“Just my fucking luck to be woken up supremely early almost two Saturdays in a row, now,” Dorian grumbled, pulling his hair back as he made his way to the school with a hair tie in his mouth. “This’d better be important….” He flicked up the collar of his long, black coat and adjusted his glasses as he found the others standing with a cart and a pile of boxes. “Now, what the hell was so important that it couldn’t wait until later?” They all looked at him with surprise save for Reina who smiled and was trying not to laugh.
“Dorian?” Nina asked.
“Yes?” Dorian answered. “Got something to say about me?”
“Well,” she started before being quelled by the hard look Dorian was giving him. “N-never mind….”
“Since this was so important, I thought it best that I didn’t do my usual hair treatment or put my contacts in,” Dorian huffed, folding his arms across his chest. “Now, what’s in the boxes?”
“Well,” Analisse began, “I got an email from the headmistress that we’d gotten approved for a room on campus and even managed to get us some furniture. I thought it’d be best if we took care of this as soon as possible, but I didn’t really mean to disturb you….” Dorian couldn’t help but forgive her, thinking instantly of how Felix would always try to cute his way out of whatever trouble he’d gotten himself into.
“It doesn’t matter,” Dorian sighed. “I’m up now, and there’s nothing I can really do except my bit, is there?” With a mumble of agreement, they loaded up the heavy boxes. Dorian, Reina, Jean and Wolfgang struggled a little with the largest of them, but still got it onto the cart. “I’d assume this is probably the gaming table….”
“Yep,” Adelaide confirmed. “And it’s in all different pieces for us to put together….” There was a collective groan at that news, though it had been expected, before Jean and Wolfgang got behind the cart and started following Analisse and the rest of them. She led them around to the back of the school to a building that Dorian remembered Reina showing him but couldn’t remember what it was for nor if he actually cared.
“What’s this building for?” Nina asked, helping to wheel the cart through the front doors.
“I think it’s mostly a storage building, but the eSports guys are on the second floor,” Analisse offered, opening another set of doors. “They convinced the headmistress to let us have their old room since we’re sort of like sister organizations….” The room had desks lining the walls and was pretty empty save for some computers and monitors that looked pretty good to just be left behind. Dorian moved to one of them and grabbed the sticky note that was on top.
“Hope you guys like the room, and can really get your feet off the ground,” he read. “Also, feel free to use the equipment we left behind. It’s all still good and we only upgraded as we needed new hardware.”
“That’s really nice of them,” Reina conceded. “But we should probably worry about those when we’ve got these chairs put together….” After a few minutes of struggling with the boxes again, Jean was the first to make a complaint after they’d opened the boxes.
“How much instructions for a chair?” she demanded, holding up the much thicker instruction booklet. Based on the chairs in the boxes, they were all surprised at the amount of paper. “It’s already made, we just need to put the legs on….”
“That’s actually already pretty nice,” Nina sighed, sitting down on one of the chairs. “As far as a chair without legs goes…that’s pretty nice.” With that seed of hope planted, they began to work, thinking that putting in some screws with an alan key wouldn’t be that hard. That seed of hope slowly turned into desires out of spite to get the chair made.
“It shouldn’t be this frustrating to put chair legs on,” Adelaide grumbled. “I mean, it’s just a few screws….” She was interrupted by the tinkling of screws followed by something that they would never have expected.
“Ver fickte shceisse!” All of their heads snapped towards Analisse as she slammed her hand into the floor before getting back to work. She kept on with it, taking a minute or two to realize that everyone was staring at her and a bit more to recognize their shock. “What?”
“We just,” Reina said. “We just didn’t expect that out of you. I mean, you’re literally probably the quietest person in our year if not the whole school.” Analisse just shrugged and went back to her chair as did the rest of them.
“I didn’t know you spoke German,” Jessica said. Dorian hadn’t really seen her since the first meeting and hoped that he’d do better in the future to remember her name.
“My great grandmother taught me and my cousins when we were little,” she explained. “Though it was our uncle who taught us all the naughty words…and they stuck pretty well.”
“It’s always the uncle, isn’t it?” Dorian sighed, flipping his chair up on its legs and sat on it. “Oh, that’s nice…that’s really nice.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Nina said.
“I’ll start getting the table parts separated so some of us can get started on it….” And so they fell back into idle conversations they tried to make with the exception of Dorian who was now organizing table legs, support frames, and the table top itself. Reina came over to help after a while, followed shortly after Jean.
“You know,” Wolfgang began, “I just had a thought….”
“A dangerous thing for you,” Reina joked. There were a few chuckles but Wolfgang continued.
“But if there was a convention for people who were really into saws,” he continued. “I wonder what that’d be called….”
“Nobody answer that,” Dorian said, keeping a leg still while Reina put the screws in. “How juvenile can you be, Wolf?”
“Just trying to distract us,” he said.
“Not a problem, but I think we just need to get on with it,” Dorian pointed out. “By the way, you still want to borrow those CDs?”
“What CDs?” Only Reina could see Dorian’s smirk and rolled her eyes, knowing what was about to happen.
“See deez nuts, mate,” Dorian smirked, looking up. The collective groan from everyone seemed to be exactly what he had wanted.
“Reina, please slap him or something,” Jean sighed. “And how juvenile can you be, Dorian?”
“I wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t tried his own,” Dorian said, dodging Reina’s hand as she complied. “C’mon, let’s just get this finished so we can go.” About an hour and a half later, they were all sat around the table, admiring their handiwork. “That took a lot less time than I thought it was….”
“Honestly, though,” Jean sighed. “At least it’s done now…all we have to do is clean up the boxes. We keeping them?”
“Couldn’t hurt,” Analisse conceded. “We’ll probably find a use for them somehow.” With a groan and a stretch, she stood up. “Now that this is over, I think we might want to talk a bit about the auction….”
“That’s coming up next weekend, right?” Dorian asked. “The weekend after the masquerade, yeah?”
“I’d forgotten that’s the date we decided on,” Jessica sighed. “Anyway, what about it? Do we need to set a new date?”
“I don’t think so since no one’s said that they can’t do it that day,” Analisse continued. “I was just wanting to know that we were still on and to say that I’ve gotten a few other people to help. Those people are also looking to be some new members and they’re willing to help by giving us more guys, so we don’t have to worry about that….”
“Really wish I wasn’t a part of it,” Reina sighed.
“Wanting to bid on either me or Wolfgang, are we?” Dorian smirked. “I’m awfully flattered….”
“What if I am?” she inquired. “Nervous I won’t bid on you…?” The looks of everyone around them didn’t seem to bother Reina and Dorian as they laughed.
“Anyway,” Analisse continued. “We’ve got the auditorium booked that evening at six, so be there at least half an hour before so we can make sure everything’s in place.”
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