Chapter Text
A-Qing sat on the bench next to Xiao Xingchen when she first heard the seniors talking. Her clarinet was clasped in her hand, her grasp tightening as she heard them speak. The two of them were chattering on about someone, rather, gossiping. A-Qing considered asking Xiao Xingchen about the person they were talking about, but he’d already left his seat calling out to Song Lan on another end of the field. She didn’t know anybody beyond the people in her grade and a couple of her friends, so the voices stayed unfamiliar to her. The two guys kept talking, paying no mind to any of the people around them.
“I thought he quit band.” One of them said as A-Qing focused on their conversation. “Why’s he back now?” A-Qing moves her head slightly in the guy’s direction trying to determine who it was. She could only guess it was a saxophone player based on the gold shape of the instrument in his hands and his hair color was either an extremely dark purple or pure black. A-Qing considered it to be the latter.
“And so did everyone else. Though who knows what the fuck he’s been doing this whole time if he hasn’t been at school.” A-Qing takes a small glance over at the other guy, though again the appearance doesn’t look recognizable. Brown hair, bun, and a trombone.
She curses herself internally when she can’t determine who it is.
She drags her focus back onto the first person, trying to see if she can guess them instead. They nod their head in response to what was said, their gaze now looking over at someone in the distance that she can’t see.
“Don’t roll your eyes at me.”
“I can and I will.”
The guy walks off, the sound of grass shifting occurring with every step. A-Qing watches him leave, trying to figure out who it was. There were tons of students in the band with dark hair, and she’d only been able to determine he was a senior based on what he’d said earlier. Knowing what instrument he played did help, so she could always ask Ning Yingying about it.
If there were any seniors she knew, it would be Shi Wudu. That was due to the fact that he was the only senior clarinet in their section, otherwise she had no idea of any other seniors. Through the beginning week of June, there was a clarinet who hadn’t shown up all week for warmups or anything. A-Qing had heard other clarinets talk about that one empty spot in the warmup block and in the rehearsal arc, so there could be the chance that the person coming down was a clarinet. A-Qing gets up from her seat, taking a moment to look around..
After a long scan of her environment, she spotted Ning Yingying with her black buns and braided hair. As she gets closer to the girl, she can hear Ning Yingying talking animatedly to another person.
“A-Luo! You’re gonna win this right?” A-Qing could hear Ning Yingying’s exclamations even at this distance. The girl kept chirping on and on towards Luo Binghe, one of the few guys she’d ever heard Ning Yingying talk to. The conversation between the two was the reason most of the band had shown up thirty to forty minutes before their actual practice time.
Coordinated by Wei Ying, he and Luo Binghe were planning on racing from the stadium to the park which was on the opposite side of the street behind the school. It was quite a distance away from where they were at the stadium, so it’d take them a little while to actually race there and back. Wei Ying apparently hadn’t arrived yet, so there wasn’t any race happening at the moment. By then Ning Yingying had spotted her approaching them, and she called out to A-Qing with an unbridled enthusiasm.
“A-Qing! Come over here!” Even from her limited vision, A-Qing could see Ning Yingying waving her hand in the air, bouncing on the soles of her feet.
“I’m here.” A-Qing says and Ning Yingying immediately cuts in.
“Yes, yes, you’re here finally! Wei Ying hasn’t come yet so we’re just waiting before A-Lou can race him!” She’s smiling and hopping excitedly, though when A-Qing glances over at Luo Binghe; the contrast between their personalities is quite clear.
“Is Shen Yuan going to watch?” He asks.
“I’m not sure! I don’t think he’ll forget to come though!” Ning Yingyin exclaims. She looks over in another direction and calls out to them.
“Shen Yuan! Over here! Over here!” She calls again, and A-Qing comes to the conclusion that this is a recurring habit of Ning Yingying’s. Shen Yuan comes to join them, and Ning Yingying is hopping up and down excitedly, her appearance becoming blurry in A-Qing’s vision. The sound of footsteps gets louder as a boy approaches them, and A-Qing focuses on the elder boy joining them. He has black framed glasses and long black hair like pretty much everyone else she’s seen in the band, one glance back at Luo Binghe and she can see the boy’s face light up excitedly.
“I’m going to race Wei Ying!” He exclaims to the other boy, his personality shifting instantaneously when Shen Yuan joins their group.
