Alex submitted the answer sheet to Professor Jaxon, who gracefully took it from him and looked Alex over from head to toe before staring deeply at his face for longer than was polite, muttering something inaudibly and despite standing right in front of Alex's desk, Alex did not hear a single thing.
A frown had settled on the professor's face, and disbelief lived plainly in his eyes, and he seemed torn between pursuing whatever had reduced Alex to this jumbled, dishevelled mess or to stay silent about it. And like before, when Alex had first entered the classroom, the professor shook his head and decided once again to hold his tongue and not ask about the state Alex had arrived in, and he moved past Alex to collect the answer sheet from the student sitting behind.
Alex turned his head toward the window and stared out at the endless blue sky. The class was silent except for the measured footsteps of Professor Jaxon echoing as he moved past the rows of desks, collecting the answer sheets from the mini test he had administered on what was seemingly only the second day of the academy. Though the professor had mentioned it beforehand, but that had done little to soften the fact that several students still resented being tested so soon, which was expected.
However, Alex did not have much opinion about it one way or the other. He did not care whether the test was taken today or next week. He thought he had done well enough after looking over the questions, which were plainly simple and required no complicated cross-thinking, being entirely about the theories of the status window that the professor had taught the previous day.
Alex, who had known the material beforehand, was more than comfortable scribbling down his answers and finishing as quickly as possible, though he had not written as smoothly as he would have liked or as he would have on any other day. His hands had quivered the whole while, earlier memories of the restroom scene flashing back to him in cruel intervals, and he had felt so thoroughly demotivated that he had sat there questioning whether this mini test and whatever marks it carried would make any difference to his life by even a slight bit.
Alex kept staring past the window, and time seemed to zip and blur around him, and he remained undisturbed until a sudden shake woke him from his stupor. He felt a tremble move through him the instant someone gripped his shoulder, his heart hammering hard and pushing blood faster through his veins, and he shot up from his seat with his body already turning to defend himself, assuming Eldric and his minions had returned. His hair swayed and fell forward across his face, the blue-tinged ends blurring the world in a dim shade of azure.
But instead of Eldric and his minions, Lara stood before him, her hands on her hips and her usually strong posture shaken by the clear shock on her face at the reaction she had drawn out of Alex, which she had likely not expected. Her jaw hung low, as though she were watching a startled cat.
"Are you alright?" Lara stammered, moving her hand toward him.
Alex threw her hand away before it could reach him. "Don't touch me, and you don't have to worry about me," he growled in annoyance.
His heart had nearly stopped in its tracks at being shaken without any prior notice, and it was beating hard. Extremely hard inside his ribcage. His chest was tight as though tons of weight had been pressed against it and were squeezing his lungs before they could fully expand and take in air.
Lara's face turned sullen. Her green eyes flickered for a moment, shifting color, and Alex recognized it at once as her using her powers to see fate.
"Don't," Alex shrieked in a high pitched voice. "Keep your distance from me and leave me alone for a goddamn day."
He wanted to rip this reality apart. Why were people so endlessly interested in him, in both good and bad ways, though it was mostly the latter? Some, like Lara, seemed to fall into the former, and yet it did not feel good. It only annoyed him, being disturbed and approached again and again, and he had begun harbouring the thought that Lara too was up to no good, that she was following some script or plan of her own and only performing a caring version of herself in order to gain his trust, and that once she had it she would pull him along on her strings and show the world that the Alex whose tales and stories were whispered everywhere was being puppeted by her fingers.
He had never once heard from her own mouth why she had helped him during the battle royale, and he could find no reason behind her caring no matter how long he turned it over in his mind.
Yes, she is with Eldric. If not that, then she is up to something just as bad.
"Leave me alone and stop showing me those worried looks," Alex snapped. "My stomach churns every time I see that face of yours."
He nearly spat on the floor. He clenched his fist, turned toward the rest of the classroom, and noticed that the professor was nowhere to be seen, having likely slipped out while Alex was buried in his thoughts.
The class was half empty now, and some students lingered by the door looking in at Alex and the commotion he was creating. Everyone's eyes were on him. From the corner of his eye he caught Thalia walking toward them in long, impatient strides, who came to a stop beside Lara and looked at Alex with a gaze that seemed to mock him for daring to snap at a girl who had only been worried about his wellbeing.
