"Li'l bit," she says.

Class starts shortly thereafter. They're having some actual speaking practice with one another, and the teacher is coming around to correct pronunciations of particular problem words, suggesting useful phrases that allow you to pause for thought without halting fluency, useful vocab tips, that sort of thing.

The main aim recently seems to be fluency as opposed to perfection, which is useful if you actually plan on using the language, and if you're a perfectionist anyway, it allows you to be a fluent perfectionist.

Rashel still looks somewhat worried, though.

"He is probably just cutting classes," Kay says when the teacher is distracted, "no need to fret."

"Yeah, I know, but I have a bad feeling and my feelings… tend to be correct on things like this."

"You... starting to sound my great-aunt which is never a good sign. I mean," How would Krian put it? "do you have a reason for those feelings?"

"Probably somewhere but not like, an obvious reason that's telling me precisely why I'm feeling it. And I know it sounds crazy, but it works whenever I trust it and it feels like this and so I have just done that in the past."

She is fretting some more now. Because she remembers all the times when she hasn't listened to it and when she has and sure, confirmation bias, but ugh.

"I am sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?"

"I don't know," she says. "I don't think so."

She sighs. "I'll be okay eventually. I'll probably go see him after school," while he's not even at his dad's because where the hell is he when he's not at the clinic but oh well – "and that should hopefully sort things out."

"Do you want me to come? I promise to be well-behaved and only be menacing at him if he starts being terrible at you again."

"Nah," she says. "I'm not sure that would be a good idea."

Apparently all this talking – which happens to not be in the foreign language they are studying – has attracted the teacher's attention, causing them to be… well, just to be told to get back to work, because Rashel has a good reputation with the teachers.

The rest of class passes by without any major occurrence. At the end of it, Rashel grabs her bag and tells Kay she'll meet him in PSHE in just a sec – she's gotta go grab some stuff from her locker.

Kay waves and goes to PSHE.

Everybody else: is in PSHE!

Rashel, however, is not.

The bell goes, class starts, and Rashel is still not there. She gets marked absent.

"Huh... Weird, she was just complaining about Thar being absent," Kay comments to no one in particular, but close enough to Ev to hear.

Ev looks around at that, notices that Rashel is still absent, and frowns.

He seems to be doing a lot of that this past week.

Rashel, meanwhile, has decided that she's going to check some of Thar's typical haunts to see if there are any traces of a Thar.

One of these haunts involves his house. His dad is probably not there, on account of it being a school day.

She feels very weird not being at school. She doesn't think she'd ever just skipped class before. It's kinda thrilling.

Thar does not appear to be at any of his typical haunts.

When she tries his house… she actually doesn't get a response, which wouldn't be very surprising, but she does get a weird feeling.

She does.

So she knocks on the door again.

No response!

What about if she texts him? Any response then?

There is in fact no response! Not even a mostly inaudible ping from a phone that's not on silent mode, no siree.

… Okay, well then, she'll knock on the door to try to get his attention, seeing as he very definitely is in there. "Thar, I know you're in there."

What, no, no Thar in here at all.

… There might be a Thar over to the left of her, though. She seems to feel very strongly that there's a Thar over there.

She spins her head around to look that way, going that direction to investigate for the presence of a Thar.

… Nnope, doesn't seem there's a Thar over here anymore. Oh well.

Maybe she should go try the apartment again?

She looks around over here a bit more first, because she was really sure that he was here for some reason, but since that feeling seems to have deserted her, she does go back to the apartment, passing by a few other people on her way.

"Thar!" she shouts again, knocking on the door. "Come on, I know you're there!"