Classroom Changes - Octavia - 4 - 1

The trip home was especially surreal.

It was late, Octavia was exhausted, and while she recognized the route home, so much had changed in the last day. There were still wrecked cars and debris everywhere. Some shops and buildings had smashed windows, broken from the inside to allow larger people to escape. Finally, so many people were now mythical creatures, awkwardly wandering the streets in the shredded remains of clothes that would never again fit them.

The train felt very crowded, but that was in part due to the fact that even the non-humans that were small enough to get on tended to take up more space due to wings, tentacles, extra limbs and tails. Octavia herself, normally feeling very large next to the traditionally slimmer and shorter Japanese people, found it a worse nuisance than usual to contain the sprawl of her limbs and tried to curl them up into a pile under her seat and on her lap. Luckily, Sato had found her a wheeled stool to use to help her move about, so she could get around without something as cumbersome as an office chair.

Despite her change, Octavia surprisingly felt like she stood out less than she normally did. It wasn’t that she was any less odd, just that there was more oddities going around to stare at. It could also have been that the events of the day did wear on her quite a bit, and she was too weary to notice.

The instructions of the white haired demon that had posed as a student also occupied a lot of her thoughts. Growing up in a somewhat religious town, she was familiar with the concept of greater beings caring about how she lived her life… but one actually telling her to do something was mind boggling. Octavia doubted ‘Starry-san’ was an actual god, but she could also tell that the lilim was nevertheless beyond her in ways she couldn’t even imagine.

Was ‘Starry-san’ watching her? Why did she care? If she didn’t pursue a relationship with Keito, would the demon be mad?

Still, Octavia felt it’d be quite prudent to put the problem off until tomorrow. It was very late, after all, and she greatly doubted she’d find her way into Keito’s good graces by bothering him when he was likely either getting ready for bed, or already sleeping.

It was almost eleven by the time Octavia finally made it to the walkup apartments she called home. The day’s events, all the emotions and revelations, had worn at her until her entire body felt weighted down by everything that happened. Her focus narrowed down to two simple problems, getting up the staircase to her apartment with her new body, and finding a way to sleep comfortably.

Octavia approached the stairs up to her apartment, wearily eyeing the suspended stairs that wrapped around the outside of the complex. Her new legs worked more with a reach, grab, and then pull movements, but the stairs looked like they’d be so awkward to get up. Octavia figured she’d have to…