“Wei Ying?” The guy asks. He pauses, “That’s the loud flute player right?”
“Yeah! He challenged me to a race, we’re going to go from the stadium down to the playground on the other end of the school and then we’re going to turn back around and go to the stadium again. The first one back at the stadium wins!” She can note the wild excitement of Luo Binghe as he talks, almost wondering if it’s even the same person.
As she’s thinking this, Shen Yuan asks A-Qing a question. “Are you Ning Yingying’s friend?” A-Qing looks over at him, a bit of surprise flashing through her as he acknowledges her.
“Yes.” She says, keeping her answer brief. There’s a moment of silence and A-Qing can only guess that he’s exchanging glances with his group.
She looks over at Ning Yingying, deciding to switch the topic of conversation. “Did someone rejoin the band this year?” A-Qing questions.
“Yep! I don’t know his name, but apparently he’s a clarinet so he’ll be in your section.” Ning Yingying answers excitedly, “I’ve got to ask Yanli if she knows who it is.”
A-Qing nods slowly. It makes sense what the girl said, but now she was left even more curious. She’d heard two of the seniors talking, but neither of them were clarinets so if they knew something about the guy leaving, it had to have been something big. This was also the perfect opportunity to learn some of the names of other students in the band, so she could ask if Ning Yingying knew those students.
“I heard two seniors talking about it, but I didn’t know who they were.” She finally says.
“What’d they look like?” Shen Yuan asks, “Maybe I know who they are.”
“Well, one of them was a guy with really dark purple hair and he had a saxophone with him. The other one was someone with brown hair and I think, I think it was in a bun and he had a trombone with him.”
“The trombone player was Nan Yang. My guess is that the other person was Xuan Zhen.” Luo Binghe answers, when A-Qing gives him a confused look he continues explaining, “Nan Yang is in my section and Xuan Zhen is the only saxophone player that has that type of hair color, considering that everyone else has pure black or brown hair.”
“Oh, that’s logical.” A-Qing responds. She’s not familiar with anybody outside of her section, so the names are difficult for her to recall. Though Ning Yingying was extremely helpful when it came to recognizing people. The girl let out a squeal of excitement, and A-Qing looked over at her, confused.
“We can talk to Banyue! She probably knows the new guy’s name, specifically because she was talking to him as they came down to the stadium!” She grabs A-Qing’s hand about to drag her off when someone’s yell interrupts them.
“I’m here! I’m here! Not late this time and didn’t forget!” Someone yells, their voice growing louder as they run into the stadium. A second set of footsteps charges after them, the two of them getting closer as two of them arrive at their group.
“Luo Binghe, I'm ready to race!” Before A-Qing could look, someone yelled at them.
“Wei Ying! What on earth are you talking about?” The person stormed over, joining their slowly growing group.
“I’m racing Luo Binghe down to the playground and-” Wei Ying was cut off with the sound of a smack.
“Owww! Jiang Cheng wh-” His voice cut off into a whine when he was hit again.
“Jiang Cheng what the hell!” He complained. The sound of his feet hopping backwards sounded in her ears as there was a swift blow of wind from a missed hit. “I’m just racing Luo Binghe, ack!”
“Is that why you were rushing Yanli and I?” He accused, “For once in your life can you be responsible instead of messing around?” The two of them went at this for the next minute or so until finally Shen Yuan interrupted.
“Why don’t you just race and then the band can be started right after that?” He reasoned, the other guy snorted but stopped hitting Wei Ying. A-Qing could feel a light breeze from the boy’s movements as he ducked behind her. She pretended not to notice, focusing her gaze onto the guy Wei Ying had called “Jiang Cheng.” She could tell him apart more easily than other people because of the purple ribbon tying up his bun.
Another person with black hair, it was not helpful at all to A-Qing.
The guy behind her, Wei Ying, suddenly spoke up, seeming more confident than when he had been getting hit. “Who’s going to be the referee?”
“Sha Hualing.” Luo Binghe responds curtly.
Even if she tried to look, A-Qing would have no idea who the person was, so when the group fell into silence, she was confused.
“Does she have a whistle?” Ning Yingying asked. “Where did she get a whistle?” Her voice raises in a mild concern. A-Qing turns her head to glance at the people scattered around the field behind them, though amongst the crowd of them, she couldn’t spot anybody with a whistle in hand.
