I’m in the principal’s office now. It’s weird. Mrs. Grintonham is the one most students expect to talk with when they have problems. Having a word with the principal? This does not feel good.

Principal Wills is a black man, tall and dressed in a fine black suit. I estimate that he’s in his forties based on his scarce hair amount on the head. We don’t frequently see him around school, so I guess he’s busy most of the time.

“Eason Lu?” He asks.

“Here I am.” I reply.

“Come and sit. I need a word with you.” He gestures me to sit down in front of his giant office desk made of premium maple. I can tell that ornate and sturdy office desk must worth thousands. On its polished glossy surface, an enchanted golden mechanic arm is floating in the midair, automatically dipping a tea bag in his blue porcelain teapot up and down at a slow and steady pace.

“That’s cool.” I praised the principal’s superior taste in furniture selection.

“Thanks.” Principal Wills laughs, “The Magical Tea DipperArm! I bought it from ‘Mostco’ for two hundred dollars. A fantastic deal, and it also comes with a two-year warranty. You want a cup of black tea made by this?”

“Sure. I don’t see a reason not enjoying free beverage.” I say, pulling over a filled cup from the saucer. “So waving up and down is the only gesture this arm could do?” I ask this question purely out of curiosity.

“Well… You are right.” He lets out a slight sigh. “But look, when you grow up you will understand, Eason, that buying useless and expensive novelties are, notably, one of the rich people’s common hobbies. I’m rich, Eason, and I want to show it off in school.”

“Cool… I see.” I reply in an indifferent tone. “I suppose tea bags aren’t the only thing this arm can grasp. ”

Principal Wills almost spills his cup. He coughs loud and deliberately, trying to interrupt my sentence.

“Ok. Back to our topic.” He says. “Eason. You are grade ten now, am I right?”

I nod. “Gonna be grade eleven in September.”

He nods with me. “Good. Good. … So, Mrs. Grintonham has told me of your situation...” He takes a pile of files from the desk, looking at it as he speaks, “I want you to understand that we are always trying our best to provide every student in our district a diverse, discrimination-free environment to study and live in. We treat all students equally and...”

“Are you just reading off those files?”

“Yeah, whatever, you catch my drift.” Principal Wills turns his gaze toward me as his tone gets serious. “Eason, bad things could happen. To All of us, and at all times. We know that you were rated F by the Testing Hat when you were young and you have difficulties casting magic.”

“That is one hundred percent true.” I agree with his statement. “And ‘having difficulties casting magic’ actually means ‘can’t cast magic at all’.”

“But that could not be a proper excuse for only earning ...twelve credits during your two years in high school. You - you’ve only taken twelve courses in two years? ”

“How many total credits do I need to graduate again?” I ask because I really don’t know.

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“Forty.” Principal Wills emphasizes. “You are way behind, Eason. Way behind. You’ll need to take twenty-eight courses in two years, seven courses per semester on average. Furthermore, we have just found out that you’ve been taking ‘Introduction to herbalism’ repeatedly for three semesters in a row... hold on... oh for lord’s sake, you are taking it for the fourth time this September? You get 100% as the final mark on that course every time, why would you do that?!”

“Uh… Mrs. Eisenberg offers free soft chunk cookies to everyone before class. ” I answered frankly.

“Well, looks like you aren’t going to have free cookies in September.” Principal Wills takes a pen from his pocket and draws a line across on one of the papers, scribbling new notes down. “I will switch you to… ‘Defense techniques against forbidden spells’. Mr. Molvolt’s section. That’ll do it.”

“Am I going to learn defensive spells on that course?”

“Yes. And you need to learn to cast them.”

“But you know I can’t cast any magic.”

“Eason, we are trying our best to help too.” Mr. Wills puts down his pen and stares at me, “But the truth is, we offer fifty-five courses in this high school but only thirty-eight of them are purely theoretical studies and not requiring any casting of spells.”

“But...”

“So I don’t care what courses you are going to take, you have to pass at least two courses, in which you must learn to juice some bit of darn magic out of your wand. ”

“You can’t force a man on a wheelchair to stand up and run.” I am confused, and even sort of annoyed. “An ‘F’ from the Testing Hat means no magic affinity whatsoever. I’m sure you are certain of that too.”

I take a sip the black tea, rest my elbows on the desk.

Mr. Wills shakes his head after he clicks his tongue in despise.

“Nah, I don’t trust that bastard hat anymore since it was arrested and accused of sixteen child sexual abuse cases last year. ”

“What?... Ok.” I decide not to investigate that further.

“You didn’t read the news? That’s fine...” Mr. Wills shrugs. “My point is, even that retarded kid Evan in our special education program can...”

“Sir...” I want to warn him of his inappropriate language.

“Ok!” He corrects his wording and waves his hand, “Kid with intellectual disability! I mean even a kid with intellectual disability can learn to cast fireballs - even though he haven’t realized that throwing it at principal’s pants is not right - he can still do it! How hard is it for you to cast some spells?”

“Harder than you’d imagine. Sir.” I answer.

“I’m sorry, but it’s also the policy of the school board which I’m not able to violate. Eason. I’m going to say this, only once.” Principal Wills sighs deeply, falls into silence, then claims solemnly. “This is a sad but inevitable fact: if you don’t learn to cast magic, we cannot offer you a diploma from this high school of magic, which means, you will not be able to graduate from high school. Forever.”

So what happens next is solely my fault. The Qi flowing in my body is so enormous and forceful that sometimes even I lose control of it if I’m not paying enough attention. That, as a result, makes me uncontrollably exert some huge forces on my surrounding objects.

The fact that I might no be able to graduate kind of shocks me. For one millisecond, I grasp the cup in my hand a bit tighter, and then it shatters into thousands of glittering pieces in a crystal clear “boom”.

Black tea spills onto Principal Wills’ face. But before he’s able to realize and make any reaction, the sudden explosion of the teacup startles me first. Qi flow out of my elbows and into the principal’s maple office desk.

Another boom. The desk cracks into a rubble of wood pieces on the floor. So now the Principal and I are sitting on chairs, face to face, staring at each other in awkward silence.

The enchanted arm is still moving up and down with the tea bag, although there’s no teapot beneath it anymore.

We sit there for like two more minutes, nobody ever says another word.

Finally, I say: “Well, that’s pretty odd, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” He replies, still holding the last intact teacup in hand, his eyes dull and expressionless. Right. He's gonna take a while to process what just happened.

“If you excuse me, I should leave now.”

“Yeah."

I quietly walk out of the principal’s office and smoothly closed the door.

Damn. I really need to find a way to restrain my power.