“Fourth floor dormitories, look at the directory in the middle of the main walkway. Next?”

“But—excuse me, I’m—“

“OK, you need to go to report to your classroom immediately. Your first class has already begun but since this is the first day for newcomers, your tardy will be pardoned. Look at the directory in the middle of the main walkway. Next?”

“/Excuse me/, ma’am, I’m looking for—“

“You need to follow that young man as well, your class has already begun too. See the directory. Next—“

“EXCUSE ME,” the small girl toting the box finally cried, nosing her way past some people and into the direct line of sight of the woman who was sitting at the main desk along with several others. It was the first day for new acceptances into Balamb Garden, and the school was in a state of somewhat orderly chaos. The receptionist women working at the front desk looked like they were ready to tear their hair out at the large group of very lost newcomers gathered around the desk like some sort of lost herd of cattle.

The small girl with the box had been trying to get someone’s attention for the past 10 minutes, but due to her lack of size and lack of gusto she had been effective overlooked each time. She had had enough. “Excuse me,” she stated in a less disgruntled fashion, “I’m lost and I need some directions.”

The receptionist looked at her for a moment, and the girl could almost see ‘You’re awfully small to be a Garden student, aren’t you?’ written in her eyes. She shifted her weight with the box. “Can you, um, just please tell me where I need to go to report for my dorm room?”

“Right here,” the receptionist replied. “What’s your name, honey?”

/People always give me annoying pet names because I’m so small!/ The girl thought, mentally stamping her foot. /Stop calling me stupid crap like that!/ “Quistis Trepe.”

“Spell that for me, honey.”

/Someone’s going to die./ “T-r-e-p-e. Trepe.”

“Ah, OK. Found you. Garden ID number 200167?” the lady asked, looking up at Quistis again with the same disbelieving look. Quistis looked at the small tag that had been slapped on top of her box by a Garden official and nodded, squinting at the numbers.

/I need my glasses! …Uh-oh. I hope I stuck them in the box!/ “Yes, that’s me.”

“You are…” the lady paused to read the computer screen in front of her. “Dormitory floor 4, room 51A. If you get lost, look at the—“

“Directory in the middle of the main walkway,” Quistis cut her off. “I know, I know.” She shuffled off, mentally repeating her dorm assignment to herself. /Floor 4, 51A. Floor 4, 51A. Floor 4, 51A./ She was still repeating it to herself when she paused at the extremely crowded directory to try and see in which direction the dorms were, anyway. Once again, due to her lack of size, she could see nothing save the backs of her new peers.

“Um, excuse me,” she said, tapping someone on the back with great difficulty. “Can you see which direction the dorms are in?”

The person spun and eyed her peculiarly. “You’re kinda—“

“Small, I know,” Quistis said, nodding with a sort of sageness. “But the dorms?”

“That way, white section,” the young man said, pointing to the right of the directory and around a circular walkway that bent around a large central fountain. Quistis nodded and shuffled her box again, thanking him and walking off.

Past many rapidly moving oceans of people and many immobile very confused oceans of people Quistis went, picking her way along and being very proud of herself that she only almost dropped her box twice. After walking up 4 flights of stairs, her knees and legs felt like jelly that had been left in the sun for entirely too long and was starting to turn back to a completely liquid form. The box was twenty times heavier and it was twenty times more humid out. Looking at the doors that went on either side of her down the extremely long outdoor hallway, she noticed she was only at rooms 1A on her left, and 2B on her right. She groaned. She trudged on.

By the time she got to room 51A she was sure that there was a group of older students hanging out around their door, snickering at her. Another older student who was sitting in his dorm with his door open grinned at her from inside the doorway and gave her a thumbs up. “Keep it up, newbie,” he said. “This is life on the top floor of the dorms.”

She looked at him for a minute wondering if he was making fun of her or trying to give her advice, but finally couldn’t tell and just kept on, stopping in front of door 51B and attempting to catch her breath. /Holy CRAP,/ Quistis thought, /I finally made it. Of course, my luck, I had to get near to the last freaking dorm on the very top floor./ Sure enough, she looked past her own door to see that there were only 8 more doors, 4 on each side. She looked back to her own door and attempted to shuffle the box in order to open the door, but couldn’t, so she knocked with the toe of her boot. She hoped she had a double dorm like everyone else and there was someone inside, so she could get in. Plus, she didn’t want to look like an idiot standing there knocking endlessly on a door to a room that held no one within.

After a few agonizing seconds, the door popped open and revealed a girl with a somewhat long face, and the tall and skinny body that went with it. She gave Quistis a grin and turned to look behind her, giggling.

