"Elena?"
A young man blurted with a frown on seeing the young lady approach.
"She didn't come," she said with a strained smile.
At the top floor of the cafeteria, right by the corner next to the huge glass panels, sat the group. Right now they were only four, and that was including Elena who had just arrived.
"Again? Sighs, it's been months now, isn't this getting a little too old," said Jeremy.
"Give her a break, she was the closest to... him. It's only fair it would affect her more," said William, more brothered with his lunch.
"Closest? Then what does that make Sasha?" Jeremy asked with a raised eyebrow, and the next instant...
Thwack.
William, after slamming his cutlery down on the plate, turned a disturbingly unnerving stare to Jeremy, who instantly realised he had touched a sensitive topic and raised both hands in mock surrender, giving a harmless smile.
"Look, I'm just saying things as they are."
William kept the glare on him for a while, then proceeded back to his lunch without uttering a word more.
"Speaking of Sasha, where is she, and the others?" Jayden asked Elena, who shrugged.
"Training?"
"Wait, this is ridiculous. I can understand Diana and Sa-" Jeremy started but then felt an unsettling chill slide up his spine. "Um, I can understand Diana being the way she is because of his death, but Anabel? Angelica? And Violet? Now that's just nonsense. They don't even like Riley to begin with," Jeremy voiced out his frustration.
Ever since the death of Riley, which the young man would never admit had made him glad, things were never the same with the group anymore. Everyone was starting to get more distant, well, not everyone. More likely the girls, Elena excluded, and perhaps even William, who seemed more sensitive these days.
Diana barely interacted with them anymore. In fact, even in classes, they would find her sitting alone at that front row spot Riley had loved to occupy. The young man, due to his disadvantage with aspects, never joked with his studies. It was the only way to stay afloat and remain in the same class as Diana, the alpha class. After all, he could never be too sure about practical exams given they were never predictable, so he had to get as many points as possible. The first time he saw her there he thought perhaps it was a fluke, but it kept on. She kept going back there over and over again, and these days she seemed a bit... unstable, but that was in his opinion.
Jeremy had always disliked Riley, so much so that he never missed a chance to disgrace him if ever it came, and this was only due to a misunderstanding between the two of them, one involving a certain commoner who was Riley's roommate and on whom Jeremy had an unhealthy fixation. Castigating the young man had become second nature to him, and it was the very reason he had approached Diana trying to cheer her up, only to let slip the glee he felt knowing Riley was dead. In doing so, he saw a side of her he had never seen before, which, frankly, annoyed the young man. Diana had also agreed to killing Riley back then, so why was she acting as though it was their fault and not hers?
But that was besides the point. The problem was that Anabel, Angelica and Celeste, every one of them in the group, as well as Riley himself, had known they didn't appreciate his presence, yet they were now acting out as well. He could understand Sasha. The girl had always had a thing for Riley, something of a tsundere toward the young man, and given that he only ever had eyes for Diana, he had never noticed her feelings. But that was a different matter for the group as a whole. They all knew, even Diana. In fact, they had kept Sasha in the dark about the whole mission to eliminate Riley, and even on the day it happened she hadn't tagged along. They all knew that if she had, she wouldn't have let him die. So her hating them and distancing herself was understandable, but not so in the case of the others.
"Look," Elena said, leaning in a little more. "Riley was a friend, yes. He may not have been everyone's friend or a core member of the group, and we all knew the only reason he ever came our way was because of Diana, but even so, he was someone close, someone we all knew and had our own feelings about. So if they're acting that way, it's only because they know deep down that they killed a friend. That WE killed our friend."
They all fell silent for a while before Jayden spoke.
"How... long do you think it will take for everything to go back to... the way it used to be?"
"I... don't know... It might never."