land for me, sorry.”

Grim gave her a fake pout. “Worth a shot?”

“You would have had way better of a shot if you’d slow-played it,” said Mizuki. She giggled. “Does that line work on people?”

“Works on men more than women,” said Grim with a shrug. “Did you want me to show you the rooms?”

“I think I’m fine,” said Mizuki. “The party spills out into there?”

“Eventually, yes,” said Grim. “The rule is that if a door is open, you’re invited in, sometimes it’s private, intimate conversations, other times it’s people getting into loud debates.” If he felt any shame about his failed pickup attempt, he wasn’t showing it, and Mizuki was grateful that she could shoot him down and continue on. “We have just one more room on the ground floor, unless you’re interested in the kitchen.” He swept into the next room, and Mizuki followed.

This room had a boy and girl standing around a box on a table, in argument with each other.

“This is,” began Grim. “Oh, this is the grand device?”

“It’s not working,” said the boy.

“We’re on it,” said the girl.

“This is the variety room,” said Grim. “Sort of a talent show type thing, for at least part of the night. People come up and share stories, songs, talents, weird stuff they want to show off, that sort of thing.”

“Sounds neat,” said Mizuki. “You have a lot of talented people?”

“The room attracts a certain sort of performer,” said Grim. “Lots of poets.”

Mizuki was looking at the box, which had wooden panels and for some reason looked familiar. It wasn’t until the sides had been folded down that it struck her though.

“It’s supposed to be making a tone when you lift the lever,” said the boy.

“Well, it’s not,” said the girl.

“May I?” asked Mizuki.

The girl gave her a skeptical look. “This was expensive. It makes music using some newly discovered ectad property or,” she looked at the boy. “Or something.”

“We’re going to try to make one for ourselves,” he said. “But we need to get the thing working first.”

“You need to disengage the lock,” said Mizuki. “There’s a lever — can I just do it?”

The boy and girl looked at each other. “Sure,” the girl said. “Please don’t break it.”

Mizuki went over to the box, branded with ‘Parson Musical Appliances’, and looked at the internals. The ectad stone was sitting right in the center of it, ready to be played, but as she had guessed, there was a clamp pushing down on the stone, holding it steady. She pulled on the lever, using more force than the two of them had probably felt comfortable with, and the music immediately began to play.

“There's a dampener, and then also a lock,” said Mizuki. “The lock is for when you’re moving it, the dampener is so it doesn’t make any noise when you don’t want it to.”

“You have one of these?” asked the girl.

“No, I’m just a mechanical genius,” Mizuki grinned.

“Seriously, these are brand new,” the girl insisted. “As in, this is the very first one to make it to Greater Plenarch, so far as I’m aware. Who are you? How’d you get one?”

“This is Mizuki no-last-name-given,” said Grim. “Mizuki, these are the Coffler twins, Beryl and Mira. They do everything together.” Once it was pointed out the family resemblance was obvious, and they were even dressed alike, in brown coats and tan pants.

“I do share the question of where this mysterious creature got one of these,” said Beryl. He was eyeing Mizuki. “It was quite expensive.”

“Who said I have just one of them?” asked Mizuki, still smiling.

“Well now you’re just taking the piss,” said Mira, folding her arms.

“Technically they don’t belong to me, they’re just in my house,” said Mizuki. “But I’m in a party with Verity Parson, whose song you’re trying to play. She’s actually going to be in Plenarch relatively soon, another month at the latest, and I imagine you’ll have a chance to hear her live, if you’d like. Though you’ll excuse me if I don’t want to hear ‘The Brave Knight Gave’ again.”

“Wow, we could hear her live?” asked Mira. “She’s famous.”

“She’s not that famous,” said Mizuki. “I could probably get her to this party if you wanted, though I’m not sure she’d want to put on a performance.”

Mira and Beryl shared a look. “Can we have her come to the next one?” asked Mira. “Would you invite her? We’d want to set up for it, to let people know, have it be a draw. And we’d pay her, obviously, I mean even if she’s a friend.”

