Hikaru Hiyama was good at a number of things. Dealing with the stress of a new environment wasn't one of them.
It had been a long journey here, to begin with. He had traveled by mundane means; a trip through the Otherworld might be much faster, but also more dangerous than the good old-fashioned airplane, and only very experienced mages dared use it for intercontinental travel. This, of course, had meant navigating through the crowded maze of Narita Airport alone, a seemingly endless flight with little leg room and a crying baby that had nearly sent him into a breakdown, and ages of security checks when all he had wanted to do was get to his dorm room and sleep for a week.
That had been on the weekend. By now he had minimized his jet lag through a mixture of magic and well-timed sleep, but that didn't mean he was energized enough for a whole row of new impressions and experiences.
The teachers and school staff, thankfully, hadn't made too much of a fuss about his arrival. That was the good part. The less good part was that schools in this country worked very, very differently from schools at home. Hikaru flat-out refused to comprehend why students had to go to a different classroom for each class, let alone why they couldn't have every subject with the same group of people. Instead of memorizing a single group of thirty-ish people and being done with it, Hikaru had run into at least a hundred classmates on his first day alone.
Classes themselves worked differently, too. There was a lot more group work, and by the time lunch break rolled around the sound of human voices felt like nails on a chalkboard in Hikaru's ears. Before anyone could drag him into the cafeteria and subject him to more chatter, he escaped to the bathroom and gulped down his lunch with only his noise-canceling headphones keeping him sane.
Afternoon classes were a bit more tolerable, mostly because his classmates were too tired to all keep talking at the same time. And yet Hikaru couldn't feel fully relaxed until he was out of class and made his way to the one and only reason why he had come here at all.
The flying grounds stretched out empty and inviting in front of him, the sky bright blue, the only sound the clear autumn breeze in his ears. Hikaru took a deep breath, and the stress fell off his shoulders. It was a beautiful day, it was perfect for flying, and for the first time since this morning he was completely, truly alone.
Excitement pulsing, he changed into his racing equipment and borrowed one of the brooms from the storage room. Technically he should wear a helmet, but since he couldn't find one that fit him, he chose not to bother with it. He simply needed to be careful enough not to crash.
Taking his broomstick in his right hand, he ran and kicked off, swinging himself onto the broom in an easy, well-practiced motion. The grassy ground dwindled away underneath him, and the school building shrank, all the stress and all the noises tiny and distant like a toy landscape.
The air was clear. Hikaru drank it like water, twirling higher and higher into the skies. Little by little his broom sped up, obeying every nudge and command of his mind, every tiny shift of his weight. Hikaru leaned forward, pressing his body close to the broomstick to reduce air resistance, and the broom shot forward like an arrow released from the bow. Wind slapped into his face, tugging and tearing at his hair. He drove the broom forward, faster and faster, bright, glowing threads of excitement coursing through his veins and the metal underneath him. The first obstacle in the course approached, a simple ring to fly through, and Hikaru shot through it. The world blurred together. The only thing Hikaru saw were the obstacles, driving through them all with a glowing smile on his face.
Finally he landed, flushed and breathless, and the world moved into focus again. There was a buzz from the stopwatch that automatically went off each time someone took the obstacle course, but Hikaru didn't bother looking at it. He had flown this round for fun, not as a speed exercise, and numbers didn't matter to him today.
"Hey, you!"
Hikaru turned, abruptly realizing that he wasn't alone. At some point during his flight a stranger had joined him, a boy about his own age who was glaring at him in obvious distaste.
"Yeah, you," the boy said, planting himself squarely in front of Hikaru and blocking his way. "What do you think you're doing here? This place belongs to the flying team, it's not some public playground!"
Hikaru's mind, which had relaxed during his flight, snapped back into full attention mode. Furrowing his brow, he eyed the stranger from head to toe, wondering how to react to him.
He looked, Hikaru thought, very much like people at home imagined all Westerners to look. There was the artfully messy blond hair, the large bright eyes, the prominent features; in fact, the only thing missing from the cliché was his height. This boy was only a few centimeters taller than Hikaru himself, who was rapidly approaching one hundred and seventy.
What he did obviously have, however, was money. Even if his tone hadn’t been enough to spell out spoiled princeling in big bold letters, the subtle brand logos on all his clothes would have tipped him off at once.
Hikaru disliked him on sight.
