Meliora - Emanate - 29

[lady_mab]

Lionel Darcy

Lia and I are tucked into a corner booth in the back of the room, staying out of the way and sticking to ourselves. We came with Rhys, but decided to sit separate. This is, Kaito promised, a safe space for Participants.

Besides, we came to an unspoken agreement that there was no longer any point to trying and hiding that Liala and I are participating as one person.

At one point, Liala's three friends came and joined us at the table. I largely tuned them out, scrolling through my phone to keep myself entertained. Rhys had made sure that neither of us received drink tickets as we turn seventeen in February. But two of the three girls sported colorful drinks that they swapped between them -- offering Lia and myself tastes of each.

They left shortly after, begging for Lia to come with them, but she gave a watery smile as she declined their invitation. Something like this is a bit too social for either of us, so sitting to the side is about all we can manage.

How Rhys can stand there in the middle, surrounded by the crush of people without even flinching, I have no idea.

The three girls were replaced very quickly by Jun, Zoné, and Glen. They look like they're enjoying themselves about as much as I am. Jun's smile is thin and strained, and Zoné brings up the rear of the group frowning.

Glen, smile mirroring Jun's, holds up a pack of cards. He's gripping the neck of a bottle of cider in the other. "We've come to invade."

Without even waiting for us to say anything, the three of them pull up chairs to our table -- allowing the rest of the bench to be free should we want to escape.

Lia sits up and gazes curiously at the pack of cards as Glen shakes them out of their box and starts to shuffle. "What are we going to play?"

I glance at her, and she offers a shrug. She seems far more receptive to their presence than she did for the other three girls, even though they are her friends.

"I dunno. Any thoughts?"

"I can teach you Zheng Shangyou!" Jun leans over and takes the cards from Glen. "It's kind of like Rich Man, Poor Man?"

"I don't know what that game is," Zoné offers, leaning in against her to peer at the cards as if they would hold the answer.

Jun shoves him off like one would a puppy and starts to deal them out. "Bullshit? President? No? Shit, what do you people do for fun out here?" She grins as she deals, despite Glen's gasp of surprise.

He presses a hand to his chest and sags in his chair. "Jun is swearing? Have you been hanging out with us for too long?"

She reaches the end of the deck and scoops up her cards. "Okay, who has the three of Diamonds?" When Zoné raises his hand, she nods and taps the center of the table. "The cards are ranked as threes being the lowest, and twos being the highest, Aces being the second highest. Suits are ranked as diamonds are the lowest, clubs, hearts, then spades as the highest."

"Woah, slow down," I tell her, picking up my cards and starting to shuffle through them. "You're going too fast."

"You'll pick it up as you go along." Jun rearranges her cards with ease and some inherent pattern that only she knows. "Then it's just like any sort of card shedding game. You can play a single, a pair, multiple pairs, three of a kind, and so on."

Glen is rearranging his cards as well, tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth in thought. "So like basic poker hands?"

"Yes. First person to discard all their cards wins." Jun looks to all of us with a small tilt to her lips, and it takes a moment before I recognize it as competition. I've sported my own fair share of those sort of smirks. She's out to win. "Quick note: You can only put down as many cards as the person before you did. So you can't play three cards to beat a single. And your hand must beat the one before it."

"It will be easy, she says," Zoné grumbles to himself, even though Jun said no such thing. "You'll pick it up as you go along."

The first round is an abysmal mess, and I wonder just how anyone might consider something like this fun. Jun constantly stops to correct our hands, repeat the rules, and to tell Zoné to stop slapping the cards on the table whenever the mood strikes him. I couldn't tell if he was playing his own brand of Slap Jack or what.

Round two goes smoother, though it is interrupted by Glen shouting, "Deuces wild!" whenever he plays a two in the middle of a trick. I think he only does this because Jun lets out a shriek of frustration and smacks Zoné for him to pass it on to Glen.

By the time we get to round three, I am finally getting the hang of the rules enough to allow some of their mood to infect me. The competitive streak is starting to rear its ugly head as well, and I slap down cards with a bit more force than necessary.

Lia always responds with a flustered, "Oooh my Goooood," as she scrambles through her cards.

"It's not timed," Jun reassures her. So when Lia tags out first during round three, the look on Jun's face (who won the first two rounds) is pretty priceless. Apparently Lia's affinity for numbers carries over to card games as well.

Round four finds Zoné staring suspiciously over the tops of his cards, contemplating the hand even though it's not yet his turn. He leans against Jun's shoulder and attempts to see her cards.

