Psync by Zile Elliven
Chapter Three
Eli
Somehow, Eli had managed to pare down his purchases to two large bags. He wasn’t made to let go of the large, fluffy blue pillow he’d discovered, which meant he was going to have to endure the dirty looks he got for taking up more than his fair share of the elevator. So be it, lady giving me the stink eye. My sister does it way better than you could ever dream of.
Since he was thinking of Juniper . . .
He juggled his bags around until he could use his phone to drop his sister a gif of a cartoon zombie dog rolling its eyes.
He smiled when she immediately sent him one of a busty, blonde anime girl giving the camera the finger. Then he saw the time and cursed. He was going to be late for his faculty event!
He raced down the hall to his room, staying only long enough to fling his purchases in the general direction of his bed before legging it to the center of campus.
He screeched to a stop outside the classroom where all the freshmen were gathered and did his best to make himself look like he wasn’t seconds from asphyxiation. Once he looked as normal as he knew how, he went inside and glanced around the room.
Alice was here! He hadn’t seen her or Nate since they’d rescued him from death by stampede, and he’d been kicking himself for not exchanging phone numbers.
He’d spent the past two days wondering if they were just being nice when they’d met, or if they’d also gotten the same instant friend feeling Eli had.
Alice spotted him, and her eyes lit up. “Eli! We saved you a seat!” She waved her hand energetically enough that Nate, who was sitting beside her, had to dodge to keep from losing an eye.
Eli hurried to the seat she pointed to. “Nate, what are you doing here? I thought you were a Bio major?”
Nate shrugged. “I already finished my faculty events, so I thought I’d keep this loser company.”
“Please, he wanted to see you as much as I did. I can’t believe we didn’t exchange numbers. Here, call yourself, I’m not letting you get away again.”
Eli took the pink and black phone shoved under his nose and dialed his number before handing it back.
A silver phone appeared on his desk. “You might as well do mine too,” Nate said in a bored tone.
While Eli did the same thing to Nate’s phone, Alice said, “Please, Nate, you’ve talked about Eli at least as much as I have.” She put on a much deeper baritone voice than Eli could have managed and made her eyes large and dreamy. “Oh Alice, do you think he likes Sword Art Online as much as we do? Because if he does, we could all watch it together!”
“I do, actually. It reminds me of an episode of this older anime I watched once called Tsubasa where the characters got sucked into a virtual world—”
“He watches CLAMP, Nate. He’s mine now.” Alice went to grab Eli’s arm but stopped just shy of touching and switched to squeezing his backpack instead.
She’d remembered not to touch him and had done it without making a big deal about it. Something inside Eli glowed warmly. For just a second, it eclipsed the ever-present emptiness inside.
Shortly, several teachers filed in and introduced the room to the various department heads in the program. Each took turns explaining how the first few weeks would go for various language majors.
Since Eli was specializing in more than one language, his course load was going to be heavy. Just the way he liked it.
“I can’t believe you, Eli.” Alice groaned dramatically. “Japanese is going to be hard enough as it is, why would you add more languages? Are you insane?”
“Well, yes, actually, but that doesn’t have anything to do with this. I just really have an affinity with learning languages.”
“Why are all of them from Asia? I mean, you are very, um . . .”
“White?” Eli wasn’t just white. He was burst into flames after seconds in the sun white—something his sister, who’d been blessed by the Cherokee genes from their dad, constantly teased him over. “I know, but there’s just something about Japan that calls to me. I can’t explain it. I’ve been into Japanese culture since I was little. I guess it was a gateway drug because eventually I fell in love with several other countries in Asia as well.”
It was one of the things Eli didn’t peer too deeply into. He tried not to look a good coping mechanism in the mouth. Especially one he might be able to make a career out of.
“Eli, do you know that guy over there?” Nate asked in a low voice as he pointed to a blond student scrolling through his phone.
“No, why?”
“Because he keeps looking at you.”
Outwardly, Eli smiled and shrugged, but inwardly he cringed. Then he took a deep breath. He was probably overreacting. He was probably, definitely overreacting. Just because he’d had a few mishaps in the past didn’t mean the phenomenon would follow him here.
A shadow fell over Eli’s desk.
“Excuse me.” The blond was smiling down at him in a friendly way. “Are you doing anything tonight? Because some of my friends are having a party and they asked me to invite people.” The boy put a hand on each side of Eli’s desk, boxing him in. “Your friends can come too.”
Nope. Not an overreaction. The Thing had definitely followed him.
Eli wasn’t a particularly impressive individual—as far as he could tell. Nothing about his looks, or abilities should have singled him out in a crowd, but for some reason, wherever he went, he had a habit of drawing unwanted attention. Since he’d hit puberty, he’d been the confused recipient of constant offers from strangers to hang out, meet up, have coffee, etc. But due to the Incident, Eli couldn’t bring himself to accept.
In fact, one of the main reasons he was so drawn to Alice and Nate was that they hadn’t invited him anywhere after they’d met. Plus, they’d seemed to pick up on his no-touching thing super quick, which was incredibly rare.
They’d also asked him all about himself and seemed genuinely interested in what he’d had to say. People under the influence of the Thing rarely wanted to know anything about him other than his number and when they could meet up.
Eli stood up and shoved his folder into his backpack. “I’m sorry, I have plans.” Avoiding the eyes of the blond boy, he hurried out of the room.
Heedless that he’d abandoned the event before it finished, Eli didn’t stop running until he’d left the building far behind.
