Tired and not hiding it, Kane allows himself to rub his eyes for a moment while trying to remember his schedule. He has a class with the Professor Steiner Lucy and Amy mentioned, but merifully he doesn’t have the same class. Probably due to the fact that he’s technically allowed to be in classes at all until they’ve done their tests. Steiner is apparently some sort of Buffer prodigy, though Kane has never heard of him.

Regardless, he has an hour before the lecture actually starts, so he’s just been wandering around, trying not to be so tired. He hadn’t realized how far away he’d actually walked last night, nor did he really have any concept of how difficult it would be to wash even a small amount of blood off of his outfit. That had always been someone else’s job, usually Bertram’s.

“You just gonna stand there and sigh till your class starts?” Kane almost forgot what Amy sounded like, but the voice of someone even vaguely familiar snatched away his thoughts. The followup before he could respond himself nearly sent him into a brief panic.

“Nah, he’s just homesick already.” Lucy’s obviously joking tone didn’t initially register until he looked the pair in the eyes.

“Stuff it. I was out late last night… Trying not to look so tired… Because… Eh?” Kane shrunk back a little as every word out of his mouth seemed to make Lucy’s face even angrier.

“Ho? Why were you out late? What were you doing that would leave you so tired? I thought I told you to be careful?” A quick glance at Amy revealed that she was shuffling behind Lucy quietly in an attempt to not get caught in the crossfire. Kane nodded internally at that sage action before considering his response.

“I just wanted to get a better view of the city. And then-” Kane begin, but was swiftly predicted.

“You got lost.”

“Precisely!” Mustering as much non-committal enthusiasm as possible, he continues. “And I even managed to find my way back in time to get proper sleep. I just… couldn’t.”

“...Ok. That’s better than what it could be. But if you wanted to go see the city, you could’ve just asked me to take you. Plus, Amy would’ve come along too, we could’ve made it a whole thing.” Lucy looked genuinely disappointed at that, to which Kane frowned a little.

“I’m not interested in being a third wheel.”

“Hold on a moment! I thought I would be the third wheel in that scenario…” Amy’s voice interrupting the argument results in both Lucy and Kane making the exact same noise at the exact same time.

“Huh?”

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After managing to safely evade the awkward discussion via exit to the bathroom, Kane finally finds his way to Steiner’s room. As funny as he thinks it would’ve been to watch Lucy stammer out deflections and explanations, he also knows that he’d need to explain himself too. He figures it’s probably better for Lucy that she talk about stuff like that with her crush without his intervention. The idea that someone who only met him yesterday thought Lucy and he had already begun dating, or more likely thought they’d reignited something, was plenty fun enough on its own.

Steiner’s class/lecture room, Kane still isn’t sure what to call it, is furnished by around fifty seats and semicircular rings of desks, each carefully laid out to not obstruct the view of the people behind them via spacing and the downward slope of the room. He’d seen into the rooms when Lucy gave him the tour, but actually standing in one gave a better sense of the scope.

Two people were already here when he arrived, a younger looking guy who shivered when he saw Kane, and a girl with long black hair, face down at a desk and obviously sleeping. Figuring her to be some sort of genius, he finds a seat close to the back of the room, on the edge of the line closest to the door, and puts his head on his folded arms.

“Well, that’s some first impression to make, Mr. Baelirus. Care to explain why you’re sleeping through my attendance call?” A male voice, old, probably middle aged, wakes him before he opens his eyes. Shooting up like a bean sprout as his brain finally registers the actual words said, Kane stammers out an apology.

“M-my apologies, professor. I didn’t get much sleep last night. What did I miss?” Kane looks around briefly, and flinches as he sees that no student sat within twenty feet of him, instead packing themselves closer together on their chairs than it looked comfortable to sit.

