Thankfully, the algebra professor was running late.

“Zut.” Jasper returned his vision back to normal as he and Josephine crashed into their seats next to Jorge in the back of the classroom.

“Oh.” Josephine reacted. “That would’ve helped earlier.”

“What do you mean?” Jorge asked, sitting up.

“Josephine, we just learned it in entity studies yesterday.” Jasper said, ignoring Jorge. “It was at the front of my mind.”

“My mind is a scrambled rubiks cube on a Segway on an escalator on rainbow road.” Josephine said. “You wouldn’t last a day in here, let alone remember something all the way back from yesterday. Ages ago.”

“Excuse me, why did we need entity vision earlier?” Jorge was so cute when he was being ignored. Always trying to make himself look taller.

“My brain is…” Jasper started. “I don’t care enough about this to come up with a descriptive metaphor right now.”

“Then I win.” Josephine said.

“GUYS.” Jorge said.

“Alright, alright.” Jasper looked at him. “We just dealt with a trickster, okay?”

“A pain in the ass one, too.” Josephine said.

“Are you serious?” Jorge somehow sat up even more. Jasper swore he sometimes hovered his butt over his chair and wasn’t actually sitting. “Where’s the core?”

“Cody has it.” Jasper said, judgmentally eyeing Jorge’s new height. “Now you can drop your shocked eyebrows before they break through the ceiling.”

Josephine choked on a laugh.

“But we haven’t had an unplanned entity on campus since—”

“Bryan and Claire’s great big spider and dice fiasco that I had to fix unconventionally.” Jasper retorted. “I still have nightmares about sticky white web goo covering my body and inside my hair. I know.”

“Lucky.” Jorge pouted, likely referencing that Jasper got the spider queen’s core for finishing it off, and then ran into another entity.

“Hardly!” Jasper said. “I for one prefer to be much more prepared. Freshman year is not the time to be fighting.”

“Jasper,” Josephine said, leaning her arm on their desk table, “no matter how many spells you’ll learn, you’ll only remember a handful in the moment. Why not fight shit now?”

“Ugh, you’re all psychopaths. And you’re speaking so loudly, everyone in class is gonna know we role-play our DnD campaign in public!”

Josephine cocked her head. “Oh, that’s a good one!”

“Right?” Jasper said. “Cody’s idea.”

“Anyway.” Jorge said, “What did this entity look like?”

“Like a horned fisher-price Kirby with hair. Lots of hair.” Josephine said.

“Kirby?” Jasper asked. “What are you colorblind? Wait, I already know that you are. Jorge, it was blue, not pink.”

“I don’t know what pink is apparently.” Josephine said. “I thought the blue looked off in the same way pink looks to me, bit it actually was blue. Ugh.”

“Sure was.”

“Wait a second.” Josephine snapped herself straight. “Zut.” she said, and Jasper jumped to cover her eyes. They flickered a little when casting that spell, though it probably wasn’t too noticeable.

“Oh my god.” Josephine said, standing up and panning around the room. “OH MY GOD.”

“What are you doing?” Jasper asked, trying to hush her down with his mind.

She looked at him. “I CAN SEE MORE COLORS!”

“WHAT?” Jasper and Jorge said in unison.

“It CURED my color blindness!”

“You didn’t practice this in class yesterday?” Jasper asked, floored at his friend’s life changing turn of events.

“THAT’S what red fucking looks like?!” She pointed at Jorge’s backpack, meanwhile other classmates were pointing their eyes at her. Jorge nodded.

“Josephine!” Jasper whispered aggressively.

She finally lowered her voice. “No I didn’t practice in class yesterday, I was hungover!”

“On a Wednesday?” Jasper asked.

“Shut up, nerd.” Her voice returned to regular volume, and she threw her backpack on. “I’m skipping. I’m gonna go see the world! This is the first day of the rest of my—”

Aaaaand their professor walked in.

“You were saying?” Jasper sassed.

She looked down at him and grinned ear to ear, then made a b-line for the door. “Sorry professor, I have a family emergency! I’ll get the notes from Jasper. Nice red shirt, by the way!” And with that, her blue wavy locks were fluttering out the door unto a new world, leaving an astonished old algebra-man and an annoyed Jasper behind. Class was much more fun with her in it. 

In their incantations specialization, there was Jasper, Josephine, Jorge, Bryan, Claire, and Bashira. They focused on longer ranged spells and supports. In the combat specialization, there was Maria, Cody, Aren, Marilyn, and the twins Xavius and Xandrelle. They focused more on enchantments and actual fighting.

The only class the two specializations had together last semester was ‘Basic Enchantments for Protection.’ Jasper spent most of that class with Maria, Josephine and Aren. They had their queer corner and it was beautiful.

Their ‘official’ college program was a liberal arts degree in ‘Ancient Studies.’ Their actual program was setting them up to be entity hunters.

Every graduating class started off with twelve students, six in each specialization.

We’ll see how many of us last, Jasper thought.

He’d have an hour and a half to get through where math would be the absolute last thing on his mind.