✽✽✽
In the afternoon, he set out for his appointment with his advisor, this time armed with an oversized hoodie and sunglasses. He’d found the effects of the Thing could be mitigated if he covered up enough. It was easier to do when it was cold outside.
It was not cold today. No, it was a scorching 93 degrees outside, and the only concession he could make to the weather was that he’d picked a white hoodie instead of a black one.
He only remembered at the last second to take down his hood before the meeting with his advisor. He’d have a better chance of convincing her to give him his way if he didn’t come off looking like someone hiding from the paparazzi.
He knocked on the doorframe of the cluttered, but cheerful office. “Hi, I’m Eli, your three o’clock appointment.”
A middle-aged woman with long auburn curls stood and waved him inside, making the dozen bracelets on her wrist jingle. She reached out a hand bearing a ring on each finger. “Nice to meet you, Eli. I’m Beth.”
Eli only paused for a second before taking the woman’s hand in a brief handshake.
Wrongwrongwrong.
Ugh. Even braced for it, he couldn’t get used to the feeling of touching someone he didn’t know.
Eli put on his best business smile. “Nice to meet you too.”
“I’m sorry to call you here the day before classes start, but I couldn’t help it. When I went over your course schedule, I found a huge mistake.”
There was no mistake. And it was Eli’s job to convince her of it.
“If you looked at it at all, you must have been freaking out over it, but don’t worry, I’m here to help.”
“Help me with what?” Business smile stayed firmly in place.
Beth frowned at her computer and tilted the screen toward Eli. “Look at your course load. It’s twice what it should be. If you tried to do it all, you’d be burned out after a semester.”
“It’s okay, I planned it that way.”
“You—wait, you planned to burn yourself out?”
Eli couldn’t help it, he laughed. “No, of course not. What I meant was that I planned my courses myself. I researched the best way to get the most out of my time here.”
Beth’s eyebrows were almost touching at this point. It wasn’t the best sign. “Eli, I understand you’re a scholarship student, but you don’t need to push yourself this hard in order to be able stay. I’ve seen your test scores. You’ll still be eligible for a full ride with a lighter course load.”
Eli barely suppressed a groan. Why was he so bad at communicating with people? Especially ones who had the power to make decisions about his life. He needed his advisor on board with his plan. Otherwise, his life was about to get much harder.
Time to try again.
“I don’t think I’ve made myself clear here. What I’m trying to say is that I’m planning on testing out of most of these classes in the first week. I’ve been studying the languages in my major for years, some more than others, but I believe I’ll be able to test out of all the 101 classes and most of the 102 classes as well.”
Beth’s eyebrows softened, and she leaned forward in her seat. Eli took this as an invitation to continue.
“It’s my intention to move to all second and third-year language courses by the spring semester. In order to do that, I have to prove to my teachers I am proficient enough in each language to do so.”
“I don’t understand. Why didn’t you arrange this with the school beforehand?”
“I tried, but no one seemed to understand what I was trying to do.” He’d spent weeks on the phone getting shuffled from department to department—often being sent back to the same person who’d recommended him to the current one, trying to find someone who could help him skip this stage, but after two rounds of departmental musical chairs, he’d finally found someone who suggested he try a self-guided course of study. After a flurry of research, Eli had finally managed to cobble together his own Build-A-Bear style major. Complete with all the bells, whistles, and hoops he’d have to navigate his way through.
“I like your confidence, but I’m not convinced you are ready for this—that anyone is ready for this much work. Learning five languages and their cultures in four years is a monumental challenge, even by someone with your potential. I’d be remiss if I signed off on this without some reassurance.”
There.
Eli had been ready for this. Had been hoping for it, even.
“Then let me give you some. Let me prove to you I can do this.” All he needed was to get into the classes to be able to show his teachers he could test out of them.
“How are you planning on doing that?”
“Pick one of the languages from my schedule. Any of them. Then find a website in one of those languages and have me look at it. If I can’t understand at least thirty percent of what’s on the page, I’ll let you trim some of my classes.”
Beth studied him for a moment then nodded. “Thirty percent, bare minimum.”
She busied herself at her computer while Eli waited—mostly—patiently. Finally, she said, “I used Google translate to tell me what’s on here, so I’ll know if you’re bullshitting me or not.”
She turned the monitor and displayed the government tourist page for Hokkaido, Japan.
Eli was just—only just—barely able to hold in a squee of joy. It was easily his best language after English.
✽✽✽
Beth had conceded only after Eli had translated half of the Hokkaido Tourist website, as well as half of a Thai fluff piece on cats, most of a Vietnamese recipe for Pho cuon (which he totally cheated at because he’d researched it for his sister to make less than three weeks ago and was able to guess at what it said), and an article in Hindi on Holi—a festival in India—that he thought he’d mangled, but Beth had seemed impressed enough.
Now, Eli was practically bouncing through campus, high on his success. He officially had a shot at not being stuck in college for the next six years, which was great because his savings would never hold out that long.
Now he wanted to celebrate.
He could do something totally crazy like text Alice and Nate. Or he could be a massive dork and go buy himself ice cream and eat it alone like a schmuck.
His hand hovered over his phone forever before he finally sent off two quick texts and then shoved his phone back in his pocket like he’d done something illegal and wanted to hide the evidence.
He wandered by a small ornamental pond and agonized for about nine thousand years until his phone buzzed twice.
When he opened his phone, he saw that he’d only been waiting for four minutes before getting a group text from his new friends.
mAlice: Yes, please! Meet us at the duck ASAP!
NatetheGreat: She means the bronze statue in front of the big pond
He sent back a thumbs up and did his very best not to skip all the way to said duck.