“Ria, the car is here.” I kissed my girlfriend on her cheek to wake her up.

Ria slowly opened her eyes while Em was grabbing everything together. “Rora...?”

“Mhmm. Helen is here to bring you home.”

She slowly sat upright and rubbed her eyes. “Am I at your place?”

“Yeah, you fell asleep in the car on our way here and we didn’t want to wake you up.”

“Oh…”

I booped her on the nose with my index finger. “We’ll see each other tomorrow at school.”

She sighed and then pomfed down on the sofa again. “But I want to stay here.”

“I know the feeling, but we really do have to leave now.” Em hung over the back of the sofa, so she could look at our girlfriend as well.

“Urgh.” Ria groaned and then got up once more. “Can I at least have a kiss and a hug first?”

“As many as you want.” I smiled and gave her a big hug, and Ria then proceeded to kiss me.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t need to say thanks, I love kissing you too.” I winked and let her go, so she could take her bag to the car.

“Helen is parked in front of the door.” Em said as Ria walked past her, she herself stayed behind a bit though. “Are you going to be okay by yourself?”

“Mhmm.” I nodded. “I will need to get used to sleeping alone again, though.”

“Well, you always have Shima.” Em approached me and put the palm of her hand against my chest. Coming in a bit closer to give me a kiss as well.

“Shima doesn’t kiss nearly as well, though.”

Em laughed. “I’d hope so.”

“Another one for on the road.” I kissed her again. “I’m going to have a hard time avoiding kissing you at school. We still want to keep it secret for a bit longer, right?”

“We don’t have to, Karin already knows, and Pres and Claire won’t mind.”

“But won’t it be a bit too suspicious if Ria and I haven’t been at school for that long?”

“Hmm… That’s a good point… But we can tell them we got together during the extracurricular activity, right?”

“I guess, but speaking of which. What do we tell them we actually had to do?”

“...” I could see by Em’s expression that she was drawing blanks. “I haven’t even thought about that…”

“Maybe giving a lecture about our academy to some super small private school?”

“... Let’s go with that.” She was clearly not convinced, but she probably couldn’t think of anything better.

At that moment, Ria came walking in again. “Where are you guys!? You better not be making out without me!”

I started laughing, and Em closely followed suit. “Nah, we aren’t, we were just discussing some practical stuff.”

“I’ll explain it to you in the car.” Em nodded.

“Ah, okay.” Ria then ran up to me and gave me one last hug and a kiss before heading over to Shima to pet her.

“Oh, by the way, Auro, don’t forget to check up on French, we’ll probably have to do the test we missed on Friday.” Em escorted Ria out of the house to the car, while I followed them to the front door.

“Right, thanks for reminding me.” I waved my girlfriends goodbye.

Helen also greeted me with a smile and a small wave as I came to the door. I gladly returned the greeting.

And just like that, five minutes later, it was just me and Shima who were left.

“I should probably practice some French then.”

Shima meowed in response.

“Are you going to help me, petit chat?”

Shima then proudly walked into her litter box.

“Ah… well… thanks for nothing I guess.” I laughed and walked over to my bookcase.

Luckily, the study session we’d had on Wednesday was still relatively fresh in my mind, so repeating French went quite smoothly. Who’d have thought that studying and then repeating would be so beneficial.

An hour later, I was done with French and decided to relax in front of the television. When the tv-chef was adding some eggs to the flour for a beignet recipe, my phone buzzed.

It was a message from Emma.

“Hey, Auro, would Wednesday afternoon fit for you?”

“To go to your parents?” I quickly returned a message.

“Yeah.”

“Sure, don’t have much to do anyway. No particular vampire business going on as far as I know.”

“Good! I’ll ask Ria too.”

Five minutes later, Em sent me another message. “It’s fine for Ria as well. Helen will pick us up after school.”

“Alrighty. <3”

“<3”

I put my phone on the table in front of me and continued watching the television. However, boredom crept up on me incredibly fast. I started flipping through all the tv-channels, but there was absolutely nothing of interest on. Without the company of my girlfriends everything was just so incredibly dull. So I decided to do the one thing I could do best, annoy Emma a little.

I picked up my phone again and called her up, putting my phone on speaker because… well… because why not I guess.

“Auro?” Em picked up after the phone had rang twice. “Is something wrong?”

“Not really… well… actually, I’m completely bored out of my mind right now.”

“Can’t you read a manga or something like that?”

“Hmmm.” I stared back at the corridor. “I don’t know. I feel a bit empty without the two of you around.”

“Mhmm.” Em stayed silent for a couple of seconds. “Hey, we were talking about buying Ria a pc, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you buy one for yourself as well? That way, we can play together even when we are apart.”

“I actually thought about that already, but it’s not like I had the opportunity to buy one while we were with our vampire buddies.”

“You could’ve ordered the parts online.”

“Well, you know how good I am with computers.”

Em giggled. “I guess that’s true, with your talents you’d probably have ordered a toaster instead of a video card.”

“Can I get a toaster in my pc? That’d be pretty cool.”

“I think that would be a bad idea.” She laughed, which made me smile. I’d grown even fonder of all her sounds since we were together. She followed up her laugh with a yawn. “I should probably get some sleep.”

“I can hear that.” I chuckled. “Did I call you up?”

“No, I was still looking at French.”

“Good.” I smiled. “I’ll let you sleep now, goodnight, Em.”

“Nini, Auro. See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

I waited for Em to hang up, which she did shortly after. That’s when I noticed I’d gotten a message from Ria in the meantime as well. She wished me a good night.

“Goodnight, Rora! <3<3<3<3”

“Goodnight cutiepie <3<3 ;)” I messaged back, after which I slumped back onto the sofa. Now I didn’t have anyone to talk to anymore either. I sighed, I could play a game on my phone to kill the time, but most mobile games couldn’t keep my interest for long. In the end, I decided to follow Em’s suggestion to read some manga in bed. I opted for this one isekai manga about a witch building her own little gay family. It was incredibly comfy, but after I’d read all the volumes I had in my closet, I was back to square one. Shima was already sleeping on my bed, so I crawled out carefully to not wake her up and get myself another series, which coincidentally also was about a witch. This witch, however, was trying to find her own place in the world, going to live with her distant family to study witchcraft and become more independent.

I was halfway into volume 7 when the alarm on my phone started ringing. The clock on my phone told me exactly what had happened. I’d been reading manga all night long, and now it was already time for school.

After a quick shower, I put on my uniform and the school’s winter jacket. The weather forecast had said it was going to get quite chilly, so only my uniform wouldn’t cut it anymore. Although I still hadn’t bought any tights, the jacket would definitely help. I then took my books and course bundles for the day. Giving a big hug to my kitty cat before leaving the house and heading towards Ria’s mansion.

Ria was waiting on me on the corner of the street.

“Did you sleep well, Rora?” She asked after giving me my customary hug, this time it was complemented with a kiss.

I leaned into her for the kiss, making it last a little bit longer. “Not really, but I’m fine now.” I smiled as our lips finally parted. “Couldn’t sleep without my beautiful girlfriends.”

Her cheeks started to glow slightly red, which contrasted beautifully with the dark blue of the winter jacket and the scarf she’d decided to wear with it. She pouted and grabbed my hand with hers, though I was a bit sad I couldn’t feel her warmth through her mittens.

“You should’ve messaged me if you couldn’t sleep.” We started walking hand in hand.

“I didn’t want to bother you. Don’t want you to fall asleep in class thanks to me.”

“I don’t mind that!”

“But I would.” I booped her on the nose with my free hand.

“Baka.” She giggled and stuck out her tongue.

“I know.” I gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.