“Did that really just happen,” Lyra’s doe eyes were glazed, “June was so close to me. I’ve never seen him so up close. He even smells nice.” She sighed dreamily.

“He smelled like sweat.”

“Yeah, but it smelled nice didn’t it?” She looked at me with those huge innocent eyes and my heart didn’t have the strength to tell her otherwise.

She was already too far gone for me to save her.

“Sure.” I gave her my best princess smile and she smiled back at me, her eyes still googly but she turned her head back to the front and left me to my own thoughts for the rest of the wait.

                                                         **********

Turned out that the kitchen chefs were just a bunch of magical mice who could speak, they were so tiny that the table which had seemed invisible from far away, was in fact bustling with activity up close. A tiny mouse with a equally small chefs hat and a tiny white apron stood at the edge of the kitchen table waiting to take my order. 

"What'll you have miss?" tiny mouse chef squeaked. Her voice was quite loud.

I found myself ordering a plate of curry and rice, a dish that always comforted me no matter what. It was one of those days. 

The tiny mouse chef nodded and instantly a plate of freshly made curry and a bowl of steaming rice appeared in front of me, neatly sitting on a wooden tray. 

"Next order," the chef shouted and I hurried to pick up my tray of steaming curry and rice and looked around for an empty seat in the filled dining hall. 

Students were busy chattering away, the sounds of metal cutlery scraping against each other mixing in with the talk, and for a brief second I was lost in the chaos of it all.

“Ah,Sunny! Over here!” Lyra’s hand popped up from a table.

I was grateful for her friendliness in that moment and walked over to her.

“I saved you a seat,” she motioned to the empty space next to her, shoving a spoonful of pumpkin soup into her mouth.

“Thanks,” I sat down and noticed that the ice cream guy was sitting directly across from us. He didn’t have a tray of food in front of him, but instead sat looking intensely at his phone as he licked a melting cone of strawberry ice cream.

I nudged Lyra, jerking my chin towards long haired guy. “Who’s that?”

She followed my gaze to him, and shrugged, and before I could stop her she called out,

“Hey.”

He didn’t look up.

“Hey, you with the long hair,”

Long haired guy looked around.

Lyra sighed through her nose, “No I’m talking to you. Mr. Ice Cream. What’s your name? I’m Lyra,” she titled her head towards me, “this here’s Sunny.”

He slid his gaze to me, before turning those silver eyes back to his phone “Asiel."

“Wanna be friends Asiel?”

“Why?”

His eyes were still glued to his phone.

“I’ll buy you ice cream.”

His fingers stopped scrolling.

“What flavor?” he asked. He put his phone down on the table, the ice cream in his hand forgotten about.

Lyra grinned, and I couldn’t help but applaud at how quickly she’s managed to turn the situation around.

“Strawberry, obviously.”

Asiel's ears perked up, and he looked exactly like a puppy interested in a toy. A huge puppy but a puppy none the less.

“Friends?” Lyra stuck out her hand.

Asiel eagerly shook it. “Friends,” he confirmed, and we grinned at each other stupidly.