Chapter Text
Hana, as a long-time boarding school student, had seen all kinds of roommates, from the messy to the tidy, from the genius students to the academic failures, from the introverts to the party-goers, so she thought, while crossing the door of the dorm where she would spend her last year of high school, on that cloudy September morning, that whoever would share a room with her at surely wouldn’t be a surprise. Maybe they were friendly, and her year at SODNYC could get off to a good start.
After a quick chat with the receptionist, she had been given the keys to her new room, which was on the top floor.
The elevator was broken, so she resigned herself to climb six flights of stairs, with all of her luggage in hand.
After a strenuous climb, she finally reached the door, dreading having to walk up the steep staircase every day of the school year.
Meet the new room, same as the old room, and every other room she had ever lived in. The front door opened into a small hallway, on the right there was the bathroom, on the left a small cooktop. Crossing the hallway, you’d enter into a rectangular room. On both sides of the room there was a bed, a wardrobe, some shelves, and so on. On the wall opposite to the door there was a window and a desk large enough for two people.
She had just sat on her new bed when her gaze fell on the other half of the bedroom, which was clearly occupied. Her new roommate arrived two days before her and had already started making herself home.
The first thing that jumps to her eyes are the shelves, so full of books that they slightly bend under the weight. On the bed were a couple of neatly folded orange T-shirts, a pair of cyan jean shorts and a weird silver laptop. Hana would guess it was some model of Macbook, if it wasn’t for the blue triangle on the top there in place of the usual apple. Whatever brand it was, she was willing to bet it worked much better than her own laptop, her brother’s hand-me-down, which could barely run the design program she used for her technical drawing homework. The desk, as opposed to the mostly tidy rest of the room, was submerged under a sea of drafting tools and sheets of paper, probably the unfortunate rests of an intense drawing session.
Some photos had been taped on the wall over the bed. Most were of buildings, Hana could recognize the Parthenon, the Colosseum, Hoover Dam and so on and so forth, but some were also of people, presumably her roommate and her friends. She decided to go inspect them, because as much as she loved architecture, she couldn’t imagine sticking pictures of random buildings over her bed, what kind of person even did that? (she didn’t want to snoop, obviously, that would be incredibly rude to do, especially to someone you haven’t even me-
“Hi.”
Shit, caught red-handed.
She immediately turned towards the voice.
“Are you my roommate or do you just break into the rooms of strangers as a hobby?”
Where less than five seconds ago there was only empty space, a very imposing black girl had appeared out of nowhere.
She was very tall, towering over Hana’s small build by at least eight inches. In her hand she held a blue baseball cap, seemingly having just taken it off. Her hair was black, but she had a gray streak that had been dyed fairly recently, if Hana had to guess, since the roots weren’t showing at all. Her eyes were unnaturally gray as well. Her gaze was analytical and piercing, almost as if she was trying to figure her out only by looking at her. She wore no jewelry, except for a necklace, on it there were around ten beads, all with something different painted on them, a silver ring and a red coral-looking rock. She was frowning, clearly having understood what Hana was doing.
“So?”
Hana put on her best smile, better to not antagonize her new roommate before even starting to roommate with her, she didn’t want to have to change apartments or in any way, obstruct what should be a peaceful living arrangement.
“Uhm, yeah, I’m your new roommate, n-nice to meet you, my name’s Hana.”
She held out her hand. The girl shook it, strangling Hana’s poor fingers.
Jesus, what a strong grip.
“Nice to meet you too as well, I’m Annabeth. Are you enjoying the pictures I taped?”
The girl was very straight-forward, at least. Hana could work with that.
“I was just looking at the buildings, I think you can learn a lot about someone from which monuments they like, y’know”
Please buy it, please buy it, please buy it…
Her face turned from a frown to a grin, she clearly saw through her bullshit, but had decided to play along.
“I see... so, what can you tell about me? From the buildings I like, of course.”
“Well, you clearly are very ambitious, given that you admire some of the largest projects in history, you are fascinated with ancient architecture but don’t eschew functionality, and you like things destined to endure for a long time.”
Her grin turned into a full smile. “Wow, are you sure you are in the right high school? I’m sure the one specialized in psychology is on the other side of the city.”
“I have many talents, I guess. Have you actually been to any of these?”
“This summer I went to Europe along with some friends, and I saw the Colosseum and the Parthenon among lots of other things. Sadly I have never had the opportunity to see the Hoover Dam.”
“Really? That’s so cool, It must have been an adventure. I went to see the Hoover Dam last summer, it was incredible, even if they have yet to replace the angel statues after they disappeared a couple of years ago.”
Annabeth muttered something Hana couldn’t quite understand, but after that they fell into an easy conversation about which monuments they had visited, and which they would like to, the second list being far longer than the first, of course. They then started talking about the school and how happy they were with the opportunity of going to one that would center their future career.
Hana thought herself lucky that her previous gaffe didn’t preclude a friendly relationship with Annabeth, whom she was starting to really like. Annabeth was a fellow boarding school kid, and she even confessed to being very unlucky in the matter of roommates.
“Last year I had to change three before finding someone decent, I’m glad you seem cool.”
Hana was shocked, she desperately hoped the issue were her previous roommates and not Annabeth.
“You must be very unlucky, but honestly you seem much better than my last roommate as well, she was really messy and always snored at night. Were your roommates that bad? Why did you ask to change so many times?”
Annabeth frowned.
“I didn’t really ask to change roommates, the first two tried to kill me, while I caught the third snooping through my stuff, so I disposed of her.”
Hana laughed, sure Annabeth was just messing with her.
“Message received, I won’t be stealing your hair dryer, now tell me the real reason.”
Annabeth threw up her hands and started laughing as well.
“Yeah, I was just joking, the third also tried to kill me.”
Hana rolled her eyes.
“So what, you just attract murderous roomates?”
“I guess you could say that.”
“I promise to only try to kill you in self-defense.”
Now it was Annabeth’s turn to roll her eyes.
“You could try, but beings much more powerful than you failed.”