PREVIOUS YEAR
Zemin's hand was cramped, his head was full of cotton, and his eyes stung with invisible sand. Despite that, he stubbornly kept writing the solution for an exercise. The mid-term exam for Molecular Physics was only next week, and the teacher of the subject was merciless—sometimes even purposefully nitpicky.
Several loud bangs shook his door.
If not for the voices that followed immediately after, Zemin would've blasted the door together with people who assaulted it from sheer fright.
He really thought for a moment that the academy was under a demonic attack.
"ZEMIN! Come out, Zemin! It's time!"
"The day is today! Your big day!"
"You can't sit in your burrow forever, bookworm!"
Breathing deeply to calm down his racing heart, Zemin walked to the door and swung it open.
"What the hell?!" Zemin snapped, before taking a second look at the trio at his door. Then he repeated, but much calmer, "What the hell?"
In front of the door stood three people, only one of which he knew at all—his classmates Adia, Edda and Valentin.
They were several years older than him, and actually, were about to graduate later this year—a year sooner than Zemin. But Zemin shared several advanced classes with them, while going to others with a class of the previous year.
They had met only a few months earlier, and since then, they didn't talk much—Zemin was always busy with more studying.
Now she stood in front of Zemin's door, holding a slightly misshapen cake in her hands. From behind her, Valentin gave Zemin a lazy smile and a lazy wave. He looked like he already popped a relaxation pill or two. Edda carried a cloth bag with some bottles inside.
Adia beamed at Zemin.
"Happy Birthday, grouch! Now let us in, we are gonna celebrate!"
"Happy Birthday!" Edda and Valentin echoed, grinning. Edda snickered.
Zemin gaped like a fish. "But I was preparing for the Physics exam!"
"It's, like, next week—one day won't change anything! Come on, do you ever relax? You must! Or are you going to commit the cardinal sin of gloom, Zemin?"
While she talked, Adia kept pressing forward, using the cake to push Zemin inside the dorm room. The movement made her breasts shake under her partially open jacket and shirt…
Zemin felt his cheeks reddening, but couldn't stop staring. His legs moved on his own—back, not forward.
"I'm not gloomy. I'm just busy, Adia," he muttered. "But I suppose one day won't hurt… Wait, it's my birthday today? It is. It really is…"
He walked to his desk to put away the textbooks, while his mind put the dates together. It really WAS his birthday.
Zemin just didn't want to think about it. In previous years, he always called Levana on that day—they could at least talk this way, even if Zemin couldn't go visit her. But five days earlier, Zemin got news that his sister was in the intensive recovery ward after she almost fell into a coma from a common cold.
Until he could reach his sister again, Zemin had poured even more effort into his studies… Otherwise, the cardinal sin of gloom would REALLY catch up with him.
Like now—Zemin barely noticed the way he was chewing on his lip. Worry. This emotion was worry.
"Of course it's your birthday! And I had to find that out from our class curator, of all people! You are sixteen—that's a special age. It's especially worth celebrating!" Adia chirped.
She, Edda and Valentin seemed to not notice his mood as they walked inside and spread their foodstuffs on Zemin's cleared deck. Soon there stood the cake, several glass bottles of beer, a packet of juice, and a monthly allowance's worth of relaxation pills.
There was only one chair in the room, which was immediately taken by Valentin. Zemin had to sit on the bed, where he was immediately sandwiched between two girls.
Edda was quiet, but kept smiling—just in general or AT Zemin?
Adia was talking a lot. She commanded Valentin to pass the cake or pour drinks, asked questions, and shared her own anecdotes. Her presence alone was enough to fill the entire room with life and quickly evaporate Zemin's initial awkwardness.
Well, a bottle of beer helped as well. Zemin became brave enough to notice the way Adia kept leaning way too close to him whenever she asked him a question, or the way her breasts brushed his shoulder every so often.
It made him feel all weird on the inside.
"Let's play 'spin the bottle'," Valentin suggested a while later, throwing a glinting look at Edda. "We have plenty of empty bottles by now."
"Yeah, let's do it!"
"Uh… What's that? Are we going to spin the bottle for… what?" Zemin asked.
Adia looked at him like he grew an extra head. "You don't even know 'spin the bottle'? Oh, thank God that I was there to save you from ignorance in time!"
The explanation of rules didn't take long. Spin the bottle twice to make a random pair of people, and then they kiss! Even Zemin's drink-addled brain could understand that.
Of course, he wanted to play. The risk of kissing Valentin was worth the chance of kissing Adia!
Thankfully, Zemin was lucky. He kissed Edda once—just a quick peck that made him blush like a virgin he was. Then Valentin got to kiss Edda three times in a row, each time longer than the last. By that point, everybody was sure that Valentin was cheating, but unable to prove it.
Then Adia kicked the bottle aside, grabbed Zemin's collar, and pressed their lips together.
This time, Zemin recognized and seized the opportunity. This kiss lasted much, much longer… Nevertheless, when Zemin and Adia got away from each other, breathless, it didn't feel like enough.
Edda laughed, and Zemin jolted, realizing that they weren't alone.
"Hell yeah! That was much better than my kiss!"
"I gave you enough kissing, didn't I?" Valentin complained, grabbing Edda's ass. She giggled and smacked his shoulder with an unsteady hand.
"Shut up!" Zemin snapped at them before giggling himself. He felt lighter inside than he ever did since before his parents died. "Shut up and get yourself your own room! And… thank you for coming to celebrate my birthday!"
He turned to Adia and blinked.
"You might stay, of course. I mean… You will, right?"
She grinned.
"Of course. It's your Happy Birthday, after all!"