A few minutes after the old man had left, someone opened the door to the classroom and slightly peeked in.

"You're Sebastian, right? I didn't get the wrong class?" The woman at the door asked, her voice nervous, accentuated by her small stature, which made Sebastian feel at ease as he wasn't the only one feeling that way here.

"Yes…um…" Sebastian answered, he wanted to address the lady but didn't know what word to use, so he stayed silent rather than potentially insult her. He had experienced that a few times, mostly from people more well-dressed, which everyone here was.

"Oh, great. Oh! My name is Anabelle, you can call me Miss Anabelle. I will be your - uh… teacher, let's leave it at that. I'm supposed to teach you writing and reading primarily, and other things children your age should know secondarily, does that sound right?" She asked, a genuine question rather than an ironic one. From someone as high status as a teacher, he would have never expected one to ask whether they are wrong or not.

"Um, yes." Sebastian answered quickly, despite not being sure about the second part of the question, as he was not informed about what he was supposed to learn here.

"Great, great. Excuse me for that, I'm not really used to this whole magic thing. I've been here for a few months only." Anabelle said, much calmer now. "Now, let's continue, first of all, can you tell me about yourself?"

"Uh… I don't know. What should I say?"

"Well, do you know anyone? What do you do daily? Those types of things." She answered, some pity in her voice.

"I… don't know that many people. There were some that I met more than one time, but most of them didn't like me or want to talk." Sebastian stopped a little to think about what more to say, looking down while doing so before looking at her again "As for what I do… Mostly look around to see if anyone has anything to give me, or if there's anything I could take, like leftovers or clothes I can exchange."

"I see. So I get you don't talk to many people, so I'll also have to teach you some more vocabulary." Anabelle moved towards the blackboard before she quickly turned to look at him "Ah, that means the words used in a language since you probably didn't know." She explained before grabbing a piece of chalk and writing "Now, I'll begin by teaching you the alphabet and what sound corresponds with what letter, so pay attention…"

For the next hour, Anabelle began explaining to him how to read different symbols, and the order they were arranged in this "alphabet". He managed to learn the order of the sounds in it, yet not how all the symbols looked. He could match most of the simple ones, but if asked to write a sound he'd fail 9 out of 10 times. No wonder everyone looks up to teachers, Sebastian thought, if it's so complicated just to read he would never be as smart as them…

"Well done!" Anabelle excitedly said "With how things are going you should learn reading and writing by the end of the week… Oh, do you know what a week is?"

"Yes, 7 days, and they have names. Today is…" Sebastian trailed off, looking away as he felt a little shame. He'd just been praised after all and now he didn't know something so simple.

"It's Thursday. So, we'll see each other tomorrow, I'm going to give you this illustration of the alphabet so you can practice it in your room." She opened her briefcase and took said illustration before giving it to him, and moved to leave before seeing how Sebastian stood in his place "You don't have any more classes right? Come on." She motioned for him to follow, and after he walked out of the door she finally started moving towards the opposite side where the guest rooms were located "Remember to practice!"

___

After around half an hour, Sebastian managed to find his way back to his room. He had tried using the campus map, yet that only made things worse as he didn't know how to use such a thing.

Finally back, he had something to eat and stopped to think about what do to next. He never had 'free time' to choose what to do, and was afraid of wasting said time now. At least he only had to choose between learning English and meditating, maybe once. He could probably memorize the whole alphabet today, after all, it was barely noon, and he could meditate at night before sleep.

So, he spent the rest of the day studying non-stop, finding a few pens and pieces of paper in his room. With the excitement he felt from today's classes, he managed to do pretty well in the beginning, memorizing a few more letters, but eventually, he reached the later half, which he had problems with even saying, let alone writing, so he had to rack his brain to remember them. He thought about asking someone, maybe Tom, but he didn't want to intrude. And as the day was over and he started getting tired, he'd made little progress. He could only hope Miss Anabelle wouldn't be annoyed or think he was lazy.

As he yawned, seeing the sun has almost fallen down, Sebastian sat in his bed, relaxed. The old man, Vernon, had said that as long as they're relaxed any position should work for meditation, so he began, trying to imagine something over the darkness of his closed eyes. This time he didn't have the same feeling, of his brain becoming more, but he felt the strain, 'fatigue' as Vernon referred to it. He was in a much worse situation than Tom had been then. His whole body was shaking and his mind felt like it would break into pieces. So, with nothing else to do in such a situation, Sebastian fell asleep, hoping the feeling would abate by morning.

