Yzac Fuemiit fumbled with the pocket of his black uniform pants for the key to his dorm room. Upon opening the door, his eyes fell on the pale skin of his roommate’s skinny back.

Kyle looked over his shoulder at the noises coming from the doorway, and then yanked his red-collared, black shirt back to his chest.

“Don’t you knock?!”

“Sorry, I... didn’t realize you would be here already.” Yzac glanced up and down the boy’s figure. “You don’t eat enough or something?”

“I eat just fine,” Kyle glowered. He sized up his roommate as well. “You maybe eat too much.”

“I’m growing.” Yzac nodded at the pool of black clothes on the bed to the left side of the room. “Are you taking that one?”

“Yeah.”

“’Kay.” Yzac tossed his luggage in front of the bed on the right, then pulled at the maroon tie around his neck. When it was loose enough, he slung it over his head onto the end of the bed and began to undo the buttons of his uniform blazer.

“Do you need me to step out or something?”

“No.” Yzac continued to strip, unbothered. “What’s your name, mate?”

“Kyle.” The motion of Yzac’s hands stopped briefly, caught off guard.

“Do you have a last name?”

“No.”

“Are you an orphan, by any chance?”

“Yeah, why?” Kyle, uncomfortable with how little his roommate was wearing, picked up a book.

“I’ve heard some talk about a certain Kyle of the Orphanage. That you?”

“Probably. What are they saying?”

Yzac chose his words carefully. “...They say you’re a special kid.”

Kyle laughed. “Is that a compliment?”

“Yeah. You’re smart, right?”

Kyle relaxed, relieved that the guy seemed mindful. “You could say that.”

Yzac pulled a navy hoodie over his head and grabbed a headset from his bag.

“Don’t disturb me when I game, and we have no problems. Clear?”

“...Got it. What’s your name?”

“Yzac Fuemiit. Call me Zack.”

* * *

Chapter 5

A Nameless Side Character tapped Linette’s shoulder. She looked up from the periodical she’d been browsing at her desk in the home classroom for second-year mages. She glanced at the clock on the wall; there were still ten minutes left to their lunch break.

“Someone is here for you.”

“Oh. Thank you.” She pocketed her reader and slid out of her seat, crossing the large room to the door. Leaning against the wall outside was the boy Matteo Samoq beat up two days ago. She thought back to the name the Director had called him.

“Korr?”

“Most people just call me Ladd.” He pushed himself off the wall.

“Okay. What did you want me for, Ladd?”

“I want you to help me.”

“With what?” She couldn’t control Matteo any more than the next person. Linette hoped the kid wasn’t out for revenge.

“Can you teach me magic?”

Linette’s expression went blank for a moment. “What?”

“Like how to get better at it.”

She looked around them, confused. “Isn’t that why you’re in school? The teachers are supposed to do that.”

“Right, but...um,” Ladd fidgeted with the hem of his pullover sweater. “The level is a bit...” He bit his lip and glanced at the passerby students from lowered eyes, unsure how to get his point across without causing offense. Linette tilted her head to the side.

“What is it?”

“I need a little... more.” Her expression remained unchanged. “Like, faster.”

“Are you saying the curriculum is too slow for you?”

“Yeah, kind of.” Ladd shuffled his feet.

“Did you tell that to the teacher?”

He raised his head to look her in the eyes. She flinched.

“Yeah" 

“And?”

“He can’t change the course. He also said I’m not that much ahead of the kids who did the trial so he doesn’t see why I should get special treatment.”

Linette sighed. “And you think you know better than the teacher?” Ladd nodded. “Are you serious?” The nods continued. She put a hand on her forehead. “Look, I don’t know who you think you are, but you should trust their judgment. The professors know what they’re doing.”

Ladd grabbed onto Linette’s free hand. “Please.”

“I can’t-”

“Let me prove it to you.”

“What, why?”

“I’ll show him.” She crossed her brows. “I’ll show him that I can do more if I just have the right guidance, please...!” Linette had turned to leave, and Ladd pulled on her arm. “Please, let me show you.”

“Why me?” She tugged her hand away from his and rested it on the doorframe to her classroom.

“You’re the strongest.” Linette waited for him to continue. He didn’t.

“That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re wasting my time. Class starts in five minutes, you should go-”

“One week!” He interrupted.

“What?”

“Give me one week, I’ll show you how much better I can get. If you still think I’m wasting your time after that, I’ll stop.”

Linette brushed a hand through her wavy hair.

