The door to my room shrieked open and it was as if I’d never been gone. My bag with books, the dark sheets on my bed, the shirt I should’ve thrown into the laundry a lot sooner.
A ball of fluff hopping across the floor and a slender figure bent over her desk, lost in her books. She looked so concentrated, so beautiful, it was almost a crime to disturb her.
A lump formed in my throat, but I quickly swallowed it away. I couldn’t be thinking those kind of things, I shouldn’t be.
The door fell shut behind me, the sound barely registering.
“Ylva?” Ryoko’s warm voice washed over me as she turned to face me. It was the sight of her that settled my worries that I was really back. Not the mosaic glass-stained windows, not the walk through the long corridor, not the Valkyrie dormitories. Those
