Chapter Text
“You’re what?”
“Banned…”
Columbina looks particularly dejected, having just had a meeting with her soccer coach over her fate on the team due to her currently flunking physics grade. She never thought this would happen to her, because really, who starts the semester off already failing so terribly that they get kicked off their own soccer field?
Columbina does.
Apparently.
She frowns thinking about the meeting she just had with her coach where she was essentially banned from practice and playing on the university fields until her grade was back up to something acceptable. Her GPA is on the line and so were her soccer privileges. She’s already feeling the effects even though they’re still in the middle of the day and practice has yet to start. She can already see it slipping from her fingers, her days on the field will be no more so long as physics plagues her life.
“I feel like I shouldn’t be surprised,” Nefer says, looking at Columbina’s resigned self. The poor girl looks like a kicked abandoned puppy that was left out in the rain. Even Nefer can’t help but feel a little bad considering just how Columbina looks right now. The wings on her head are visibly drooping, a testament to just how sad she feels right now.
Lauma is entirely more sympathetic than Nefer, simply patting the poor girl’s head in a comforting fashion, “Now, now don’t be too mean to her. Physics isn’t exactly the easiest subject.”
Very true.
And Columbina is awful at it.
None of it makes sense, all of the words sound like obscene fancy jargon that she can’t be bothered to understand. There’s too many numbers thrown around and what do you mean that weight doesn’t affect how fast something falls? That makes absolutely no sense, but once again, she finds it entirely difficult to even comprehend the subject. She supposes her professor doesn’t make it any better, maybe he is really trying, but Columbina finds it very difficult to hold onto anything he says with how uninteresting he makes the subject.
“So now what’re you going to do?” Nefer inquires. “Since you don’t have soccer anymore. Study?”
Columbina makes a face, she was never the most diligent student, but she did get enough with average grades and slightly above for other things. Studying was never her forte, she’d much rather be doing other things than sitting in a library and staring at walls of text that end up jumbling together on the page after an hour of reading.
“Coach is having me help the volleyball team during their practices so I have something to do while I get my grades up,” Columbina says.
“Is that even beneficial?” Nefer mumbles.
Columbina follows with a small sigh, “I’m not sure, but I can’t really do anything about my current predicament…”
Lauma pets her again, something comforting for these trying times. Columbina lets out a pathetic whine because really, what is she going to do without soccer to fill her days? Study? She can hardly even work out whatever was going on in her physics class. Even if she starts from the beginning, she can hardly understand the content.
“I’m sure your last exam grade couldn’t have been that bad, could it?” Lauma tries, sounding just a little bit hopeful.
Columbina shrinks in her seat and shuffles in her bag for her exam paper. She winces, looking at the score marked in red at the top, circled and everything. She mostly definitely tries not to look at all the red X’s littered across the page either as she slides it over for Nefer and Lauma to look at.
Lauma’s expression immediately drops.
“I retract my statement,” the woman states grimly.
Nefer makes a sour expression, “I think it’d be in your best interest to drop.”
Columbina pouts.
“I can’t… this is a course required for me to advance in my major.”
Nefer and Lauma exchange looks, some kind of telepathy connecting them as they attempt to piece together the right words to help Columbina out. Lauma slowly turned the page over to hide the upsettingly low score before looking back at Columbina.
“You need a tutor.”
—
“You WHAT?!”
Jahoda all but shrieks when Columbina shows up to practice and breaks the devastating news. While Alice did ban her from playing on the field, it’s not like she’s banned from showing up to practice and saying hi to her teammates. When she approached, she did get a confused expression from the batch, wondering why she wasn’t in her practice attire, or anything. Jahoda had jogged up to her, questions on her tongue that Columbina had to answer.
“Sorry,” Columbina looks like a wet puppy.
“You’re one of our best midfielders!” Jahoda exclaims, clearly just as crushed by the news as Columbina is, maybe even more. “Our playmaker! What’re we supposed to do?! There’s a reason why you and Chevreuse are such a deadly combo!!”
She grabs Columbina by the shoulders, grip tight with something like desperation and Columbina only manages a pathetically sad look as the blonde gives her the most devastating expression. Chevreuse lets out a sigh and shakes her head like she expected this to happen. She moves to put a firm hand on Columbina’s shoulder.
“Find a tutor soon,” she says shortly. “Our season’s coming up and we’re going to need you on the field. What’s a striker without her playmaker?”
Columbina agrees. She needs to get back as soon as possible. There wasn’t much time to waste as she was one of the team’s offensive midfielders, she needed to get her grade up and back onto the field as soon as possible if she wanted any chance of getting a good season this semester.
