“This is Almark,” said Fia. “He’ll be our sixteenth student starting today.”
Leila’s eyes moved from the window and raked over Almark. At Fia’s urging, Almark introduced himself.
“I’m Almark, from the Alneti Kingdom.”
He gave the name of the country the Black Wolf Riders happened to be in when he was born. From that perspective, saying this was his country of origin wasn’t altogether a lie.
“I’m not familiar at all with this institute, or this island, or even mages, really. I hope you all can be patient with me.”
He bowed his head, which was met with louder applause than he expected.
Not too bad, he thought.
“For family reasons, Almark had to join the institute two years late. There’s a lot he doesn’t know, so everyone, please be there for him if he needs help,” Fia told the class. “Hmm, Almark, your seat should be…”
“Over here, Professor!” The girl whose gaze he met earlier raised a hand.
Fia nodded slightly. “Next to Wendy. Take your seat, Almark.”
“Yes, Professor.”
Almark gave the girl, Wendy, his regards and settled into his seat. Wendy replied in kind, still smiling.
With the start of first period, Fia began to teach them about world history. Since Almark didn’t have his books yet, Wendy shared hers with him from her seat.
The book detailed the Major Quartet that created the world, the Median Octet that populated it, and the Minor Sixteen created as their servants. This was all new to Almark, and he had no idea how all of this was related to magic. And so, first period came to an end with Almark frowning in confusion. He definitely needed someone to explain this to him later.
But then, he saw a shadow cast over his desk. He looked up to see expectant faces peering at him. Almost half of the class had flocked around his desk, all curious to learn more about their unusual new classmate. They started bombarding him with questions.
“I’ve never heard of the Alneti Kingdom. Where is it?”
“You’ve got no surname, right? Then you must be a commoner. What does your father do?”
“Why’d you start at the institute two years late?”
Almark patiently answered their questions one by one.
“The Alneti Kingdom is one of the countries in the North,” he said, and the students blinked in confusion.
“The North?” one chubby student asked. “How far north?”
“Around the Foretta Kingdom?” another student chimed in.
“No, further north,” Almark said.
“But if you go further north from the Foretta Kingdom, you cross the border of the central plains…”
“Right.”
“So you’re from past the Menoba Strait?”
Almark nodded, and the students started muttering nervously.
“When he said north, he really meant the North…”
Almark prepared himself emotionally for them to start acting distant, but they were more laid-back than he expected and simply chatted about how the lands north of the central plains were really far away, and didn’t make any more remarks.
Almark then said his father was a traveling blacksmith and that he was late to enter the institute because he was with his father in a faraway country. A student asked him what his father made, and Almark answered “swords” without overthinking it. This was met with incredulous expressions, as the students didn’t know swords were used enough to have that much demand. This made it painfully clear just how different things here were compared to the North.
“So how did you come to the institute? Who brought you here?” a talkative freckled girl asked him, to which Almark responded he came on his own. This made the students once again mutter in shock. Wendy, too, looked at him with eyes wide with surprise.
“On your own? From that far away? How?” the freckled girl asked.
Almark smiled at her. “Yeah. Uh, well, I managed.”
After this, he decided this was enough questions for the time being. He got the impression that if he ended up answering too many, they’d notice the holes in his story.
“Tell me about yourselves, too,” Almark said, surveying the nearby students.
Wendy got up from her seat next to him. “Since we’re neighbors, I’ll introduce you to everyone. Okay, first…”
With a smile, Wendy told Almark about the students one by one.
There was Morgan, a chubby, friendly boy who was the son of a lumberjack from a village in western Garai Kingdom; Nelson, a boy with a nimble body and a strong-willed face, who was the son of a knight’s attendant from the Myx Duchy, which bordered the Garai Kingdom; Lilty, a dainty, almost fragile-looking girl whose parents were musicians in the royal conservatory of the Foretta Kingdom, a large country in the central plains; and Norish, the talkative, freckled girl, who came from a farmer family in the Lang Duchy, a small country in the South.
After Wendy introduced everyone, Morgan motioned at her next. “And this is Wendy. Wendy Baherb. She’s the daughter of House Baherb, a major noble family from the Garai Kingdom.”
Wendy frowned. “You’re making it sound bigger than it is.”
“There’s also a few other people…,” Morgan added, but then someone called out to them from behind.
“Hey, you guys!”
It was a stocky, stern-faced boy, followed by two similarly large boys. They all glared at Almark and his peers.
“How long are you going to make a fuss? Let’s get moving,” the first boy urged, his tone hostile.
Almark tried to answer him, but Morgan hurriedly waved a hand and cut him off. “You’re better off not saying anything.”
“Tohrk, we were just introducing everyone to the new student, Almark,” Wendy said.
The large boy, Tohrk, scowled at her. “Wendy, you can go ahead and keep being everyone’s friend if you want, but don’t cause us nobles trouble. Got it?”
“That wasn’t my intention…”
“The longer you spend grouping up around the new kid and dawdling, the longer we have to wait for our next class. Right?”
Tohrk narrowed his eyes, scowling at the students surrounding Almark’s desk. The students hung their heads to escape his glare and, one by one, stepped away from Almark.
“Is our next class somewhere else?” Almark asked.
He didn’t sound flustered at all, which earned him an annoyed tongue click from Tohrk.
“Next we have a practical magic lesson,” Wendy said gently, regaining her composure. “So we need to move to the magic training area.”
“Practical magic?”
They had a lesson like this right away? Almark felt his heart racing. Seeing his reaction, Tohrk scoffed at him and smirked.
“Hey, new kid, since you came here two years late, I’m guessing you can already use magic, right? We’re not here to babysit an amateur.”
“Huh?” Almark raised his eyebrows.
Tohrk heaved a dramatic sigh. “I’m asking if you learned a spell or two on your own.”
Tohrk’s two cronies, who were standing behind him, laughed.
“No,” Almark replied. “I can’t use any spells yet.”
“Gee, this bodes well.” Tohrk shook his head with a very exaggerated grimace. “Another commoner in our class, huh? And this one looks like he’s nothing but dead weight. Classes 1 and 3 are going to make a laughingstock out of us…”