Chapter 1
The moon shines bright tonight. The grass releases a particular scent—one when a cooler temperature replaces the heat on the soil. Frieren’s breath mists through the air. How long has it been?
Oh. In her defense, it’s only been 30 minutes. Time and schedules were never really an issue for her—she has all the time in the world. She barely even followed her own schedule in the first place.
Maybe it just felt weird to wait. Fern was never the type to run late. She’s always arrived 5 minutes earlier than the designated time. There were multiple times when she’d wait in the hallways for her next class.
Even when the bell wasn’t supposed to ring for 15 minutes.
Yet here she is, her foot tapping relentlessly on the pavement. Her watch ticks infuriatingly on her wrist.
Frieren’s used to slower times. Time ticks differently when one’s on their phones or playing games. Her room feels relatively fast whenever she’s in it. Daylight rises and quickly sets before she knows it, so her time on campus always felt excruciatingly slow.
But this one ticked her resolution away with each second.
Maybe she should’ve known better. Fern’s a third-year student who quickly streamlined her curriculum. She overloaded more than necessary, rushing her graduation for unknown reasons. Frieren’s a fifth-year repeater who lost motivation midway.
Maybe this—accepting Fern’s invite—was never a good idea.
She tucks her hand inside her trench coat. Her face hides underneath her scarf. Maybe it’s time to go home.
“Frieren!” A soft voice shouts. Heels click on the pavement as it approaches closer. Frieren turns to see her friend rushing over to her.
“I’m sorry!” Beads trickle down Fern’s temples. Her torso huffs with one hand pressed on her knee while the other hugs her books and notebooks together.
“Professor Serie called me at the last minute—I had documents I needed to submit.” She huffs. “And the engineering lab asked for an extra hand! There were more qualified people who could help—seniors, other lab assistants, but for some reason, I was still asked to come!”
Fern bows her head down. “I’m truly sorry!”
Well, Fern always overworked herself like that. She’s always worked behind the scenes—working silently and diligently but somehow ends up getting swarmed by colleagues.
Except Frieren notices other tiny details that Fern didn’t bother telling.
Like how Fern’s sweater wasn’t anything Frieren’s seen before,
How her headband made her look neater today,
Or how her lips looked redder than usual.
Frieren turns away. Her cheeks feel warmer underneath her scarf. Fern rarely fixes herself up, always satisfied with a quick tidy and brush.
Whether Fern was also late because of that, she’ll never know.
She doesn’t know what to make of it. It’s probably nothing much behind it. Frieren buries herself underneath her scarf.
“You look different today.” Frieren mumbles, but a part of her wishes she didn’t hear.
“Mmm?” Fern walks closer. That’s when she realizes a new detail from Fern: she’s wearing perfume.
“Nothing. I don’t remember.” They start walking to the cafe she suggested days earlier. Fern frowns, unconvinced. “But you barely forget any detail. I don’t even know how you keep failing your courses.”
Yellow light illuminates from lamp posts and establishments alike. Frieren takes a shortcut— a detour from workers and students going home, but a path still spacious enough for comfort.
“I can remember them if I wanted to.” Frieren grins cheekily and taps her own temple.
“So you can study on your own.” Fern stops her tracks. She defensively hugs her notes and books closer to her. “You just choose not to!”
“Well, I wouldn’t have remembered them if I were alone.” She evades another passerby.
“So you remember concepts better when you’re with someone?” Fern follows.
“More or less. Something like that.”
“But why?
“Just because.”
“You’re not making sense.”
Frieren stops in front of the shop entrance. The bell jingles as she pushes the door open, hitting them with a sweet scent of coffee and cold air from inside. She makes way for Fern to enter. “That’s why I haven’t bothered to study as much lately.”
Or she just chooses not to, at least.
Fern scans the area inside. The music plays softly in the background. “I guess that makes sense.” She walks to the table with a couch. Frieren follows suit.
“Do you have anything you want?” Frieren leans on the chair across the couch. Fern settles her things on the table before eyeing the chalk-written menu above the cashier.
“Perhaps white chocolate cream will suffice? Iced.”
“Don’t you want coffee?”
“It’s 6:00 PM, Frieren.”
“...Fair point.”
Frieren queues up on the counter, occasionally stealing glances of her companion. Fern laid out two kinds of materials: her notebooks, binder, and a book on one end of the table, while a reviewer and laptop on her side. She’s always made an effort to make Frieren study. It amazes her how being seatmates in that one, eventful class she was about to drop could lead her to a companion.
She orders her medium coffee and large white chocolate cream.
The first hour was productive. Frieren halved her drink while Fern barely touched hers. She stole occasional glances on Fern’s scratch paper, witnessing a sheet full of complicated solutions Frieren knew, but hadn't studied in her courses. Fern occasionally stared at her laptop while Frieren made use of her friend’s notes.
