Chapter Text
Lumine is so tired.
Everything feels so overwhelming. She is so, so tired. She doesn’t want to attend school anymore. She doesn’t want to do anything anymore. She just wants to curl up into bed and rot.
No. She must keep pushing forward. She has people depending on her.
“Lumine?” Her professor’s voice brings her back to the reality that she’s standing in a busy hallway after she requested to talk to the blonde.
“Yes, professor?” She asks kindly, in complete contrast to what’s running through her head.
“The documents I requested regarding the upcoming Akademiya Extravaganza event. Where are they? I’ve asked you to prepare them since last month.”
She cusses herself (and the teacher) internally. With the unimaginable amount of favours she had agreed to do, her schoolwork and student council duties, she had completely forgotten.
Biting her tongue from spitting out all the curses in her head, she bows low.
“I’m sorry, it’s not complete yet– Give me maybe 3 days and I’ll have them submitted–”
“I expected better from you, Lumine.” she sighs rather dramatically and loudly, drawing some students’ attention. “You keep slacking off and it’ll come back to bite you in the future. You’ve always been punctual, but that changed recently.”
“Yes, I know, I’m sorry–”
“That can’t go on, Lumine. You do realise how important the Akademiya Extravaganza is, I’ve reminded you every week. How can you be so careless?”
She never wanted to strangle a teacher so badly.
Why can’t they at least have this conversation elsewhere? Somewhere private? Not in a hallway full of students.
She could hear every single word from their whispers.
“Is Lumine seriously in trouble with a teacher?”
“She forgot to turn in an important document apparently.”
“Pfft– Seriously?”
“Uh-huh. It’s actually kinda funny.”
“I never would’ve expected Lumine of all people to forget something like that though.”
“Is she starting to be a rebel?
Shut up shut up shut up shut up.
Without realising, she had bitten her lip so hard that she could taste blood in an attempt to keep her emotions in check.
She is so tired.
It’s as if she is underwater. Everything sounds muffled. Her vision is blurring and turning dark. Her legs feel wobbly.
A piercing pain shot through her head like a bullet.
She inhales and exhales as normally as she could, but her shaky breath is all she could hear.
She has to find an escape form as soon as possible. She can’t let anyone see her collapse, especially not in public.
“Yada, yada, yada.” a voice suddenly chimes in. Wanderer.
Through her blurry line of sight, she could see Wanderer step in front of her, facing their professor.
“So, she forgot some document, big deal.” Wanderer crosses his arms across his chest. “So what?”
“Of course you wouldn’t understand, Wanderer.” she sighs heavily in annoyance. “That document is important so we can get the Akademiya Extravaganza up and running–”
“Which isn’t for another 2 months,” he cuts her off.
“Why don’t you focus on something actually important? Like, I don’t know,” he drawled, feigning deep thoughts. “Bullying? How students are experiencing severe depression because of the enormous mountain of work you give us?”
“That is not–”
“Oh, but of course , some event is so much more important than mental health.”
“We care for our students–”
“And what a great job you’re doing in showing it.”
Her mouth is open, but no words are coming out. The same could be said about the crowd around them. Lumine shakes her head softly and tries to blink the dizziness away.
“You think that she’s not suffering internally?” If looks could kill, she’s sure that the professor would’ve been strangled to death by Wanderer’s glare. “She’s the president and a model student. That means she’s juggling both school work and student council duties. You already give us an ungodly amount of assignments and tests, imagine having student council work placed on top of that.”
The tension is so thick. Lumine could barely breathe. Though that may be just because she was close to losing consciousness, she’s not insane enough to not tell how everyone’s holding their breath.
“Wanderer…” Lumine whispered, her hand tugging his sleeve. “Stop it…”
Perhaps her dizziness is causing her to hallucinate, but she swears she just saw Wanderer’s eyes soften in concern when he turns to look at her.
His fingers wrap themselves around her wrist, before she is pulled away from the crowded hallway. She couldn’t tell exactly where they are going, but she has walked this path and taken the exact directions to a certain place and a certain time so many times, she could do it in her sleep.
He’s taking the directions to the empty student council room.
He pushes the door open and pulls her inside. She doesn’t bother to pull away. As soon as the door closes, she collapses against the door, unable to stand on her wobbly feet any longer.