“You just have to really try, to teach me. Okay?”

“...One week?”

“Yeah.”

“When are you asking me to start?”

“Today?”

“No. Tomorrow. Come to me after classes end.”

“Yes!” Ladd hugged her and ran off before she could argue. He couldn’t be late to class, after all.

As promised, Ladd came back to the classroom following dismissal the next day, gasping hard to catch his breath.

“You didn’t have to run over, you know.”

“Huh? I just... You said... Oh. Okay.” He wheezed.

“Come inside. Show me what you can do so far.”

He stepped closer to where she stood and cast a glance around the classroom. Several dozen desks were scattered around the central space in the room, rather haphazard compared to the neat rows of the first-year mage homeroom. The windows here were much bigger, too, coming all the way down from the ceiling to waist-height. One of them, in the back, was cracked open despite the biting February wind. It made sense to him, though. The heating in the room was overwhelming, especially for someone who had sprinted here from two buildings over. Ladd wiped the sweat from his neck and forehead, then noticed the scribbles filling the board at the front of the classroom. Huffing, he tried to decipher all the ...circles.

“You can help clean that.”

Ladd spun his head in Linette’s direction.

“I offered to clean the classroom so that there wouldn’t be any stragglers. So, you have to take responsibility and help me do it.”

“I,” Ladd calculated. “I don’t mind, but there’s no way for me to reach that.”

“No? Just go up.”

“Go up? Where? How?” Ladd searched for a wall ladder or a long stick, but he found neither. While hs attention was elsewhere, Linette wiggled the fingers of her right hand and Created a blob of water in front of her. She flattened it and then stepped on it, and it carried her to the upper left section of the chalkboard. Ladd, who only noticed as she swept in front of him, fell over in shock. His seat planted firmly on the floor, and his jaw refused to return to its resting position.

Linette snapped her fingers, a rather dramatized flourish, and a handful of water curled around the eraser that rested on the board’s tray. It floated up to her, and she took care of one corner. She set herself back down on the floor.

“Your turn.” Linette extended her right hand, offering the eraser to Ladd.

He gawked at her for a few seconds more before shaking his head.

“Tell me how.”

“You can’t even do this much?”

“No, I... how do you make the Water appear like that in the first place?” Ladd didn’t spot any containers in plain sight.

“You can’t Create?”

“No, I’m Level 1.”

Linette groaned. “Then what were you going to practice with.”

“Can you... Create it for me? And then I’ll Move it?”

“...You’re going to control my water?” A quizzical eyebrow shot up.

“Please.”

“...Fine.” Linette opened her hand and Created Water between them. “Try walking onto it.”

Ladd stepped forward and lifted a leg. Coming down, it passed through the water like it was... well, water.

“What are you doing? You have to make it able to hold you first.”

“Oh, I have to do that?”

“Did you think I was gonna do it for you? I Created it, the rest is up to you.”

“Oh.” Ladd stared at the Water in a daze.

“You have to prove yourself to me, remember?”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. Right.” He chewed his lip. “Able to hold...” Ladd mumbled, and Linette wondered why she had let the kid talk her into doing this. Then, she felt a subtle shift in her control over the Water.

I’m gonna need you to carry me, okay? Just like you did for her. Ladd connected to the Water, uneasy with the sense that he was invading something personal.

Here I go...

Ladd stepped through the Water again. “Oh.”

Why didn’t you listen to me? Hold me.

He lifted his right foot and tapped gingerly at the surface of the water. His shoe got wet. Ladd shifted his gaze to Linette’s feet – completely dry.

“What is it, what am I doing wrong?”

“You’re asking me?”

“I told you, I need you to teach me for real.”

Linette narrowed her eyes.

“What are you thinking of before you take your step?”

“I’m asking it to hold me.”

“That’s not how it works. The Water doesn’t know what it means to hold you.”

“Does it have some kind of vocabulary limitation?”

Linette sighed. “It’s not about vocabulary or what words you use. It’s about the properties of your element.”

Ladd’s mouth opened into an ‘o’ shape.

“You need to think of how Water naturally behaves and then command it accordingly. So to walk on it-” Linette pulled the Water back under her control. “- you have to remember that the natural thing is for the Water to break up and go around the surfaces of whatever it comes into contact with. It’s a liquid, so it changes form. Right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And if I don’t want it to do that, I tell it to become more like a solid. Don’t break off into a different form. Don’t try to wrap around my feet. Do you understand?”

