Project: Socialize (Chapters 1-197)

186. Christmas Eve - Memories

[Loyd's Perspective]

Standing on the eastern corner of the Nocsinis Station Square, I waited along with Noah and Zaksus for the arrival of the girls that will be attending this mixer that Noah had set up a few days earlier. According to him, these girls are from Lumina Girls' High School, the high school that's considered the counterpart of our Nocsinis Imperial High. Everything between their school and our school are just extremely similar. We have a similar academic scores, similar scale of school, and we're both affiliate schools of top universities in Vilheim with theirs being the Lumina Girls' University and ours being the Nocsinis Imperial University.

The time that we had arranged to meet up at was 5:00 P.M. and the current time is 4:58 P.M. As courtesy, we had arrived about twenty minutes earlier than the agreed upon time and had just been standing here and waiting by the eastern entrance to the Station Square underneath a light pole. However, as each second ticked by and they're still yet to show up, an atmosphere of discontent and worry began to brew between us.

"Are we gonna get ghosted?" Zaksus asked with a slight tremble of worry in his voice.

"Just wait," Noah responded in a somewhat irritated and annoyed voice as he was squatted down against the light pole. To me, it felt like Noah is also worry but had converted the worry into irritation.

"It's not time yet," I chuckled and said to them, hoping that this will be able to curb their worries. "Let's just wait for them to show up."

"No shit," Noah responded as he rose to his full height. "We're already here. It's not like we're gonna go home now. If they don't show up, I guess we'll need to go somewhere and release this frustration."

"What could we do, huh?" Zaksus asked.

"Well, we could—"

"Is that them?" I elbowed Noah gently on the side of his stomach, interrupting him as we watched as three girls approach us.

"Hey, Noah," a blonde girl with short hair down to her upper back greeted him with a smile and a wave.

"Hello Mary," a smile appeared on Noah's face. "You girls ready?"

"Yup," Mary said after taking a quick glance back at her two companions. "I think we can save the self-introductions for later and start off by getting some food?"

"That's a great idea," Noah nodded his head in agreement. "Let's do that."

The six of us then mobilized in a group as we were led by Noah to a restaurant that he had picked out earlier. To be honest, I was quite surprised by the level of the girls that Noah had invited to the mixer with all three of them being beautiful in their own unique way. My eyes wandered slightly over my shoulders where I could see the three girls chatting amongst themselves in my peripheral vision. The one on the left was a girl with long, beautiful hair the same color as Irina and the one on the right had her brown hair in a ponytail.

"What do you think they're talking about?" Zaksus whispered to the Noah and I.

"I don't know," Noah responded in a hushed voice without adjusting his gaze in any direction. "Stop whispering. It might leave a bad impression."

It wasn't long before we arrived at the restaurant Noah had picked out and was being led to our seats at a booth by the window. The seating arrangements for our mixer was quite simple: the boys sat on one side and the girls sat on the other facing us. I was the one following behind the waitress first so I filled in the seating and was seated up against the window where one could see through the glass and at the festive city outside where the sky had now darkened due to the winter season.