#dcggersedge

●●●●● | ATTRACTION (zoo wee mama) ●●●○○ | AFFECTION ●●●●● | INTEREST ●●●○○ | LOYALTY ●○○○○ | TRUST

She whistles quietly as she approaches Nel, tapping the other woman on the arm with her wrist as she offers her one of the two champagne flutes with a smile - bright, but not put on.

"Sooo, how'd the outfit end up working for ya?" Nel looks good, in her opinion. The suit look definitely suits her. "Any complaints? I'll be sure to remember them for next time so we can find ya something better."

And now, the far less important but also still relevant question. Yunaka wags her eyebrows playfully as she lifts her glass. "aaaand, what does your date think?"

[ WATER ] - The liquid of life, the quencher of thirst. Served in crystalline glasses. And what’s more dramatic than throwing water at someone’s face!

"Hey, Ferdinand! You taking care of yourself?" Normally, the enthusiasm all the students have is endearing, but she doesn't wanna see them partying themselves to death either! She offers him a glass of water and gestures for him to take it. "Don't be enjoying yourselves too much, now. You know the monastery's gunna make you guys be the ones to clean things up after."

“Professor Yunaka!”

Ferdinand accepted the offered glass readily, though the moment her warning settled in, his expression shifted in a way rarely seen upon his face: genuine alarm.

“clean up… afterwards?” he repeated, as though the concept itself had only just been introduced to him. “you mean to say the monastery intends to keep us here after the festivities conclude?”

his hand, halfway through lifting the glass, paused dramatically in midair. somewhere behind him, the ballroom lights shimmered gold against polished marble, laughter still drifting through the halls in warm waves. and somewhere within that crowd—

his composure returned almost instantly, though not without a visible trace of distress lingering beneath it.

“now, ordinarily,” Ferdinand began carefully, placing a hand against his chest with all the dignity of a man about to defend his thesis before a royal court, “I would consider assisting with the cleanup a perfectly honorable responsibility. in fact, I have often done so willingly.”

a beat.

“however.”

his gaze slid briefly aside, suspiciously toward the ballroom.

“…surely exceptions can be made under certain social circumstances.”

he took a very deliberate sip of water then, as though it might cool the sudden realization overtaking him. oh, he had asked for it, had he not? he even did clean-up during Cupido Bash! for fun! oh... he really had asked for it. “it would be extraordinarily unfortunate if one’s dance partner vanished only to be discovered stacking chairs and collecting discarded napkins at midnight.”

then, quieter, almost horrified by the vision itself:

“saints preserve me. Dorothea would never let me live it down.”

"can you believe it, professor? apparently, that man over there" — she points her chin in the direction of the scout — "is going around saying that he's the one who discovered me. he didn't. it was manuela. and not only that, but she actually took me under her wing."

disdain colors her words , and dusts her expression like the finest pressed powder. dorothea then shifts her weight with visible exasperation.

[ GOSSIP ] - For those who don't want to be the center of attention, sitting on the sidelines and observing those who do is a time-honored tradition. Exchanging thoughts with another while doing so is a rite of passage for a student—it is a slightly worse look for the staff to take part.

Marni is only half paying attention to Yunaka's story. She honestly should be paying attention, because news reaches her slowest of all as a resident of Abyss. She should be paying attention, but there's just something weighing on her mind that won't go away no matter how long she tries to ignore it.

"It's not that I don't care about what embarrassing thing happened to the king of Brodia the other day," Marni cuts her off mid-story. "But there was this guy who walked up to me just before you got here. Blue hair, he was making that face Mauvier makes. You know the one."

She pulls out two lilies from her bouquet, uses the stems to mime eyebrows, and pulls an inscrutable, somewhat miserable looking expression. The stem eyebrows really add a certain je ne sais quoi.

𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐃 ♡ 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐄𝐄 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐌𝐘 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐒

●●●●○ | ATTRACTION ●●●●● | AFFECTION ●●●●● | INTEREST ●●●●○ | LOYALTY ●●●●● | TRUST

"A kindred spirit in many a way. Our meeting is both gift and miracle."

Azama gestures with one of the boxes toward Yunaka. An invitation... and a question both.

"Whatever do you think their logic was with this scheme?? Not just for a conversation piece...?" It'd be disappointing if so.

And yet! Surely it was not merely the handiwork of some bored lone thief. That many a box, if not the majority, have been said to have been found half full (or half empty if you're a silly pessimist)... it speaks to some manner of preplanning.

That said, curiosity shifts on a whim. Starry eyes crack open for fellow star-adorned comrade.

Alcryst thinks he'll always hold a preference for traditional paintings over photographs, but he loves the photo-artifex's ability to instantly capture moments of time. It's so satisfying to just point at something and have its image printed in seconds! He and Lapis played around with something like this many months ago, but he's overjoyed to play with the device's new improvements.