“That’s the drum major whistle.” Shen Yuan said, “Jiang Cheng, isn’t that the drum major whistle?”
“Yes, it is..” Jiang Cheng answers. At least A-Qing knew his name now, but now she was further more curious about everyone’s reactions. Wei Ying had been quite silent during this time, so A-Qing knew that there was some importance about Sha Hualing having a drum major whistle. She had yet to figure out what it was.
Finally, after a long minute of the group looking over at the referee, Wei Ying broke out of his fear of Jiang Cheng and spoke.
“I'll let her know I’m here, then we can do a two minute warmup and we can race after that?” He asks, his question seeming more of a statement if anything. A-Qing looks over at Luo Binghe who nods his head and turns around, dragging Shen Yuan along with him. Shen Yuan doesn’t protest and follows him willingly, while Jiang Cheng sighs and heads after Wei Ying. Being that the two of them were alone now, Ning Yingying glanced over at her.
“They’re going to race now then.” Ning Yingying says, “Do you think A-Lou will win?” She suddenly pauses, realizing her hand was still holding A-Qing’s. She startles, releasing her grasp on A-Qing.
“Oh my gosh, I didn’t even ask if I could grab your hand!” Ning Yingying exclaims, “I’m so so so sorry! Was that inappropriate of me?” She stumbles over her own words in her apology, and A-Qing laughs at the poor girl’s panic.
“You’re fine, you didn’t realize at all.” A-Qing replies, attempting to alleviate Ning Yingying’s worries. “Do ask beforehand though, I can’t tell who it is otherwise.” Ning Yingying doesn’t say anything for a second and then suddenly lets out a gasp of realization.
“Yes, yes I’ll make sure to do that!” She says, waving her hands wildly, throwing off A-Qing’s vision. “Is it fine if I walk you over to Banyue? By hand!” Ning Yingying clarifies the last statement and A-Qing nods her head, holding out her hand for Ning Yingying to grab. When she feels the grasp of the girl’s hand around hers, Ning Yingying takes this opportunity to drag her over to where the color guard is on the field.
“Banyue!” Ning Yingying exclaims.
“Oh, hi.” The girl replies, her voice is soft and A-Qing can only assume it’s Banyue. “Do you need something?”
“Actually yes!” Ning Yingying squeezes A-Qing’s hand for a second before going back to her conversation, “Me and A-Qing have been wondering who that new guy was! The one you went down to the field with, I mean!”
The other girl stays silent for a moment, most likely analyzing their expressions or something of the sort. Or if not, she was probably looking at A-Qing and looking at her eyes, looking at the white color of her pupils. She wasn’t unfamiliar with that sort of attitude towards her, but one look at the girl’s face and she can only guess that is exactly what Banyue is doing. Suddenly Banyue opens her mouth to speak, her unreadable expression quickly shifting into one of guilt.
“Yes, sorry can you repeat that?” She asks.
“I was saying that we were wondering who the new guy was!” Ning Yingying repeats. When Banyue nods, A-Qing immediately determines the girl had been staring at her.
“That was my friend.” Banyue says, “He’s a senior and I’ve only known him for a bit. Why do you ask?”
“A-Qing said-” Ning Yingying’s voice was cut off by the loud blow of a whistle. A-Qing flicks her head in the direction of the whistle, noting a figure in the distance with the whistle in their mouth.
“Was that Sha Hualing?” A-Qing asks. They had mentioned before that Sha Hualing had “borrowed” the drum major whistle, but not knowing what she looked like, she had no idea if the figure was actually her or not.
“Yeah.” Ning Yingying answers, her tone distracted as she looks in that direction. “You want to get closer?” Her tone quickly switches up as she focuses back on the conversation they were having. A-Qing nods, paying more attention to the pair of people crouching down on a section of the race track.
“If you’re going to watch, come over here now! The race is starting in a minute!” Sha Hualing calls out loudly, her voice echoing out through the stadium. Ning Yingying quickly drags her up to the edge of the race track, providing A-Qing with a clear view of the two runners. She takes one glance at the environment around her, noting a large number of students are spread out along the edge of the track, also watching the two prepare to run.
When Sha Hualing notes that the majority of the people have approached, she immediately starts talking again, “The race is going to go from the track down to the playground on the other end of the school and back. The first person back to this part of the track is the winner! I have someone by the playground to determine that you both have actually reached the point before turning around; no cheating is allowed for the race so remember that!”