Second hour came by. Fern’s already hunched closer to the table. Her new scratch paper’s been replaced by new concepts and diagrams. Her formerly clean, eloquently solved papers have a few scribbles by now. She bites her pen from time to time before resuming. Frieren returns with a bacon flatbread to offer. Fern refuses. Frieren enjoys her food before skimming Fern’s notes.
The third hour passed. Fern’s drink was only halfway through while Frieren left her a portion of her flatbread. She’s already scrolling through her feed while Fern thumps on the desk. Her head’s cradled between her arms. She takes a sip out of Fern’s drink before eyeing her companion again.
“Tired?” She returns the cup near Fern.
“I’m going to fail this time.”
“You never failed a subject over the past three years. What changes now?”
“I was busy with events, organizations, lab work, and—wait, did you even study?”
“I did.”
Fern shoots up only to see her notes and books in front of Frieren. No scratch papers, no solutions or whatsoever. Confusion’s etched across her face. “I thought you did?”
“I already know them.”
“I thought you failed this subject before?”
“I did.”
Fern slowly shakes her head and takes a devastating sip out of her drink. Frieren had upset her, somehow, but then Fern’s always quick to act up despite her cool nature. She buries her head on her arms once more before sighing. Frieren grabs Fern’s drink again to shake in a circular motion.
“You seem awfully worked up today.” She fiddles with the straw. “You never lost your cool on exams before.”
“Something’s just—you know, at home, I—” Fern shakes her head against her arms. “Nevermind.” She yields.
Fern’s always dropped the subject of home. She always gets emergency calls, dropping everything on campus to rush without explanation. Sometimes, she purposely drops the subject during their drink out with their organization or Stark. Frieren never pried her, but it’s always been something noticeable for her.
But then again, she’s always been observant.
“I think you need to drink up.” She aims the straw at Fern’s direction. “You barely drank the entire time we stayed here.”
“But—” Fern looks up to retort.
“You also haven’t eaten.” She pushes the flatbread closer to her. “You need to pass this course, right?”
“Yes, and—”
“Then you need your proper nutrition if you want to digest topics efficiently.” Frieren points at a water bottle. “I doubt you even touched your own water.”
Guilty, Fern takes a glance of each beverages and sigh. She glances at her laptop, who’s now on sleep mode, and her notorious solution sheet. Frieren could see her weighing her options: it’s either she eats now, or she’ll never hear the end of it.
Fern yields, pushing all her study materials aside. She makes space for her the plate. Her face lights up from the sight of the flatbread, as if she’s only seen now in the past hour she’s been sitting. Impatient from Fern’s amusement, Frieren starts cutting it into biteable portions
“If you want to properly ace your exams,” Frieren cuts the bread with the butter knife “Then the least you could do is take care of yourself.” She whispers, but she’s sure Fern could hear her from where she is.
Fern nods apologetically. The plate clatters once Frieren’s done with her chops. Fern bows her gratitude before grabbing the utensils with her own.
“I suppose…” Fern mumbles in-between chews. She seems to weigh each of Frieren’s words.
Fern’s always been a workaholic. Frieren’s gaze shifts between Fern, her materials and gadgets, and even the personal notes she brought for Frieren to study.
She considers her options, one of them being a choice she dreaded. Frieren sighs, grabbing a book in defeat and flips to a page Fern’s opened long enough to naturally open to it.
Biomaterials Science, 6th Edition by Ewig S.
She despised reading Ewig’s books. It was the messiest out of all references.
Yet Frieren could tell Fern thought otherwise. Rather, she seemed to never care whether it was messy or not. Lines and highlighters scribbled everywhere from top to bottom. Complementary diagrams and acronyms were written on the margins of her book. Some had sticky notes with bullet points inside of it.
There was no way Fern would have studied this in three days’ time. Probably at least a week or so. Previous pages had similarly extensive highlights around it, and the bookmarks sticking out of her other books only supported her idea further.
This girl is part of her home organization, a laboratory assistant, and she gets to study this much for a midterm? She can’t seriously be doing well right now.
Fern peeks at the page she’s looking at. She continues to bite the remaining portion of their flatbread.
Frieren takes note of the paragraph with the most circles and underlines to recall some.
“A technician wants to initiate surface absorption of polyethylene glycol to restrict protein absorption, so they placed the biomaterial into blood to mimic the solution. What assay should they use?”
“Colorimetric Assay.”
“Correct.” Frieren flips a page. She skims the other segments with annotations. “Would you consider nitrocellulose or polyvinylidene difluoride, PVDF, for a high-abundance protein with less than 15kDa molecular weight proteins?”
“Wouldn’t PVDF be better for durability?”
