Chương 5: Day Five

Dear Diary, So I showed up here on Monday, woke up in the Infirmary on Tuesday, and went into complete Squirrel Mode on Wednesday and Thursday, having Marie deliver food straight to my room. Okay, normally I don't sleep quite that much when I'm in Squirrel Mode, but this was my first time getting yeeted into another world. Or yoinked? Was I yeeted or yoinked? I'm still not certain there, or if it was a combination of yeeting and yoinking, but something told me that might be important.

So I'll give you a little virtual tour of my room. Hell, I really ought to call it 'my cell', although I'd be referencing the medieval lairs of monks, not the modern lairs of convicted criminals. We'll start with the biggest piece of furniture, the bed. On the plus side, it's pretty solid construction, and while it's twin-bed narrow, it's not twin-bed short.

I'm guessing it's about the length of a king bed; if some of the people here are as tall as Marie, I can see why; she might have to curl up a little to fit, but she could do so without being too ridiculously contorted to sleep. Also, when I say 'pretty solidly constructed', I mean I'm pretty sure I could jump up and down on it all day long without stressing the beams it's made of in the slightest.

This is the kind of bed that you wouldn't break during sex unless you're, like, She-Hulk doing the deed with The Abomination. Even they might have some trouble breaking this bad boy. On the other hand, that dump truck solid construction isn't close enough to make up for the lack of comfort. The mattress is maybe an inch thick at best, and I don't know what it's stuffed with, but it isn't enough to soften the solid slab of oak beneath it.

Like, seriously, no box spring, no proper mattress, just a tiny pad over a completely inflexible slab. The pillow seems to have that sleepy time enchantment the one in the infirmary had, though, which is nice. Next, my desk. It follows that same theme of 'built for eternity' that the bed does, although in this case it's not as much of a problem. The top is a two foot by four foot slab with a weird lamp stuck about three feet down the wall side.

The lamp thing is kinda like a camp light the ROTC Sergeant brought along on one of our camping trips. As far as I can tell, the light inside is always lit, but you can adjust how much light it puts into the room by lowering a metal cap down over it; all the way up and the room is as bright as a table lamp can make it, all the way down and it's black as pitch at midnight.

The desk has a couple drawers along one side, as well as one thin drawer right under the desktop that runs from the other drawers to the far end of the desk. The chair is... a chair. It's practically an ode to ignoring ergonomics given physical form; four legs, a seat, and a straight ladder back, all in very hard wood. Fortunately, it's about the right size for me, because I don't see a way to adjust the height at all. The last bit of furniture in the room is the wardrobe.

Again, it follows the theme of Built To Last, but here there's at least a tiny concession to artistry in the form of some scrollwork across the doors. Inside it returns to pure function, with a pole across the top to hang my uniforms from, a single shelf near the bottom, and a weird drawer with a mesh front under the shelf. Where everything else in the room was spotless and empty when I arrived, that drawer had some really old, desiccated weeds in it.

They might have been flowers once upon a time, because they didn't smell awful. In case you're wondering how I know the lamp has a 'black as midnight' setting, the ceiling, floor, and all four walls are undecorated grayish stone. No windows. There's not even a window in the door, so if I put that light all the way down, it's pitch black. Good for sleeping. Bad for avoiding stubbing your toes on the furniture if you're not sure where its at. That's actually how I learned another of the oddities about my new eyes.

I avoided shutting the light down until I was ready for bed the first night, and I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. When I woke up though, I could sort of see. I say 'sort of', because while I got absolutely zero sense of color or texture, I got a sort of wireframe view of the world. Enough to navigate by, but not much else. Also, when I pulled the cap up to light the room, I wound up blinding myself for god knows how long. Lesson learned, close my eyes when turning on the lights.

Yeah, the virtual tour of my room isn't exactly the Ben Franklin or the Art Museum. On the other hand, at least until I fuck up, this little box of Limbo is all mine, furniture, uniforms, and all. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Oh! That's the last thing in the room, I suppose; the uniforms. I wore my Eastside school uniform Monday; it's not so much a 'uniform' as 'really restrictive dress code'.

Black linen pants or skirt; white, orange, or black collared shirt; black shoes. I had a cheap ass pair of loafers, because the floors at Eastside never stayed clean for long. I wore a black polo shirt, because we had actual goths at Eastside, so I didn't have to worry about being confused for a goth unless I did my makeup in black; not something that went with my complexion, or at least it hadn't been. I'd have to try that at some point once I figured out where to get cosmetics here in Phileo City.

