From what I could tell the others in the group didn’t seem fazed at all by the black hair’d girls interactions with the blond. So she does this often huh?

“Do you want to tell me then?” I asked, interrupting there flirting. The black haired girl breathed out a little shortly through her nose and closed her eyes briefly before opening them again, turning to me with a disingenuous smile.

“Well, I’m Ares” She then gestured to the blond, making the girl’s cheeks rosy again. “This is Galena,” She then gestured to the big guy. “that’s Taiyari,” She pointed at Conar who was still looking irritated. “That’s Conar, I believe you’ve met though.” I guess he must have talked about me, how flattering. I’m sure he only said good things. She then finally pointed towards Callias. “And that’s Callias. So there you go, you know who everyone is now. Does that feel better?” She was being patronizing but I wasn’t going to feed into it.

“Yeah.” I said plainly.

“Hmm, not a very reactive type are you. We already have two like that in this group, we really don’t need more.” Well now I was getting confused, did she want me to join her group? Well, this group, whatever it was.

“Did you want me to join?” I asked, though I still hadn’t really been told what I would be joining to begin with. She laughed.

“Well, no, not exactly. You don’t really have any status in society and neither do your parents so that just wouldn’t work but we thought it might be fun to have a kind of, you know, mascot of sorts. I mean, really, it’s not every day that someone like you comes to this school.”

“Do you mean, like, a normal person?” She smiled at my answer and leaned forward again, her elbow on her knee and her chin in her palm.

“Normality is relative. Perhaps to you, and the people around you, you’re normal. To me, people who have enough money to buy you is normal.” I didn’t exactly like the example she gave there but, in this case, I actually did understand what she was saying.

“Fair enough.” That was all I could really say to that. She sat up straight again, resting her arms on the arms of her chair. She seemed to examine me some more.

“You know, from the information I was able to gather you had a rather violent past. I was expecting some animosity, but you’re oddly calm.” Ah, so she dug into my past huh. How much does she know then?

“You haven’t done anything to piss me off.” I mean other than being mildly irritating and having a kind of superiority complex around her she was fine, I had no problem with her. Granted I didn’t like that she was trying to dig up information about me but, if anything she probably just found out about my past school records. She might have also found out I was trans, which isn’t a secret to begin with but I’m also not going to go out of my way to tell people. She chuckled a bit at my response.

“Should I try to then?” I was getting exasperated already.

“Why would you want too?”

“Because, Mr. Eros, I am bored.”

“Well I’m not a TV station or a board game, so maybe you should try those instead.” I wasn’t even annoyed so much as I was tired with where this had started to go.

“That’s the point though Mr. Eros, you are not those things which just makes it that much more fun. There’s no guide to read and no rules to dictate, it’s so much more unpredictable.” I sighed and got up.

“Ares, I have no problem with you and I don’t want to have a problem with you. If you want to try being friends with me, I wouldn’t mind that either. But if you’re trying to start some kind of game with me, this isn’t going to go anywhere. I have no interest.” I started to make my way to the door. “Now, lunch isn’t over and I need to eat, so I’m going to go do that. I hope you find something to cure your boardroom.”

“Wait, we would pay. Money is no object.”

“Pay for what? For me to be your mascot? What would that even entail, do you just want me to come in here, and what? Just hang around?” I wasn’t really asking, it was mostly rhetorical.

“Sure, come here during your lunches and let us do as we please with you. You can go get our food when we ask, or just let us ask you whatever we want and answer honestly without holding anything back.” I was getting a little more irritated at this point but I made sure not to let it show since from what I’ve heard so far she would love that.

“Ares, I’m sure there are plenty of other people in this school you could ask for this kind of thing. I don’t know why you decided on me, someone you hadn’t met until now.”

“Well no one else in this school is lower class than you, it just wouldn’t be the same. Can you imagine how boring it would be to just have another politician’s child to play with?” No Ares, I really can’t imagine that.

“Well, I’ll let you figure that out. I’ve said no now and I’m going to lunch, bye.” I turned around and pushed open the door, I heard Ares say something from behind me again though as I exited.

“The offer is always open if you need the money Mr. Eros.” I heard the door shut behind me as I got a few steps down the hall. The hallways were still sparse with people as it had creeped into the middle of lunch now. I saw someone coming down the hall in the opposite direction I was going. I recognize that suite. His pace was fast and his heartbeat reminded me of the kind of heartbeat I hear a lot when people are stressed. He was looking at his phone but put it back in his pocket as we started to get closer to each other. When he noticed me I saw his pace visibly slow and his heartbeat calm down. He smiled at me in the only way he seemed to know how.

“Hello, coming back from lunch are you?”

“That’s where I’m headed actually.” I could practically feel my stomach wanting to eat itself, it always sneaks up on me like this.

“Just wandering around then were you?”

“I was invited to a club, sort of, and declined.” He raised a brow, I could already tell what he was about to ask.

“Which club is this?” Well I was right.

“I don’t know, I still have no idea what the purpose of there club even is really. They did a bad job at selling it to me.” Granted they did try to get me to sell my self to them. I saw a frown creep onto Lex’s brow at my words but it quickly vanished.

“That’s odd, what was the club leaders name?” When he asked that question was when I realized I wasn’t given that information ether, though I can take a pretty confident guess at who the leader of there group was.

“Ares, I think.” I saw no expression change in his features, but I think that in itself was pretty telling.

“I see, well, I’ll let you get to your lunch then.” Somehow it felt like the conversation ended before everything was done being said on the subject.

“Yeah, thanks.” He smiles at me and continues walking past me, going in the direction I had just come from. I didn’t think too much of it since even before he saw me that was the direction he was walking, but there was a small part of me that wondered if there was some kind of connection between him and Ares, or at least him and that club. If there was any connection between them, they didn’t seem friendly anyway. That might be something I need to look into later.