Shizuka stretched at her desk in her dorm room, looking at the pile of graded homework assignments, the last the class had to turn in.  All that was left was the project, and then their final exam.  Shizuka had made herself an early dinner to help her power through grading the assignments, which she'd return to the class tomorrow so they could use it for review.  Looking at the clock, Shizuka saw that it was still quite early.  Leaning back in her seat, she stared at the ceiling, feeling that the semester had gone by rather quickly and uneventfully; her birthday having passed without much fanfare.  In her heart, she had wanted to meet people, but had been fairly unsuccessful and awkward, though she did have a run-in with the radio boy, Nick Weston.  Most unusually though, she had picked up a new hobby.

[hr]
Shizuka walked into the Lancom Arcade wearing a newsboy cap, a scarf, and her reading glasses.  She noticed after a few visits to the arcade that she stood out less if she wore her glasses.  She didn't need them to see, since she was only mildly far-sighted and needed the glasses for reading, but they didn't impair her ability to see farther away.  One might think that it was unusual for her to need reading glasses, since that was usually a symptom of old age, but if the eyes are a window to the soul, then maybe it made a bit more sense as Shizuka had an unusually old and traditional soul than others her age.  Yet here she was, surrounded by the trappings of modern culture, the noisy machines around her made with technology that was younger than she was.  It was weird and exciting; none of this existed during her parents' generation, let alone her grandparents'.  She found the gaming tables, taking a seat at an empty table, and pulled out her deck.  At the beginning of the semester, she had met two guys who introduced her to this collectible card game, Wizardry: The Collective.  At the time, one of them had lent her his deck to use, and it had been themed around the metal element, one of the six elements of the game, the others being fire, water, air, earth, and plant.  Probably because of that first experience, Shizuka had also made her main deck metal element.  Many who she had played against were surprised she chose metal, believing that her gender would make her choose a more 'feminine' element, as if elements had genders!  While female gamers were not super-rare, they were still a minority, and Shizuka could tell; sometimes desperate guys would approach her awkwardly, or else underestimate her skill, but it wasn't something that had yet gotten out of hand or become too much for her to handle.  Maybe she'd play a few casual matches and head home.