Those who had failed to awaken were gathered quietly and processed for departure. There was no further special ceremony, just a brief administrative acknowledgment and then they were gone, sent back to wherever they had come from with whatever they intended to do next. They simply rode the bus there to be sent off. Those who succeeded went ahead to complete their registration.
Once registrations were done, the students were shown their dormitories as they'd be living within the school, and as such they each went to their respective rooms.
The dormitory rooms came in a few configurations. Single occupancy for some, double for others, and three-person rooms at the lower end of the allocation. Of course, Leon found himself in the three occupant room, which for a second, he couldn't quite understand. Actually, a lot of things had been rather strange ever since he arrived in this new world.
Why had the only son of a national legend, heir to a family of considerable wealth and standing, been living in a deteriorating studio apartment before coming here? He couldn't recall the specifics cleanly, but he was certain the Carter family had a property of some scale, a mansion, or something close to it.
Why had the reputation of being trash preceded him here before he had even touched the awakening orb? That wasn't something that developed overnight. People had arrived at this ceremony already knowing his name and already having filed him under a specific category. That kind of reputation was built over time and maintained with consistency.
And why was he being treated like any random student? Placed in a three occupant room? He wasn't trying to be prideful about it. He genuinely didn't think it required pride to notice that a family with the resources the Carters apparently had could have arranged something as straightforward as a decent room assignment for their son at a prestigious academy.
'Am I hated by my stepmother? Is that it?' He thought to himself without much surprise. 'I need to investigate properly when I get the chance to go back home.'
He filed it and kept walking.
He made his way to his room, and lo and behold, two other students were already inside. Luckily, these students were also first years like him, but they appeared to have arrived at an earlier date.
As soon as they saw Leon, they welcomed him warmly, in fact, suspiciously so for someone who had been called names and treated like a contained plague for a while now.
"You must be from the batch that came in today, the second batch?" The first with brown hair said.
"Yeah, the last batch. Welcome to our room, well, also yours now, haha. I'm Raul." The boy with black hair said.
"I'm Dustin." The brown haired boy said.
"Nice to meet you guys, I'm Leon." He said with a light smile, shaking hands with the two. "That's my space I assume?"
They both glanced at the corner in question, which had accumulated the casual debris of two people who hadn't been expecting company. Empty wrappers and a few stray items that had migrated without intention.
"Yeah. Sorry abut that." Raul said, looking over at the not so tidy corner. "We didn't think we'd be getting a roommate so early."
"It's fine, I'll tidy up."
"Nahhh, it's our mess, so let us do the work, right, Raul?" Dustin said, already moving to pick up the empty leathers and snack packs. Raul joined him, and in no time, Leon's corner was mostly clean, he just had to clean off a little dust in some places and that was it.
"Thanks, you two." He said, being genuinely grateful.
Unpacking didn't take long. His bag was small and its contents were modest, and there was something quietly uncomfortable about how quickly it was done. When everything was in place, he sat on the edge of the bed and took stock.
It was then that Raul noticed something. His eyes moved across Leon's belongings and then around the room, searching for something he apparently didn't find. "Haven't seen your uniform anywhere. Have you not gotten yours yet?"
'Uniform?' Leon thought to himself. Nothing like that had been mentioned, so he didn't know. "I didn't know we were supposed to get a uniform." He answered.
Raul and Dustin looked at each other with the specific expression of people processing something they hadn't anticipated.
"Did you live under a rock?" Dustin said, not unkindly, more genuinely puzzled than anything else. "Every child knows what the Grand Phoenix Academy uniform looks like. No way ou thought they'd just stop using it, right?"
Leon laughed it off lightly and claimed he'd forgotten. It was the easiest available answer, and neither of them pushed it further. He made a mental note to sort the uniform situation out at the first reasonable opportunity.
Once everything was settled, he lay back on the bed and pulled out his phone. This was the first real stretch of uninterrupted time he'd had since arriving, and he had been quietly looking forward to it. He wanted to check the internet, get a sense of things, news and current events and whatever else might help him build a more complete picture of the world he was now living in.
But first, on a quieter impulse, he opened the contacts list.
He entered the contacts list, just to see who was in it, and what he found shocked him. Leon didn't have many contacts, just 7 in total, and from the descriptions attached to some, he could tell it was for ordering and some kind of service, perhaps laundry? Apart from those though, one name there triggered a memory, 'my stepmother.'
He stared at it for a moment without pressing anything.
He became aware, gradually, that the room had gone slightly strange. Dustin had stepped out briefly and returned, and since that return, both he and Raul had been looking at him with an attention they were not making much effort to disguise. It wasn't hostile. It was the particular focused stare of people sitting on information they found difficult to contain.
Leon felt it for a solid minute before addressing it.
"What? What is it?" He finally said. He hadn't told them his last name, so he figured Dustin must have learnt of it when he left the room for a short time. Such rumours were bound to spread around, what room he was in and who he was. "I can feel your eyes boring through my skin."
Raul had the grace to look mildly embarrassed, but Dustin did not.
"Haha, is it that obvious? Sorry. We just can't help it." Raul scratched the back of his neck. "Being in the same room as the guy who caused that phenomenon today. It's a bit much to process, you know?"
"Yeah, who would've thought the one and only Leon Carter will be in their very room, right? Crazy." Dustin said. "Even crazier is that you are the one who triggered that phenomenon, you know? Thought you were trash and all, but then you only summoned a weak skeleton, that's rough man, don't think I've ever heard of anyone summoning a skeleton before." Dustin said, raising his head to think about it more.
Raul closed his eyes briefly with the expression of a man watching a situation develop in a direction he had been powerless to stop.
Dustin, oblivious, raised his chin and thought about it more seriously. "Nahhh, I'm sure you're the first, for sure."
Leon sat with that for a moment. He genuinely could not determine whether Dustin was being deliberately blunt or whether this was simply how his thoughts exited his head. His tone carried no edge, he sounded, as far as Leon could tell, completely sincere.
Raul opened his mouth.
Before he could say anything, Dustin shrugged with a finality that suggested he had finished thinking it through and arrived somewhere. "You don't need to let all the talk get to you, though. I also summoned a Grade 1 beast, and I've got the potential to hit Grade 3." He said it simply, without self-pity or particular emphasis, just a fact he had made his peace with. "Who knows what the ceiling is on your skeleton? There are death knights, aren't there? Fully armoured and stuff. That's a huge possibility there, you know?" He said thoughtfully.
Leon stared at him.
His expression had gone completely flat, not from offense, but from the specific blankness that settled over a person when reality delivered something entirely outside their expectations.
...
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