"Hey! Knock that off." She holds her cards to her chest and leans away. "No cheating."

"How is this cheating? I don't understand." He watches her put down her cards. "I thought we were partners!"

"Yeah, for Meliora, not for this."

"Okay, okay, uhhh..." He throws down a two and three of clubs. "Whatever!"

"You can't do that!" Lia tells him as Jun gives an exasperated sigh. "Rule number one: two is the highest, three is the lowest!"

Tucking her cards beneath her thigh, Jun picks up his discarded trick and hands them back to him.

"Oh really now because I'm pretty sure rule number one is 'Jun is just making up half this as she goes along because she wants to win'."

"Play your two of a kind,” Glen suggests, only to earn himself a sputtering of outrage.

Zoné gasps, affronted, and mimics Jun by clutching his cards to his chest. "No cheating!"

"Christ, Zoné, is this going to take you all night?" I tap my three cards against the table, showing off.

He pauses, squints at his cards, considers them. "Can I fold?"

"This isn't poker!"

"Here!" Glen takes a pair of sixes out of Zoné's hand and lays them on top of Jun's pair of fours. Then the round carries on from there.

The game ends with Lia starting a new trick by setting down four cards.

"Ah!" Jun places her remaining four cards in a neat line -- three queens and the wild Joker. "Tadaa."

"Argghhhh!" I smother my face with my hands. "I thought I was going to win!"

Zoné cackles as he sets down his Jack-Queen-King-Two combo (Jun gives a stressed sigh, because it's wrong, but doesn't say anything).

"Jun's not allowed to play the next round!" Glen tosses his cards down, which is fine by me. I only have three cards left -- I would have had to pass anyway. "I give up! I fold, or whatever."

Zoné swats him with his remaining two cards. "If I can't fold, you can't fold."

"Dude, the girls are kicking our asses at this game!"

Jun sticks her tongue out at Glen, and he returns the expression. "C'mon Lia. Let's leave them to their foolishness."

Lia's amused smile switches to one of slightly mystified as she allows herself to be tugged out of the booth. Despite the fact that she had been hanging out with her three friends from calc, she's caught off guard by Jun's open friendliness.

By all of them, really. Because I feel the same way.

Glen holds out his drink ticket to Jun as she passes. "Grab me another cider!"

"They will not accept this from me. I look like I am twelve." She takes it anyway and ruffles his hair in passing.

Silence descends on our table, but it is surprisingly far from awkward. Glen busies himself with shuffling the cards back into the deck, and Zoné stares off in the direction that Lia and Jun went.

I tug out my phone, ready to resume my idle scrolling, when Zoné suddenly speaks up. "You know... You should start eating lunch with us. You and Liala. I know it's pretty much winter hols, and half our group doesn't know a thing about Meliora, but that's beyond the point."

My eyes narrow as I study his profile. There's no clue giving away what he might be thinking, though the record shows that he could just as easily be not thinking. "You really don't fancy my sister, do you?"

His head jerks around and he pins me with wide, pale green eyes. There they go, practically popping out of his face. "No, I don't. I just want to be friends with the two of you. You have some sort of strange fascination with thinking I have a crush on Liala." His answer is straightforward and blunt -- traits I'm beginning to identify in him over the few times we've actually talked.

Glen chuckles and starts to deal out a game of solitaire. "Not when you've got Jun."

The surprise turns to confusion and Zoné's gaze swivels to his friend. "What?"

It never occurred to me that Zoné might be sweet on his partner. They are close, that much I can tell, but not to the point of anything beyond that.

Zoné recovers faster than Glen can come up with a rebuttal. "I don't fancy Jun, if that's what you mean."

"Oh?"

"Don't you 'oh' me," he says, mimicking Glen's raised eyebrows. "A guy can be friends with a girl and not fancy her."

I might have laughed, I'm not too sure, but some sort of noise does work its way from my mouth and they both look at me. "I’m not an expert," I begin, slowly, feigning disinterest, "but Glen, I'm pretty sure you're supposed to follow up with something like 'does that mean she's free?'"

Glen stares at me in something akin to horror before a flush creeps up his neck and across his big ears. He cowers under Zoné's stare and tries to focus on his cards. "I'm choosing to ignore that."

"I'm going to corner you about this later."

"I don't doubt it, but perhaps at a time when I'm better prepared."

I watch their back and forth, the casual conversation laden with history between the two of them. And somehow, they are willing to try and fit Lia and I in. At odd angles, just like the rest of their crew.

I'm more curious than I would like to admit to see if they can hold Lia and I together as well.