It was lights out in the dorms. Well, fifteen mio lights out in the regur parts of the dorms. Our floor, overseen by prefed general pain Naomi Ratuna, had to turn lights off fifteen minutes early or face her wrath. We had some workarounds for this however that Naomi hadn’t gotten us for yet. Kalei did a trick she used at home to pe clothes he door to block out any light we’d make. Ohe shirts were in pce, she got into bed and started pying on her eGame 3.

  I retty beat and decided to sleep. I was usually the first to sleep tely, which brought out another part of my nights that was being routine.

  “Zeta, gimme?” Oka asked. She was leaning over my bed with her hands csped behind her.

  I got the reading app open on my phone and ha to Oka.

  “Yay, thank you!” Oka said as she shuffled back to her bed.

  “Better than that weird squiggly light thing you had for reading right?” Kalei asked.

  “Have,” Oka scoffed. “I’m not getting rid of my official Pajama Lara Butto Night Reading Nightlight. It just needs batteries.”

  Oka got fy in bed as I started to drift off to sleep. Some nights it could be a pain to have Oka and Kalei stay up ter than me, but that night I just felt safe and warm in my bs, ready for a perfeight of sleep.

  “Fang Fair’s tomorrow,” I mumbled as I got very cozy under my bs. It’d be good to get a long night’s rest before the big day.

  “Heh, Fang Fair,” Kalei said. “If you say it out loud it sounds kinda funny. Try it.”

  “Fang Fair,” I said. “Hahah, it kinda does, yeah.”

  “Fang Fair Fang Fair,” Oka said. “Fang Fair dang fair, heheheh.”

  “Dang Fair,” Kalei said. “Dang that dang ol' dang Fang Fair.”

  We were all giggling, which could be dangerous if Naomi Ratuna rowling about. I thought about what Naomi would do for the Fang Fair. Probably some super fancy thing. Lillia’s would probably be really good. Which had me thinking about our presentation.

  “Hey,” I said. “We did our Fang Fair presentatiht?”

  The sileer I asked that was not f.

  “….h-huh?” Oka said.

  “What’d you just say?” Kalei asked.

  “…We did our presentation, right?” I asked.

  Oka bolted out of bed and ran to the front of the room where we piled our backpacks and assigs and stuff.

  “Oh crap,” Oka said. “We have the cardboard foldy thing and…and that’s…that’s it.”

  “That’s it?” I said. “That ’t be right.”

  I was out of bed now too, and Kalei jumped down behind me.

  Oka and I shhh’d her, and she froze ih her hands out in front of her. We heard a footstep creaking outside in the hallway. If Naomi caught us then, we wouldn’t even have time to fix this. A few tense moments passed, and the footsteps tinued on. We all sighed in relief, then inhaled again in panic because we pletely blew off finishing our Fang Fair presentation.

  “OK, so what do we have?” I whispered. “Let’s quickly brainstorm something in case we really really have nothing. We could…” I stammered, then grabbed my tail, which was flig around from my sudden high stress level. “Tail…tails something…with tails, a thing about…i something…tail…tails!”

  “You wanna try that one again?” Kalei asked.

  “No.” I said.

  “You don’t have to brainstorm, we have a topic at least,” Oka said, sifting through the part of the pile for Fang Fair. “Which is moondust stones. In addition to that, we have a few rough he aforementioned cardboard foldy thing…an assig sheet that says we hree pages of stuff…”

  “And how much time do we have?” Kalei asked.

  “It’s…right away in the m tomorrow.” Oka said. "I think."

  “Why didn’t we do this?” I asked. “We had so much time!”

  “I thought it was month,” Kalei said.

  “I wao believe it was month so bad that I vinced myself it was month,” Oka said.

  “I think I just didn’t want to,” I said.

  “Well, whatever,” Kalei said. “We don’t have time to panic about this, let’s just get it done now. Each of us take a page of the presentation and an art thing. We don’t have time to think too much about it, just expand oline as much as you . I’ll take the first page, Oka the sed.”

  “Ahe third?” I asked.

  “Zeta…you go stand over there.” Kalei said, pointing to the general area of our beds.

  “What?” I hissed. “Shut up, I’m not gonna sit out of this.”

  “You’re just gon in the way over here,” Kalei said. “I mean literally go work over there.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, let me grab some stuff at least.”

  I kicked around in er of the school stuff pile for anything useful.

  “Hey, I have some art supplies left over from…something. Why did I keep all this?”

  “Who cares? You’re on art too, go,” Kalei said.

  With just a topioondust stones for each of us to take and somehow fill a whole page with, we split up and got to work.

  “We have to work effitly and quietly.” Oka reminded.

  Kalei and I nodded.

  I sat at the desk by our back window past the beds to write, and I filled my page with maybe too maences paring moondust stoo moonlight. After rewriting my page to look more artsy and foldable cardboard thing ready, I got to work making some kind of art piece of a moondust stone. By this point, I realized I had no idea what a moondust stone was. But it was too te for me to stop to check.

  The three of us worked through the night until sunrise, having some kind of pleted board. None of us were sure it was quality, but it was done.

  “Well, it’s done enough,” I said. “How much time do we have to sleep?”

  “…Forty-three minutes.” Oka said.

  “That’s like normal , how much time do we have to sleep in before this?”

  “…Twenty-seven minutes.”

  “Why is it less?”

  “We might as well not even sleep.” Kalei said. “Just muscle through and crash sleep once we’re done.”

  “I don’t think we really have a choice otherwise.” Oka said.

  This was my first all-nighter. I felt less tired than I expected, but I was still riding the anxious wave.

  “The key is to keep moving,” Kalei said. “I’ll go procure us some energy drinks or coffees or something. That is my quest. This questline is not as fun as the other new ones in Adventuring of Zup…but you get this great armor set if you finish all of the side quests on odd numbered days…”

  Kalei tio ramble about things from her video games as she shuffled off.

  “I think the ck of sleep is getting to Kalei,” Oka said.

  “I think she pys too many video games,” I said.