Chapter 35: It Starts Tomorrow
It starts tomorrow
The following few days were... weird, to say the least.
Before, whenever Mike went out, he would occasionally feel a brief gaze of curiosity land on him, but it was most likely due to his stature that made him look younger than most of his peers. Moreover, such looks didn’t last long as whoever was staring probably had their attention taken by something else or simply didn’t deem him worth THAT much attention.
The only times such attention became more prominent were when he did something odd in a place with many people. An example of this would be when he carried those large boxes of equipment in the gym despite his smaller size.
Otherwise, people hardly noticed him.
The last few days, though, were different.
The seniors still barely gave a damn, which wasn’t surprising, as Mike guessed, their schedules were too busy for them to care much about the squabbles between the freshers.
However, Mike was receiving a LOT more attention from his peers. Whenever he went out now, he noticed that someone was almost always staring at him. Sometimes, it was mild curiosity, great intrigue, contempt, or outright hostility. But whether it was due to luck or perhaps wariness, no one had approached him to try anything.
Not yet, anyway.
Moreover, Mike hadn’t seen Aghes since that day. Granted, he hadn’t seen her before then besides when she confronted Theresa and when she attacked him, so perhaps they just kept missing each other, but Mike’s gut told him that she’d seek him out almost immediately if she truly wasn’t under some sort of supervision after the stunt she pulled.
On a more positive note, Mike had used this time to earn quite a lot of credits. Despite everything, he hadn’t stopped doing commissions, and his goal of stocking up on credits before classes started went quite well if he said so himself.
By the end of the free time all new students had gotten, Mike had amassed a total of 5,959 credits, just shy of six thousand.
He wasn’t sure if it was a huge amount in the grand scheme of things, but he was fairly certain that it was enough to sustain him for the time being. At least until he found out a more lucrative way of earning credits.
On a slightly related note, Mike, to his immense relief, found out that the food was indeed restocked for free at the end of a week, so Mike didn’t need to worry about buying new ingredients unless he wanted to make something particularly luxurious, which he didn’t see himself doing in a while.
There was also his roommate, Jonathan. Not much had happened on that front, and Mike was still determined to avoid the weird guy. It wasn’t that hard, though, as he barely left his room.
However, whenever he did leave his room, Mike noticed that the smell of blood coming from it got stronger. He was close to just reporting it to the authorities multiple times, but despite everything, his instincts told him that Jonathan wasn’t actually a threat. Just... odd.
Then there was Theresa, and Mike had to admit that he was surprised by her a bit.
After their talk and declarations towards each other, he noticed a faint shift in her personality.
She was amicable to him before, kinda. But anyone could tell that she was still holding herself back around him. She seemed to avoid getting TOO close to him and opening up a lot, like she was still a bit... wary?
Maybe that’s not the word he would use, more like reasonably cautious, like she wasn’t 100% certain of his personality, which would warrant her releasing her inhibitions.
After that night, though, something shifted.
Mike noticed that she was a bit more relaxed around him, and she did some things that she didn’t do before.
For starters, she always appeared in front of his door in the morning now. She said that having someone accompanying him now that he was at risk of antagonizing their entire grade was a necessary measure for his safety. Which made sense in principle, but Mike noticed she just enjoyed – or at least preferred – being close to him.
More than that, he realized she was curious about him. Well, more than she already was.
For some of these last few days, she spent the entire day just following him and watching him complete commissions. It was a bit weird at first, but Mike quickly found it enjoyable, as while he liked thinking about things, having someone he could talk to genuinely was a luxury he rarely enjoyed.
They usually only talked whenever they sparred, and even then, the topics revolved around combat and what to expect within the Academy.
Now, though, they began sharing more personal details with each other, and they were gradually learning more about one another on a more fundamental level.
He also learned that she was extremely snarky and sarcastic about certain things. Whenever Mike asked a dumb question, she almost always gave a sarcastic response, only to sigh and answer normally when she saw his confusion.
In comparison, Mike was just happy he could speak his mind and risk saying something dumb since chances were that she wouldn’t judge him for it, considering his circumstances.
