The Dreams

Chapter Twenty Three

Finals were just around the corner and Rina only felt more and more guilty about taking up Corine's space and time. Trying to bring up the issue with Corine only resulted in her friend insisting that she was in no way distracting from her studies, but she knew better than to believe that. With Corine's habits and a distinct recollection of both finals weeks of their freshmen year Rina knew better than to stick around and distract her. Corine needed good grades on her finals so her semester's GPA would not be too low. She was remarkably good at making up for an entire semester's worth of underachieving with just one test.

She did not want to run the risk of messing that up for her. After the huge favor Corine had done by allowing her to stay in her dorm room for so long she could not allow her to have a horrible finals week.

With the amount of work Corine needed to go from just barely passing to having solidly average to slightly above average grade, she needed time to study day and night. Just heading to the library for the afternoon would not be enough to stay out of Corine's hair until she was prepared for her exams.

Rina knew she needed to get out of Corine's hair until her last final was over. She just did not know where to go until that time.

She thought about it for a while. She even worried about it. She lost sleep over it, but she still tried to keep it all to herself. She needed to allow her friend to just focus on her studies and deal with her problem herself.

The only person that came to mind when she thought of people she could potentially visit was Hibiki. He would be studying for finals as well, but once the idea of spending more time with him entered her mind she could not shake it.

She had not exactly been avoiding him the last few weeks, but she had been giving him some space so he could focus on his studies without having to worry about her. She missed him, and she wondered if he missed her as much as she missed him, he had a lot more going on in his life right now than here so she had to suspect that he had other things to occupy his time rather than pining away for her.

As much as she did find herself worrying that she would be a distraction to him and how that had kept her away, she knew that he would handle having her around better than Corine. She could actually help Hibiki study. Corine would just use her as an excuse to procrastinate. Hibiki would actually find a way to use her for his studies.

That settled it in her mind. She would not feel guilty asking Hibiki if he would like to have her come stay with him for a few days. It seemed like it would be for the best, and she certainly would not mind having a bit more quality time with him.

She would just have to gather up the courage to ask him. Thinking about asking him to have her over for what might end up being a multiple night long sleep over made her a little bit nervous. They had never spent the night together before. She knew even bringing the fact up within earshot of Corine would only result in a ton of teasing.

That would only distract Corine from her studies which was exactly why Rina though she should leave in the first place. She also did not particularly want to have another conversation with her friend about the current state of her sex life. Thinking about that was enough to make her nervous. She did not know if she could handle the thought of having that sort of possibility out there when it was not something they had ever really discussed. She felt awful about that. It seemed wrong to her that she had been teased so much about it and still lacked the courage to actually discuss it with Hibiki even though he was the only person who really had any business discussing it with her.

She accepted the fact that she would need to have the discussion sooner or later. She just did not know if she could handle being the one to bring up these concerns. Waiting for the topic to just come up seemed like it would be much easier to her, but she did not know if this was even the sort of thing that Hibiki was thinking about at this point and waiting for him might mean she would be waiting and worrying about it for a long time.