Neha’s office was the same one on the second floor, and Luna walked up the stairs with trepidation.

She still didn’t know the assistant super well. Their session last week had been relatively simple. Neha had apparently already looked at her schedule, and had given her a new one. Luna had stumbled through the conversation, still too dazed that something like this was actually happening.

This week she was ready to make requests and ask for changes. She could do this properly.

When she walked into the office, Neha was answering some emails on her laptop. Just like last week, a printed copy of her submitted schedule awaited her on the desk. And just like last week, Luna walked up to the desk, looked down, and saw that almost nothing was the same. Mentors in STEM was still there. She’d asked to attend office hours for her computer science class and that was still there as well, but everything else…

She felt the sting of loss, somewhere deep in her chest. There was a call with some of her closest online friends that wasn’t on her schedule anymore. Losing some time for reading was less brutal, but also hurt. She sat down heavily, and Neha gave her a chiding look. “Maintain your composure, miss.”

“Yes, miss.” Luna straightened her back and sat properly. She hid another wince at the correction.

“Now,” Neha continued, “it looked like you had something to say, miss.”

“I…” Luna worked up her courage. “I’d like to at least get a chance to see my online friends.”

Neha’s perfect, flat composure didn’t shift an inch. “You’ll have to beg, miss.”

Luna felt an ice cold shock run through her. “I’m… sorry?” She asked through sudden rapid little breaths.

“I’m not permitted to make changes unless you beg, miss,” the assistant said.

“How,” Luna licked dry lips. “How would you like me to beg?”

“I’m not permitted to give instructions, miss.”

Luna tried to calm her speeding heart. There wasn’t really anything else left to do. She wanted to see her friends, and walking out, quitting, was unthinkable.

She gently pushed back the chair, took a step to the side so Neha could see her past the desk. Then she lowered herself to her knees, leant forward, placed her palms on the floor, and begged.

“Please miss, please allow me to see my friends and have more reading time this week.” Luna’s voice cracked for a moment. “I’m ahead on my assignments, and it would mean the world to me.”

Luna looked up. Neha’s expression hadn’t changed at all.

“Sit back down,” she said, “that was acceptable, miss, so you’ll get your hour and a half to catch up with your online friends. However, it was only acceptable, so no, you will not get any other reading time, and you’ll lose one of your afternoon breaks to make up for the study time you’ll spend on discord.”

Luna hung her head for a moment, but recovered her composure and nodded. “Yes miss.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you today, miss?” Neha asked.

“No miss,” Luna said, “and thank you for educating me.”

The faintest hint of a smile penetrated the clay mask of Neha’s face.

“You’re doing well, miss.” She gave Luna the hand sign for dismissal. “Keep growing.”

Luna walked back downstairs and spent the next while sitting at one of the tables in the living room, working on her homework. It was almost a relief, a break from the intensity of the afternoon.

Becca and Claire had both left for classes, but Perse and Diana were typing away on the couch, with Diana’s calves sitting in Persephone’s lap and forming a table for her to write on. There was something possessive about the gesture, almost like the servant was being caged by Diana’s legs and kept in place.

Meanwhile, Riga and Arie shared opposite sides of one of the tables. For a moment, as she took out her laptop, Luna wondered why she hadn’t joined them. The thought had an obvious answer: Why would she join them. They hadn’t asked her, and she shouldn’t push herself on people.

They stayed there, working, only interrupted by a hand sign from Arie that sent Isabelle to the kitchen to fetch more tea.

Claire and Becca eventually came back, with Claire sitting next to Arie at the table, and Becca joining the developing cuddle pile on the couch. Claire leaned against Arie for a moment before beginning her work. Becca leant into Persephone and took Diana’s feet into her lap. Luna felt another pang of envy deep in her gut. She shouldn’t push herself on people. They’d probably talked about it ahead of time without her.

She focused back on her work.

6pm came around, and they collectively realized that they had the same 2 hours of free time. Arie took charge.

