Vincent thought it was fantastic that Madeleine manifested abilities. He rambled about it to me before class started as I was copying down his notes in my own notebook.

“I won’t be telling anyone, obviously, but once word gets out—and you know it will, Axel,” he said after noticing my expression, “it’ll be the greatest weight lifted off of our shoulders.”

“There’ll be more weights added to us to substitute the current one, Vin,” I reminded him. “And Maddie, too.”

“It’ll be better than having to simply smile politely as people insult our family,” he shrugged. “Well, only you do that. Aren’t you tired of it?”

“Not really,” I said. It was the truth. 

“Oookay,” Vincent replied skeptically. When Professor Erwin entered the room, he immediately fixed his posture and sat straight up. Vin’s eyes were practically glued to Professor Erwin’s face. 

“This week, we will be reviewing handling materials that weren’t magically made,” Professor Erwin spoke. “This is because we’ll be starting our unit on removing traces of magic from magic-made materials.”

As Professor Erwin was talking, I could see a black-haired girl sitting down to my left from my peripheral vision. 

“Hi, Axel.”

“Oooh, someone’s late,” Vincent teased as he and I turned to look at Aria.

“It’s less embarrassing than having your EmAble ringtone play on full blast,” she retorted. “What was that song from, anyway? Rosie’s Enchanted Garden?”

Vin’s face went red. “It was set because of a dare!” he weakly countered before turning to look at Professor Erwin again. He flinched when his wristband started glowing bright yellow.

“Vincent, could you explain what I was talking about?” Professor Erwin asked him. “Unless you weren’t listening.”

“Edwi- Professor, I was only distracted for a few seconds,” Vincent said as he stood up. “I-”

“You forgot to activate your voice,” Aria reminded him.

“Oh, yeah,” he stammered, then pressed on his wrist. Instead of repeating his argument, he obediently responded to Professor Erwin’s first question. “So first, raise your right hand like this…” 

As Vincent was explaining, I told Aria, “You seem to be out to humiliate him today.”

“Not really,” Aria replied. “He started it first. Plus, was there a nicer way to say ‘you didn’t activate your voice’?”

“That’s true,” I realized. “Oh yeah, I had an off-day yesterday. Did anything happen?”

“Prof Sherry spent our hour on a tangent about how Marcenia shouldn’t have conquered Charlian. Laverie and Shabon got into a fight. Uh, Amelia got rejected, I think.”

After noticing my expression, she said, “Oh, you were talking about homework and stuff. No, you’re the lucky kid who always manages to choose his off-days at the right time.”

Suddenly, I felt a sharp sting on my wrist and saw a bright red glow. I looked to the front of the lecture hall to see Professor Erwin’s scary face.

“Would you like to come down and demonstrate what Vincent was talking about here?” he asked me. “Or were you not paying attention?”

“I’m really sorry, Professor Erwin,” I apologized quickly, rubbing my wrist. 

“Why’d he have to flare you?” Vincent grumbled. “He must’ve gotten dumped today.”

Over Vin’s voice, Professor Erwin said, “Answer my question. Actually, no, just come down. You seemed very enthusiastic about this topic.”

“I am, Professor,” was the only thing I could say. I walked down to the front of the lecture hall and saw a sheet of paper on the desk in front of Professor Erwin’s desk. The handwriting seemed really familiar…

Wait, this is my paper on creating substances. I couldn’t believe Professor Erwin still had this paper. 

“Lift a particle from this ink,” Professor Erwin ordered. 

“Yes, Professor.” I looked up as unnoticeably as possible to see Vincent, who was motioning what I should be doing. However, he was half-occupied with something on my desk, and was only moving his right hand. 

I pointed at my writing with my right hand, then subtly lifted my index finger. I squinted and realized that I was looking at a shaking, glowing red dot. It was extremely small and I wasn’t even sure if it was real.

“What you should be seeing is a glowing red speck. Now make it so that all the materials in this room with the same ingredients as this ink will glow like that particle is.”

I looked back up at Vincent, who switched his busy hand and was now making motions with his left hand while mouthing something like ‘hold it steady’. I tried to imitate those motions as well as possible.

The particle seemed to be getting smaller, but it could’ve been my imagination. I looked up at Vincent, who was stretching out his fingers as far as possible. I did exactly that, and the particle expanded so quickly that I didn’t even realize it got larger until it disappeared.