Thalia grabbed Lara by the hand, Lara still wearing that shocked and quietly sad expression from Alex's earlier outburst, and pulled her away from him. "You don't need to waste your precious time on such a waste," Thalia mocked in distaste, and she took Lara with her and left.
Alex felt the eyes were still focused on him. From the corner of his gaze he found Eldric watching, his face resting lazily on his small fist, his body slouched deep in the chair with one leg thrown over the armrest like he was sitting on a throne he had owned for years. A smirk sat comfortably on his face, and the sight of it filled Alex with fury, but he bit back the feeling, slid his chair out, and returned to his seat.
He leaned forward and rested his head against the surface of the desk, folding his arms in front of his face. He started gazing out the window toward the sky. The sky, at least, did not mock him, did not taunt him, did not worry over him. Its impassive and endless blue was the only thing Alex had found so far that was genuinely appetizing to look at for any stretch of time.
***
The day zipped past in a blur as the classes came one after another. True to what Professor Daniel had announced the day before, the students who had failed to complete their fifty laps would continue running them in every subsequent class until they had finished the full count, and they would not advance to the next challenge until that was done. The professor followed through on his word without hesitation, and Alex was made to run the remaining laps.
Alex did not know when exactly he crossed the fiftieth lap until the professor, who had been keeping the count the entire time, called out that he had completed them, and Alex only nodded and fell in behind the others for the challenges and tasks that followed.
But as Alex had already made his peace with, he fell completely behind on those as well and was told to complete the remaining work the next day, and the day after that if it still was not finished, and he would not move on to the next task until it was done.
He was the only one falling behind. The others had moved through the tasks with relative ease, and though a few seemed to struggle, most of them ended up completing everything while Alex staggered along like a slow turtle watching rabbits spring ahead of him. The image called to mind a story his mother used to tell him whenever he lost motivation, about a turtle that had won a race against the fast rabbit through sheer determination alone, never stopping, never resting, inching forward without end while the rabbit grew lazy and stretched out under a tree and lost the race to the very creature it had laughed at.
And Alex, the first time he had heard that story, had been filled with so much motivation that he had swung his sword diagonally, horizontally, and vertically a hundred times without stopping, or at least with only occasional short breaks to breathe, and he had achieved that feat and carried it forward into the years that followed, only ever increasing the weight of his training.
He had believed in that story from the very first day he heard it from his mother. He had believed that as long as he worked hard, as long as he did not stop, as long as he did not shy away from the work, as long as he did not give up, that he would come out triumphant. That he would win. That he would find the glory waiting at the end of everything.
However, the reality was darker and uglier than any wish or dream, and no matter how hard he tried to keep up, others zipped past him and finished the tasks in the time it took him to stumble through the first half. There was no such thing as the lazy rabbit and the determined turtle in this life. It was all about talent and about who had more levels.
Alex felt the bitterness settle thickly in him as he thought about how foolish he had been all this time.
That had been the only class that he fell behind and felt the worst of it, thankfully, because the other classes had been mostly theoretical and would only move into their practical components in later sessions. So Alex had managed to save face to some small degree in those, at least.
Though there was no saving face after walking into class looking the way he had, his hair tangled and falling every which way across his head, his academy uniform damp, his coat and shirt wrinkled and creased, his tie hanging loose from his collar, none of it touched or mended before entering the class. As a matter of fact, he had not thought about his looks much because he had started tolerating the looks from others and he had been in stupor all this time.
However when he reached the library, the old man in charge of the place hit him across the head with the book he had been reading.
"Have you seen yourself in a mirror?..." the old man muttered, finishing the sentence with something too low for Alex to catch, whether because the words were genuinely too quiet or because the old man had taken some small pity on him and had not allowed the rest of the words to reach Alex's ears. Alex did not know which.
"Go look at yourself in the restroom mirror and tidy your clothes," the old man said, more ordered than advised. "And here, take this stamina potion. You look weak and meek." The old man wrinkled his nose, produced a small vial from his dimensional storage, and handed it to Alex, who took it with a quiet thank.
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
"What are you staring at me for?" the old man bellowed, his voice not particularly loud and yet carrying some quality that made Alex feel his bones rattle from the inside. Alex had drifted back into his thoughts without realizing it, and now he bowed his head slightly and hurried toward the restroom at the back of the library's first floor.
***
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