By the time lunch period came around, Andrew was exhausted. Nearly dead on his feet. The best lies in the world were all actually true.

An amateur might try to get away with simply seeding as falsehood with generous kernels of truth, but the masters of the deception knew how to tell the truth and use it to cover up more inconvenient truths.

Andrew wasn’t lying when he said he'd been exhausted by his feet with the Professor. In terms of actual time lived, the indeterminate period he’d been around was many times the professor’s life. However, when considered on the basis of stages of life, Andrew was still a child. A “young” old one. An eidolon still going through his growing phase.

Reaching past the surface of the world and fiddling with the underpinnings of reality took a lot of energy. When he was in his eidolon form he’d simply fade away like a nightmare during the day time and leave whatever was left for Sophia to handle. So he hadn’t really been bothered by how much power he had to burn to get things done.

Now though, now when he was stuck in a body of flesh and blood, he was starkly aware that too much of ‘that’ kind of exhaustion could kill him. Or at least disincorporate him and leave him very inconvenienced.

He’d rather not admit it aloud, but he suspected that Sophia had been right about him being a bit young to be gallivanting through the greater-cosmos. Not that he would have let that stop him even had he been more aware of the issue.

Time, cultivation, and good eating would remedy the issue of his weakness. So long as he didn’t go picking fights with the gods, devils, and archangels, he’d probably be fine. There was no such remedy for the creeping madness he’d felt overtaking him with each day that he spent within the figment-realm of Abwickeln.

The point being, that while Andrew had indeed played up exactly how tired he was, back in the intro to power channeling class, he hadn’t been lying about being tired.

Now with the passage of time adding to his exhaustion, Andrew was fairly certain that if he didn’t end up sleeping through his next few classes, he’d just end up skipping the classes altogether.

Right now, all Andrew wanted to do was eat his shepard’s pie and apple cobbler in peace. He had a webcomic up on a browser window and was doing his best to just sort of veg out. Hoping to catch a second wind before the lunch hour was over.

Just as Andrew was trying to settle down, he started to feel a gaze on his back. Lines of curiosity, scrutiny, and calculation started to prod at him. Unpleasantly poking at his back like a rogue erection in a crowded dance floor.

At first Andrew tried to ignore it, but as time wore on the feeling got stronger. Becoming unpleasant enough that had he finished eating he’d have left just to get away from the gaze. Finally, Andrew threw down his spoon, and without turning round, he called out a soft challenge.

“Oi, mate… If you’re gonna do something then just fucking do it already. Otherwise bugger off before I get testy.” said Andrew. Letting a little killing intent seep into his words.

For a moment, talking seemed to work because the gaze pulled away for a bit. Then it came back and started to come closer. Andrew prepared for a fight, grumbling to himself, and deciding he’d probably not be as generous to whoever this new person was, as he’d been to Thug One and Thug Two.

He prepared to be attacked from behind. His preternatural senses all sharpened themselves to the point that he found himself seeing with eyes that weren’t inside his body. Which was how Andrew first saw the gangly youth in the tidy and pressed uniform making his way to him from halfway across the dining hall.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

The young man was slender, but tall. His build was athetelic but not explosively so. His hair was yellow-green. Slicked back against his scalp.

His skin was a soft golden color. His features were pretty and slightly androgynous in that way that was common for the fae-blooded, and Andrew could clearly see that while his ears weren’t as long as a fairy or elf’s they still ended in a point. Making Andrew conclude the young man was some kind of half-elf.

Instead of attacking Andrew, the young man sat to the side of him and then turned. The stare returning as he openly, and somewhat rudely, looked Andrew over. Like a con artist looking to hook a sucker.

Andrew tried to be patient but his exhaustion and the fact his meal had been interrupted made his temper much shorter than it otherwise would have been.

“Are you gonna say something or are you gonna just sit there making eyes at me. Because if the latter I’m sorry to say, while you’re not bad looking, friend. I’ve already got a significant other. So maybe just say what you’re gonna say and bugger off.” said Andrew. Unsure if he was smiling or simply baring his fangs, as he showed his teeth to the other boy.

