Once they made their way to the gym proper, Sarah took charge of the exercise routine for the whole group. Felix and Yvessa seemed content to follow her lead and Sam couldn’t have complained even if he wanted to, since just following Sarah’s warm-up instructions proved almost too much for him. What annoyed him most was that she was taking it easy on him since, after she told him he can take a break, she still had another set of warm-ups in store for Felix, Yvessa and herself.
The rest of the session passed very much in that fashion. Sarah tasked Sam with doing a certain set and after being satisfied that he was performing it correctly, she left to do her own training while Sam finished his. Felix and Yvessa were also taking their part in tormenting Sam. Each of them dropped in every couple of minutes to check up on him and see how he was doing. It usually involved them telling him that he was doing something wrong.
“Straighten your back,” Felix told him for the second time in a minute.
“Any more straight than these and you won’t be able to court me anymore,” Sam said between gritted teeth.
“His back is fine, leave him be.” Yvessa angelic voice sounded from behind him. “It’s his knees that are overextending.”
Finally, Sam finished his tenth repetition and laid down the weight while staring balefully at the two first-years. “You two are enjoying this way too much.”
“I’m just trying to help you, mate,” Felix pleaded his innocence.
Yvessa nodded. “I concur. You are already so far behind even the worst performing first-year students. There is no way you’ll catch up to them by graduation time if we didn’t help you. You are sorely in need of it.”
“Jokes on you, cause it’s not a done deal at all that I’ll be attending graduation at the same time as you two. It’s the year after yours that I should be aiming for if we take Mr. Ritter’s optimistic view.”
“Fuck that, mate.” Felix clapped him on the back. “We’ll get you ready for graduation on time. You just need to trust us. Me and Yvessa here, we’re going to be like your Gull and Temussa.” Sam stared at him blankly. “Oh, right. You haven’t started elven history. Well, we’ll help you there as well. I mean, Yvessa already knows more that what’s being taught here on account of her upbringing and whatnot.”
Yvessa looked unimpressed with Felix’s description of how she acquired her knowledge. “I grew up on Maynil,” she said once she saw Sam’s questioning look. Which only caused that look to deepen. “It’s the Sarechi Kingdom’s—the elves’—homeworld. My mother was, is, Terran ambassador to the elven court, so I lived most of my life in Larsus—”
“That’s the what the capital is called,” Felix whispered to him.
“Thanks.” Sam nodded to him. “Ain’t no way I would’ve figured it otherwise.” Felix gave him a thumbs up. “So you had an elven education?” Sam asked Yvessa with interest. It just dawned on him that this might be his first interaction with some that grew in a completely alien environment to the one Sam knew of. Because while he already saw a bunch of elves while he was walking around campus—hell, there was even one in the gym with them right now—he hadn’t spoken to any of them yet.
“I received a noble’s education, which is much better than what most elven children are given. Don’t get me wrong, Sarechal is not like an old medieval kingdom where everyone who isn’t a noble is an oppressed serf. But compared to the Terran Republic, there is a definite difference in the quality of education between the rich and powerful and the more average citizens.”
“That’s a being a little generous to the republic.” Felix sounded bitter. “It’s not like the poor elves are suffering or anything. Their average schools are better than our average.”
“Only when it comes to magic,” Yvessa countered him.
“Aren’t you the one that’s always going on and on about how great elven culture is?”
“It doesn’t mean that—” Yvessa started to say but was stopped by Sarah coming up from behind.
“Alright, break’s over,” Sarah said. “Stop wasting Sam’s time. Don’t forget that you’re supposed to be helping him train, not helping him rest.”
“But Moooom…” Sam was petulant. “We were just in the middle of getting some backstory.”
“It’s funny that you’ve mentioned the back cause it’s time for you to work yours.” And she sent him on his way to the nearest bench. She kept a closer eye on him after that, apparently not trusting Felix and Yvessa to act as cruel and malignant as she could. With the she-demon eying the clock every time he rested between sets, it came as no surprise that he was finished with his own workout much earlier than the other three. It had absolutely nothing to do with Sarah going easy on him; not having him do the same number of sets that she was doing herself.
“Alright,” Sarah said, “let my just finish my workout and we’ll do stretches. And good job. If you can keep going like this, then I’ll have you in shape in no time.”
“How long will that be? Cause I’m hoping to be adopted sometime next week.”