“Hey, Adelaide—our new roomie is here.” She grinned a bit wider, turning back to Quistis and opened the door further. “C’mon in. We’re your roomies. I’m Dallelia, and this is Adelaide,” she said, indicating a girl with very red hair and very blue eyes sitting on a bed. Adelaide waved, and grinned as well, indicating the made bed next to hers.

“That’s yours,” Adelaide stated. “This one’s mine, and Dallelia’s is the one on my left. Just don’t get ‘em mixed up, OK? Oh, and don’t mess with stuff that isn’t yours. Those are the rules.”

“I—I thought the dorms were only doubles or singles?” Quistis asked, looking around unsurely as she set her box of belongings on her bed. She cast a look at the small, cleared table and it’s few drawers, and guessed that was hers since in was in the corner near her bed. A small window was above her bed, and there were two others above Dallelia’s and Adelaide’s beds as well.

“Nope,” Dallelia said, plunking in a chair by a small computer near the door. “Some unlucky fools get stuck with three other people. Imagine /that/.”

“In other words, there’s singles, doubles, triples, and quads,” Adelaide explained, uncrossing her legs from indian style and scooting to the edge of her bed. “Eh, we forgot. What’s your name anyway?”

“You’re…well, you’re pretty—“ Dallelia began, looking Quistis up and down.

“—Pretty small, I know,” Quistis said with a nod, rolling her eyes up towards the ceiling slightly as she brushed her long bangs back out of her eyes. “I’m Quistis Trepe,” she said, pointing to herself for some odd reason. “Um—what years are you guys?”

“Been here 2,” Dallelia said, waving her arm around. “I was a newbie last year.”

“Couple months,” Adelaide said. “I came with the first group of new people. There’s usually only one a year, I think. I guess there must have been a massive influx of people this year, though.”

“Yeah, it’s the biggest I’ve ever seen a new group,” Dallelia said. “Hopefully I’ll be a SeeD this year, though, so I’ll get my own dorm in the SeeD area. You guys’ll be on your own.”

Quistis almost bubbled over. “I can’t wait until I’m a SeeD! I’d be the first person in my family to ever even go to any sort of formal schooling whatsoever…” she realized she may have blurted too much. “…Oh. Um.”

“Wow,” Dallelia said, biting the inside of her lip. “Um, not to sound—like, snooty or anything—but you guys must have been like a lower class or something, right?”

Quistis nodded somewhat reluctantly. “Eh, well…yeah. There was 9 of us, including my dad. All my brothers and sisters only went to school for a year, but that’s just so they could read and write. I got picked and got to go through the Garden test—oh, my family was so surprized! No one in my family has ever even been /inside/ a Garden, much less attending one! I can’t wait until I’m a SeeD so I can finally maybe do something for my family.”

“9 KIDS?!” Adelaide blurted, and Dallelia had an almost identical reaction after Quistis was done speaking. “9 kids?! I have one brother and that’s too much for me! Do you get along with all those people alright?”

“We get along alright,” Quistis said with a shrug, digging her skinny fingers under the tape on her box, and ripping backwards toward her. The lid of the box popped open and Adelaide scooted closer to peer into the box with curiosity. “Well, except for when Keldis starts picking on Tuyeila—they’re twins—then my eldest brother Darren has to step in and break them apart—or sometimes Keldis starts picking on me or my younger sister Analdan, and then Tuyeila will break it up—or Darren—or dad—“

“OK, OK, stop it, you’re confusing me,” Dallelia said, waving her hand at Quistis. “I’d forget all my brothers and sisters in one week. I’d be like, ‘Wait, who are you again?’”

“We were together all the time,” Quistis said, “so forgetting each other’s names was unrealistic. I mean, we were basically living on top of each other.”

“You from here in town?” Dallelia asked.

“Yep,” Quistis replied, pulling a very worn and tattered looking book out of her box, checking it for damage, and then setting it on the small table she had decided /must/ belong to her. “Down by the docks. My dad’s a fisherman, and he works on a fishing boat. Actually, so do my brothers Darren and Mylon, so I ate a lot of fish at home.” She pulled a face and turned to look at her roommates. “Is there much fish served here?”

Dallelia looked at Adelaide with a ‘I don’t believe this’ look on her face. “…Well, um, no…not unless you ask for it…”

“You mean I actually get to /pick/ what I want for food?!” Quistis asked, almost dropping the small plant that somehow had managed to survive inside the box during her trek. “I had fish for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at my house!”

