Lazing About in a Dating Sim

The next few hours went by relatively peacefully and before we knew it, it was lunchtime. 

And since neither Lucia nor I were in the mood to walk halfway across the school for some overcooked brisket and orange juice, we just decided to raid this world’s equivalent of a vending machine for food. 

Which was essentially just a crate of food with a coin slot attached to it.

Moreover, Lucia ended up being the one who paid for the food, as up until about a month ago, I lived in a world where the money had the faces of dead people on them and not the faces of dragonflies.

“Do you seriously not have any money on you?”

There was a bit of disbelief in Lucia’s voice.

“I forgot my wallet at home.”

“How the hell do you forget something like that?”

“Didn’t you forget to bring your project to class on Monday?”

I quickly retorted.

“Ugh... don’t remind me, the teacher fuckin lectured me for 10 minutes straight about that after class ended.”

Lucia grumbled before shoving two silver coins into the food basket’s coin slot and grabbed a couple of snacks and drinks.

Then she handed me two of the items that she had purchased.

Which were a bottle of chocolate milk and a large blueberry muffin.

“…You did that on purpose didn’t you?”

I gestured towards the many blue dots on the surface of the muffin that I got handed.

“Hey, beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Fair enough.”

I said before unwrapping the blueberry muffin and begrudgingly taking a bite out of it.

It didn’t taste all that bad, which was a little surprising as according to the wrapper it was set to expire in about a week.

“Anyway what’d you think of the novel that we just read, Otto?”

There was a hint of curiosity in her tone.

“It was pretty good, definitely better than what I expected.”

“Right? Whoever was in charge of advertising the novel should get fired. Vermillion Gardens deserves to have more of a presence compared to the shit that keeps filling up the reader’s choice list in the library every week.”

“To be fair, when has that list ever been reflective of what people actually like to read?”

“You’ve got a point there. Frankly, I’m starting to think that the school‘s just putting whatever books are the cheapest to purchase on the list.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time that the school did something stupid to save a buck.”

“Yeah, just this morning the ceiling of my dorm room caved in because the school was too stingy to make the roof out of something fuckin sturdy.”

“…Did you get hurt?”

I said with a dumbfounded expression plastered on my face.

“Nah, it completely missed me.”

“Well that’s a relief.”

“More importantly, since when have you cared about my wellbeing?”

“If you’re dead, who's gonna yell at me for making the most minor of mishaps?”

I said nonchalantly before shrugging a little and taking another bite out of the blueberry muffin.

In turn Lucia just rolled her eyes.

“Anyhow, we should probably be getting back now. Didn’t Anne say that she was gonna check in on us?”

“Shit you’re right.”

Lucia said simply before grabbing my hand and pulling me in the direction of the student council room.

And after a couple minutes of walking, we made it there relatively unscathed.

The moment we got to the student council room, Lucia and I were greeted with a mildly annoyed Anne.

“…There you guys are, I’ve been waiting for ages.”

“Oh don’t be so dramatic Anne, we were gone for less than 10 minutes.”

“Make that 20, anyway did you guys get your duties done?”

“Yeah.”

I said simply before pointing to the coffee stained sheet of paper that was on one of the desks in the student classroom.

“Wait hold on… if you guys already had your duties done, what were y'all doing walking outside?”

Anne said while motioning towards the piece of paper.

“We were grabbing lunch. Well more accurately I was grabbing lunch for the both of us.”

Lucia said, slightly confused before gesturing to the handful of food she was currently holding.

“Couldn’t you have just let Otto get his lunch by himself, though?”

Anne asked, inquisitively.

“Knowing this guy, if I did that, he’d probably get sidetracked on his way there and end up in a shallow grave.”

“You’ve never let something like that stop you from doing something before, and besides, you hate walking around with other people.”

Anne said, with a mischievous grin on her face.

“You’ve got to stop reading into things so deeply, Anne.”

“Whatever, anyhow if y'all are done gathering signatures. There’s nothing left for you guys to do today. So you’re free to do whatever you want for the rest of the day.”

After hearing those words leave her mouth, Lucia and I breathed a sigh of relief.

“And now that I know that y’all are done with your duties, I’ll be heading off now so I can get back to doing mine.”

Anne remarked before quickly exiting the student council room.

The moment that Anne left, Lucia and I slumped onto the giant bean bag chairs in the middle of the room.

“Hey Lucia?”

I said listlessly while staring at the ceiling.

“What do you want now, Otto? I’m not in the mood to answer any dumb questions.”

Lucia retorted before getting a bit more comfortable in the bean bag chair she was currently lying on.

“Do you actually hate walking around with people?”

I asked while completely ignoring what Lucia had just said.

“I thought I told you not to ask me any stupid questions?”

“Eh, never stopped me from asking them before.”

In response, Lucia just sighed.

“Fine, I guess there’s no harm in telling you. Yeah I hate walking around with people. Why do you care anyway?”

“I mean as someone who walks around with you everyday, I feel like that information is kinda relevant to me.”

“Weirdly enough, I actually don’t have much of a problem walking around with you specifically, well aside from your braindead quips.”

“I wonder why that is.”

“Who knows.”

Lucia said, before sinking deeper into her bean bag chair.

A couple of minutes after Lucia finished her statement, the school’s bells rang and indicated that classes were resuming for the final time today, which didn’t really affect Lucia and me, considering that we still were excused from classes for the rest of the day.

And for the remainder of the day, all we really did was argue about literary tropes and critique each other’s tastes.