From the administration building, the walk to the sports complex was just a bit longer than the walk from the main school building. Luckily we could walk alongside the laboratory building, which had a bit of an overhang that protected us from rain. The laboratory building was constructed separately from the main school building in the mid 20th century because the school administration had the brilliant idea to move the highly explosive chemicals to a more isolated location, rather than in the middle of a baroque building with lots of wood. Luckily nothing had happened so far in the school’s history, but they’d rather not tempt fate any further.

“The labs always look so sad when it’s raining.” Emma commented while I temporarily closed the umbrella.

“It’s a concrete construction, this building always looks sad, especially compared to the others.” I replied which made Emma giggle.

“Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

The school did have plans to renovate and beautify the outside of the building because it did stick out like a sore thumb. Although no one has a clue when exactly those works are going to start.

After the short respite from the rain I opened the umbrella back up again to continue our way to the impressive sports complex which was only a little bit further away.

“Your clothes are in your locker aren’t they?”

“Do I really need to wear them? I doubt I’m going to sweat.”

“No street shoes on the gym floor! They leave scuff marks!”

“Alright alright, and I guess running with a skirt isn’t the best idea either, unless you wanted to see my panties.” I joked, but when I looked over to Emma, she was again beet red.

“Y-yeah…”

We reached the sport’s complex’s entrance, which Emma swiftly opened with a key.

“Wow, they gave you a key and everything?”

“Mhmm.” She nodded. “So please don’t break anything, I don’t want to lose my key privileges.”

“I promise I’ll be careful.”

We entered the sports complex’s main entrance hall when the door slammed closed behind us, making an echo ring throughout the entire building. The entrance hall was only partially lit up by the doors and two windows that hung four meters off the floor.

“Wow, this building is pretty darn spooky when no one's here.” I looked down one of the dark corridors leading to the locker rooms. When I focussed on the darkness it did get clearer every second, until it might as well have been lit up by natural daylight.

“Hey, Emma, guess what!”

“Hmm?” I heard Emma flip on a switch, at that instant all the lights started to light up with that typical cascading sound you would hear in the movies. My eyes however, did not like this rush of light, and I was instantly blinded.

“Ouch.” I cried out in pain, closed my eyes shut and covered them with my right arm. “Could you warn me next time you do that?!”

“Oh shit, are you alright?” Emma rushed to my side and grabbed my arm. “What happened?”

“You know those scenes in the movies when they shine a bright light on someone wearing night vision goggles? That.” I slowly took my right arm from in front of my arm, trying to let my eyes get used to the light again.

“Sorry, I didn’t know.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine.” I blinked a couple of times. “Are my eyes red?” I look over to Emma.

She shyly looks back at me before quickly turning her head away again. “Just a little, and it looks like it’s going away.”

-I should probably avoid doing this when I’m around other people then. At least until I learn to mask it.-

We walked down the leftmost hallways towards one of the several locker rooms housed within the building. Most people, like me, kept their clothes at school unless they needed to take them home to get them washed. To make sure we always had a pair of fresh clothes the school did provide us with three sets of indoors clothes and two sets of track suits. Together with two pairs of shoes, one for indoor, the other for outdoor sporting events.

Having arrived at our class’ locker room I quickly went to work changing my clothes.

Emma set up her bag next to me and started doing the same.

“Are you gonna run as well, Em?” I put my uniform jacket on the bench to my right.

“Might as well take the opportunity to race you, now that we’re at it.”

“What about the track meet?”

“Eh, it’ll be fine as long as I don’t pull a muscle.” She took off her uniform jacket as well, together with her shirt, revealing the spot where I bit her earlier this morning. My attention was immediately pulled toward it.

“Looks like it healed pretty well.” I ran my hand over her neck, the little bumps not looking or feeling any different than mosquito bites.

“W-w-what are you doing!?” She stumbled back while stammering. “That spot is extremely s-sensitive…”

“Right, sorry… For some reason I just really wanted to touch it…” I found myself still staring at her neck.

“I know you probably can’t help it because your vampire stuff but you should really learn how to control your… urges…”

“Mhmm… and I’m not even thirsty right now…” I nodded and finally, with some effort, managed to break contact with her neck and look the other way. So we both could continue to get dressed.

“You might even want to consider getting dressed in the bathroom next time.”

“Next time?”

“We have P.E. on Thursday, remember?”

“Oh shit. That’s going to be problematic in several ways and it was already pretty uncomfortable…”

“I getcha.” Emma finished tying her last shoe and patted my back.

“Is that why you sometimes do it too, because you are uncomfortable?”

I guess she didn’t expect that return question because she froze in the middle of walking out of the locker room and turned around. “Well… Y’know… Uh... You’ll figure it out.” she waved away my question and continued on to the door and proceeded to wait for me outside.

“Hmm.” I shrugged and put on my shoes. “If she says so.”

I rejoined Emma outside and together we walked down the hallway towards the indoor sport’s arena. The sport’s arena had practically everything a school would ever need when it came to sports equipment and then some. Basketball, indoor soccer, hockey, gymnastics, badminton, etc. Every sport you could think of that you could practice indoors was present. There was even a pool but you had to take a different turn in the network of hallways to get there.

“So, what do you want to do first?” I asked Emma who was jumping slightly in excitement.

“Let’s warm up first.” She pulled her arm across her chest to stretch her shoulder.

“Hmm, alright then, you take the lead.”

She nodded and together we started running a couple of laps around the soccer field.

But at the end of the warm-up I didn’t even feel a thing. Emma continued on with a couple of basic stretching exercises, so I followed along. I never really used to be one of the most flexible students and apparently becoming a vampire didn’t change that fact at all. Because this did, in fact, feel exactly the same as before.

“Really can’t go any deeper than that, Auro?” Emma smirked at me while touching the floor with the palms of her hands, while I could only just reach my ankles with the tips of my fingers.

“Shut up, you.” I smiled back at her.

“Here, let me help you.” She sprung upright and walked over to me. “Sit down.” Emma commanded.

I did as she asked and sat down. “And now what?”

“Stretching is also about breath control.” She moved behind me and put her hands on my back. “Breathe in deeply.”

Once more I did as she asked and took a deep breath.

“And now, breathe out slowly.”

While I did so, she gently pushed on the top of my back to push me down to the ground.

To my surprise I managed to bend forward a lot more than I usually could “Woah! What kind of dark magic is this!?”

“Just something you need to get the hang of.” She patted my back.

“You should’ve told me sooner!”

“Hmm. I don’t tend to watch people around me during the stretching exercises, so I didn’t know you were such a potato at it.”

“Hey, that’s rude! Potatoes like me have feelings too!” I looked over my shoulder to make eye contact with her and smiled.

“Mhmm.” She smiled back softly and offered me a hand to get up. “Get up, we have a race to run.”

I took her hand and got up.

“And you better give it your all, otherwise I’m going to be pissed.” She squeezed my hand.

“I wouldn’t dare.”