“Well, yeah, you get to pick what you want…” Adelaide said, “within reason, of course. There’s usually a couple of things to pick from in the cafeteria. But the hot dogs go fast. Everyone /loves/ those things. So if you want one of those, you have to wait in line or get there early, either. Or just be really lucky,” she said with a laugh. “So it sounds like this place’ll be a lot better than your old house.”

“It’s bigger, yeah,” Quistis said, rummaging in the box for something. “But it’s not better, I think. Well—I mean, it is…but my family’s not here. I’m so used to them being around it’s really bizarre not to have them around anymore.”

“Hey, it won’t be that bad,” Adelaide said, shrugging. “Some of us came from pretty far away, and left our families behind. I came from a small town way far away called Winhill.”

“I’m from Timber,” Dallelia said. “Not too far, but expensive for someone who’s making close to nothing. So yeah, you’re lucky. You can probably just walk down to go see your family. Adelaide and me, we’re not so lucky.”

“Plus, you got stuck with us,” Adelaide said. “We’re pretty nice people. Just be thankful you didn’t get stuck with those people who think they have to ‘initialize’ the newbies. It ends after the first month or so, and then everything goes to being cool. But the first month kinda sucks, so if people are picking on you, just tough it out and think that in like a month you’ll be hanging out with those same people.”

“Oh, well,” Quistis said, pulling out a very tiny picture frame and looking at it for a moment. “Here’s a really small picture of my family. It’s kinda hard to see, but they gave it to me for me to be able to see them all the time.” She handed it to Adelaide, who was reaching for it. Dallelia was moving from her seat to look as well. “I don’t really care who I hang out with. I could hang out with no one. I’m just here to become a SeeD and make something of myself.”

“Oh, that’s no fun,” Dallelia said, eyes stuck on the picture. “You’ll have to go to at least a /few/ parties. You can hang out with us, if no one else. And hey! Who’s /this/ guy? He’s hot!” Her finger jabbed at a young man in the picture, and Quistis leaned over to look.

“That’s my second eldest brother that I think I told you about, Mylon. He’s the other one that works on the fishing boat,” Quistis said. “I—I don’t see him being attractive. I mean, it’d be weird if I did since he’s my brother and all.”

“Maybe I do want to learn some more about your family,” Dallelia said, smirking. “Maybe even meet some of your family…”

“Oh, good lord,” Adelaide said, handing the picture back. “Dallelia, you’re going to drool all over the picture. Quistis, if that picture goes missing Dallelia probably has it—making copies of it in one of the instructor supply rooms.”

“Can it!” Dallelia hissed at Adelaide, whapping her over the head. “Bitch! I never said anything about it when you were drooling over that one guy who sat in front of us in our World History class. Speaking of classes—are you scheduled for any today, Quistis, or are they starting you tomorrow?”

“I think I’m tomorrow.” She reached into the pocked of her grungy old pants and pulled out a small piece of paper that had her schedule on it. “Um. I’m tomorrow.”

“Lemme see that,” Adelaide said. “Maybe I have classes with you! That would be so cool.”

“Well, then, be prepared,” Dallelia said with a dramatically serious-sounding voice, “for tomorrow is your first day as an official Balamb Garden student!” She made a gagging-self-with-finger motion right after her statement. “Lucky you. So no classes today…?”

“Um, no,” Quistis said, scratching behind her head and digging the toe of her boot into the floor.

“Well, then…let’s go do something. Our classes have been canceled today since the group of newbies was so big—all the officials are so busy! Let’s go…I dunno. Let’s leave. Actually,” she said, looking Quistis up and down, “let’s go get you some uniforms. They’ve probably got yours downstairs somewhere.”

“No, they’re here,” Adelaide said, waving vaguely. “They dropped them off last night.”

“OK, cool,” Dallelia said. “Why don’t you put your uniform on and we can go prance around and look for cute newbie guys?”

“Uh-oh, new victims,” Adelaide said with a snicker. This received her another whap from Dallelia. Quistis smiled.

“OK,” she said, having spotted her stack of clean uniforms and heading towards them. “Oh, this is so cool. I even get a uniform and everything! Man, I can’t wait until I’m a SeeD…”

I changed a few things, mildly. I have no idea what Quistis’ family situation was, and I have no idea how people are recruited into Garden. I’d have to assume that there was a regular school system besides Garden, because not everyone in the world is a mercenary, folks. I don’t know; the other details like dorms and newbie acceptances and stuff like that I just plugged in however. I don’t know how any of it’s done, and I sure as heck don’t know the layout of the dorms. (Since every time you go to the dorms, you just go straight to Squall’s…I made something up. Garden appears to have a healthy number of people, so I made like a gabillion dorm rooms. Heh heh.) Alright, I think that’s it. Amara, signing off…

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