That's when Kieran noticed it. He squinted, leaned slightly across the table, and frowned.
"Wait a minute… That's not our school uniform."
Annie blinked mid-bite. "What?"
Roy, Tanaka and Brock all instinctively thought of the same thing. "Is this guy stupid? We go to an all-boys school, and he says that's not our uniform? Not shit, Sherlock."
He pointed at the dark blazer she'd hung on the back of the seat. "Your crest. That's from the all-girls school down on the road, right?"
Tanaka chokes on his soda. "The High? The all-girls school from down the road?"
Annie tilted her head, suspicious. "...Yes…"
Brock raised an eyebrow. "I thought that place was basically a fortress. No boys. No visitors. No joy. Just a factory producing high-class girls."
Tanaka, completely ignoring Brock, leaned in like he was uncovering treasure. "So do you have any cute friends?"
"Wow," Roy muttered; he was stunned. "You didn't even pretend to ease into that question at all, did you?"
Kieran tried to soften the moment from Tanaka's stupidity. Kieran also had a goal as well now. "What he means is, what's it like over there? I've heard – "
Annie interrupts him. "Rumours?" Annie arched a brow.
"Everyone assumes it's either a secret training ground to raise women into noble people," said Roy.
Annie just blinked. "Yes."
A beat.
All of them said it at the same time. "Wait. What? "
She shrugged, grabbing another fry from Kieran's tray like she'd been invited, but Kieran slowly pulled the tray away as he was looking for answers.
This annoyed Annie, but she accepted it and answered.
"I'm not saying anything official, but let's just say the fencing club is way more intense than it needs to be, and you should never trust a girl who says she's 'just practising violin alone after class'."
Tanaka looked like he'd just been handed the plot to the greatest romantic spy novel of all time. "That's incredible. So wait, do they make you do etiquette drills? Like, how to drink tea with dignity and deliver a death glare at the same time?"
"Yes," Annie replied, completely serious.
"Do they train you in fan combat?"
"Nope."
"Damn it."
Kieran looked amused now. "So why were you out here, then? The High girls don't usually come to this side of town."
Annie suddenly found her milkshake very interesting. "I was… skipping. Needed air. Stuff was getting messy, and then I ran into him." She nodded vaguely toward the door, where the boy from earlier had fled.
Tanaka asked gently. "Ex-boyfriend?"
Annie didn't answer for a moment.
"Nah, it didn't even get to that stage yet."
All of them felt a bit of pity grow in them for this girl, so they didn't press forward.
"Still," she added, voice lighter now, "it's funny. The high keeps us locked up like precious jewels, but half the girls are dying to escape. I just beat them to it."
Roy watched her carefully. "So what now?"
He wasn't asking in a dramatic kind of way, just in a way of curiosity.
A simple question.
She gave a small shrug. "I sit in a weird booth with even weirder boys and eat other people's fries."
The boys were a little saddened by her rather dejected appearance, not because she was down per se, but rather because she was depressed about sitting down with them.
Tanaka lifted his milkshake. "To escaping this wretched world!"
Kieran joined in. "To poor decisions that somehow work out in our favour but still get no girls."
Brock raised his drink last. "To strangers we randomly meet."
Roy didn't lift his cup, as there was nothing in the cup; it was finished. But still he lifted, and they all clinked.
Annie lifted her drink away with a little smile. "Cheers, weirdos."
A toast ended in the chaos of slurps and straw gurgles. For a moment, they were just five kids in a booth too small for them, basking in the afterglow of too much salt on their chips but still enjoying everything at the same time.
Then Tanaka leaned in forward, elbows on the table, all serious, steepling his hands like he was about to interrogate Annie like an agent of the law.
"Okay. But seriously now," he said, eyes locked on Annie. "Do you have any cute friends?"
Kieran was now locked into the conversation.
"Define cute?" Annie didn't hesitate with that reply.
"Dangerous," he replied without any hesitation. "Sharp-tongued. Maybe a little unhinged. But secretly lonely and is open to an emotionally oppressed boy who looks like they haven't slept in days."
Kieran gave it a second to think about what he just heard. "So… you're looking for your clone in a skirt format?"