Finally, I generally wore black dress slacks, because when the dress code first came out my friend Emilio and I staged an ongoing protest about the original version of the code, which specified black slacks for boys and black skirts for girls. Emilio looked way better in a skirt than I did anyway. So the Phileo City Heroic Academy takes the term 'uniform' way more seriously. The pants are black linen, but they're way closer to the BDU winter pants back at Eastside ROTC than they were to dress pants.

That wouldn't be bad except for one problem, but I'll get to that in a minute. The blouse is white and sort of poofy, with ruffles along the neckline. I'm honestly not sure how far the neckline is supposed to plunge, because instead of buttons, zippers, snaps, or even ties along the front, the bottoms of the lapels had a single tie on each, and they had enough material to wrap around my waist.

Thing is, if I tied them straight up in front, there's enough play in the lapels that I could just straight up flash my tits to the world, which is not something I want to do by accident. I mean, I got a bit of an upgrade there; while I wasn't lacking in the boob department before, I'd already started sagging a little. I had no idea what magic let slightly bigger boobs stay perky, but I wasn't going to complain about that, especially considering... things. Yeah, in a minute, as I said.

So if I tied the strings at the bottom, I'd wind up a walking wardrobe malfunction. If I wrap them around my waist and tie them back in the front, not only does the neckline come close to throttling me, but my tits are nearly as visible as if I'd just left the things untied, because reasons. The only way I can get a reasonable amount of slack in the neckline is to tie them behind me, and that's just a pain in the ass.

Fortunately for my desire to remain reasonably modest, the double-breasted jacket is made of a thick red material. Between two layers of the stuff, I could be Dolly Parton going commando and nobody would know. Of course, that's the big problem. I've just noted all of the articles of clothing Marie issued me on that first day. Six pairs of slacks, six dangerous blouses, and six jackets. Notice anything missing? I certainly fucking did.

When I spoke with Marie about it on Thursday, she brought me a pair of black knee high boots and six pairs of socks. By that point I'd dumped my Eastside clothes into the laundry chute wrapped up in one of my Academy jackets, since the jackets each had 'Diaz' in beautiful embroidery on the left breast. I'm still really fucking impressed with how fast Marie made those. It might be magic, but being able to sew that fast is the kind of practical thing that just doesn't scream 'magic' to me.

On the other hand, while she seems to be an Embroidery Witch, when I showed Marie my clean bra and panties, I swear to god on high that she almost teared up looking at them. She just held the panties in front of her, staring at them with something like awe on her face, and just said, "How?" with, I shit you not, tears in her cat pupiled eyes. She still brought me what she could, though.

Every time I thank her, she gets that same weird look and either mutters 'it was nothing', or something my brain hears as 'de nada', even though I know that's not what she's actually saying. So now along with my uniforms, I've got a sturdy pair of boots, six pairs of shapeless black socks, half a dozen white linen camisoles, a linen corset, and half a dozen I shit you not linen bikini bottoms.

I don't know how else to describe them; they're basically just a two-inch-wide strip of linen with a linen cord that ties at one side to hold it up. Have you ever worn linen? Just to clarify, I'm talking about heavy duty linen, the kind that will last as long if not longer than denim. The kind of thing you'd wear in a factory to provide protection from bumps and scrapes against sharp metal edges, because it laughs at them. In short, that shit is not comfortable.

On my legs, my arms, even most of my torso, it's not that big of a deal. On my lady bits and my nipples, on the other hand? That shit bears a striking resemblance to sandpaper. Fucking. Ouch. I tried wearing the cami-and-bikini bottom this morning; first under my uniform, then since I'm all alone in my room, just by itself. I just couldn't take it. Right now I've got my old bra and panties on, but that's like, two days out of the week at most.

I'm either going to find some way to sandpaper-proof my delicate bits, or mama Diaz's little girl is gonna wind up going commando most of the time. Neither of those sparks joy, but what the fuck else am I going to do? So that's it, my room and all of my worldly possessions.

In brighter news, classes aren't scheduled to restart until next Monday, and due to my brilliant bit of improvisation, I've got Monday off, so I'm going to spend the next three days exploring the Dining Hall, the Library, and the Practice Yard; not necessarily in that order.