Getting Serious

"Bye! You can come tomorrow to pick up your motorcycle, seeing as you're going to have your hands filled already when heading back."

Seoyun hugs me one final farewell for the night before I leave off with the large bag. I've decided to take out the shoes form their boxes and place them into the large bag along with the clothes. It should be fine since they're still new. The photo book is also in there.

I would just crash at my place right now since I'm feel tired but I did promise Yuna that we'd train together. Letting out a sigh, I pull out my phone onto Kakao to text Yuna.

Minji: Hey, you want me to go to your place?

Yuna: That'd probably be ideal since your house isn't exactly the best place to be detonating spells

Minji: Right. That's true. I just came back from a party with Seoyun and Dahyeong so I should be there in roughly 15 minutes.

Yuna: I've dropped a pinned location to you. See you there.

I pull my phone away from my face and step from the path leading to Seoyun's house onto the sidewalk.

All I need to do now is walk the remaining distance to the bus stop, get in, and take it to Yuna's street then walk to her house. Not too sure how much this large bag is going to hinder me but I'll see. I kick at the bag gently with my knee as it hangs off of my elbow, watching it bobble about each time I kicked it.

~~~

For it being late into the evening, there sure were a lot of people on the bus. As soon as I step onto the bus, I look around me and count at least 10 people, if not, more. I guess no one wants to walk when it's dark out. I mean, who'd blame them? I wouldn't want to either.

I pull out my t-money card - the one Dahyeong got - and use it to pay for my fare. It'd seem unfair to Dahyeong for me to not use it and besides, the different coloured backdrop is always a good change.

Making my way to the back of the bus, I spot an empty seat and quickly take haste in sitting. I usually fall all the time whenever I'm not sitting on the bus so I won't make that mistake ever again. For some reason though, I can't tell if it's because of bad balance or absolute lack of ability to catch myself from falling.

Bus drives when it's dark out and all you see are houses and streetlights are honestly the best. The rumbling of the bus easily can lull me to sleep and the dark outside is the most calming thing to watch, I believe. The scenery as it whizzes by me is something that I usually can only experience while I'm on the bus. As much as people seem to hate buses and public transport, I just love everything about it.

I hear a ping, signalling to me that we're arriving at a stop. I look closely at the board that displayed the stop, only to be in ever so slight dismay as it was my stop.

I push myself off my chair and stride to the exit of the bus. Once the doors open, I, along with a few other people, begin filing off the bus. Without wasting any more time, I head for Yuna's house. I reach into my pocket and pull up my phone to check the adress Yuna sent me just to make sure I was going in the right direction. My proximity to the red pin was really the only indicator I needed to know that I was heading the right way. I decide to shoot Yuna a text to let her know I'll be soon.

Minji: I'm almost there

Yuna: Nice. I've practically almost set up the training area.

Minji: There's a training area?

Yuna: Yep. You'll see it when you get here.

Minji: Alright, fine.

~~~

I pull up to Yuna's house and scan my surroundings. The house looked like a standard house belonging to this neighborhood. It was made of wooden planks running up and down on the outside of the house and cobblestone for the small trim around the bottom edge. The house has a large field in front with somewhat unruly grass. In certain patches, it looked as if they hadn't received a cut in at least a year. Despite that, the grass looked healthy and no spots of yellow grass or bare spots were to be found. I find that interesting since my house can never seem to keep a patch or grass alive.

I reach down to the grass patch, feeling it. The large blades were soft to the touch and curved to a flat surface whenever I flattened them. I would continue to be amazed by mere grass but I have other matters to attend to.

I race to Yuna's front door and giddily knock on it. I guess some proper training to hone in on my abilities I unexpectedly received before is exciting for me. Some cluttering noises makes its way to my ears as I listen in on it all intently.

The front door clicks open and I'm greeted with Yuna's smiling face.

"Hey! Come on in."

Yuna motions her hand for me to get inside and I follow after her.

"Don't mind the mess around here. I don't live here permanently since my actual house is in the realm of enlightened so I have basically treated this house like one large storage room. Besides, I'm not the neatest person, though I'm sure you already know that."

I pause for a bit before lightly laughing.

"Ah. Makes sense. Also, I have something to ask you about regarding something that happened at school. I heard people talking about your incident during science class. I assume you used your powers on the splash of water, right?"

"I get it's a bad idea on my part but I really just needed the mark booster so I wasn't about to let my project die like that. Besides, meaningless gossip like that doesn't do anything to me. No one's gonna actually believe the fact that I have abilities unless they've been there themselves."

I bring a hand up to my hair and tuck it behind my ears.

"I guess that makes sense."

Yuna nods and leads me down a flight of stairs into a large brightly lit room. In fact, it didn't look like a room but a gym on steroids. Each and every wall in the room was made of this unusual stone that was surprisingly squishy. There were quite a few stations scattered about.

In one area, there was target practice where it was pretty self explanatory. Aim your abilities at the targets. There was a punching bag hanging in one corner with boxing gloves lying beneath it, as well as many standard exercising materials such as bars and weights.

On the other side of those equipment were sets of tables with books and pages piled on top of them, as well as cauldrons set up on each one with a bowl of unidentified sparkling objects beside each one.

"There are two main aspects to training. Usage in battle and utility use. Usage in battle is your typical and what you'd expect. You train yourself to be better in fighting. When it comes to the utility aspect of it, it's about mixing up power brews, enchanting gems, and creating and reciting spell runes."

I stare at Yuna with a blank look on my face, barely taking in everything. Not only things she just said but everything around me. It's all very new to me after all.

"Oh yeah, the ground is made of a stone found in the realm of enlightened. It's designed to be resistant to any sort of combat but soft to the touch in case an unfortunate event were to occur."

"Right..."

I wish that she would elaborate on unfortunate events but also not at the very same time.

"With all the introduction said, are you ready to start?"