“Let’s all get dinner together? Somewhere that isn’t the cafeteria?”

“Ooh,” Persephone said, “what about Chinese food? We can do family style.”

Becca almost raised her hand, and Diana gave her an encouraging nudge with her foot. The quietest of them spoke up: “There’s a Cantonese place nearby, and someone in my dorm recommended a Szechuan place they liked.”

“I am not fantastic with spicy food,” Riga admitted. “So whichever one is less spicy.”

“That’s definitely the Cantonese place,” Claire said.

The group dragged itself off the couches and tables and grabbed their backpacks. Persephone got the name of the place from Becca, and Diana shepherded the group out the door.

Luna walked in the middle of the pack as they approached dinner and spent a moment just enjoying the atmosphere.

Claire and Becca were wrapped in a conversation with Riga, which meant that mostly Claire and Riga talked, while Becca listened and occasionally nodded. Arie was busy typing some kind of angry message on their phone on Claire’s other side, occasionally bumping shoulders with her.

Diana and Persephone, being the ones navigating, made up the front. To Luna they made quite a couple. Diana was just a bit taller, but they both had matching skinny builds. Persephone’s aesthetic came straight out of either a skatepark or a punk catalog, while Diana’s had a bit more of the Korean streetwear aesthetic. But both looked so composed, so put together, and somehow seemed to be doing so well with this crazy thing they’d gotten wrapped up in.

Luna just couldn’t imagine herself fitting with that. The way Claire and Arie had such an easy rapport only made it worse. Even Becca seemed to smoothly slide herself in, and Riga in the meantime had all the self assurance in the world.

The disgust for herself and her body, always under the surface, threatened to erupt. She took a deep breath and pulled herself together.

Just in time, since moments later they arrived at their destination.

They’d chosen the Cantonese place, which meant that Luna ended up being their designated spokesperson with the owner. It had all the right trappings for a good hole-in-the-wall family run shop, so Luna asked for recommendations and ended up explaining both her major and an extremely sanitized version of why they were here.

She hadn’t even gotten asked about her gender. Maybe she was passing better. And maybe she was doing better making her Cantonese sound feminine than she thought.

As everyone else looked over the menus, she leaned over to Persephone. “Thank you,” she whispered, “I think the makeup tips helped that go a lot better than in the past.”

Persephone coordinated the selection, then delivered order to Luna, who dutifully noted it on her phone before reciting it back to the owner. Luna added in an order of char siu bao, because she missed the steamed pork buns.

They made smalltalk about classes for a while. Riga’s environmental science class was having it’s first midterm next week, though since this was her sophomore year she didn’t seem overly concerned. Thanks to their mandated study time, she was apparently also ahead of schedule. Persephone and Becca were both struggling through physics requirements. Arie professed that college wasn’t harder than her private school, to a round of amused eye rolls.

By the time the food arrived Luna had relaxed a little. That the restaurant threw in some free potstickers helped as well. They ate family style at the round table, and more so than at any time in the last year, everything felt right in the world.

“Random question, but does anyone know why Neha calls everyone miss?” Claire asked.

“I asked Jacqueline about it at one point,” Diana said, “Neha is apparently under some very strict rules and protocols set by someone in Delta Sig.”

“Not by Miriam?” Riga asked.

“No, though the two of them are definitely close,” Diana explained, “Miriam definitely manages Neha, but I don’t think it’s either of their most intense connections.” She took another bite of her food. Luna marveled at how normal these sorts of conversations had become.

“Wait,” Becca interrupted, “she doesn’t call me miss.”

Everyone stared at Becca for a moment, who immediately turned beet red.

It was Arie who finally chimed in. “That’s because you’re an animal, Becca.”

“Arie!” Diana chided, “Don’t be mean to Becca.”

Becca turned an even darker red. Arie just shrugged.

Persephone chimed in to help. “Look, there’s nothing wrong with being a bit quiet, a bit like a mouse, and generally sort of a pet.”