The best possible way to get her grades up would be to get a tutor who could help her understand her class and dedicate her free time to study. The faster she gets that done the quicker she can get back on the field and the less she’d have to worry about her atrocious grade.
The only issue is just.
Who?
Who can she ask to tutor her?
Alice, their coach, swings by to round up Jahoda and Chevreuse to go over the practice regime. Columbina looks at the blonde woman with the saddest eyes she could muster. For a split second she can see her coach’s resolve waver and there's just a little bit of hope in her eyes. Maybe she could at least play referee for any practice matches or help warm up, but her coach shakes her head and Columbina watches as her spark of hope dies just like that. She pouts and Alice pats her head.
“Don’t do that,” the blonde woman sighs fondly. “If your grades are lacking, I’m afraid you’ll just have to be on temporary probation okay?”
Her pout doesn’t leave her face but she nods, “…Okay.”
Alice smiles at that, “The volleyball coach will treat you well, trust me! And if she doesn’t just let me know okay?”
Columbina blinks at the subtle threat.
She ends up staying to watch the team practice, fighting the desperate need to get on the field and join them. Chevreuse works around the ball with Hu Tao, her fellow offensive midfielder, easily passing it back and forth and Columbina sighs longingly at the sight. They weave around Linnea easily and Chevreuse scores a goal, breaking right past Noelle’s defense.
Columbina lets out a sigh.
She used to be able to do that too.
The crushing feeling in her chest worsens when she realizes that she’s going to be benched for a while knowing that she’ll need to somehow pass the next couple of exams to make up for this one. As well as get continuously good grades on her assignments.
How is she going to make it?
Maybe she can just try something at the tutoring centers on campus, she knows those are always open for students who need help. Although, last time Jahoda used it, she said the experience wasn’t really helpful and Columbina needs a good tutor as soon as possible. She can’t afford to waste time shuffling through people to find someone when soccer season is on the horizon, looming over her head evilly, trying to lure her back into the field when she is very clearly banned.
After practice ends and the team debriefs with Columbina standing on the sidelines sadly, Jahoda and Chevreuse return to her, deciding to head into the athletic training room as Chevreuse wants to run an ice bath for herself. In the training room, there’s Lumine and Ineffa going through inventory, the two student trainers look up at the three girls.
“Oh, hey guys,” Lumine greets warmly. “Practice just ended?”
Ineffa puts down her clipboard and acknowledges the three soccer players as well, “Hello. Do you need an ice bath, Chevreuse?”
“Yes, please,” the purple haired girl nodded and Ineffa immediately got to work, heading over to the large metal baths and running the cold water. Chevreuse puts her stuff down and takes off her shoes whilst Columbina and Jahoda go to converse with Lumine.
“I’m hoping no new weird injuries from practice today?” the blonde smiles, looking over the two. She eyes Jahoda specifically and the soccer player is quick to shake her head.
“Nope! None at all!” Jahoda says, far too quickly for comfort. Her face is faintly flushed pink and Columbina blinks because there’s a subtext that she’s not getting right now, “No ankles that anyone needs to look at!”
Lumine laughs, too amused at Jahoda’s clear fumbling and stumbling. Her gaze then settles on Columbina and she raises an eyebrow at Columbina’s lack of practice wear. Rather than in the usual practice jersey and shorts that the soccer players wear, she’s still wearing her oversized sweater and shorts she wore to class.
“You didn’t go to practice Bina?” Lumine inquires.
Columbina makes a sad noise from the back of her throat, “I’ve been banned.”
Lumine raises her eyebrows, decently surprised.
Of course, who would expect one of their soccer team’s best players to be banned from the field?
“Coach Alice is mean,” Columbina pouts and Lumine laughs, patting her head to provide some kind of comfort for her terrible predicament. “It’s awful.”
“Yeah…” Jahoda sighs, unsure if she’s agreeing with Alice being mean or the awfulness of Columbina’s current position. Alice, as bright and bubbly as she can be, can put their team through hell if she so desires to. Columbina can say this is one of the more tamer, she supposes, consequences that the older woman has in store. She has an arsenal of ideas and Columbina admittedly is glad she doesn’t have to live through any torture drills of a few hundred push ups.
Although at that cost, she’s banned from soccer until further notice.
Arguably worse than not being able to move her arms for two days.
