Chapter Text
Naomi doesn’t really want to think about her current situation, all things considered. She’s sure her demeanor is summoning a rain cloud overhead and she’s already gotten odd stares at it from where she sits in the train station. She’s sure she’s making a poor sight. A stupid, close to tears woman, leaving her brooding self on a bench just shy of a quite impressive fountain. Naomi sighs as she runs her hands through her hair, roughing up the meticulously curled strands. Naomi cannot afford to care for that.
As it stands, she’s lost. She had been trying for the better part of the day to find Saint Augustin University with no luck. She was already going to be behind for just the setting she was forcing upon herself, but now she couldn’t even properly make it there. If she cared any less about her appearance, she would bang her head against her suitcase and bags. She was so screwed, and classes had yet to begin. She was lucky if she found somewhere to sleep tonight.
In retrospect, she should’ve taken her aunt’s offer of being driven in one of those fancy cars of hers. Naomi just couldn’t dare face another one of her lectures, it's why she agreed to study at a school such as this. It was still limited of course, and she could never quite escape her aunt’s influence, but it was better than the life she was doomed to keep living.
She had spent every year after high school, and before that but don’t tell anyone that, working her ass off at any job that would take her. Now at 23, her aunt finally got sick of Naomi playing grown up and told her that she would take “drastic measures” if she didn’t “take her life seriously” and study for a “real” job. And with the possibility of not paying rent looming over her head and a promise to an all paid expense housing experience, she had no choice but to bend to her aunt’s whims.
She tries not to let the fact that she will probably be the oldest student there, aside from the instructors of course, or at least the oldest freshman there affect her too much. It’s something she’s learned over the course of the last few years. There is no shame in taking time on her journey through education however… a university like this might complicate things, at the very least. Not only is she not a firm believer in this particular faith, she has no partner and if she retained anything from her aunt’s constant lecturing, it’s that women without suitors are frowned upon. There was nothing she could do now but worry about how to get there. Naomi taps the top of her suitcase in rhythmic motions, temporarily distracting herself as she considers her current options. In the midst of picking up her belongings that are littered on the sole bench, she feels a presence, for lack of a better word. She turns back to face the train station at large only to find…
Absolutely nothing.
Not one person is paying Naomi any mind and she doesn’t know if she should be celebrating that fact or not. She takes a couple more looks around to see if anyone is even glancing in her direction only to find nothing out of the ordinary. A little kid is begging his mother for a treat from a food stall, an old man is counting his coins as a lady in a gaudy blue coat expressively yells over the phone next to him. The loud train whistle rings in her ear as it passes by the dingy tracks.
When finding nothing out of the ordinary she turns back to her belongings and sets off to try her luck finding anyone to help.
The presence remains.
~~~
“And finally, these are the dormitories,” The melodic voice of Sister Mari floats over the group of girls surrounding the entrance of the dorms. They were reaching the end of the mandatory tour after all the faculty had spoken in their long drawls of speech. Two tall buildings stand on each side of a central grass area surrounded by benches and trees. “You have all been assigned a roommate and we will discuss those arrangements prior to this orientation ending. If any problems do arise, please feel free to confide in any of the sisters here, we are all here to help.”
Someone coughs in front of where Naomi stands. Behind her girls are whispering about the excitement of getting a roommate. Naomi just suppresses a groan. It was bad enough that she was here, and now she had to deal with a roommate? She celebrated far too early, cheering when she arrived on campus right before the orientation started. Now, she wants to leave and never return to this place in her life. She’ll be lucky to make it to the end of the semester.
“Any questions?” Sister Mari asks, cheery to finally be done with her scripted speeches. “If something comes up later, we are still here to answer any concerns you may have.”
Naomi takes a few moments to just stare at the dorm building as the room assignments are read off a list. The building is dated, that much is sure, the date etched into the side of the dorm building they stand at being nearly 100 years ago. It’s a muted red brick that encases most of the building, with the occasional white marbled textures of the accents on the building. The main entrance had two towering and textured pillars that reminded Naomi of Roman Colosseums and she mused that she could pretend to be some nymph.
Just as she comes to terms with the fact that she’s better off being a beggar, her name is called by Sister Mari and she turns her head back to the group.
“Naomi? Is that you?” she asks and Naomi nods as she makes her way to the front of the makeshift crowd. She watches as Sister Mari welcomes her with a smile, her finger tracing the line of Naomi’s name till she reaches… “Ximena?”
“Yes?” comes a small disembodied voice from the crowd.
“I believe so, Miss,” Sister Mari says behind a laugh. “You are rooming with Naomi on the second floor of Orpheus Hall. Here are your keys.”
Naomi kind of wants to scream. She’s heard horror stories about Orpheus Hall and it just so happens that it was her dorm this year. She was cursed. That was the only explanation.
When Ximena takes both the keys from the Sister, she silently hands Naomi hers and they make their way up the stairs together in a blanketed muteness. It isn’t broken until they make it to the end hall to their room.
“Oh, we share a bathroom with our suite mates…” is what Ximena says offhandedly as she moves around the little hallway into the room labelled with a gold B on it. The room across from it and next to the bathroom has a mirroring A. “Guess we should make time to say hi, huh?”
“Mhm” is all Naomi really has to offer. She sets off the bags she could afford to bring up the stairs with her. Naomi opens each closet, the one in the center of the room and the one by the door. A bed sits on each side of the room and two twin desks sit side by side.
Ximena just blinks at her for a few moments before also removing her bags from around her body. The silence is only broken when Naomi clears her throat as she stands by the open door of their room.
“I’m going down” is all she says, leaving them both in a few moments of silence. At first, Orion didn’t think anything of the statement so she was confused on why Naomi stood there, expecting something, before Ximena understood. They were inviting her with them.
She blinks.
Naomi blinks back.
“Yeah, ok” Ximena answers, dropping the bag she was digging through onto her bed as she grabs her keys and follows behind Naomi’s silhouette.
They make it back downstairs to the other girls dragging their various sizes of luggages up and down the halls of their dorms and spend the rest of the day doing exactly that. They make conversation here and there, but for the most part they are both content in letting the little speakers of Ximena phone engulf the room with music. Naomi wonders if most of her time here will be as peaceful.