It took Cale over a week to recuperate. During that time, Julius would visit every day, bringing food and medicine with him. No matter how much Cale assured him that he was getting better and that he could get these things for himself, Julius would simply scoff in his face and ignore him.

Somehow, that only made him seem more adorable.

Cale blinked himself to awareness as he shook his head and pulled on the final layer of his uniform, stepping into the boots as he went to the door. He flung his satchel over his shoulder, opened the door, and left.

While he had diligently done all his homework and kept up with his studying as much as he was able to while stuck in his bed, he had no doubt that he had only fallen further behind. No matter how many notes that Julius scared off of his classmates, without the context provided by the teacher and class, they were next to useless. Studying them, in the end, hadn't done him much good.

He sighed as he locked the door and started traipsing through the hallways, on the way to the cafeteria for the first time in almost two weeks.

As he walked, he only passed by a handful of students, all of them going in the same direction as him. At this point, it was a small enough number who was awake as early as him that he could recognize each and every one of them, even though he had no idea who they actually were. They nodded to each other as they passed through the hallways, an unspoken agreement of leaving each other alone keeping them from making conversations. The sun hadn't even risen yet; the only people awake now were those like Cale, who valued studying over friendship.

That wasn't to say that they were rude, they simply didn't force themselves to make nice and distract each other from valuable time that could be better spent learning.

Julius wasn't in the cafeteria when he arrived, which was for the best. Cale had taken advantage of Julius to the degree that he wondered when the teenager had had time to sleep, and he didn't fault Julius for taking the time to sleep in. He also didn't expect Julius to keep him company when eating just because he had taken care of him and Cale had gotten used to it.

He clicked his tongue as he gathered his tray full of the breakfast that he usually enjoyed and that he had been robbed of for the last time. It was lucky that they served hot chocolate drinks, though Julius had told him that there usually weren't any left by the time the teenager got there. Cale though, early as he was, had never had a problem.

Going to his usual table, he sat himself down, putting his satchel sitting on the opposite chair and slowly ate his breakfast, savoring it.

His eyes drifted over the rest of the cafeteria as he ate, humming slightly due to the good taste. The breakfast offered by the school was simple but that didn't mean it wasn't tasty. His eyes shut as he could finally taste it properly, his appetite having entirely abandoned him during his illness.

"Puhh..." He put his hand over his stomach as he leaned back on his chair and stared up at the high domed ceiling.

He smiled. That was a good meal.

His eyes slid over to the old clock on the wall and he sighed. It was a little passed half to seven, which meant that he had over an hour until classes started. And the library opened at seven in the morning on the dot, every day.

Cale stood from his seat and deposited the tray on the shelves. He wandered back to his table and pulled out a book and a notebook, settling in to study until the library opened and he could move there. It would still be a while until the cafeteria filled up anyway, and this was how he usually spent his days.

Before he knew it, he looked up at the clock and saw that it was only a few more minutes until the library doors opened. He packed up his stuff and grimaced as the volume in the room rose higher as more and more people entered to eat their breakfast.

He left the cafeteria just as Sayer entered it and the two passed each other by, neither saying a word to the other.

Cale's lips twitched a little as he kept walking.

The library opened its large doors when he pulled at them. He went in and took a refreshing deep breath. Though it had hardly been any time at all in the grand scheme of things, it felt as though it had been ages since he had last been here. He found that he had missed it.

Cale waved to the librarian as he walked past her, and she nodded back at him stiffly.

Walking over to his usual corner, Cale unloaded his books on the table and sat down to really get into things.

He immediately started biting his lip in frustration.

By the time that classes started, Cale was about ready to set fire to something. This wasn't a feeling that he often had, but when every book he found on the subject simply informed him that an incantation was a phrase used to invoke one's magic, without telling him how it did it... well, it was annoying, to say the least. He wanted the actual science of it, he wanted to know why it worked the way it did.

Why the incantations worked in the first place. Somebody must have made them up, yet there were no mentions of that in the history or magic books. They were in the common language spoken in this land, but the books told him that in other countries, the same incantations were in different languages. So did it have less to do with the words themselves and more to do with the meaning of them?

Cale wasn't a scientist. But in the face of this mystery, he couldn't help himself. It woke his imagination like nothing else had since he came to this world.

Still, no matter how much he wanted time to slow down so that he could read all of the books he could see around him, time was a cruel mistress. What felt like only a couple of minutes after he had sat down and started reading, he looked up and was faced with an unsympathetic clock. It was time for class and if he didn't want to be late, he'd have to hurry.

He swore to himself as he quickly gathered up his things and hurried out of the library.