She picks up the whistle from her neck, holding it loosely in her hand. “Is that a drum major whistle?” Someone asks.
Sha Hualing pauses, and A-Qing notes that the girl’s face shifts into a heavy glare at the speaker.
“Alright! Starting now if there’s no more interruptions!” She sweeps a gaze along the crowd studying the group suspiciously.
“On your marks…get set…GO!”
Sha Hualing blows the whistle again, signalling the start of the race. A-Qing can barely note the movements of the boys as they bolt out of site, disappearing from the stadium. Ning Yingying suddenly pulls her hand downward, “A-Qing, let’s sit.” She says, “It’ll take a bit for them to come back even at the speed they left.”
A-Qing follows her lead, sitting on the grass and making herself comfortable. Her clarinet is set down beside her as soon as she feels comfortable enough. She’d probably fucked over her lunch schedule by coming in early, having ate lunch sometime around 10 just to be able to arrive to the race on time. Dinner wouldn’t even be available till 16 or 17 depending on which one it said on the schedule.
She couldn’t remember what time it was exactly.
A-Qing glanced over at Ning Yingying who seemed concentrated on the entrance of the stadium as if someone was going to come out of there in the next couple of seconds. After sitting there for just a short bit, A-Qing grew bored of waiting in silence, everyone around her was talking and a couple of students had even started a betting circle on who would win and by how much. That plan came to an end when one of the drum majors came up to the group and asked them what they were doing. She could only guess it was one of the junior drum majors, because the two seniors were talking off to the side to someone else.
A second glance at Ning Yingying and she can see the girl waving her hand over to some other people. They were most likely in the color guard too. A-Qing leans onto Ning Yingying, resting her head on her shoulder, closing her eyes to let the rest of her vision fall to black. If the other girl notices A-Qing’s head on her shoulder; she makes no comment.
“Banyue!” Ning Yingying calls out, her voice becoming a hushed whisper as she considers A-Qing “sleeping.” “Banyue, join us over here!”
A long moment passes without any more sound from Ning Yingying, but she can hear the sound of grass shifting nearby as someone comes to join them.
“You’re Banyue’s friend right?” Ning Yingying asks suddenly. A-Qing almost opens her eyes, but that meant she’d have to show she was awake and aware of the conversation, and that meant lifting her head up from the comfortable position she’s set herself in.
“Yeah, I’m in the band this year.” The other person responds.
A male voice, though she’s never heard it before. It feels odd to her ears, specifically because she notes a light accent when he speaks but she can’t place it.
“Oh, you play the clarinet?” Ning Yingying asks, “A-Qing plays the clarinet too! I think she’s asleep right now though.”
A-Qing has to hold herself from reacting to this statement. If someone could fall asleep that fast, she’d envy them with every inch of her being.
She was not asleep. Not at all.
The urge to get up and look at the guy gets stronger the more Ning Yingying talks to him. Even if she can’t deduce his features that well, she’d at least be able to form an idea in her mind of what he looked like, and not being able to do that was driving her insane. The two of them began talking for a while and A-Qing began learning far more than she’d ever be able to if she had asked the person herself.
To begin, the guy was called Xie Lian. He’d quit band freshman year and decided to give it a shot again for senior year. His explanation for not showing up the first week of school turned out to be that his cousin hijacked his car and took it out of country lines, which resulted in getting his license suspended for a while until they could explain it to the authorities. A-Qing prayed internally to never meet his cousin, because every story, every explanation, every everything about his cousin seemed to get worse the more he told them about the cousin. He knew a lot of people through volunteering and even met one of his friends while working at a camp, so it wasn’t as if he’d spent the entirety of his summer sitting around.
Somehow there was no end to their conversation, and Ning Yingying managed to bring up a new topic every time they seemed to be nearing the end of their current one. She didn’t at all find it boring, she just found the chatter to be long and time consuming.
That was probably the whole point of talking. A-Qing wouldn’t question the method or manner if it passed time.
There was a loud yell from someone in the crowd, interrupting her train of thought. A-Qing jerked her head up, forgetting all about pretending to be asleep.
“They’re coming back! They’re coming back!” The person yelled. A-Qing focused her gaze onto the entrance of the stadium, trying her best to keep her vision clear. Two blobs of movement came charging into the stadium and Ning Yingying let out an excited gasp.
