Linky's Fics

Take A Break

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Rinne stared intently at the pink liquid that bubbled in the flask. She’d been hard at work on her latest assignment for class. While she had a few days to complete it, Rinne wanted to get it done early. Though she’d been having trouble getting things right.

It was currently her third try at creating this formula tonight. Rinne was surrounded by countless books, both ones open and closed. As she kept making little to no progress on completing the assignment, Rinne gradually brought out every single possible book in the room that could be useful.

And as the count of books grew, so did her level of confusion and frustration.

She followed every instruction to the letter and made sure each measurement of the alloys used was precise. But this time was different from the rest. She didn’t expect it to be this color. It was nothing like how the book described, nor her previous attempts, which troubled her. Surely things would go as planned this time, right?

But there was only one way to find out.

With a wave of her hand Rinne’s ring shone, “As from the one all things are born.” The liquid began to bubble more rapidly. Which looked promising since the book said this would happen, and that didn’t happen with her two previous tries. Even if the color was different it looked like she finally completed this—

Only for it to fizzle out mere moments later.

Dang it.

Rinne was stumped. She kept getting something off with each attempt, but she didn’t know what. And what made this time worse is that she felt so close too… It was time to read up once again and go back to the drawing board.

As Rinne opened up yet another tome, she heard a familiar voice as the classroom doors opened.

“Still at it star-scholar?” Renge walked into the room with a plastic bag in hand from the convenience store. “Ya need to take a break, you’ve been at it for hours.”

She couldn’t stop now. Not when she was so close! “But I need to figure out what I’m doing wrong—”

“You can figure that out once you get some food in ya.” Renge took out some onigiri, “Here. It’s hard to do alchemy on an empty stomach.”

She had a point. There was no use trying to brute force things right now. Time to clear her head, as well as eat something.

“Thank you Icho-senpai.” Rinne took a bite, it had a tuna mayo filling. And it was quite tasty. She didn’t realize how hungry she had gotten over the several hours of studying and multiple failed attempts until she actually sat down to eat something.

It was a very thoughtful gesture. As Rinne thought more about how Renge made the effort to go out of her way to do this for her, it made a warmth bloom inside of her heart.

She had a small smile, “I appreciate you looking out for me.”

“That’s what a senpai is supposed to do after all!” Renge grinned, patting her on the shoulder. “Ya got this. I know you can ace this assignment.”

That warmth inside her only continued to grow from Renge’s kind words. Rinne truly was grateful for Renge, and definitely wanted to pay her back for this later. Perhaps they can go back to that cafe Renge showed her sometime tomorrow. She’d gotten better at giving the cashier her order without getting overwhelmed too.

But she’d have to plan their future outing later. She had an assignment to finish. With a renewed confidence Rinne was ready to give this another shot.

After she finished eating first, of course.

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