Chapter 2.3 - High Hopes

*Warning – slight reference to mature events. Though after the last chapter you really should’ve expected it :P*

Chantia look at the sight in front of her just long enough to register what she was seeing before she turned around, both embarrassed and disgusted. She did not want to see that. Plumbob, she did not want to see that.

"Lock your damn door if you're going to do things like this!" she ordered disgustedly before leaving the room with flaming cheeks.

It wasn't fair. She was the oldest. She was supposed to be the first to sleep with someone, not Mia! But no, every single thing in Chantia's life Mia just had to do first or be better at! She was sick and tired of always being the loser!

For several days the atmosphere between the two sisters was slightly cold and tense. Mia was angry at Chantia for walking into her room without knocking, while Chantia was angry at Mia for one-upping her again. Their little spat continued until Cora reminded Chantia just how childish she was being.  

“So what’s up between you and Mia? You guys have been truly mean to each other for the last couple days,” Cora asked curiously at breakfast. Chantia shrugged slightly, not really in the mood for answering.

“She slept with Gary, and I walked in on them,” she mumbled into her plate. She could feel her cheeks flame up again at the memory. Cora choked on a piece of her waffle in surprise.

“She what?!” she asked incredulously once she got her breath back. “Gary? Sweet, naively innocent Gary?” Chantia felt her mouth pull with disapproval. Really, couldn’t Cora get the hint that she didn’t want to talk about it?

“Yes, ‘sweet, naively innocent Gary,” she snapped. “Except he isn’t nearly as naively innocent now, is he?”

Cora snorted. Then she started sniggering and eventually her sniggers became full-out laughter. Despite her irritation and anger, Chantia felt her own mouth corners pull up in mirth. Maybe the whole situation was funny. When put that way, Mia sleeping with Gary was actually hilarious. The guy was so sheltered he blushed when he saw cleavage. Him sleeping with Mia…it was actually funny.

“Oh Plumbob, I can’t stop laughing!” Cora gasped amusedly. “Do you think he actually managed to find the right place, or was he too entranced by her –”

“Cora! This is my sister we’re talking about! I do not want to hear about Gary being ‘entranced’ by Mia’s…I don’t know, whatever innuendo you can think of!” Chantia’s words set Cora’s laughter off again, this time joined with Tiffany’s.

“Oh come on, you have to admit it’s funny!” Cora protested. “I mean, let’s face it – Mia is hot, and Gary is not. I can just imagine him going ‘Oh Mia, you’re so –”

Chantia stood up quickly and slammed her hands on the table. She really, really didn’t want to hear that.

“That’s it, I’m out of here,” she decided and stalked off with a burning face, Cora and Tiffany’s laughter following behind her.

 She might not have wanted to listen to their speculations, but Cora did help her see the humour in the situation. It was time to get back at Mia.

Mia was sitting in the common room, reading a book as usual. Trying to act as nonchalantly as possible, Chantia joined her sister on the couch.

“So…Gary, huh?” Chantia commented lightly after a couple of silent seconds. “Was he good?” She couldn’t keep the grin off her face. Now that Cora had made her see the humour in the situation, she couldn’t stop finding the whole thing hilarious.

Mia snapped her book close before slowly turning to Chantia, staring incredulously at her sister.

“…What?”

Chantia gestured slightly with her head. “Gary,” she repeated, “you know, the guy you slept with. Did you have ‘fun’?”

Mia raised an eyebrow at Chantia. “Extremely,” she replied drily. “What’s it to you? Jealous?”

Chantia snorted at the thought. No, she wasn’t jealous. How could she be? Sleeping with Gary…there was nothing to be jealous about there. Yes, sure, she was disappointed that Mia got her first experience before she did, but really. Gary? At least Chantia knew she had better prospects waiting for her when she returned home. The only reason she hadn’t ‘been’ with Sam yet was because she was saving herself for marriage. Oh, they’ve talked about it, but Sam had been respectful and deferred to her wishes. She wanted her first time to be meaningful.

