The evening went smoothly. Chaz seemed to be a little agitated from how much he had spread out his things, but he and I managed to clean everything up together. There were a few articles that had been time-consuming to find, but other than that there were no problems.
"Thanks," he said as he hoisted his backpack over his shoulders. He gripped a few rolling bags in his free hands and lifted the handles. It was now almost time for us to go down to the lobby one last time. The clock had declared that we just had five minutes to go. Of course, we would head down the elevator early to avoid the mass of people that would gather.
As I should've known, however, people would have the same idea. As we made our way through the crowd of students, I volunteered to hold one of Chad's bags in the hopes that doing so would help him squeeze in better. I can't say for sure whether it did or not, but we were on time coming out to the lobby.
"Ah," Slith and Day were grouped together, with the four-armed alien speaking to address us. "You all came! And just on time, too." We could see a slightly exaggerated look of sadness displayed on his face. "It pains me to see all of you leave. We had a great time, I can tell."
I nodded. Even though all the hardships that I endured, I still enjoyed coming to Crystalline Underground; that was a name that I had almost forgotten until Day had volunteered to tutor me. Still, I had to remind myself of it every so often.
"Are we sure that we aren't missing anyone?" This time it was our teacher that had spoken up. "Let's see. When you hear your name, announce your presence." As predicted, Day pulled out a roster and began to read names off it, receiving appropriate responses. Predictably, Chaz was higher up on the list than I was.
After a while, Day rolled up the roster and stashed it away in some unknown pocket. "It seems as though we have everyone," he finished. "Okay, through the portal we go."
With that, we all began to flood into the small gateway that led to the school. The crowd moved incredibly slowly since the hole itself was only built to transport one or two creatures at one time. Chaz and I were lining up in order to transverse the magical device when I felt a familiar voice raise behind me. "Wait a moment, Feste."
"During lunch," Day instructed, "come up to the office. You know where that is, right?"
I decided to reply honestly. "N-No," I stuttered, my face dropping. "But I can figure it out if you want."
Day shot back a friendly smile. "That's fine. Midnight will come to get you, then. He says that he usually takes a stroll during that time, anyway." Then, he opened his eyes wider and part of his grin dissipated. "And don't you worry about a thing. He's just as friendly as I am."
Intending to casually tell Day that I needed to say my goodbyes to Chaz, I slowly began to turn around. "Thank you, sir." My teacher eased the pressure off of my shoulder and I was let free. Luckily, the crowd was now sparse enough to simply walk through without getting held up as often.