Theresa, especially, was quite liberal about information concerning herself, as she shared quite a bit with Mike. Mike guessed that, similar to him, she didn’t have a lot of people she could talk with openly, so the prospect finally showing itself made her usual inhibitions get retracted a little.
Mike learned that, apparently, the reason why Agnes was so hostile towards Theresa was that Theresa was born out of wedlock.
Her mother worked as a maid in the family, and supposedly, she was quite pretty, and she ended up catching the eye of one of the more prominent members of the family. Aka, Agnes’ father.
One night, after a banquet of some sort where the man was intoxicated, he found her mother and forced himself on her.
After this, she was promptly banished from the family after being paid a large sum to be shut up. This was to avoid any possible trouble she could bring.
However, no one anticipated that she would get pregnant, as ability users – especially at higher grades – had great control over their bodies and could avoid these types of things.
Anyway, 9 months later, Theresa was born, and this caused a lot of problems.
At that point, Theresa wasn’t keen on sharing too many details, but to summarize, when her existence was discovered, the family brought her and her mother back in to save face and forced them to take the Agni name, even if they didn’t truly consider them to be members.
Now, why did all this make her half-sister detest her so much?
Well, as it turns out, Theresa was discovered to be highly talented. And while she didn’t receive the same resources as legitimate members of the family due to the circumstances of her birth, she had no trouble keeping up with them in the talent department.
This fell back a lot on Agnes, as she was constantly being compared to Theresa, which ended up making the girl resent her simply for existing.
Hence, the current situation.
If Mike was being honest, the info was a bit more than he had bargained for, but it gave him a decent insight into Theresa’s past and who she was as a person. She was someone who was born into a world where she was looked down upon, despite not asking to be born.
Despite this, though, she didn’t seem discouraged or anything. In fact, she was quite driven. She also seemed to have a lot of care for her mother based on how she spoke about her.
Moreover, she took this time to start teaching Mike more about certain things he was oblivious about, but the rest of the world considered to be common knowledge.
Trends, news, important figures, and in general just miscellaneous information that wasn’t useful from a combat standpoint but was sort of necessary if one wanted to have a steady foundation in the societal world.
If Mike was being honest, he didn’t care all that much about how people perceived him due to his apparent lack of common knowledge, as to him, he would simply learn as he went, but Theresa was determined to make him a bit less oblivious than he currently was before classes started.
Soon enough, Sunday arrived, and Mike finally received his timetable from Beatrice.
Eventide Academy: Student Course Schedule
Student Name: Mike (Year 1)
Effective: Monday–Friday, 8 PM–4 PM
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08:00–09:20
Close Quarters Mastery
Location: Training Hall C-1
09:40–11:00
Martial Forms of the World
Location: Training Hall C-3
11:20–12:40
Aura Combat Fundamentals
Location: Ability Wing A-2
12:40–1:40: Lunch Break
1:40–3:00
Power Management & Flow
Location: Ability Wing A-1
3:10–3:55
Enemy Analysis & Tactical Exploits
Location: Strategy Wing S-4
4:05–4:50
Behavioral Decoding & Subtextual Analysis
Location: Comm/Espionage Wing E-2
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Notes:
Students must report to all sessions on time.
Physical readiness checks will be performed before morning classes.
Timetable repeats daily (Mon–Fri). Saturdays are reserved for assessments, drills, or open training.
Locations are subject to change based on facility availability.
The timetable was easy enough to understand, though, Mike didn’t understand why it said classes were from 8 AM to 4 PM only for his classes to end by 4:50.
However, he wasn’t overly bothered by the fact, just intrigued.
On the night before classes officially began, Mike made sure he had everything prepped and ready for the next day.
His uniform was in good condition, and he spent a while just memorizing the routes to the different course locations via his map.
In truth, there wasn’t a huge amount of stuff he could do at this point, so what remained was him mentally preparing himself.
As he lay in bed and calmed his racing heart, he stared at the ceiling for a while before taking a deep breath.
’Tomorrow is gonna be the start of everything.’ He closed his eyes and mumbled.
"Let’s see how it goes."