“I, I think so. I’ve never told It to not do something before.”

“Go ahead.”

Well, okay. Look. Here, this is my foot. I’m going to step on you, but don’t move. Okay? Just stay where you are and don’t change at all.

A small pressure built at the center of Ladd’s chest. That meant it was working, didn’t it? He touched the Water with his right foot and felt It resist. He placed his weight on it, and the water slipped out from under his heel. He landed on his ankle and clutched it as a sudden jolt of pain ran through it.

“Oh, Powers!” Linette kneeled next to where he sat hunched. “What did you do! What happened?”

“Why did it run away from me?” Ladd whined through gritted teeth.

“I don’t know. Maybe my water doesn’t like you.”

Ladd stared at her. Her cheeks flushed. “...That was a joke.”

“Oh. Haha.” Ladd’s voice contained no trace of amusement. “But seriously. What did I do wrong this time?”

“What did you tell it?”

“I said don’t move. Don’t change.”

“‘Don’t move?’”

“Yeah. I specifically said to stay where it was. I’ve been betrayed,” he whimpered.

Linette looked over at where the Water hung. “And then when you stepped on it, what happened?”

“It slid behind me.”

“Behind you?” Linette turned her face back to Ladd.

“Yeah, like when you’re walking on a ball and it pops out from under your foot.”

“...Ladd.”

“Uh?”

“Are you sure the Water moved and not you?” She placed a sympathetic hand on his arm.

“Wha...wait.”

“Didn’t you just slip? Because it’s wet?”

Ladd blinked at her, and she blinked at him. After a moment, she let out a snort.

“You silly thing. You have to be careful! How could you walk on Water like It’s dry?” She muffled her giggles with her palm. “Are you okay? Can you stand up?” Linette rose and offered Ladd a hand.

“...You keep that for yourself. You need it cover your face again because you keep laughing at me.” He pushed against the floor with his own palms and tried standing on the swollen ankle. He hissed, but he got himself upright.

“You gotta go back to the infirmary. Get your foot checked out.”

“Huh? No, I can keep going.”

“No.” Linette crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m ending the lesson here. We’ll resume when they say you’re allowed to.”

“But-”

“You’re really something, you know that? I heard you make it a habit to practice magic without adult supervision. That’s bad, kiddo. You can get hurt, like this.”

Ladd scratched the back of his neck, supposing that he shouldn’t tell her what had happened a month ago.

“If you can walk, go get checked. If you can’t, I’ll help you get there.”

Ladd beamed. “You’ll come with me?”

“Well... I have to make sure the classroom is cleaned first. But sit over there for now, and I’ll take you after.” Linette nodded towards the nearest desk chair.

Ladd hobbled over, then remembered. “You said I have to clean the board, right?”

“You can’t do that now. You’re injured.”

“But what about like this?”

Ladd tapped into the Water hovering in front of the classroom, and It flew high up into the air. It crashed into the top of the chalkboard and dripped down, washing the chalk dust in Its trail.

“...That’s one way, I suppose. You don’t have nearly enough water, though. Here.” Linette Created a large wall, enough to cover half the board. Ladd’s eyes grew wide.

“Whoa!”

“Huh?”

Ladd jumped out of his seat and limped to her, ignoring her protests. He grabbed onto one of her arms and leaned.

“Man, I really wanna try.” Ladd’s eyes sparkled.

“You should be sitting down, Ladd.”

“I’ve never seen anyone use that much water before.”

Linette peered at him. Even if his eyes showed no life, every part of his body language shouted in joy. She shook her head, giving up.

“Go for it.”

Ladd concentrated at the wall and shoved with all his mental might. Linette felt her water pushing back against him. She would have scolded It if she thought It was sentient. Instead, she patted the boy’s head, which was damp to the touch from perspiration. Something in her jerked out of place, and the Water splashed against the chalkboard. It was only when she saw the giant puddle on the floor behind the teacher’s lectern that she realized she should’ve been more reserved with Creating It.

Ladd threw his arms around her neck and her knee buckled, unprepared for his weight shift. What a bundle of trouble this kid was.

“Okay, okay! Off. You’re pushing into my pin.” Ladd let his arms fall. Indeed, a small red blotch traced where her gold sprout pin had been digging into the skin under her green collar. He wrapped a hand around her arm and squeezed.

“It hurts.”

“Your foot?”

Ladd nodded, pouting.

“Okay, let’s go to the infirmary, then.”