"Sorry," he said coolly, trying to step past the stranger. "I didn't know."
The boy blocked his way, trying his best to tower above him with the minimal height advantage he had. "You just walk on other people's territory and don't even ask?" he said sharply. "And what about your broom, did you borrow that without asking too?"
Hikaru said nothing. If he opened his mouth here, he would say something horribly rude for sure, and the last thing he needed was to get into a fight.
"Huh? Did you? That's interesting." The boy leaned all up in his face, making Hikaru take an awkward step back. "How about I go and tell everyone about it, huh? And that you were flying without a helmet too?" His pretty face contorted into a mocking smirk. "I could do that, you know. Got any reasons why I shouldn't?"
Swallowing more rude comments, Hikaru demonstratively turned away. Maybe, he thought, if he ignored this guy long enough, he would eventually leave him alone.
But the stranger, it seemed, wasn't so easy to shake off. "No reasons?" he sneered. "So I can go and ruin your start here, right? Just like that?" Snorting, he stepped past Hikaru, his chin stuck high into the air. "I didn't think you'd be that boring."
Following a sudden impulse, Hikaru waved a hand and used the strands of emotion around them to make him trip on air.
The boy fell forward, catching himself on his hands and knees with a curse. But when he turned around, there was a grim sort of glee on his face. "Now we're talking," he said. "Maybe I should keep threatening you till you explain to me how you cheated to get that result."
Following his pointed finger with his gaze, Hikaru glanced at the time on the screen. It was indeed one of his better times, though by no means a record.
"I didn't cheat," he said.
The boy barked a short laugh. "Yeah, right!" he said. "I'm the fastest guy on this team, and I've been trying for months to get this fast. What trick did you use to get this fast, huh? If you tell me, maybe we can still get along."
He sure talked a lot, Hikaru thought. Annoyance twitched through him. He had already listened to too many human voices today; the last thing he needed was to listen to this baby villain wannabe in a language he was fluent in, but by no means native. His brain was low enough on battery as things were.
"I didn't use a trick," he said flatly, pinning down the boy's gaze with his own. "If you want to get better, stop threatening people and practice."
With that he headed for the storage room and left, leaving a fuming stranger behind.
~ ~ ~
Too slow.
Gritting his teeth, Finnian threw a punch against the big screen of the stopwatch. Too slow. Again. Why couldn't he do it? He was doing everything that exchange student bastard had done, and he still wasn't getting faster. Why couldn't he reach that guy's time? What the hell did this stranger have that he didn't?
That guy…Conflicting emotions boiled up in Finnian's veins, and none of them were good. He had to be cheating, he had to. He had probably manipulated his broom somehow, and that was the only reason why he had beaten Finnian's time. Finnian was an outstanding flyer, one of the best in his generation, a rising star on the broom-racing sky. He couldn't just stand there and take a defeat from a random stranger he had never seen before.
The sun was setting. The air was growing chilly. His racing clothes did a decent job at protecting him from the elements, but even under the thick protective fabric he was starting to shiver. Soon it would be too dark to fly, and he still hadn't figured out what he was doing wrong.
Stop threatening people and practice. He couldn't believe he was actually doing what that bastard had told him—that insolent jerk, who did he think he was? He hadn't even responded to Finnian's threats! Finnian hadn't meant to blackmail him for real, of course. He had just wanted to rile him up, get under his skin like that guy had gotten under his. But apparently the exchange student had defeated him here too.
He gritted his teeth. What would his parents say when they found out he had lost to some random no-name foreigner—what would his father say? He was a Day, heir to one of the oldest and most influential Light Mage houses in the country. He couldn't afford losing.
His body felt sluggish, but he ran and kicked off again, flying one last round before it got too dark to see. The wind that usually invigorated him now felt like a cold slap in the face. Even without looking at the time he could tell he was the slowest he had been since middle school.
Finnian pointedly didn't look at his time when he got off his broom, the bright screen mocking him in his misery. He only made straight for the locker rooms, got changed back, stuffed his broom into the storage room and pulled out his phone to call Lucy for a ride home.
At a distance, a dark figure watched him. But by the time he decided to call out to it, it had already walked away and disappeared into the dormitory building.
Whatever. Not his problem.
As long as this person hadn't watched him humiliate himself on the flying grounds, he figured he'd take it.
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