The other boy startled and then opened and closed his mouth several times before grabbing hold of himself. The air around the half-elf changed and then he put on a smile that was a lot more confident than the one he’d worn before hand.

“I uh...I know, I mean the whole school’s talking about how you shared a cab with the school’s White Rose and started making out with her right in front of the school gate.”

Andrew considered the other boy’s words and wondered exactly how much free time the students of Blackvale must have if they were so bored as to be speculating on his and Sophia’s relationship. Then he looked the half-elf over again with a look of wariness.

“Ah, so are you another one of ‘those’? Here to tell me who I can or can’t fraternize with?” said Andrew. His voice getting louder and sharper with each word that passed through his lips.

“H-, Huh? No… I... I was... I was just trying to….”

“Well, I don’t know what you thought you were trying to do, but I can tell you what can do right, bloody now. Bugger off!” said Andrew. Feeling his patience come to its end.

The half-elf seemed to deflate his confidence fleeing. He was about to get up from the table but then Andrew stopped him. Keeping him in place by resting his hand on the boy’s shoulder for a second.

Andrew’s orange eyes met the half-elf’s blue-green eyes. Neither boy said anything for the thirty seconds that Andrew’s hand rested on the boy’s shoulder. Then Andrew’s look softened and the half-elf’s expression collapsed.

Andrew removed his hand from the boy’s shoulder. Then half-elf began to shake his former composure completely lost. Large, sloppy, tears poured from the boys eyes.

If there was anyone watching from a distance they’d have seen the two young men sitting in silence and intimate closeness. They’d have seen Andrew put his hand on the slender half-elf’s shoulder and pull him towards as if to whisper something in his ear. Then they’d have seen the half-elf jump up from the table and run out of the dining hall sobbing, hiding his face behind his hands.

Andrew was aware of at least a handful of less intrusive, less pointed gazes, that had been looking in his general direction. Through his connection to the collective unconscious he could feel a series of moderate shifts in the public’s opinion of him and tiredly wondered what the rumor mill would make of this little episode.

Andrew sighed. He looked at his food and then shook his head. With his appetite gone there was nothing left for him to do but to dispose of the excess food, put the tray in the tray station and make his way out of the dining hall as well.

The truth of what really happened was slightly confusing even to Andrew. He remembered feeling very cross with the boy. Then he recalled recognizing that those feelings weren’t his own. He might have been feeling a little hangry at the moment, but Andrew’s fundamental nature was quite separate from the haughty, disdain, he’d felt for the half-elf.

Usually, if he really hadn’t wanted to be bothered by someone and he couldn’t ignore their presence, it was Andrew who would have left, rather than growling and beating his chest at them to scare them off. Flaring up for almost no reason just wasn’t him.

This isn't to say that Andrew couldn’t be mean or brutish. He was a Quirk, so for the first fifteen years of his life he’d been learning meanness and brutishness from masters of the art. It wasn’t impossible for Andrew to be an asshole but he was generally a different kind of asshole and he could tell there was something “inorganic” about the way the situation was progressing.

With this understanding, Andrew had taken a second to take several steps back and get a good look at himself and the half-elf. At which point he realized there was some kind of miasma pouring out of the boy. A kind of greasy, oily, anti-charisma. An unpleasant provoking presence that made it really hard to tolerate the half-elf’s presence.

Too tired to tolerate strange gases messing with his head, Andrew got rid of the miasma and the ‘thing’ that had attached itself to the boy’s essence to create the miasma. Literally clearing the air, and forcefully tearing away the hateful aberrant piece of data that was responsible for trying to interfere with Andrew’s thoughts.

Surprisingly, the half-elf was apparently sensitive enough to notice when the both the miasma and the “thing” was gone. Even more surprising, the boy had immediately, burst into tears once he realized what had happened. Running off, sobbing.

Now Andrew felt bad. He felt bad for being so rude and aggro to the half-elf for no reason, and he felt doubly bad because as far as he knew, that little ball of hate with its antagonistic miasma was some precious family heirloom. However, there wasn’t much he could do about it right at this moment, so Andrew just decided to go to his next class and see if it was large enough for him to nap in.