“… Do you know about the Seven School Mysteries? Did you hear the story?”

“Mysteries?”

“Yeah. I heard from some upperclassman about it, who is friends with my brother. They say that every year, weird things start to happen at our school since a few decades ago.”

“Like what?”

“For example, occasionally an additional set of stairs seems to appear randomly inside the school building, despite you being on the highest floor. Or a student enrolling in school, only to then disappear the year after. Some people did some digging on these ghost students as they call them and later found out: They were dead all along.”

“What the heck?”

“Yeah. Weird things like these have kept happening at this school for decades, but people have started to notice a pattern. Every year, the mystery changes. They rotate and after seven years, they repeat.”

“Ahh, that’s why it’s called the Seven School Mysteries.”

“No shit, dingus.”

“So, do you know what’s we’re in for this year?”

“I think we will have one additional student for this year...”

***

Looking through what I’ve written so far, I realize I am not a good writer.

Like what was that awkward ending of the previous chapter?

Or the way, I included my name in the first chapter? I mean, certainly that’s better than simply outright saying “Hi, my name is Jordan,” but oof. It’s rough.

I mean, in the end it’s all about practice, right? So, I’ll just have to keep doing what I’m doing.

One thing I’ve realized in my old life when it comes to writing is that your writing is always better when you have fun doing it. When it comes to university for example, my best papers were the ones that featured a topic I was interested in.

Which is why I’ve written about my job, my wife. So, I figured, family comes next.

Specifically, the kids.

Let me introduce them to you.

I have three daughters. From the youngest to the oldest they are Sana, Zora, and Latvia.

Yes, I know what you are thinking. Why on earth would we name our child after a country?

To be fair, Zenia came up with the name, and I thought it sounded good. Only years later did it occur to me, that it is the English name for a country. Again, I am not a native speaker, and I’ve been in this world for a few years at this point. Anyway, after that shocking realization I started calling her by the nickname of Via. (Which means road in the Romanic languages but just leave me alone.)

(Why am I writing this down anyway, no one speaks English in this world? God, no one will ever want to publish my book, if it’s full of unintelligible gibberish like this.)

IN ANY CASE, which has become my catchphrase now apparently, my oldest daughter Via has now changed schools. Nothing unusual, this city follows a three-school-system similar to that found in many countries of my old world. Meaning, elementary, middle, and high school.

When we moved from the nobles’ district to the inner city that of course meant that our children had to change schools as well. For Sana, that wasn’t much of a problem, as she only started school after our move. Zora also just moved up to middle school.

For Via, moving schools came with a whole slew of mostly administrative problems. Because she was about to finish her second to last year in middle school when we were about to move, it was hard for us to have her move to a school where she could immediately be moved to the final year. Curriculums were simply too different between our royal school and a commoner school, it appears. Also, it seems to be common for most people to finish education after middle school, so Via would be thrown directly into her final exams.

In the end, we managed to get Via enrolled with a bit of help from granddad.

“Can you believe I am worried about our oldest daughter attending a new school?” Zenia asked me one evening.

Sana and Zora had already started school earlier and it went off without a hitch.

“But when it comes to Latvia... I have so many worries. What if she doesn’t manage to get in with those people? I mean, she joins the class during their final year, and she’ll be busy with exams anyway. Maybe we should have arranged for her to remain a student in the nobles’ district or something. She’d get a better education and would have stayed with her friends.”

“Don’t say that,” I tried to console her. “I get it, her circumstances are out of the ordinary. But I believe she’ll manage. I mean yeah, getting familiar with the curriculum will take a bit of time, but she is an A-student. At least when it comes to things unrelated to magic. And maybe she’ll join a study group or something. The royal academy was no place for her anyways, it was too focused on magical prowess, which she... is lacking.”

“You remain awfully optimistic as usual. Even though I can tell you’re grasping at straws.”

Okay, obviously I was a bit worried as well. But I could not have predicted what the actual issue with her new school would be.