“A-Luo is going to win!” She exclaims excitedly, tipping herself forward to view the audience better. A-Qing shifted in turn, positioning herself to be more comfortable.
When the blobs approached the finish line, A-Qing noted the curly haired appearance of Luo Binghe as he skidded down past the finish line. Wei Ying followed quickly behind, coming to a stop right after him. The crowd bursts into loud chatter, exclamations of excitement erupting through the group as people start talking about the race. When the winner becomes obvious, someone curses about losing the bet and suddenly falls quiet again when the sound of a drum major approaches.
Ning Yingying lifts herself up from her seat, providing a hand to A-Qing to do the same. “A-Luo is going to talk to Shen Yuan first, so we can wait.” A-Qing grabs her clarinet from off the ground before the two of them get out of the way.
They stand off to the side, Ning Yingying having dragged her away from the chaos of the crowd. The ruckus of people is loud and blurry in her vision, and A-Qing can’t find a single face to focus on, so she shuts her eyes again, trying to focus on the darkness covering her vision. The ruckus only seems to increase with the passing seconds when one of the drum majors suddenly claps his hands together loudly.
“Attention! Band I want you guys to listen up!” He yells out to the group.
“Who is speaking right now?” A-Qing whispers.
“Mei Nianqing. If you look at the one next to him, that’s Jun Wu.” A-Qing nods, paying attention to the drum major speaking.
“I’d like to ask you all to get set into warmup block! We will be able to start as soon as everyone is set, and we’ll be doing some exercises to begin with. You’ll move off into horn warmups after this, so please be efficient with getting set.” Mei Nianqing announces to the group.
“Adding on to this, if you have taken anything from the drum major cart, please return it. This includes poker chips, as we are down quite a few and there will not be enough if you guys take home the poker chips after every new set you learn.” Jun Wu says, following along with what Mei Nianqing was saying. Clearly, the first remark was aimed at Sha Hualing, who had yet to take the hint to return the drum major whistle. She wasn’t sure about the poker chips though, perhaps someone in the band had an addiction to the poker chips and wanted to take them home? A-Qing wasn’t sure.
She looks over at Ning Yingying, “Can you help me set my place in the warmup block? I don’t know where I should set myself yet..” She’d had no problem playing in concert band, but marching band was going to be hell on earth if she couldn’t figure out an efficient way to memorize her sets on the first try. She didn’t hate marching band yet, but she knew that this was going to be the most packed month of her summer.
“What’s your number on the field?” Ning Yingying asks.
“C3.” A-Qing responds, dropping her hand from Ning Yingying’s grasp and pulling out her phone from its pocket. The big screen of her phone makes it easier to read things, but she still struggles largely with remembering the positions, especially because the field is too large for her preference. A-Qing passes her phone to Ning Yingying who immediately starts pressing a couple of buttons before pulling the app with all the field positions.
“Follow me.” Ning Yingying states, walking in the direction of the middle of the field. A-Qing quickly runs after her, grabbing her hand again as the guide. “10…20…30..” She can hear the girl muttering the lines of the field under her breath, stopping at the hashmark on line 30. Ning Yingying pauses again, counting the steps before finally stopping, demonstrating to A-Qing the spot.
They stop holding hands and Ning Yingying hands her the phone back.
“I’ll head to color guard now! We can talk at break.” She waves good-bye to A-Qing and quickly runs off to her position in the color guard. A-Qing takes a swift glance at her position on the field, noting that Xie Lian is standing on the spot that had been empty all of June. She puts down her instrument two steps in front of her, proceeding back to her spot and waiting till the director came onto the field. It’d be surprising not to know him, Lan Qiren, mostly due to the fact that Wei Ying had been yelled at by him a severely large number of times.
Including the fact that he was their only director.
The drum majors began the warmup block. This one was being led by Jun Wu, while one of the junior drum majors began walking down the stretch block, asking each of the captains if all their members were present. A-Qing fell into a quiet hole in her mind as she went through each of the motions, first stretching her right arm, then the left. They went through the motions again, stretching their legs this time, going front and back.
They proceed by stretching their legs on the ground. A-Qing’s limbs hurt as she does this, she doesn’t actually stretch or do warmups or anything like this at all, so she’s not used to the feeling. The entirety of it ends with holding a twenty second plank, which was a nightmare. The twenty seconds tick by slowly, and when they finish, she gets up with a sigh of relief.