“I’ll make some tea.”
He seems to take her silence as agreement, as a few moments later, a porcelain teacup is shoved into her shaky hands.
“Drink up.” he says, having knelt down to be on her level. “Don’t drop the cup, I’m not taking responsibility for it if you do.”
She ignores him, opting to slowly blow on the hot tea to cool it down, before taking a small sip.
Oh, she feels so much better now.
It still feels as if someone’s stabbing her head with a dull knife, but her vision is much clearer now.
“Better now?”
“...Yeah…” The blonde takes another sip, before placing it down on the ground next to her.
Wanderer flicks her forehead, letting out a scoff as her small squeak as she rubbed her forehead.
"Idiot, you brought this upon yourself."
"I was trying to be nice-"
"And look where that has gotten you." he sneers at her huff, crossing his arms across his chest as he did so. "You're too nice, so people use you as a doormat."
"I am not-"
"You're just the 'perfect student', aren't you?"
Lumine pauses, thoughts of all sorts running through her head. She lowers her head and brings her knees closer to her chest, so she could bury her face between them.
His words are like a sharp dagger that suddenly pierced her heart. Part of her expected it, but for him to say it that way…
“Struck a nerve, did I?”
“Shut up.”
Wanderer runs a hand through his hair, sighing.
“Listen,” he looked down onto her small figure. “You can’t please everyone . It’s quite literally impossible-”
“ Shut the fuck up. ” Her words are like the first lighting of deadly fire. Her voice was never tainted with such venom. Even Wanderer immediately shut his mouth. “You don’t know how important this is.”
She should apologise, take her words back. But she can’t.
She can feel tears starting to well up and stinging her eyes. She quickly ducks her head to wipe them away.
“Do I?” he asks. She can’t figure out his intentions behind his words.
“You don’t know me.”
Take it back. You don’t mean it…
But she does.
Please… Just apologise… the small voice inside of her begs pathetically.
But she won’t. Because she can’t.
“That I don’t.” Wanderer states simply. “No one does.”
Stop it. Stop talking.
“But the high walls and picture perfect mask you built to keep people out are starting to break, y’know.”
“And today just proved that.” he adds unhelpfully.
“I know that.” she snaps, her voice laced with venom. “I’m not a fucking idiot.”
“If you do, then why try so hard to maintain them?”
“Because I have to!” Her hands find their way to the collar of his uniform.
“You wouldn’t get it–” She choked out through sobs, unable to fight the tears back anymore. “You can at least escape reality! I-! I can’t do that!!!”
She hates how he isn’t responding, just fixing a neutral expression at her. She wants him to push her away, yell at her, or do anything , so she stops letting her feelings escape from within her.
“Everyone has been relying on me, ever since I was a kid!!! I’m not like you!!!”
“I wish I can be like you, so I don’t let expectations actually define who I am!! I want to be my own person!!!”
With her lips trembling and tears falling down her cheeks, she lowers her head and lets out a wail that has been building up for what felt like an eternity. She doesn’t even try to hide it anymore. Her pent up emotions have been building up for so long, she was an active supervolcano just waiting to erupt.
And today was that day.
Gentle fingers bury themselves in her hair. She looks up, but she has no chance of seeing the expression on Wanderer’s face. Lumine is suddenly pulled into a hug, silencing her and causing her watery eyes to widen like saucers.
“You said before how everything I say stays within this room.” he whispers softly. “The same goes to you, so just let it out.”
“We’ll figure everything else out later.”
That is enough for her to wail, possibly even louder as she buries her face into his shoulder. His shirt is immediately soaked from her continuous tears.
Everything she had been building up inside of her are now all out in the open. It’s pointless to attempt to keep up the broken down walls that shut everyone out.
No, that’s not quite right.
In a sense, it seems close to tumbling down to everyone around her, but still standing strong. Only Wanderer could see for what it truly is. Completely gone to rack and ruin.
But she’s alright with it. If she was an active supervolcano that would erupt without warning and burn everything in its path, then he’s the deep blue ocean, merciless and turbulent, but calm and gentle when it wants to be.
Her trust in him is deeper than the deepest oceans. And her love is more vast than any other ocean.