Tanaka pointed at Kieran with his index finger and nodded solemnly. "Exactly."
Annie smirked. "I have one friend who collects switchblades and writes stories about love between a man and a woman who are not destined to be together. Does that count?"
Tanaka's eyes lit up like someone had just handed him a live hand grenade and told him it was a love letter from an emo goth mommy. In all honesty this guy might be a masochist; I do not know for sure. "I'm listening."
Roy tilted his cup and watched the last of the soda drip onto his tongue. "You know you just described someone who's either going to date you or murder you, right?"
Tanaka pointed a fry at him. "Sometimes it's the same thing. That's the thrill out of it all."
Brock, wiping fry grease off his hands, finally spoke again. "I don't get how any of this turned into matchmaking. Weren't we talking about the tournament initially?"
"We were, then we got interrupted, and now we're trying to set Tanaka up with a potential murder."
"Correction," Tanaka cut in, raising a finger. "A goddess. Potentially murderous, emotionally unstable maybe, but undeniably my type."
Annie tilted her head, a little taken aback at the chaos that ensued. "You actually might be her type."
Tanaka put his hands on his chest and fell back as if the best thing on earth had happened to him.
Then chaos roared; the table were having multiple conversations at once about why Tanaka should go after her and the others disagreeing with that statement.
Annie laughed, really laughed, and it startled even her. She clapped a hand over her mouth, cheeks pink.
"You guys are –" she started, then shook her head, as if the words wouldn't come out. No, she didn't want them to come out.
She settled back into the booth, letting it slip anyway, sighing through her smile. "So freaking weird."
Roy looked at her, a little sideways. "You stayed, though."
She nodded. "Guess I'm weird too."
The night rolled on. More dumb questions. More half-truths were told. Talk of the tournament returned in fragments, like who might enter from the people they know, what the capital scouts were going to look like, and how much the world started to change recently right underneath their feet.
But for a while, a little while, none of it really mattered to them.
There was a booth. There were kids inside that booth; there was laughter, and they were all happy.
Eventually, the trays were empty, the wrappers balled up, and the mood mellowed to that quiet, sleepy kind of peace that settles in when you're too full to keep going on.
Kieran yawned into his hand. "We should head out; we have school tomorrow, and I have first period, unfortunately."
Tanaka stretched like a cat, joints cracking, then turned to Annie. "Hey… before we vanish into the darkness like cool vigilantes, can I get your number?"
Annie raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"
"Not for anything weird! I am not hitting on you!" he blurted, hands up like he was under arrest. "It's about your friend. The writer. I need guidance, lore and things I can need to know to better connect, you know. I don't want to mess this up."
She stared at him, for a second too long, as if trying to gauge whether he was for real.
I guess he passed.
With a small sigh, she pulls out a napkin from the table and scribbles her number with a ketchup-smudged pen and hands it over to him. "If you start texting me memes, I swear to god I am blocking you."
Tanaka took the sacred parchment.
"Understood. This is the beginning of something beautiful."
They all stood up, shuffling out of the booth. The seat cushions gave one little squeak of protest.
Kieran adjusted his jacket. "Are you going to be okay getting home?"
Annie nodded, already halfway through the door. "Yeah. I'm a big girl. My school's dorm is ten minutes that way."
Roy held the door for the others. "Guess we're going the opposite way."
Annie paused just outside, under the flickering Fry Shack sign.
The boys clustered together, slightly awkward, like they were saying goodbye to someone they didn't mean to care about yet.
"Night, Toler." Kieran said with a short wave.
Brock raised two fingers. "Later."
Tanaka called out, "I'll let you know if she writes a story about me."
Annie snorted. "God help us all if she does."
Roy was the last to turn. "I guess this is goodbye, huh?"
Annie smiled faintly. "Goodbye, strangers."
They started walking. One by one, the shadows of the boys disappeared down the sidewalk, laughter trailing behind them like a ribbon unravelling into the darkness.
Annie stood for a second longer, hands stuffed into her jacket pockets, staring after them. Then she turned the other way and walked off into the night, alone, but somehow less lonely than she was before.
And for once, nobody looked back.
Then the boys realised.
They forgot to give their names.