“Wrong.” Frieren skips to another page. She starts hunting for the page she stopped highlighting in. “Nitrocellulose is smaller and offers less background noise than PVDF. You have to consider its signal-to-noise ratio or else you’ll struggle to measure the bands accurately.”
She didn’t bother reading for that one. She hands Fern her book.
Confused, Fern grabs her material before alternating between Frieren and her reference. “I thought you hadn't taken this subject?”
“I haven’t.”
“But you know about it?”
Frieren starts placing Fern’s empty cup and plate on a tray. She places all of them on a tray to give on the counter.
Guess Fern’s not the only one who refuses to talk about her household. “Yeah. I just do.”
The door jingles as another person leaves the shop. The customer’s fewer than when they first arrived, aside from other students studying for their midterms. Frieren’s silence catches up to Fern.
“I see.” Fern looks down at her material again. Frieren checks for another mess she might’ve missed.
“But polymers need to be hydrophobic to achieve surface erosion, yes?”
They reached a mutual understanding, didn’t they?
“I’ll return these items first then we can continue.” Her lips naturally curl on its own. Her chest was lighter than she expected. The cashier greets her with a smile as they grab the tray from her. Frieren ends up ordering a sandwich for Fern. She at least knows half a flatbread wasn’t enough for her.
They ended up staying longer than expected. Fern writes on a fresh new scratch paper, refreshing the topics she learned earlier. She began asking Frieren more questions, and Frieren’s surprised with some of her own answers. She hasn’t reviewed in a long while. Fern scans more on the book, inquiring more on the encircled terms while Frieren quizzes her with some applicational situations. Some were questions she acquired from tests years ago, some were made from her head.
There was something comforting in their solidarity. Just two classmates studying together, not pressured nor bound by anything from their past. Frieren could figure that much. Fern has her reservations, but she can’t find herself asking for more.
It’s a lot better this way.
—
Time passed faster than they anticipated. The clock hit 11:18 PM by the time they finished reviewing. Fern stretches while Frieren sips her service water.
“Feeling confident with your test yet?”
“I guess so.” Fern gets her one last stretch before jerking her shoulders up. Her hands shake as she tries to move its strain away. “Will you be there on the test itself?”
“I didn’t really plan on attending…” She mumbles to herself, and Frieren receives a tiny chop from Fern.
“Ah!”
“Your parents are paying for you, Madame Frieren! At least show some gratitude by attending your classes!”
Not like money’s an issue for her, but she inches away instead.
“I’ll think about it…” Frieren mumbles. Her figure leans towards the other side of the couch.
But Fern didn’t respond immediately. The cafe plays a soft, jazzy melody, befitting for a midnight shift. Fewer students remained in the shop. Some scroll their phones during their break, while some continue writing on their touchscreens.
Curious, Frieren steals another glance at her company, and the sight only makes her want to squirm farther on the couch.
Fern was leaning closely. Her head was tilted with a curious expression on her face. Her brows furrowed, like she’s thoroughly scrutinizing Frieren under her gaze.
“You know, Frieren,” She pauses, further analyzing Frieren like a specimen. “You’re truly the oddest person I’ve ever met.”
Her chest twists. She instinctively looks away from her. She takes one final sip of her water before putting the cup on the table.
“Yeah,” Frieren mumbles, unsure of what to say. “Thanks, I think.”
Fern shakes her head as she starts collecting her things. “No, I should be thanking you. I probably wouldn’t get to study properly if you weren’t here.”
She gazes back at Frieren. Her chest thumps loudly behind her stoic expression.
“Mm.” She hums in acknowledgement.
“I think we should go home.” Fern stands. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do much in return.”
“No, it’s okay.” Frieren stands to follow. They start walking towards the exit. Her cheeks continue to heat up, and her scarf feels warmer than it should.
It’s really odd to be in such a position. Fern only said her thanks.
The door jingles one last time as they step outside. The air was warmer and the street was silent. A couple of other students walk back to their dorms while others call it a night.They breathe in their one final take after a strenuous studying.
“Thank you again, Frieren.” Fern turns to her companion. Frieren reciprocates.
There was a pause between. A comfortable silence until Fern notices a detail.
“Oh, here.” She gives her materials to Frieren. Confused, Frieren takes them away from her.
Fern reaches out to adjust her scarf. Her fingers softly brush against Frieren’s cheeks. She didn’t notice it’s been falling off on one side, and Fern pushes a few crumbs away.
“I’ll make it up to you eventually.” Fern pats the fabric once she’s finished. She takes her materials back from Frieren. “In the meantime, I hope this makes things equal for now.”
She gives her scarf a one last fix before smiling warmly at her. It tugs a few strings on Frieren.
“I’ll be heading off, then.” Fern waves and Frieren does the same. They exchange one last look before Fern starts walking in the opposite direction.
That… was a pleasant turn for the night.