“I guess it’s better than physical torture under the guise of conditioning,” Chevreuse says from where she’s pleasantly nestled in her ice bath. Ineffa is quietly adjusting the water levels as the soccer player sits in the ice and water, “Although, you do have to help with the volleyball team so… is that in itself the physical part of your punishment?”
“Punishment…” Columbina mumbles.
“You have to help the volleyball team, Columbina?” Ineffa looks over at the black haired girl, the topic of volleyball catching her attention. Ineffa turns off the water now that it has reached acceptable levels. Columbina nods and Ineffa hums in thought for a moment, “Are you aware that their practices begin very early in the morning?”
Columbina blinks.
Her wings immediately droop.
“…Do they?”
Ineffa pauses, seemingly realizing that she may or may have not said something awful.
Lumine sighs, a laugh on her lips as she pats Columbina’s back comfortingly. Her expression has twisted into something resembling that of a drenched puppy, her wings almost acting as her tail and ears, drooped down with clear distress at the idea of having to wake up earlier than she already does for this. Her shoulders sag and the pout on her face seemingly worsens.
What do you mean she has to wake up early?
First she fails her first physics exam of the semester, gets banned from touching the soccer field, and now she finds out that she has to wake up early to help out the volleyball team?
“Ineffa!” Jahoda exclaims, indignant. “Look at what you did!”
“I apologize then, Columbina,” Ineffa is quick to say. She lands a comforting hand on Columbina’s head, gently patting her head, “May I ask what got you into this situation in the first place?”
“I failed my physics test,” she says simply. “Because of that, I’m not allowed to play until I get my grade back up.”
“Ah,” Ineffa pauses and then looks at Lumine. Her fellow student trainer gives a look, “Lumine, didn’t you take physics before?”
“Huh?” the blonde blinks. “Yeah, but I cheated. I wouldn’t be of any help.”
“Your academic integrity is terrible, noted,” Ineffa mumbles, causing Lumine to respond with an offended “Hey!” Jahoda laughs before looking at Columbina who was heavily contemplating in thought over her very clearly shortening list of options for help. The blonde puts a hand on her friend’s shoulder, shortly catching her attention.
Columbina looks at her, lavender eyes looking particularly dismayed past her circle-rimmed glasses. Jahoda makes a sound halfway between a croak and a stutter.
“If it makes you feel better,” Lumine chimes, picking up the conversation as Jahoda had frankly let her words die in her throat at just how purely sad her friend looked, “I can come with you tomorrow for volleyball practice. I have to set up the room early this week.”
Columbina's expression brightens.
“That would make me feel better.”
—
Columbina manages to pull herself out of bed just right before dawn.
It’s too early, she thinks. The sun isn’t even up and she has to make her way over to the university gymnasium to help the volleyball team set up for their morning practice. She decides that she’ll never complain about late practices ever again, now that she has to wake up early to be on schedule with the volleyball team.
The blue light of her phone blinds for a brief moment when she picks it up. Columbina immediately turns the brightness down and squints at it, grabbing her glasses off the table. Lumine sent a text message a couple of minutes ago, saying that she’s outside of Columbina’s apartment right now.
She quickly gets ready, not wanting Lumine to wait any longer. She grabs her school bag and throws on something relatively comfortable before heading out.
“Good morning.”
Lumine greets, she’s holding coffee in her hand and Columbina groggily nods in return, sleep still deep in her bones. Honestly, she’d much rather be sleeping in today, her classes were all scheduled for some time in the afternoon for a reason, but alas, she doesn’t seem to have that choice as Lumine leads them onto their university campus and into the gymnasium where Lumine sets up the indoor training room.
She looks through their drawers, keeping a mental note of the pre-wrap and tape inside, and what other supplies. Columbina yawns into her head, setting her bag down on one of the counters.
“Need any energy drink or anything?” Lumine asks, as she checks the ice machine.
“No,” Columbina shakes her head, “I’ll be okay.”
Lumine makes a noise indicating that she heard and Columbina decides to head into the gym to meet with the volleyball coach. She lets the blonde know before exiting, and it’s honestly been a good minute since Columbina’s been in their gym. Since soccer is an outside sport, she never really comes here, and she honestly never has had a reason to come here. Sometimes student fairs are held in the gym, but once again, she never really saw a reason for being there.
The volleyball team isn’t here yet but she does see an older blonde woman. That must be the coach based on the clipboard she’s holding.
The woman notices her first as she quickly looks up from her clipboard at Columbina’s presence, smiling kindly.