She shook her head in amusement. “Why should I be jealous? It’s Gary we’re talking about here. He’s got nothing against Sam. I mean, seriously, if I was to sleep with someone at least I know Sam would be able to –”

“Okay, TMI Chantia, TMI,” Mia declared, throwing her hands up into the air. “I really don’t want to hear about what you’re planning on doing to your boyfriend. Or just ‘doing’ him at all, for that matter.” Chantia broke into laughter, delighted at getting a rise out of her stoic sister for a change. Mia glared slightly at Chantia before returning to her book, but the atmosphere between the two sisters was as casual again as it had been before the incident.

 Classes for the new term started again, and before they noticed final exams were upon them again. Both girls passed with flying colours, graduating their degrees with highest honours. To celebrate their graduation, the girls went bowling with Cora and Tiffany for one last time.

The evening was fun, relaxing and satisfying. They talked and played until early the next morning, promising each other to stay in touch after returning home. By the time the evening was over, Chantia was relaxed, happy and smugger than she should’ve been.

Seemed like ‘perfect little Mia’ was quite as perfect after all.

Before the official graduation ceremony started though, Mia had something to do. Nobody was really surprised by the events, except the guy in question. As everyone had suspected, poor Gary didn’t even see it coming.

“B-but…I thought w-we had something special! I thought you loved me!”

Mia scoffed. “Love you? Why would you think that? It was just some innocent fun, Gary.”

He looked at her with betrayed eyes. “So what, it didn’t mean anything to you?”

Mia’s answer was short and to the point, and brutally honest. “No, it didn’t.” With that she turned around and walked away, ignoring the broken-hearted guy staring after her with a betrayed expression.

The next day was graduation, and with graduation Chantia received a pleasant surprise.

“Guess who?” a very familiar voice whispered into her ear. When she turned around, she could barely contain her shriek of glee.

“Sam! You’re here!” Chantia exclaimed and immediately threw her arms around him. “You have no idea how much I missed you!”

Sam tightened his arms around her. “Oh, I think I do,” he breathed into her ear. Chantia just sighed happily, revelling in the feeling of his arms around her.

“When did you get here? How did you get here?” she questioned him once she let go. Sam laughed embarrassedly at her question and gestured to her parents.

“I came with your parents,” he confessed. “They told me they were coming and invited me to come along.”

Chantia smiled happily and gave him a kiss. “Remind me to thank them later,” she murmured in reply.

Chantia used the time while they waited for the ceremony to start to introduce Sam to her friends. Cora in specific was quite impressed.

“Oh, I approve,” Cora informed Chantia, looking appreciatively at Sam talking to Tiffany. “Now that I finally met your mysterious boyfriend, I really can say I approve. Great catch girl. He is hot.”

Chantia just smiled smugly. Really, why had she ever been jealous of Mia? Gary didn’t even come close to Sam.

Dressed in togas and surrounded by an excess amount of ceremony, the girls finally received the physical representation of their success at university, graduating cum laude.

(Chantia clearly thought togas was overrated, since she never got into hers)

The girls would’ve loved to go home with the rest of their family, but they had several things to do at the dorm first before they were set free. With the help of their roommates, everyone cleaned the dorm for the next batch of students before saying their good-byes to everyone.

Gary was still heart-broken over Mia, so he deliberately acted like he didn’t see her, waving over her head at Tiffany and saying good-bye directly to Chantia while ignoring Mia.

“Awkward,” Cora whispered to Tiffany, who struggled to keep her giggles at bay. Everyone felt sorry for Gary, but everyone found the whole situation hilarious as well. Except Gary, of course.

It was with relieved hearts and high spirits that the girls finally returned home.

“You know Mom, that isn’t exactly the first thing we want to see upon coming home,” Chantia quipped smartly upon walking in and seeing her parents lip-locked. Gustave and Evelyn immediately separated, turning to the girls with broad smiles instead.

