Honeycomb Hearts

In The Dark

After Blake had calmed down, she shuffled out of her room, leaving her door slightly ajar. This time holding onto the left wall, she made her way into the living room, where Yang's face was aglow on the couch.

"Hey Blake, I think you should see this." Yang said.

Blake walked over and took the phone from Yang's outstretched hand, her eyes squinting to adjust to the sudden change in light. She scanned the words on the page – it was a news website, and none of the news was good. The storm outside has elevated to a minor tropical storm with winds at around 30-35 miles per hour. An advisory was released for the area surrounding Malleus City, which included Apis Mellifera.

"Well this is sudden, what even caused it?" Blake asked.

"No clue," Yang said, taking her phone back, "Meteorologists are stumped. Also, I hate to be a bother, but-"

"I'm not letting you walk home in this storm. At least not alone." Blake said, cutting Yang short.

"Yeah, I was going to ask if I could stay a bit longer." Yang said. She began to twiddle her thumbs, leaving her phone alight on her lap. "Say, do you think Ruby will be fine?"

Blake mused for a bit. "I remember a story about that house withstanding a tornado somehow, when a few houses in the town got knocked down – including Nora's place and the bus stop."

"Jeez, I'm glad to hear Nora and Ren were okay though." Yang said.

"Actually, it was about fifty years ago. Nora and Ren weren't even a thought at that time."

"Oh. Well that's still good to hear... I think."

The room fell silent as Yang picked up her phone again and began to scan the article once more. Blake took a seat in the chair Yang had previously sat in, taking a similar position – which was definitely bad for her back, but there was no chiropractor here to tell her off. She sighed and looked out the window – the trees in the distance behind the library were bent and the branches were all swept the same way of the wind. That is, from what she could see – the rain and the cloud coverage made it near impossible for any light to come down, making any vision from inside to outside difficult. Well, while they didn't have power, they still had comfy chairs.

"Do you mind if I read while I'm here?" Yang asked.

"No? Why would I mind?" Blake turned her hear towards Yang, who was pointing at what looked like a graphic novel on her phone.

"Well I don't want to be rude, I wasn't sure if you'd rather talk or something else. Just wanted to make sure."

Blake chuckled. "I have a feeling this storm's going to last a while, so I think we'd run out of conversation topics anyways."

"Very true. This web comic's been super good – I found it just a few days ago and I've been reading a ton every day, and I'm not even close to being half finished with it! There's like six hundred chapters!" Yang's face was nearly as lit up as her phone.

"That's... a lot of chapters," Blake said, "I could only hope to write that many. What's it even about?"

Yang cleared her throat. "Well if you must know, it's about a girl in college who's struggling in classes and is recommended tutoring. The only problem is that in high school, she had a tutor that she fell in love with, and the two got into a pretty serious relationship. When the girl learned her tutor was only using her for her body, she cut it off and was devastated for like, a good half a year. Now that she has a new tutor that's super cute, she's scared of being hurt again in the same way."