Despite not yet knowing if she liked this girl or not, Jinny was intrigued. She had a sudden urge to play games of chance with Jinx, to experiment, to see exactly how her ‘bad luck’ worked and what it could really do. But that would have to come later. 

“Okay, I’ll remember all that.” She was going to have to check the calendar for the next Friday the 13th. Maybe she’d have to stay with Otou-san if there was one soon. As Jinx asked her question, not about her, but about her father, she felt a little annoyed. Of course she’d only care about him. Just like everyone else.

But they’d know [i]her[/i] name soon enough.

Letting out a little irritated huff, she decided to be honest. Maybe it would discourage Jinx from her dumb idea of intruding on their lessons. “Sensei is a great teacher, but he’s not nice. Like, I know he’s going it somewhat easy on me, because otherwise he’d literally kill me. But he’s not afraid to hit me when we’re sparring. I’ve never won, because he doesn’t mess around.” Something about ‘a hundred lessons in defeat’ or something. “Hiding the bruises and going to regular school was a trick.” But at least she’d learned the best places to hit someone and not make it show.

“Besides that…” She shrugged. “He does his thing and I do mine.” That wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t quite true either. Slade did leave her to her own devices more often than not. But he was also there when she had trouble. When one of her experiments had gone wrong and she had to work it out. When she threw her English homework across the room in frustration. When she had the usual nightmare and didn’t want to go back to bed. He was an excellent choice as far as fathers went. But she wouldn’t trust that knowledge with anyone. She just wanted to make him sound scary and cold. So she continued.

“When I said you can’t keep up, I meant that. I’ve been doing this since I was a little brat. You’d probably get hurt pretty bad. So you should drop it.” Realizing this was a bit more bitchy than she’d intended, she sighed.

“Look. I think I'm about done. I spent most of the day getting fucking stared at like a weirdo and I’m over it. So I’m going to give the bed a test run.” Jinny retreated to her own room, closing the door and leaning against it. So far, the day had been… interesting. But not all bad. Tomorrow was going to be the real test.

She got dressed for bed, crawling in not soon after and dropping into an exhausted sleep.

-

The next morning, Jinny realized that her suitcase had been dropped off at some point. Which was good, because she needed a fresh uniform. Half an hour later saw her showered and dressed, with her hair braided back as usual.  The necklace was still around her neck, and she hid it under her shirt. She peeked out of her room into the shared space, and saw that Jinx had get to get up. Good.

She gathered her things into a brand new purple backpack, made sure she had her keycard, and slipped out the door toward the cafeteria. The first class for today was open, reserved for testing purposes, and she wanted to get into a higher math.