“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Anderson,” Yue said, bowing.

He could feel Viktor’s gaze on him and felt a little awkward. He glanced at him for a second as well, he was surprised. He hadn’t seen him standing or really for more than a second so it was a bit shocking to see that he was almost two heads taller than him. He was also very handsome. Yue wanted to sigh, a bit jealous of Viktor’s manly looks.

Mai nudged him a bit and grinned.

“Oh, so he’s the one who likes you..” She whispered in Vietnamese. 

Yue blinked a bit as he processed the statement and then turned to her with an incredulous look. They had talked about languages with the girls at the dorm and Yue had shocked everyone with the number of languages he knew. Since this included Vietnamese, Mai immediately started talking to him in a mix of English and Vietnamese just because she could. Now she was just using it to whisper secrets to Yue.

“We don’t know each other...I JUST learned his family name…” Yue murmured.

“Hehe, I’m just joking.” Mai giggled, getting the impression that Yue was just embarrassed. She would’ve teased him some more but her mood was instantly ruined as the rest of the students walked to the pavilion.

The chairs and desks in the pavilion all had wooden boxes with names engraved on them, each side had the name of a student. The professor would flip the box depending on the class he had, they were used to set up a seating chart and assign groups.  

Mai ended up sitting next to a girl with dirty blonde hair and green eyes. The girl’s clothes were formal and clearly European. It might’ve been because of her modest yet clearly luxurious clothes, but she looked younger than Mai. Neither of them seemed very happy about the group they were placed in.

Yue felt a bit troubled as he noted that his own name was nowhere to be seen in the names surrounding Mai’s. When he found his name he looked up and felt considerably more troubled by the person sitting beside him. Viktor was already sitting down and looking at him with his legs crossed elegantly. Yue decided to stay silent and just sit down.

“Your newest project will be to create an easy-to-use magic item that can create a tower quickly. This is an important topic, many mages are trying to figure out how to make magic more accessible to the general public so they can make their lives easier. I would like at the very least your idea by next week.” The professor said and wrote ‘tower creation spell’ in the air using magic.

“Before you go and think that this means you can goof off, I’m only going easy on you because of expedition training. If you do badly there and only come to me with an idea I’m docking your grade.” The professor warned and smiled before telling them to start discussing with their partners.

“Um...It’s nice to meet you..” Yue murmured, awkwardly.

“It’s a pleasure, I’m Viktor Ivanov,” Viktor said, continuing to look at Yue with his piercing golden eyes.

Yue didn’t really know what to say after that, everyone was really just talking about the projects but Yue didn’t even know where to begin.

“Do you have ‘insight’?” Viktor asked out of the blue.

Yue processed the words for a second and immediately blushed a bit. Viktor had seen it when he accidentally had a prophecy about him the day before. That would’ve been bad but it seemed that Viktor thought it was insight so he hadn’t been exposed. Not many people knew about what his prophetic ability looked like anyway so it wasn’t like he’d be exposed that easily anyway.

“Y-Yes..” Yue said, trying not to sound enthusiastic so he stays credible.

‘Insight’ was a term used to describe two things. One was the innate power ‘insightful eyes’, which was what Viktor probably thought Yue had and the other was the Legendary level skill ‘Insight’. Both allowed the user to learn everything about an object, place, or thing in seconds. Insightful eyes was an ability similar to Yue’s prophetic eyes because it could be used at will and randomly as well.  Insightful eyes always made the eyes glow when the ability was being used. Both versions of ‘Insight’ were rare but not as rare as Yue’s ability.

Yue did actually have ‘insight’, he had the legendary skill version which he had learned from his master. This version worked at will and was actually meant to fulfill the purpose of hiding Yue’s abilities. If someone saw him using his prophetic powers, he could hide it and say he was just using insight.

“So...I was thinking that we could use Archives to make the spell…” Yue murmured.

“That’s a good idea,” Viktor murmured.

Archives were in a way a record of magic, they allowed spells to be recast easily because they gave them a physical form. Yue had never done a tower-building spell but he knew the basics of it. His master would occasionally cast a similar spell when they were traveling and weren’t near a town.

“We can work out the basics today and work on actually making it soon,” Viktor murmured. Yue noticed that he seemed to be staring at something and turned to look in the same direction. One of the pairs seemed to have no idea what they were doing and looked like they were listening in on the conversations of others.

“What languages can you speak? Anything south Asian?” Yue asked, wanting to make sure their ideas stayed between them.

“I know Japanese,” Viktor suggested, looking over at Yue.

Yue sighed, he didn’t know Japanese, he never traveled to Japan. Viktor took the hint and snapped his finger, and suddenly a clear bubble surrounded them. Yue looked confused when he noticed it but when he touched it he realized what it was.

“A sound bubble...that’s smart,” Yue murmured, looking at the confused faces of his classmates.

“Well let’s plan this out,”  Yue said and faced Viktor with a small smile.

‘Well...Not everyone who has killed is a bad person…I would know...’ Yue thought to himself, relaxing as he decided to ignore his previous prophecy. He figured that by the time such a day came, he'd understand why it happened and be more sympathetic. They talked about their plan of action and decided when they would start actually making the item.

“Expedition training is probably starting tomorrow and going on every other day until next week so we’ll be busy,” Viktor murmured.

“Should we just do it on a day off?” Yue asked, looking up from the paper where he had been writing some of the specifics about the item they planned to create in Chinese. He faltered a bit as his face ended up close to Viktor’s.  Viktor was very immersed in watching him write down Chinese characters with a quill.

“Alright, just meet me at the library then. My manor has an area we can use.” Viktor said and met eyes with Yue.

‘Ah...Rich people..’ Yue thought to himself, having a manor in a different country was expensive, even the rich kids from the area lived in the dorms because building or buying a manor just to go to school there was too expensive for them. He was curious just how much influence Viktor had since he could afford a second home just for him to go to school.

“Okay..” Yue responded and got rid of the sound bubble spell Viktor had cast.

The sound bubble wasn’t a very difficult spell to cast and but not just anyone inside of it could easily dispel it even if they knew how. He hoped that Viktor and the rest of his classmates didn’t pay close attention to his abilities, a lot of the things he knew weren’t things that just anyone could do.  It would be hard for him to completely hide his abilities so it was good that many of the students looked down on him from the beginning. Viktor didn't look down on him at all though so he would have to be a bit more careful than he already was.

Class time ended soon afterward and the other students started to leave. Of course, William didn’t leave without saying something.

“How Lucky, Miss Yue got paired up with Viktor so she doesn’t even have to do any work..” William said and rolled his eyes as he snickered.

Yue for the first time in his life felt the urge to throw someone off a cliff as he heard this. His face probably showed it too. Viktor didn’t really care about what William said until he looked at Yue’s face and could clearly see the anger and hatred in his clear blue eyes. He decided to say something about it but his chance to reprimand William was stolen by Mai who stormed up to them and grabbed Yue’s wrist.

“You jerk!” Mai exclaimed right to William’s face before dragging Yue away.

Albeit small, the outburst shocked everyone, especially William who was appalled that a woman would dare to raise her voice at him. Viktor sighed and sent William a disapproving look.

“It’s a shame that you never learned to respect women.”