“Welcome home, girls,” Evelyn greeted them, welcoming them back with a warm hug. “I just want to say that I’m very, very proud of you girls.”

Chantia smiled in her mother’s arms. While she had gotten used to the continuous greyness of university and actually had had a lot of fun, she was still extremely glad to be back in Sunset Valley. The saying held true – there was no place like home.

The next couple of days passed in a flurry of activity. Mia officially became an employee at the Landgraab Science Facility, starting out at as an Aquatic Ecosystem Tweaker with an insanely high starting salary in Chantia’s eyes. Chantia herself applied at the Facility for a job in parapsychology and got the job without a problem. The Facility had a close working relationship with the Police Station regarding paranormal cases, so they agreed to forward any relevant cases to Chantia.

The next major change that happened was that Mia moved out of the house. She loved Evelyn and the house she grew up in, but university had given her a taste of independence and she was eager to continue that independence. It was with tears (both of happiness and sadness) that Evelyn sent the girl off, but Mia left with the knowledge that her family would always be there for her whenever she needed them.

Before she left though, Mia gave Chantia something.

“Here, take this,” Mia ordered and pushed the box in Chantia’s hands. “Inside is a special fruit called a ‘flame fruit’. I started developing it in high school, but I couldn’t manage to complete it until last term, with my professor’s help,” the genius explained. “If you use it in a recipe, the ghosts will be able to taste the food.”

Chantia looked up, astonished by Mia’s words. Charlotte had once explained to them that one of the things they missed the most about being alive was the ability to taste food.

“How did you manage to make this?” she asked with astonishment. Mia just sighed and shook her head.

“You should know better by now not to ask me those kind of questions,” she gently reprimanded. “You won’t be able to understand the answer in anyway. Just find a way to give these to the ghosts, okay?”

After Chantia promised to do that, Mia left the house, moving away to her own apartment. 

Mia’s request reminded Chantia about her friends, so she started making plans to buy the house on the hill, but she hit an unexpected snag.

“The house is already sold?! When did that happen? And who bought it?” she asked incredulously. She really hadn’t expected that to happen. After all, nobody wanted to buy a haunted house!

Sam shrugged slightly and took a sip of his coffee. “The Fenrir family bought it,” he admitted. “Audra, the youngest daughter, recently got engaged, so her parents bought the house for her to live in after she gets married. They don’t believe ghosts exist, so it doesn’t matter to them that it’s supposed to be haunted.”

Chantia gaped at him. For several seconds she was completely speechless. “B-but…the house…and the ghosts…they won’t be able to live there anymore if the Fenrirs move there! That was why I was going to buy the house!”

Sam nodded. “It’ll be the Newby’s, but yeah, I know. Anyway, I talked to Audra, and apparently she isn’t very keen on living in the house, because she believes ghosts exist and the whole ‘haunted’ thing is a bit of a negative thing for her, and her fiancé shares her views. So neither of them wants the house, but they can’t just refuse it for fear of insulting her parents, and they can’t sell it immediately either for the same reason.”

Chantia sighed and slumped in her chair, folding her fingers further around her mug of coffee. “So either way, I won’t be able to buy the house,” she concluded dejectedly. How could she have been so stupid? Just because no one ever showed interest in buying the house she had assumed it would still be available after she came home from university, even though she knew the agency had been trying everything just to get the house sold.

Sam smirked at her. “Not quite,” he disagreed. “As I said, Audra doesn’t want the house. So when she heard you do want the house, she agreed to try and get her parents to think about selling the house. So far they’re not convinced, but Audra is fairly certain that if you approach them with a good deal and a solid motivation for wanting the house, they’ll sell it to you.”

For several seconds Chantia stared flabbergasted at Sam. “You…convinced them to sell the house to me?” she asked incredulously, unable to believe her luck.