“You’re not leaving my care until I say you’re ready.” She gave him a wide smile. Next to him, Felix barked a laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Yvessa asked as she approached them.
“He was either laughing at my being emasculated,” Sam said. “Or… he was laughing because he finds the concept of a not blood related family structure outrageous.”
“Why can’t it be both?” Felix asked. Yvessa just shook her head and looked at Sarah expectantly.
“I was just congratulating Sam on a job well done,” Sarah said. “And I told him that if he keeps going like that, then he’ll be combat fit in no time.”
“That is funny.” Yvessa nodded. “There’s no way he’s going to get in shape with how easy you were going on him.”
“That wasn’t the joke at all,” Felix said.
“And I wasn’t going easy on him,” Sarah said. “He’s not like you or Felix. He has a brand new body. Until two days ago, he literally never worked out before.”
“Don’t forget to mention about how I also didn’t have any legs.” Sam nudged her.
“What?” Felix asked with a laugh and Yvessa in shock. “You didn’t have legs before?” she continued.
“You didn’t tell them?” Sam asked Sarah.
“Obviously I didn’t. Why would I? That’s something private to you!”
“Wait. You really didn’t have legs before being taken?” Felix asked.
Sam ignored him. “Didn’t you say that you told them about me?” he asked Sarah.
“Yeah, about your personality and what happened to you since you got here. I wasn’t going to mention something like that without your permission.”
“Oh,” Sam said in embarrassment. “Thanks, I guess. But it’s not something private that I don’t want people to know about. Especially since I do have legs now.”
“So you didn’t before?” Felix asked, his face was slowly creeping closer to Sam’s.
“It’s not like I never had any,” Sam said. “I just lost them in a traffic accident a couple of months ago… give or take a hundred years. And now I have brand new legs!” He slapped his precious fleshy thighs.
“Wow… Man, sorry about that, I didn’t know.”
“So you’ve been having problems getting used to having legs again?” Yvessa asked Sam in a low voice.
“Not really. Literally none, now that I think about it. Why?”
“You gave it as a reason for why I should be going easy on you,” Sarah said. Yvessa nodded along and seemed annoyed at having felt bad for Sam.
“What, I can’t mention having lost my legs in a traffic accident in an attempt to score sympathy points anymore?! What is this world coming to? I’ll have you know, back in my days, you weren’t allowed to make fun of someone that wasn’t in shape, even if there wasn’t any reason besides laziness for them being a fat ass. That’s what my therapist told me, at least. He called it self-harming behavior.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“No one was making fun of you,” Sarah placated him.
“I was going to, but then Yvessa derailed the conversation,” Felix said.
“Never mind that!” Sarah snapped at them before Yvessa could offer a retort. “But while I got you both here, I wanted to ask you for your help with helping Sam.”
“What are you, a single mother?” Sam said before he realized the fact that he has been repeating that one joke the entire day.
“Of course we’ll help, won’t me?” Yvessa said while looking at Felix. “It’d be idiotic not to help train someone who is certain to become a Ruler once he reaches level 10. Right?”
Felix nodded. “Yeah, we’ll help. That’s what friends are for. We are friends, right?” he asked Sam.
“I don’t commit to any platonic relationship until I’ve tested the potential candidate taste in pop-culture.” Sam avoided answering. “But also, Sarah is basically my only friend, so I’ll pretty much just to whatever she tells me to do. So if she says we’re friends, then we’re friends. But beware, if one day your relations turns sour and she’ll sic me upon you, then whatever bonds of friendship we may have had before will not prevent me from causing you harm.”
“See,” Felix said, “we’re already making jokes.”
“That’s not a high bar,” Sarah said. “Sam has joked with every person he met since coming here.”
“That can’t be true,” Sam said. “Surely not everyone.” Sarah raised her brow at him. “Don’t look at me like that. The burden of proof falls on the prosecution. That being said, you’re probably right. I’m a nervous joker. And it just so happens that I’m almost always nervous.”
“If he gets on your nerves, just tell him to pipe down. He’s like a small dog that way,” Sarah spoke as though Sam wasn’t there. “I mainly wanted you guys to work out together, since I won’t always be available to accompany him. But if you guys want to help him with some actual schoolwork, then I’m sure Dan wouldn’t mind the extra hands.”
Felix raised both thumbs up. “I’ve already volunteered Yvessa to be his elven history teacher.”
