Project: Socialize (Chapters 1-197)

194. Heading Home

"You alright?" Loyd asked with a gentle hand on my back. He must've noticed me shivering from earlier. 

"Yeah," I responded. "Just kinda cold."

"It's gonna be a few more weeks until it warms up," he said. "You want my coat?"

"No it's fine," I rejected his offer and saw momentarily a look of disappointment on his face.

Wait a minute...Don't tell me Loyd he...

I paused in my steps and looked over at him, feeling my face becoming warm at that thought.

B-but I'm a guy...

"Right now you aren't," Noah whispered nonchalantly as he walked past me as if he could read my mind.

"Alvelyn?" I felt a gentle tug on my sleeve. Looking over, I saw that it was Irina. "Is something wrong?"

"Nothing," I responded. "Just a bit cold."

"How about now?" she wrapped her arms around mine, hugging onto me.

The soft sensation of her chest pressing against the side of my arm was...well quite a nice feeling. It also made me quite flustered. I don't think I'll ever get used to this...

***

When we finally made our way out of the school and off campus, I looked up at the sky and taking in its beautiful color as the darkness of the night met the orange of the sun in the distance, blending together and creating a beautiful and mesmerizing light purple color. The view of the tall concrete buildings with lights shining in their windows around us was quite pretty to the eyes, and it was this scenery that momentarily distracted me from the cold.

Since none of us lived by the school, we walked together until we arrived at the nearby train station. And once we were there, then came the familiar moment where we would all say our goodbyes and go our separate ways.

"We'll be going this way," Erith said as she hooked her arm with Luna's while having their back facing the metro escalators. "We want to go shopping for a bit before going home."

"Shopping?" Loyd commented. "This late at night?"

"Yeah," Erith smiled in that mature and confident manner. "We can handle it."

As I gazed at her face, I couldn't help it but think back to what I had seen the two doing in the other timeline. Will they also be spending time with those...college students again in this timeline? I just have a severe lack of information about the two of them, even Luna. It just came to me how little I really know about them outside of our little circle. Erith, I could understand, but Luna as well... It just makes me—I don't know—kinda sad to know that we're actually that far apart...

"Well, have fun," Zaksus said. 

Then, as if nothing had happened, every one of us went our separate ways. Zaksus and Loyd went off in the same direction towards the train line that would take them home as their homes were located close to each others, Luna and Erith went down the escalators to the metro to go shopping with Irina following behind them as her commute home required taking the metro as well. That then left Noah, Muria, and I to take the escalators up to the elevated railway to make our way back to Lumina.

As usual, with a smooth and swift motion of scanning my phone against the scanner on the ticket gates, we passed through and boarded the escalators. From there, we made our way up to the platforms where we waited in the cold wind for around two minutes for our train to arrive. Finally, we boarded it like we've always done, except this time, I'm a girl.