“No, we helped convince them to consider selling the house to you,” he corrected her. “It really is up to you now to close the deal.”

Chantia couldn’t help it. She launched herself out of her chair and threw her arms around Sam’s neck, thanking him profusely. He really was the perfect boyfriend.

The two of them spent hours discussing ways to convince the Fenrirs to sell the house, but in the end Chantia didn’t have to use any of those ways. She received her first job as a ghost hunter and ironically enough, her first clients were the elder Fenrirs.

“We don’t believe in this ‘ghost’ nonsense,” Sarah Fenrir informed her snobbishly, “but I can’t deny that strange things have been happening in this house. We’ve seen lights float around at night; just floating around with no apparent reason. At first we thought it could’ve been fireflies, but fireflies don’t get that big. It started happening on the last full moon and since then it happened every night. Now, I don’t care what it is, I just want you to get rid of it. The people at the Science Facility said it sounded like ‘wisps’ or something like that and said you’d be able to get rid of it.”

“Of course,” Chantia agreed. “If the lights are indeed will-o’-the-wisps, I can get rid of them,” she assured the woman. Inwardly, she was rather excited. She’d finally get to put her university training to the test. Little was known about will-o’-the-wisps, but they had been taught how to deal with it.

Sarah watched Chantia the whole time she did her job, making sure the younger woman didn’t break anything while catching the wisps. By the time she finished the older woman was grudgingly impressed.

“I suppose you know what you’re doing,” she grudgingly complimented Chantia before abruptly changing the subject. “My daughter informs me you’re interested in that house up by the waterfall. Are you?”

Chantia was slightly taken back by the abrupt change in conversation, but she immediately jumped on the opportunity.

“Yes ma’am, I am. That house holds a special interest to me, so –”

“Special interest? Like what?” Sarah interrupted suspiciously. Chantia bit her lip softly, thinking of a safe answer. Sarah was indeed incredibly sceptical, so Chantia had to approach it cautiously.

“Well, as a paranormal investigator, the house’s haunted reputation can provide me with valuable data. I’ve visited the house before and it seems that ghosts are present there,” Chantia answered cautiously, silently hoping she chose the correct approach.

“Ghosts don’t exist,” Sarah argued stubbornly.

“Maybe not,” Chantia agreed good-naturedly, feeling a bit satisfied when her answer seemed to take the woman back a bit, “but I can’t deny that paranormal experiences do occur there. There are many possible explanations for such events, and it is my job to find the correct explanation. That house holds an extremely valuable source of data.” Thank you Mia, she thought, for teaching me how to say simple things in an extremely over-complicated way.

Sarah just harrumphed.  “You can get your money for the job from my husband,” she informed Chantia and walked away with her nose held high.

The next day, Chantia got a phone call from the woman.

“§48 000,” Sarah declared the moment Chantia answered the phone. “We’ll sell the house to you §48 000. If you’re serious about buying the house, we’ll give you until the end of next month to provide us with the money. After that, the deal is off.”

Chantia felt her heart leap. She had the chance to buy the house.

Now she just had to get the money.

_~...~_

I had some crazy weird glitch at the graduation ceremony. First, Chantia never changed into her toga. Irritating, but manageable. Then, while everybody was in the rabbithole, Chantia graduated first, coming out triumphantly, throwing her diploma in the air etc. Everybody else was still inside the hall. Then, when it was time for the ceremony to finish, everyone reset. So everyone dressed in togas both graduated and didn’t graduate, since they had the option to throw their diplomas in the air, but they didn’t get the extra trait slot. I was so worried the girls were going to be stuck at uni forever. Luckily, Mia completed graduation when she returned home. So that is the reason Mia is in a toga in the coming home shot and Chantia is not.

All that time and effort I placed into Mia as a child and teen seemed to pay off. I allowed her to get a job before I kicked her out, and she started at level 6 of the science career. Now the rest is up to her.