“Let me ask,” said Mizuki.

said Verity.

said Mizuki.

Verity replied.

“Alright, all set, just let me know when the next party is,” said Mizuki.

“Wow,” said Mira. “That’s going to be amazing. Now I’m almost ashamed that we’re going to be using the machine when we have the real thing next time.

“Wait,” said Beryl. “Isn’t she a dungeoneer? Does that make you a dungeoneer?”

Mizuki shrugged. “We only do a dungeon once a week, if that. Mostly I’m a student.”

“Well, we’re going to listen to this now, then save it for lulls in the variety show,” said Mira. “I’ll come find you if we need some help. Do you have a talent, aside from fixing things?”

Mizuki hadn’t really fixed it, she’d only moved a thing that needed to be moved, a lever that was part of totally normal operation, but she still felt a nice glow from being helpful. “Um, I’ll think of something, Grim said that you can do basically whatever you want?”

“Five minute limit,” said Mira, holding up her fingers. “But you can go up again after five minutes, if you’d like, and you have more to offer. Sometimes someone has a hot streak, other times it’s just one-ofs. Show off an entad, if you have it, that kind of thing.”

“Oh, I love entads,” said Mizuki. “I’ve got a bunch with me, maybe I can figure something out. It’s gotta be cool though, right?”

“We only accept the coolest,” said Mira. She laughed. “You get a lot of duds, but it’s a short enough time limit that you just move on with things.”

“Bring your best,” said Grim. “Otherwise we’ll have to ban you.”

“Is the tour done then?” asked Mizuki. “Because I was going to get some food.”

“Knock yourself out, and I’m sure that I have other tours to give,” said Grim.

“He loves his tours,” said Beryl.

More people were already starting to stream in, and Mizuki found that the dining room had a bit of a line, which she happily joined. She was unfamiliar with a lot of the dishes, though she didn’t know whether that was because she was still unfamiliar with what Plenarch had to offer or if it was just the peculiarity of Mercette House.

Once her plate had been loaded up, Mizuki found a place to sit in the music room, hoping that someone would play something, and she was rewarded when a girl with a giant coil of hair on the top of her head began to play at the piano.

“Zuki!” said Willow as she sat down on the couch. She was one of Mizuki’s older friends, the group that had invited her to the party, and the feeling of relief was overwhelming to finally have someone she actually knew. Willow was ridiculously pretty, with hair she’d dyed blue and a ton of piercings all over her face, and for the party she’d put on a black dress that hugged tight to her body. “I was worried you wouldn’t come.”

“I said I would,” said Mizuki. “And I always keep my promises, if it’s to a friend, and not too much trouble.”

Willow laughed. “So, any cute guys?”

“I talked to Grim, who seemed to suggest that his room was soundproofed,” said Mizuki.

“Oh gods,” said Willow. “Please tell me that didn’t work on you?”

“It didn’t,” said Mizuki. “Plus I’m not really, ah, that kind of girl.”

“I thought you said you were way into boys?” asked Willow. “I think that was one of the first things that I learned about you.”

“Yeah, well,” said Mizuki. “I need a little more warm up than just ‘hey come up to my room’.”

“Alright,” said Willow with a nod. “Well what if he’s hot?”

“Oh, then,” said Mizuki with a laugh. “But no, I need at least a few days. I’ll fall for a guy fast, but even a kiss too soon feels like you’re missing out on the fun part.”

“The fun part being … not kissing?” asked Willow.

“Yeah, actually,” said Mizuki. “The not kissing can be great, the idea that you might kiss, that it could happen at almost any time? That’s hard to beat. The start of a relationship is always the best like that, when it’s all fresh and new.”

“Sounds awful,” said Willow. “To me, the best part is when we’re in bed together.” She was looking around the room. “Now, mind you, it’s got to be the right guy.”

“Someone hot,” said Mizuki.

“You get me,” said Willow. “Anyway, the rest will be here shortly, we’re going to party. Are you in for a wild night? Wild beyond your wildest dreams?”

“You have no idea how wild my dreams can get,” said Mizuki with a laugh.