“That’s very generous of you, Yvessa, thank you.” Sarah didn’t waste the opportunity to fully reel in her friend.
Yvessa sighed. “I guess that I can help him catch up on what we’ve learned last trimester, but there’s still the current one and the next one. Besides, would he even be able to skip those courses? Even I had to do the oral exam.”
“I very much doubt that Dan cares for maintaining academic integrity and equality when it comes to Sam,” Sarah said. “But we’ll have to ask him. Maybe they’ll just give him his very own exam to test him on the material. It’s not like there are guidelines to follow, telling the academy how to handle adult Taken.”
“Or any Taken for that matter,” Felix muttered under his breath.
“You’re still going on about that?”
“About what?” Sam asked.
“They wanted Sarah to learn the full course list for sculpting,” Felix said before Sarah could deflect. “Which, if you don’t know what it means, is total bullshit cause she doesn’t need to do it.”
“Just because I’m a Taken doesn’t mean that I definitely won’t need to sculpt in the future,” Sarah said. “So there is a concrete reason for me to learn sculpting.”
“Yeah, but all the courses?” Yvessa entered the debate. “I can see just teaching you the first one, but even that is overkill. If it were up to me, I’d just teach you the very basics, three or four weeks max. And if it turns out that it wasn’t enough in the future, there will be plenty of high levels around who could personally teach you what you need to know.”
Felix nodded. “They probably just forgot to take the fact that you’re Taken into account and signed you up for the all the mandatory subjects. Same thing with Yvessa and elven history, just that in her case Dan didn’t decide to step in and tell the academy not to be idiots, and for some reason neither did she.”
Yvessa looked at Felix with annoyance. “It wasn’t worth the fuss. This way I just need to spend ten minutes of my time every trimester taking the exam and that’s it. Unlike you, I’m not well loved by the wider Terran populace. Everything I do or don’t do is judged by everyone else.”
“So did you end up learning sculpting?” Sam asked Sarah before the wonder twins could get into a heated argument.
“No…” she admitted. “Dan pretty much forbade me from it. He just gave me basic lessons and told me that if I had a problem with it in the future that he will come and help me himself.”
“Which was the obviously smart thing to do,” Felix said. “Or are you also going to be signing up Sam to sculpting lessons?”
“That’s different! Sam is already far behind everyone else in his year. He can’t afford to waste his time when he has so much catching up to do.” She’s right, you know, Sam rebuked himself for the fact that he was currently resting because Sarah told him he can take a break. Stop that. He slapped his hand. If you keep thinking like that, you’re going to drive yourself crazy. Just gotta trust that Web-Web will tell me when I’m taking it too easy and not worry about it until then.
Felix laughed. “That doesn’t sound very convincing coming from you. I forgot; just how many electives are you currently taking?” Yvessa voiced her agreement.
“Don’t you too start with me about that.” Sarah massaged her forehead and checked her watch. “Dammit. You’ve been keeping me here way longer that I should have. And unless you guys already finished with your exercises for the day like Sam did, hop on to it.” She spun on her heel and made her way towards one of the machines furthest from where they were. Yvessa and Felix exchanged glances before they both went back to completing their sets.
Deciding that he didn’t have anything better to do, Sam opted to keep them company as they worked out. “So…” he began once they were both taking a break. “You’re also in the ‘Sarah is spreading herself too thin’ camp? I just heard about that from Dan yesterday, but with all the other information I had to process, I still didn’t have time to cross-examine her on the subject. Let alone to start ribbing her.”
“Why would you want to do that?” Yvessa asked him with a frown.
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“Why would you make fun of her for something like that? She’s your friend.”
Sam cleared his throat. “I didn’t mean anything bad by it. Just some like humor between friends. You want to tell me you’ve never made fun of her for that?”
“I don’t make fun of my friends for their decisions in life.”
“That can’t be true.” Sam turned to Felix.
“Well… No. It’s just that she spent most of her life unable to make fun of her friends, so that might’ve been true in the past. But she’ll come after you and me with no qualms.”
“I resent that assumption,” Yvessa said.
“Which one?”
“Both.”
“Wait, so do you guys agree with Dan’s assessment?” Sam asked.
“Damn right,” Felix said. Just as Yvessa said, “It’s not our place to pass judgment.”