“You must be Columbina,” she greets and the black haired girl nods. She extends a hand to shake which Columbina takes, the older woman’s girl is very firm, “I’m Nicole. Alice sent you here for me to watch you or something of the likes. Not really sure what’s going on in that woman’s head.”
Columbina lets out a light laugh, “I’m not so sure either.”
Nicole’s smile seems to widen, already taking a liking to Columbina, “You don’t really have to do too much, I’m sure helping us out will be like work compared to what Alice puts you all through."
Columbina briefly thinks to having to go through conditioning when she first got on the team her freshman year and the torture drills that Alice would put the team through to hone their skills. There’s a reason why they’re so good right now and the team has such amazing synergy and it’s because Alice drilled it into them from the moment they stepped onto the field. Columbina musters a polite smile and Nicole laughs, seemingly already being well-informed of the horrors that Alice has put the team through.
“Don’t worry, all you’re doing for us is setting up the nets. My girls might have nasty swings but they always struggle lifting those poles. But you should be fine,” Nicole explains. Columbina nods, taking mental note, “And during practice collect any stray balls that roll out, and make sure they’re away in the cart afterwards. As for the water, we get that from–”
“Hello, Nicole,” Lumine appears out of thin air beside Columbina and Nicole smiles warmly at her appearance.
“And there’s our trainer,” Nicole greets. Her gaze returns back to Columbina, “Lumine provides the water but you’ll be the one pulling them out and putting them away. Doesn’t sound too bad doesn't it?"
Honestly, it does sound like a fairly easy job. Setting up nets and taking them down, grabbing water, and chasing after stray balls is easy. Something that someone of her skill and position shouldn’t be doing. Every second she laments not being on the field, but alas, she knows that Alice signed her up for this to keep her busy as she knows that Columbina does indeed have far too much time on her hands. Which could definitely be used for studying, but lord knows that she wouldn’t even do that either unless forced to.
And technically, she is being forced to right now, but she hasn’t found a tutor to help her.
Last night, she stared at her physics lessons that her professor uploaded and simply just closed her laptop. One look at any diagram and she simply gave up. None of it made sense, what is even the relationship between position and time anyways? She doesn’t know.
Columbina heads off to the storage room where everything is kept after being directed to it to set up. Lumine and Nicole chatter while she hauls out the poles and sets up the nets. The cart of volleyballs gets rolled out and with Lumine’s help she drags out the water coolers. It’s a fairly easy job and Columbina settles onto the bleachers while Nicole heads out to meet with her team in the locker room for a quick briefing before they get into practice.
“Bored, huh?” Lumine sits down next to Columbina who nods solemnly. “Could use this time to study.”
Columbina pouts, “I don’t even know what I’m studying.”
“You might just be doomed,” Lumine shakes her head with a laugh and Columbina frowns.
Is this really where her soccer career ends? With a failed physics test?
The team enters the gymnasium, a couple of the girls noticing Lumine and Columbina, waving at the two. There’s a look of recognition when their eyes land on Lumine, Columbina’s not surprised that they recognize the blonde. Lumine’s been an athletic trainer for as long as Columbina’s been on the soccer team, every athlete knows her because they’ve had to come to her for injuries, her and Ineffa. Some of the girls look at Columbina, faced filled with curiosity as to what she was doing here. There’s a brief look of recognition in a couple of faces, realizing that Columbina is one of the players on the soccer team, and Columbina just laments more about her situation.
She should be back on the field, but instead she’s inside the gym before the sunrises.
Alas, the volleyball team starts their warm ups. Balls start flying through the air and shoes skidding across the gym floor. Series of girls yelling “mine!” and “I got it!” amongst other things can be heard. She looks over at Lumine, who’s gone completely silent, tracing her friend’s gaze towards a couple of girls who were warming up by one of the nets.
A tall blonde girl was setting the ball in the air, allowing for her teammate, a pretty dirty blonde girl to spike it right onto the other side of the net. The girl who Lumine was staring at, Columbina finds out, calls out “mine!” and drives towards the ball, arms outstretched and hands clasped together. The ball bounces off her arms, firing up and away from her.
It inevitably rolls over to Columbina and Lumine.
Columbina picks up the ball just as the girl who had taken the spike jogs up to her.
“Nice one, Citlali,” Lumine smiles as Columbina hands the ball over.
The girl, Citlali, her face turns a shade of bright red that Columbina’s never seen before on a person as she sputters and stammers and admittedly. She’s a little concerned now for her.
“Wha–Lumine–hah–why are you here?!” Citlali manages to get out as eloquently as she could.
Lumine smiles serenely, clearly aware of the effect she has on Citlali, “I work here.”
