Academy Life [3]

"Little hare!"

'You fucker...'

Having no choice, I swallowed my pride and answered weakly answered the roll call.

"Here..."

'Didn't he want to make up for the first day, where he got me to mentally blow up in front of my entire class?'

Spinning my thoughts, attempting to make sense of things, I inevitably arrived at what could only be said to be the bitter truth.

'Just like the principal, he doesn't seem to view the nickname as something negative, just an objective description of me. I don't think he was lying when he apologized to me, so that must be it. I will have to do something about this awful nickname before it spreads further...'

*Giggle*

A snicker quietly flew through the room. Tracing the sound, my vision arrived at Sarah who had turned her head back towards me. Once again I could see the strange desire in her eyes, her slits of amber filled with the need to pat the cute little hare behind her.

Suddenly the look in her eyes transformed back into its earlier form, refilled with the feeling of hostility and carefulness, and she turned her head back to look at Mike again.

"Today you won't be attending any courses. Instead, you will be choosing what classes you want to attend! I will also be briefly explaining some of the more intricate facilities that you will have access to."

Before he could hand out relevant papers, where we would make our choices, Suzuka raised her hand.

"Yes?"

Standing up, she stated her question with a hint of annoyance.

"Didn't we already choose our classes? I thought it was mandatory to register our courses before the start of the term."

Without needing to think about his response, our teacher answered.

"Because of some technical issues from the geezers, your course registrations have unfortunately been lost. Therefore you will have to redo it today, and how knows, maybe you won't make the same choices now that you have seen our different facilities."

And with that said he distributed the papers.

As I was looking at my different options, I had already decided before homeroom. I wanted to focus on my mana as much as possible, making me choose a mana manipulation course, as well as an elemental mastery class. For my three last combat classes, I had to choose martial ones, the reason being I was, after all, in the martial division.

General close combat practice, where Mike was the instructor, and dagger-mastery were no-brainers, but I had a hard time selecting my third one. A few weeks ago I had pondered for a long time, choosing between flexibility practice and strength training.

Even if it should be obvious for me to choose to increase my flexibility, increasing the number of moves I could pull off with my great speed, it was hard.

'I just want to get strong enough to be able to beat a girl in arm wrestling one day...'

With tears in my eyes, I chose the obvious reason, not letting my insecurities cloud my judgment.

'I will still have some free time, I guess. If I cut back on sleep a bit, maybe I can squeeze in an hour of weight training. "

Finalizing my choices, I put the paper down and looked around to see everyone waiting. Most likely they were waiting for our teacher to talk about the facilities, who in turn was waiting for me, the last person to finish writing.

'Seems like they all knew exactly what they wanted to practice.'

Then the gorilla started to loudly speak again.

"Now that you have all finished selecting your courses, let's talk about what the academy can offer you to get stronger!"

The digital whiteboard suddenly lit up, showing a Powerpoint presentation.

'Is this where he goes, "Welcome to my Ted-talk"?

Unable to hear my inner ridicule he started to talk about all kinds of different buildings and services.

"So first of all, and maybe most importantly, you will all get five hours a week to use in a time capsule. These five hours will simulate a total of 25 hours, meaning one hour, in reality, equates to five in the virtual world. As A-class students you have an extra hour compared to B-class, so that is something you should appreciate! Oh, the capsule will scab your body and mind to create an identical, virtual copy of you, and although you can't actually hone your magic there, all your skills and elemental affinities can be used. And as it is not reality, you can continue to practice without feeling physically tired or emptying your mana. Do be careful though. The capsules work by speeding up your mind, meaning if you spend too much time without a break your brain could get fried."

'That's amazing! 25 hours extra to practice my [Lightning Step] and lightning manipulation.'

During my astonishment Lindsey asked Mike:

"How does it work, what are the technicals behind it?"

Mike became silent. Slowly, sweat started to run down his forehead and he blurted the most scientific answer he could muster.

"Uuh, well you see... The electromagnetic mana pulses... does something with the brain and then it goes *peeeeeet* and *zoooom* and that makes it so..."

*Haaaa*

Giving up pretending to know, he sighed and told us the truth straight up.

"I'm sorry. Honestly, I don't know the science behind it. Maybe someone else knows?"

Raising his hand James took it upon himself to explain it.

"The capsule emulates a virtual world by utilizing dimension magic, through a combination of all elementals. Assisted by electromagnetic pulses..."

As James continued to speak, what I could only interpret as scientific mumbo-jumbo, I felt myself getting bewildered.

'How can someone so smart, be so stupid?'

****

After getting a brief explanation of some different practice tools. how the production center worked as well as what libraries are available depending on your chosen courses, I had made my way to the cafeteria. Standing in the line, surrounded by mid-riffs and chests, I could smell the amazing aroma coming from the kitchen.

'I wonder if it'll taste as good as when I ate with James, Sarah, and Brad...'

I had a feeling that even if they say that "company makes the food", it would still be amazing.

When I had gotten my food, after getting bumped a couple of times, I sat down at my usual spot. While eating the succulent rice and the spicy, but sweet, curry, I let my brain rest and my thoughts disperse for the duration of the meal.

'It's still delicious, just like always. Why would you need a personal chef when the cafeteria food is this good?'

Always having to keep my brain activated, to keep myself from committing mistakes that would make my future more difficult than it already seemed, had taken quite a toll on my psyche. Thankfully, I could relax during my mealtimes. Just enjoying the beautifully constructed meals at the academy was my eye of the storm.

Having enjoyed a good, I stood up to get one of my daily coffees. Turning around from the table, and taking a step forward, my visage was met by a squishy, yet elastic. sensation.

'Huh?'

....

Looking up, with my face still firmly planted in heaven, I saw the face of Sarah. Looking down at me with a dumbfounded expression, her mind seemed to have stopped for a moment. To be fair, so did mine, even if I had already to some extent tried to turn off my brain.

'So soft...'

Enveloped in her warmth and surrounded by her bountifulness, both of our faces started to burn. Time seemed to stretch. What should have been seconds, started to feel like hours. Then a bright voice brought us out from eternity.

"What are you guys doing?"

James and Brad had arrived, seemingly with the intention of joining me at the table.

Sarah and I quickly took a step back from each other and looked towards James with strained expressions. The flustered girl took the lead in explaining what had happened.

"We just accidentally bumped into each other! Nothing else happened, even if he is cute there is no way I would date a hare!"

....

'Who said anything about something happening? Dating? And isn't that a bit harsh to say you would never date someone like me?!'

A bit disoriented after Sarah's sudden outburst, complemented by the fact that I had gotten a taste of heaven, I tried to make sense of her words.

'Oh, she is into James, is she? That would explain why she got so desperate in trying to make sure he understood there was nothing romantic going on. Even if James is slow, I think he should be able to understand that there is no way something would be going on here. We have never even talked with each other, except for some sparingly said words two days ago...'

Just like I expected, James was completely befuddled by Sarah's outburst, but he shook it off and continued to talk normally anyway.

"No, never mind. Anyway, Miren! We thought about sitting together again today, seeing as we didn't meet at all yesterday. May we?"

'Didn't Sarah and Brad hate me? Did James force them to come along?'

And with that, I signaled towards the seat as a symbol of accepting his request. I would have said something, if not for the fact that I was still too flustered to speak.