Celebration (1)

"Soran! I finally found you! Why'd you run off like that?"

Art blushed and quickly pulled away from Soran, the warmth of Soran's breath and the feeling of his tongue licking his lip sending his heart into turmoil. He averted his gaze from the intense heat and emotion shining through Soran's eyes.

Sighing in disappointment, Soran too straightened up, and looked over the top of the bench behind them to see Lydia triumphantly sauntering over, causing a dark gleam of annoyance to flash through his powerful gaze. Thanks to the cover of the bench, Lydia had not seen the previous intimate scene, thinking that Soran must have leaned over to whisper something into Art's ear. Even so, she shot another dark gaze of warning at Art, promising that untold hardship would ensue if he continued distracting her Soran from her…

"Lydia." Soran responded coldly.

Oblivious to the sudden drop in temperature in the sounding area, Lydia moved to sit down between the two boys. Not once did a stray thought that she was clearly intruding rudely pass through her head.

"What bad timing. Art and I just finished our drinks, and we're now going to settle into our rooms. Maybe we'll see you later. Let's go Art." Seeing her overbearing actions, Soran no longer held back, and simply stood up and bade her goodbye in an overwhelmingly chilly tone, although this melted away with astonishing speed as he warmly called out Art's name with great intimacy.

"Y..Yes." Art stammered out, still unable to regain his cool.

The two quickly stood up and left, leaving an astonished Lydia behind, now alone on the couch. Rage and shame roared to life in her heart as she wondered how anyone dared treat her like this.

"I merely need to open my arms, and thousands of willing suitors would line up outside my door. How dare you, Soran. You should be honored to have caught my gaze… No… No it's not possible that he doesn't like me. He never treated me so coldly before. It must that stupid pretty boy that's always following him around… He must have played some dastardly trick on Soran's mind.

Lydia quietly spoke to herself, vehemently cursing Art's name as she remained there alone on the couch, wallowing in a mixture of jealousy, shame and hatred…

Meanwhile, Art and Soran were walking back towards the dorms. By then, most students had already settled their things into their rooms and met their roommates, and were heading down to grab a quick bite to eat before the welcome celebration later that night. A mixture of reverent, jealous and loving gazes were sent their way as the two walked together in awkward silence.

Art was still unsure of how to respond, and kept his eyes directed downwards towards the ground, looking anywhere but into Soran's hungry gaze. Fortunately, Art was saved by the usually pesky headmaster as a wind elemental suddenly zipped in front of them with a message.

"The headmaster requests your presence in his office, student council president." The elemental said with a buzzing, high pitched voice.

A couple of the nearby students gasped. They had expected it to hand Art a written message, not suddenly open its mouth and speak. It should be known that only high level elemental summons possessed sentience, and only peak tier elementals were intelligent enough to speak. It was a testament to the headmasters power that he could send one so casually to relay a message.

Art, on the other hand, spared no thought for this extravagant delivery service, and instead, muttered an awkward goodbye to Soran and beat a a hasty retreat by once again activating blink to disappear from Soran's gaze.

Reappearing outside the administrative building, Art straightened his robes and banished all the stray thoughts from his cluttered mind. He knew the headmaster would easily pick up on any oddities in his behavior and not hesitate to investigate its cause in hope of finding some sort of material with which he could mock the perfect Art.

Entering the administrative office, the attendants were clearly already expecting him as the simply bowed in greeting and motioned towards the central staircase that spiraled up to the headmaster's office. The eyes of all the attendants were unable to resist staring mesmerized at the view of his back and swaying hips as he gracefully went up the stairs.

The top floor of the administrative building was dominated by three enormous rooms. To the left and right of the stairs were an extravagant meeting room and a large business office respectively. In the center, opposite the staircase, was the door to the headmasters office. The words "Headmaster Keith Vernon" were inscribed on a silver plaque on the upper half of the door, the simple characters seeming to radiate a domineering, majestic aura.

Art knocked softly on the door.

"Old man, it's Art." He called out.

A dull thud sounded through the door, the headmaster likely having knocked something off his desk in anger when he heard the words old man used to address him.

"Hmph, ungrateful brat, daring to call I, the great Vernon, old."

Art casually strolled in even as Vernon continued cursing at him.

"You called for me?" Art interjected into the tirade of "smelly brats" and other profanities being thrown at him.

"Hmm... Oh! Yes, indeed I did. Just wanted to tell you that you will have to give a quick opening speech before the fireworks tonight."

A line of black sweat ran down the side of Art's face.

"You... I never agreed to this... Also why did you make me come all the way here for this when you could have just had the elemental say this to me? No, even before that, I clearly gave you my phone number, why send an elemental?"

"Hoho, too bad I've already told all the staff to look forward to your speech. As for why I had you come here, well I figured you could use a little inspiration from me for your speech. You can start off by talking about how great headmaster Vernon is and how we should be honored to learn under him and..."

"I'll be fine, thanks." Art interrupted and directly left the office, ignoring Vernon's continued ramblings.

Not wanting to see Soran's mischievous yet magnetic eyes again, Art decided to return to his dwelling on the mountain top and meditate until it was time for the celebration. Meanwhile, Soran finally arrived at the administrative building and was desperately searching around for Art...