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___

Waking up with a smile on his face, Sebastian felt more refreshed than ever. The feeling he had now was similar to how he felt when he woke up two days ago when someone spoke through his body and he fainted, except he was now in a bed, and was much less confused about what was going on.

After eating and using the room that had a weird toilet in it, and 'running water', he and Tom were once again guided to the class by Mathew, who said that he was their Senior. He didn't seem that old, Sebastian had only heard old men be addressed as such before, but he'd learned to just accept things here.

"So, how was your first day?" He asked them, a little interested yet most likely just wanting to make small talk.

"Ohh, we met this old man called Vernon, and he made us meditate, which made my head hurt, so I don't really see the point in that, but apparently Sebastian did something good, not sure. After that, I went to my room and read a cool book about the history of the academy. Are those… are those things true?" Tom started speaking very fast before ending with a question.

"Hmm? Oh, mostly yes, I think. It's been a while since I read that one, not really into history myself, I only did a little in my second year. There could be some slight exaggerations in the book you have, I think the author was a student when he wrote it." Mathew responded "And you should know that meditation may be hard but you won't reach far if you don't use it. Your mental capacity is very important unless you want to become a researcher or artificer. Those jobs usually have lower requirements in that area, I wanted to go into that in my first year but quickly changed my mind after taking pyromancy… you'll learn what that means soon. Oh anyways, here we are. See you tomorrow again." Mathew waved at them as he left them in front of their class again.

"So… how was yesterday for you?" Tom asked Sebastian

"Huh? Oh, me? I- uh, practiced some letters. The teacher said I should learn reading and writing by the end of the week."

"Cool. At least you had something to do. I read that history book, but I couldn't even get past page 50 due to how complicated it was…" Tom complained, before turning silent as finally, Vernon showed up.

~~~

"We're not meditating today?" Tom asked excitedly, as Vernon rolled his eyes before replying to him.

"No, you already know how to do that, no point in me observing over you. Do it in your free time. No, what we'll be doing today is I will be teaching you magic…"

"!!!"

"...theory" he ended with a smirk.

"So, not magic?" Sebastian asked.

"No, theory is… the knowledge we have about a subject. You can't just force your will onto the world without knowing some basic theory. The way we use magic is by focusing our will on interacting with the environment, which might sound simple, and to a certain degree is: you can learn a spell if someone spends hours describing the feeling they have to you, and you try repeating it until you get it right, but that would mean actually CASTING the spell, which at best will waste a huge amount of focus, and at worse will kill you due to errors. One of the reasons why magic was scarce until they started applying the scientific method to it… Regardless! Let's start by focusing on ways used to move our focus first…"

Sebastian and Tom listened as Vernon spoke about the secrets hidden beneath the acts they've seen others do as casually as breathing. From the man that found Sebastian that was able to read his mind with a touch, to the masked one that could disappear and appear from place to place in an instant, only now did they start to understand the complexity behind what they did, changing the world with their will.

And they could barely understand a thing.

"So… hallucination is part of…" Tom asked before being interrupted by Vernon.

"No, 'visualisation'! It started with mimicry before they noticed that the motions weren't important but the image was… But hallucination can have a weird effect on magic, you learn that in psychology I believe." Vernon said before looking at his wrist "Oh, it seems we've run out of time. You can read "Magic 101" if you want, it covers the basics of magic theory. And, Tom! Remember to meditate! You two are really disadvantaged so you'll be struggling if you don't take this seriously." He finished, taking his leave.

"Well, uh, see you tomorrow then?" Tom spoke, before quickly continuing "Or we can talk after class! I can help you with… reading?"

"..." Sebastian simply stood there and ignored him, thinking.

"...uh, bye." Tom continued before he, too, left, just in time for the teacher, Miss Anabelle, to arrive "Oh! I mean, good morning miss!" He said before quickly walking away.

"Haha, kids. He is the other kid that came with you, right?" Anabelle asked Sebastian

"Yes." Sebastian responded. She looked at him for a few seconds before sighing.

"You don't understand him?"

"...not really. He doesn't seem… like me. He's smart, I can tell. He knows how to read, and he had a family. Yet we're… treated the same?"

Anabelle stood there for a while, deep in thought, before replying to him "You see, Sebastian, people can differ a lot, you struggled alone, while some may have had everything they could have wished for, they started with an advantage. But, in the end, how much one knows compared to others doesn't change who they are. You can always learn, and can always forget. Here, you have the same resources, so you see others as they are, not what they have, for the better or worse."

"...what?" Sebastian said plainly.

"Ahem, anyways, let's see how much you remember from yesterday!"