Becca turned purple and buried her face in her hands.

Diana pulled Becca in sideways and wrapped her arms around her, and Becca sort of buried her head in Diana’s chest. Diana placed a small kiss on Becca’s scalp, prompting a ‘dawww’ from Persephone that the rest of their table mirrored.

Luna was distracted from the pinch of envy by Riga at the other side of the table, looking almost grumpy. Arie flashed the fellow minder a glare.

Luna didn’t know what to make of it, but that was sort of the point, right? Her role was to be passive.

She turned to Persephone instead. “How have you been doing?”

Persephone smiled. “It’s not what I expected to be doing with my freshman year, that’s for sure. But I like it.” Her eyes flashed briefly to Diana. “I like it a lot.”

She looked Luna up and down. “How about you? You feel… lighter than you used to. I still remember on day one you could have sank through the floor, you tried so hard to disappear.”

“It’s crazy how much has happened in two weeks.” Luna looked at her tea as she spoke. “I still… I still feel a little misplaced sometimes. But everyone here has been lovely, and I think I’m settling in really well, too.” Luna had no doubt that Persephone was making the same mental comparison to Claire, but neither spoke it aloud.

“You’ve gotten sooo much better at ballet,” Persephone said, “it’s been amazing to watch.”

Luna felt herself blush, and shook her head. “Noooo, you’re so pretty when you move.”

“My mom made me take ballet–like, actual ballet–for a year when I was small. I hated it. But it’s made all of this a little bit familiar.”

They spent a moment in companionable silence, watching Arie and Claire laughing as Diana told a story. Becca was still curled into the taller girl’s side. To their left Riga, the only one among them using a fork, was taking advantage of that fact to shovel an athlete’s worth of food in her mouth.

Luna turned Lazy Susan to reach the teapot, and poured both of them some more tea—Persephone first, then herself, despite their age difference. Persephone smiled, and just for a moment her eyes seemed to sharpen. Luna shivered.

There was another moment of silence as Persephone took a sip fo the tea, and Luna felt like the other girl was working up to something.

“Ask,” she said eventually. Her voice sounded meek to her own ears, almost like she was pleading.

Persephone smiled, and nodded in gratitude. “Why do you think we’re like this? Like, I’ve been doing reading on my own time, and I think I know what Miriam and co are getting at, and it’s definitely not normal. Do you– Do you think the trans thing has anything to do with, for you?”

“I…” Luna tried to find the right words. “I feel seen, I think.” She pushed a few grains of leftover rice around her plate. “I think I feel seen, and I think I feel like they’ll protect me. They…” How much did she want to say? “They did something early on that meant a lot to me gender wise, that showed they were paying attention. And it made listening to them and obeying them feel very safe.”

Persephone nodded. “I think… I think it’s a bit of the same for me. Not with the gender stuff, of course, but in terms of being seen. Something in my brain just goes ‘oh this makes sense’.” A slight pause. “I think the most disorienting thing about all of this has been just how comfortable it’s all been, just how much I like it–even when I’m being caned across the floor by an angry Miriam. It feels sometimes like I shouldn’t.”

“I think… one of the advantages of being trans is that I’ve already given up on being what society wants me to be.”

They didn’t get desert, out of respect for the submissive in the group who weren’t allowed to eat any. As they got the check, the conversation gradually devolved again. Riga talked to Persephone, Diana to Becca, Claire and Arie were lost in their own world as usual, and Luna was once again alone.

By the time they left the restaurant Luna felt the old melancholy overtake her again.

It’s not like everyone had coupled up. She’d had a great conversation with Persephone herself! And with others throughout dinner. But afterwards Diana and Persephone and Becca all seemed close, and Riga joined them as well. Persephone and Diana made up the center of that group, and just like always a moment later Luna watched as Diana poked Persephone, they shared a laugh, and then the four of them were talking.

She was the odd one out once again, and she wasn’t even sure why.

She snuck back into her dorm room, and cried into her pillow.