Chapter 3: Green House

No matter how hard Eric tried to pick out the person who threw the ball with his eyes, his chance of guessing who actually threw the ball was close to zero with everyone acting oblivious to what just happened.

In the end, Eric decided to give up but that meant he was going to hold on to the ball.

"Let's keep going." He said to his brother before he continued moving forward, subtly shifting his gaze from side to side.

Just like the teacher said, their desks were at the farthest back, and they were wooden desks just like the ones everyone was using, well, mostly.

Their desk stands were made of sturdy metal to make sure they didn't break as easily and that was the only difference.

Eric picked the desk close to the window and made himself comfortable on the seat so Evan had the other one all to himself.

Once the twins were comfortably seated, Eric placed the tennis ball he was holding on his desk and began to twirl it with his finger.

"It matches." He muttered his gaze shifting to the girl sitting in front of him.

Something he noticed the moment they made their way out of the reception area toward the academic block was that the uniforms the students they met in there and the ones everyone in the class was wearing were different.

Instead of the red checkers and brown uniform, everyone in the classroom, currently other than them and the teacher, were wearing lemon green tops with bottoms that had a darker green tone.

Also, the only difference this time was that while the boys were wearing long sleeves, the girls were all wearing short sleeves.

"I suppose this is the main school uniform," Eric muttered.

The girl sitting in front of him flinched for a second there before turning to him, an awkward expression on her face.

"Um, hello." She said to him, raising her left hand for a subtle wave.

"Hello," Eric responded.

"Um…sorry about that." She uttered, bringing her gaze down to look at the ball.

Eric wasn't too quick to respond to that as he followed her gaze down to the ball first before raising it to face her.

"Did you throw it?" He asked.

"No, no, that wasn't me." She denied it instantly, shaking her head.

"Then, don't apologize," Eric remarked with a sigh before picking up the ball.

"Oh, sorry."

Getting that response, he let out a sigh before putting his face down on his desk.

"You must know who threw it then."

"Not really, but I know it came from over there." She responded, nodding toward the back seats on the last two rows.

The four boys over there were busy chatting like there was no teacher in the class, it was clear where most of the noise was coming from.

"I see," Eric muttered, his face still down.

"But you didn't see what I just did."

"Don't worry, I know."

"Oh, if you say so." She shrugged. "I'm Esther, by the way, but you can call me Chisom if you want."

"Eric."

Apparently, Evan was too busy chatting with the boy sitting in front of him to notice his brother talking to Esther.

________ _________

As anyone would have guessed by now, New Horizon was a mixed school, but it wasn't just any mixed school, it was a boarding school.

Further down, the compound, away from the compound toward the left, was the hostel buildings.

Two three-storey buildings, not exactly as large as the academic block but big in their own right.

To cut down the chances of any funny business going down on campus, both hostels were separated with quite a tall fence, and the entrance to the grounds was sealed off by black gates that only opened to those supposed to go in there.

The hostel on the left was home to the boys of New Horizon High School, and the one by the right was home to the girls.

To encourage community building alongside competition and teamwork, the students in the hostels were divided into six different houses, namely; red, yellow, blue, green, purple and orange.

For the male hostel, the red and orange houses occupied the two rooms on the first floor, the second floor was occupied by the blue and yellow houses and finally, the last floor was occupied by the green and purple houses.

Since they were both males, the twins were obviously going to be in the male hostel; their house was also confirmed during checkout.

It was pretty common to separate siblings in the particular school by putting them in different houses but per a special request, the twins were allowed to stay in the same house. Well, it's not like they were the first siblings to be in the same house, the request was just to make sure they weren't separated.

Moving on, the twins were informed that they were going to be staying in green house, and that was the reason why they were making their way up the stairs to get to the highest floor.

As expected, they seemed to be getting quite a lot of attention from the students currently going about their after-school activities, but none of them tried to say anything to them.

Most of the students were wearing the red checkers uniform but some were in sports outfits.

It didn't take the two too long to get to the highest floor, and after that, locating their house wasn't difficult.

Just toward the right was the room with the 'Green' tag above the door. Since it was to the right, the purple house was to the left.

There were a couple of students hanging out in the spatial corridor, some of them wearing green sports outfits, some purple, and the rest just the usual red checkers uniform but with shorts instead.

"Hm, I wonder why none of them are wearing trousers." Evan pondered.

"Ehe, there you two are."

The two instantly recognised that voice and turning to the entrance where it came from, they found a familiar face staring at them, a wide smile on his face.

Their classmates had acted like they didn't care about them after they took their seats but as soon as the teacher left, they instantly got surrounded.

The boy they were looking at now was at the center of it asking most if not all the questions.

His hair was shaved down to a low cut, and his skin tone was slightly darker compared to that of Evan.

He was still partly in his school uniform except that all he had on top now was a neat white singlet.

"Oh, it's you you." Eric sighed.

"What was your name again?" Evan inquired.

"Chima." The boy responded. "Chima Obasi." He added before turning away from the two.

"Hm, Chima."

"Anyway, I'm glad you two are in my hostel," Chima remarked before turning to the two with a smile. "I already have all your stuff in here, so let's get you set up."

"You have our stuff?" Evan responded, sounding quite confused. "Oh, right, the dude said someone had helped us carry them upstairs, so that was you."

"All I did was round some other students to do it, but yeah." He nodded before he began heading down from the left path.

The twins had already taken notice of this, but the room was quite the huge one with double bunks stretching down four rows except for the farthest or fourth left row, which was instead filled with single bucks.

There were quite a lot of students moving around in there, most of them wearing green sports outfits of different varieties.

All the bunks in the room were filled with mattresses for students in this kind of school, made to strictly contain only one person at a time. And beside those were cupboards of different sizes where the students kept their valuables.

Also, they had their boxes sitting on top of the cupboards.

It was stated earlier that all the bunks were occupied, but that wasn't exactly the truth.

Just toward the end of the fourth row, close to the last bunk, which had more than one cupboard surrounding it, were two empty bunks.

Besides those were two matching blue mattresses, two matching double-layer cupboards and two boxes that the twins recognised.

"There's our stuff," Evan said just after stopping in front of all that.

"As you can see." Chima nodded.

Meanwhile, Eric was busy looking around, and that was when he noticed something.

There were at least two single bucks at the end of the other rows, breaking the order of double bunks, and around those bunks, there was at least more than one cupboard, which wasn't the case for ones on the fourth row. Except for the one at the farthest end.

"You two are okay with staying together, right?" Chima asked just as he grabbed one of the mattresses.

"I don't see why we wouldn't be." Eric retorted.

"Alright," Chima said as he laid down the mattress on one of the bunks before grabbing the other one.

Once he was done with that, he lifted their cupboards and dropped them toward the end of the space created by separating the bunks with their backs against the wall.

"And that's that." He remarked before letting out a deep sigh. "You shouldn't need my help with anything else but if you do, I'll be nearby."

"Oh, thank you," Evan responded.

Chima responded to that with a nod before taking a step toward the bunk on the farthest end.

He stopped just after that first step to check the time on his watch.

"Hey." He said before turning to the twins.

"Huh?"

"How about we go grab something to eat? It's just about time for lunch."