She’d have to do this daily when school started.
That was going to suck.
Though the good news was that the director still wasn’t here. Or maybe he was caught up scolding a student, then he’d be in a worse mood and that would be even worse. A-Qing frowns to herself internally, and she starts wondering which was worse, Xue Yang in a bad mood or Lan Qiren in one instead. Xue Yang was a bitch already being in a good mood, so him being in a bad mood wasn’t that much different if she thought about it—
“Pick up your instruments if you haven’t already!” Mei Nianqing called. A-Qing suddenly flinches, startled by this and she quickly picks up her instrument, hoping she wasn’t the only one left who hadn’t picked it up.
“Face the south end zone, we’ll be doing eights and eights first.”
A-Qing takes a glance at the direction she sees everyone turning, quickly following seconds later. Eights and eights are the easiest thing for her to do. It’s taking marching steps forward, avoiding the bending of her knees and taking eight-to-five steps and then holding another eight. They do this for several yards, then they transition to backwards marching. A-Qing can only guess the size of her steps, although she knows she’s probably off when moving backwards.
Unfortunately, height is a major problem for backwards marching. Short people take smaller steps. Taller people take larger steps.
The majority of the band was well over one-eighty centimeters; it didn’t help her at all with recognizing people’s appearances. If they were all tall with long and dark hair… was there a requirement for joining the band? She’d have to check that later.
They do a number of exercises and A-Qing loses track of how many they do. The worst one is diamond drill because of the forty-five degree angle that she has yet to master. When they go through everything, A-Qing is thoroughly bored out of her mind. Doing this for the next, who knew how long, nine, twelve? As long as she went home as soon as possible, the happier she’d be.
The transition to music warmup is quick, mostly because of the drum majors yelling at people who walked slower than running. It was an exaggeration on her part, but she felt like she was running already just by walking anywhere. Her muscles were aching painfully as she got over to the south endzone, guessing her place amongst the clarinets by counting down the first two in the row. It’s easier for her to perform in music warmup, perhaps because it’s not the drum majors leading. Their ability to properly ease classmates into an eight a.m. rehearsal was fascinating. It should be studied.
The juniors were a bit more lenient, Yue Qingyuan and Lan Xichen if she could recall their names correctly. The seniors…oh that was completely different. Jun Wu and Mei Nianqing were friends, she guessed already before they became drum majors, and they were quite strict to practically everyone. Mei Nianqing, she’d never seen him treat anybody with anything but strictness except for Jun Wu, and Jun Wu was practically the same. Lan Qiren, despite being the director, somehow had a worse level of strictness, though she was pretty sure he was more polite to students who actually behaved (Wei Ying was definitely on the opposite end of this). As she’s thinking all this, she pretends to play her music, which she still has to memorize.
They play for a while, going through each of the warmup exercises. A-Qing plays through the first one easily, but in the others, she’s been letting her thoughts drift.
They finally go through the warmups and A-Qing feels a rush of satisfaction flow through her. They’d probably have to begin learning the sets, or at least rehearse the music or do something like that…
“Take five everyone. While we’re at it, can four volunteers bring down the stand racks? We need them for later.” Lan Xichen calls out to the band, well she thinks it’s him. She’s not sure. Some people yell out that they’ll get them, and quickly run off to the other end of the stadium and back to the school. A-Qing holds her clarinet in hand, hoping to get a drink of water before they begin working on their music.
As she begins walking off, she hears the sound of someone jogging past her in the opposite direction.
She’s confused at first, her gaze following the person. It looks like the senior that Luo Binghe mentioned, Ju something, if she could remember his name. A-Qing thinks for a long second, she couldn’t remember.
“Xie Lian! We need to talk.” He calls, his voice sounding stern. A-Qing hangs around for a second, noting the slightly blurry figures moving around in her vision. The guy grabs Xie Lian’s hand and A-Qing winces at the aggressive movement. Xie Lian follows him with a compliant motion and she wonders if she should interfere. It could be seen as an invasion of privacy if she follows them, so she opts against it. The best thing she could do was watch from a distance and make sure there wasn’t anything bad happening.
She walks off in the direction of her water bottle, shaking her head slowly, trying to focus on the break. If things went on like this for the rest of the day, no, the rest of the week, she’d end up losing her sanity.
It was going to be a long week.