Before Citlali could say anything else, one of the girls, the pretty dirty blonde from before, calls out to her.
“Citlali! Stop loitering around!” she yells and Citlali lets out this despaired huff and grumble before leaving after quickly thanking Columbina. She returns back to her teammates, the tall blonde laughing and teasing her over likely Lumine. Columbina looks back at her friend, Lumine sighing fondly, her eyes carrying this intense adoration that has Columbina raising her eyebrows.
She tucks the thought away for later, deciding to go pick up more balls as the girls were starting to get more into their warm up and balls were rolling away towards the side of the gym. She’ll ask Lumine about this later.
Columbina takes in the new, foreign environment. Call her uncultured, but she’s also never been to a volleyball game. The sport was never on her radar, never really within her interest, but when her eyes landed on the couple of girls from before, having a kind of mini practice game with more of their team.
Lumine is definitely staring, Columbina traces her friend’s gaze right back to Citlali again. Citlali, to her credit, doesn’t seem to notice, too focused on the mock game she was playing in. When Columbina picks up another couple of balls, rolling them back to the other members of the team, she finds that Citlali is serving this time.
“I’ve got it!” the tall blonde girl yells, positioning herself perfectly under Citlali’s serve. She receives it with much ease, the ball flying up into the air. Just in time, another girl, a taller dark haired girl immediately jumps into action. Columbina is honestly amazed at how quickly they linked up, bodies moving faster than words.
“Clorinde!”
The call comes in right after Clorinde runs in, just right underneath the ball. She sets it right towards the pretty dirty blonde who had spiked the ball jumps up, smooth and perfect. Her form is pristine, graceful almost and Columbina genuinely can’t look away. The girl’s movements are precise with a practiced elegance, eyes narrowing as she spikes the ball with her palm.
They’re really good.
Columbina revokes her previous thought, maybe volleyball is within her interest–
She hardly registers what happens, but what she does know is that she’s now on the floor and her head is throbbing and the volleyballs that were in her hands are now scattered, rolling across the gym. She winces in pain, face scrunched as she attempts to register that a volleyball had indeed hit her in the face.
At full force.
Her vision is a little oriented and she hears gasps as well as multiple footsteps approaching her hurriedly. Everything hurts, the front of her face, the back of her head. She thinks she might’ve just had a concussion but she’s not sure. But what she does know is that she can’t see, her vision is blurry and she honestly doesn’t know where her glasses went either.
“Shit, are you okay?"
A girl’s voice calls out, the closest to her. She feels a pair of hands helping her sit up, gently pulling her by her shoulder and arm. The touch is warm, as the girl who’s helping her seems to have also retrieved her glasses. One of her hands gently comes to lift Columbina’s chin and put her glasses back on her face. Columbina feels her breath hitch at the action, her brain rushing to catch up as her face warms.
The pretty dirty blonde from before comes into vision, deep blue eyes full of sincere concern as her hands are back on Columbina’s shoulder and arm, firm and stable. She supports Columbina for the poor girl is too disoriented to properly get her bearings. Her lips are just slightly pouty as she looks over Columbina with worry, cheeks just slightly pink and Columbina thinks she has a staring problem.
Most definitely.
“Am I in heaven?”
The hands supporting her immediately pull back and Columbina falls back down.
“Sandrone! She’s injured!”
Nicole comes in quickly with Lumine, Columbina hardly registers their movements as Sandrone, Columbina assumes is the name of the girl who helped her up started bickering with her teammate. Nicole helps her sit up properly and Lumine takes a second to look over Columbina before sighing.
“Concussion?” Nicole asks, worriedly.
“Doesn’t look like it, but we’ll see,” Lumine states. She looks back at Columbina, the soccer player looking particularly dazed, “Can you get up?”
“Maybe.”
Lumine grabs her, helping her up, allowing for Columbina to lean her weight onto her. She throws the black haired girl’s arm over her shoulders and Columbina makes a noise of protest, the movement causing a dizzy spell to blur her vision as she limply rests against Lumine.
“I’ll take her back to the training room,” Lumine states and with that they’re out of the gym.
Columbina walks with Lumine. She can walk, but she can tell that Lumine’s definitely concerned about her. Her mind is a little jumbled, reflecting back to Sandrone, she thinks, the girl with dirty blonde hair, tied into a neat bun and pretty ocean eyes. Lips settled into a small frown and flushed cheeks. The girl who spiked that ball with amazing form and an air of elegance.
Columbina might just be a little enamoured.