“So I’m hearing one yes and one ‘yes, but I don’t want to speak ill of my friend,’” Sam said. “That’s good to know. The picture’s not looking good for Ms. Khan.”
Felix finished his set and sat up, drying the sweat on his forehead with a towel. It was the first time that Sam saw any of the three showing signs of perspiration during the entire workout. “Of course, I agree with Yvessa that it’s Sarah’s choice and all. But at the end of the day, she’s obviously gonna have to make some sacrifices. I mean, she only made it to level 3 a couple of weeks ago, for Christ’s sake. It took her the same amount of time as an above average Terran, that needs to sculpt every day, takes. If it was anyone else in her place, I would have said that they’re lazy, but since it’s Sarah, I know that she just has too much on her plate to be able to optimize her free time for cultivating.”
“So have you two tried convincing Sarah to drop some of her course load like Dan is? Or are you just commentating from the sidelines?”
“I have tried talking with her about it,” Yvessa said. “But after she made it clear she isn’t going to change her mind, I decided to avoid mentioning it.” She threw a sideway glance at Felix, clearly intending to chide him for doing just that.
Felix cleared his throat. “For me, it seems that she’s clearly set in her ways. So there isn’t much we can do besides annoy her by continuing to question her decisions.”
“Really?” Sam raised an eyebrow. “Cause I’m pretty sure that you were doing just that no more than a couple of minutes ago?”
“That wasn’t judging her decisions, but rather her hypocrisy,” Felix answered with a beaming smile.
“Fair enough. So if I am to take up the mantle in operation ‘UnBilbofying Sarah,’ I take it that I should count you two out?”
“I have no idea what that means,” Yvessa said. “But if you’re going to try to get Sarah to drop some of her classes, then I can only wish you luck. Even though you are pretty much the person least qualified to lecture anyone on their training.”
“Some times it is the fool that sees most clearly among the king’s court,” Sam said, showing wisdom much beyond his years. Judging by the fact the both of them went back to their training, it appeared they were unable to appreciate his sagacity. They stayed off the topic of Sarah’s life choices as they continued their sporadic discussion. No other topics of import were brought forth, the conversation mainly circling around the two’s half a year in the academy. Before too long, they too finished their training and all three of them were left waiting on Sarah, who claimed to have been delayed in finishing by the actions of persons other than herself.
While Yvessa and Felix relegated themselves to the showers, Sam sat down next to Sarah and counted for her as she pushed the barbell up and down. She didn’t ask for his help, but he had nothing better to occupy his brain than simply goggling at her display of strength. He couldn’t see exactly how much weight she was struggling with and was satisfied to stay in ignorance. His own muscles were still aching in horrible agony from the punishment he doled on them three straight days in a row. True, he wasn’t feeling quite as bad as he probably would have been with his previous, less evolutionary primed body, but he still felt like shit. Of course, his mental mood was not impervious to the negative effect of his physical state. He also felt like shit in his own mind, which was full of self judgment aimed at the fact that his own workout didn’t last as long as the others.
Before he could slip too deeply into melancholy, Sarah finished her last exercise and, after returning everything to its rightful place, called Sam over to lead him through some stretching. “How come we have magic but still need to stretch?” Sam asked her, in his whiniest, most annoying voice. He only had to heighten his natural pitch by a little bit.
“Do you want the science behind the reasoning, or do you just want to complain?” she asked him, her head almost touching the ground as she bent to touch her left foot.
Not able to showcase his nimbleness anywhere close to what Sarah was doing, Sam just murmured in disgruntlement and focused on counting the seconds until he could let go. Once they were done, Sarah clapped him on his back and congratulated him on a job well done.
“Thanks,” Sam responded, “but I really think you should save the commendation until such time as I am able to this for a month straight.”
“C’mon,” she said with a smile, “have some belief in yourself. You’ll be in shape in no time. I guarantee it.”
Sam just nodded his head, biting his tongue to prevent the already half-formed self-deprecating remark from flowing out of his mouth. “So what’s next on the itinerary?” he asked her.
“How abut we both go get cleaned and then see from there,” she answered him and then proceeded to guide him towards the showers. One quick shower later. To contrast with Felix’s long one, seeing as they both began getting dressed at pretty much the same time. And their entire four member party was gathered just where they were a workout’s time ago. “So breakfast?” Sarah asked, and since Sam was still unemancipated, it only took Yvessa’s and Felix’s affirmation for their next destination to be decided.