Laws of e(Motion)

Two: #013DB7

Even after attending the same school for years, Emilia still found it impossible to shake the discomfort of even being there alone. The shelter of the building hardly felt warmer than the autumn air outside from her walk in, her ears almost painfully cold. Simultaneously she felt like everyone was watching her as she kept walking directly for her locker while she also knew that almost everyone there to watch her didn't even know who she was, and there was certainly nothing notable to look at.

Daisy Collins' earlier mornings always acted as extra reassurance on the days she didn't have a sports team waiting for her instead. Emilia's closest friend would be by their lockers instead, acting as a warm anchor for her morning. The task of loading her bag with her textbooks for the day didn't feel so daunting if Emilia was protected while her back was turned, and Daisy was well adjusted to doing just that.

"How are you feeling?" Daisy asked, running her fingers through her messy blonde ponytail. Maybe she'd already finished training for the morning, Emilia was very quick to lose track of schedules that didn't impact her. "Has your timetable changed much?"

"Too much," she smiled. Making light of it would make it easier to cope with, for she only needed to go through the stress once, when it was actually happening and not before.

"Anything would be too much," Daisy commented. She knew her friend well enough to be exactly right.

"Yeah. I don't know. I guess I haven't thought about it because I have to do it regardless of how I feel about it."

"Yeah, don't think too hard about it," Daisy said. "Do you want to get out of here?" At Emilia's nod, they both knew the chosen destination of her physics lab, arriving early to her class first thing being no issue.

The bright white of every surface in the lab interior didn't put stress on Emilia's senses like it really should've done, the relative quiet to the corridors welcomed. Comfortably familiar with the height of the stool, she was quick to take her chosen seat midway across the side stretch of the U-shaped marble-topped tables that curved around three sides of the room. It kept her largely out of sight from the front of the class, hidden behind the rows that filled the middle in, her preference for the right side of the classroom simply from how that angle felt to her.

"You're going to be alright on your own?" Daisy asked. She was far more concerned than she needed to be, or at least Emilia told herself to avoid feeling like a child forced from parents on the first day of nursery.

"I'll be fine," she reassured her. "Maybe see you at lunch?" Mentally, Emilia decided that lunch would not be happening based on the amount of times it had been promised before a sport took her place.

"Maybe," Daisy confirmed Emilia's thought process. "Have a good day." With a final smile over her shoulder, Daisy left for her own class.

As was usual, Emilia was the first one there with plenty of desk space to get her things ready, and plenty of time to Max-proof his usual seat to the right, setting the stool itself as far away from hers as was acceptable, and making sure her pencil case was pushed past the halfway point between them so it would look like he was closer than he really was when he sat down. From there she could find her favourite pen, gel for her rough notes so it didn't get caught on the page, and a pink ballpoint for messily circling anything important. Passing time by looking over her last lesson's notes and trying to ignore the test script tucked into the back of her notebook, she still found herself torn away from her place of focus every time the door opened. Slowly the class filled up, all people Emilia knew by name so far, and well enough to smile at as they made eye contact, some of them close enough with her to share a brief greeting before they took their own seats. She'd started unscrewing the end of her pen, a habitual fidget, while she waited. Both Max and Clara were yet to show up and while she didn't hate it, she was starting to worry on their behalf. The door opened again.