“Apology accepted, and while I do marvel at your technique, it is prohibited to use hostile techniques during class. Stick to another defense one, if you must do so to feel safe. Though I suspect no one here but I would be capable of harming you…”

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“Ah… Professor, I’m sorry, I literally can’t turn it off. It’s one of the things I wanted to study here.” Kane stares the bald man in the face for a few moments, as visible confusion flashes across his eyes.

“That would explain why it remained active while you slept, then. Very well.” Steiner claps his hands for the attention of the other students, then begins walking towards his own desk at the head of the class. “Well then, now that his first impression is ruined, let’s hear his preferred introduction. Stand and speak, Mr. Baelirus.”

Kane freezes in place as every student in the room turns to him. Except for the black haired girl and the nervous looking boy who were both here when he arrived, everyone is looking at him with a bit of unease. One or two of them probably walked into his aura without paying attention, or perhaps some of them actually understand what it would do, and aren’t just uneasy out of ignorance.

“Ah… I’m Kane Baelirus. That Baelirus. Adopted. Nice to meet you.” He didn’t bother to stand to give his introduction, and he’s sure that it was truly awful, but the black haired girl from earlier smiled to herself before sitting back down, and a couple of the braver students chuckled a bit and did the same. He even watches in real time as a blonde girl very obviously weighs her odds of cozying up to him, before deciding to ignore him.

No one sits back down within the range of his aura, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, now that Steiner essentially forced his inability to turn it off into public knowledge. He’d hoped that wouldn’t get exposed for at least some time yet, but if anything, it proved Steiner knew how to manage students.

“Now, since we have a new attendee, even if I doubt he’ll be here long, we’ll be going over Monday's lesson again, from the top.”

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“Mr. Baelirus, thank you for taking the time to answer all this stuff manually. Usually we’d just have some sensors do that work, but…”

“Please, Professor Agnola, I choose to bring these here, I wouldn’t dream of using it as an excuse not to take mandatory testing. As I’ve been told so far, you handle the assignment of initial rank and rank matches?” Kane puts on his best attempt at being civil and charming, though he suspects that his visible frustration during his manual answering of the psychic data information betrays him slightly.

“Oh yes, plus, you were seen sparring with Ms. Smith, so your initial rank will likely be quite high regardless.” Kane nods to that, figuring that for a blessing and a curse for his start here. “Your first match will be tomorrow, noon, in the arena there. Likely against whoever in the top thirty happens to be around. I look forward to seeing you then.”

Kane just nods a response before making his way out. The tests wouldn’t have been so bad if he could actually do them, but even with his inability to use even a single of his techniques, his knowledge of them alone would carry him highly in the ranks, he was sure. He’d had to hide quite a bit, though. For now at least, neither his stepdad or that woman had tried to exert any sort of pressure on his decision to come here. The moment he started revealing family secrets, though, that would probably change.

Soon enough, Kane finds himself stretching his arms on the roof, watching the sparring grounds as Lucy had been doing when he’d first arrived. Remembering her schedule, both her and Amy would be busy for another hour in a class, and that took care of everyone here he already knew. He almost considered heading out early, just to spend a bit of the money he’d so lawfully acquired last night, but is interrupted from his thoughts by an aura ascending the stairs to the roof. His eyes widen a bit in surprise as he sees the black haired girl from earlier. She isn’t surprising in and of herself, the specific type of nervousness on her face is, however, and Kane smiles as a means of holding back a chuckle.

“Ah… Um. Hi. Sir, I saw you in class earlier, and you looked at me, and… Ah… I forgot what I was going to lead with. Your aura is… hard to think around.” Doing his best to remain stoic in front of the embarrassed girl, Kane waves a hand dismissively, before making the decision to spare her more embarrassment.

“You could always stand just outside of it. Right now, its maximum distance from me is exactly thirteen feet. Also, you can call me Kane. We’re fellow students, yeah?” Kane barely manages to focus on something other than how cute her face looks by closing his eyes and laughing a little. “And take your time. I suspect I know why you had planned out something to lead with, but take your time to think of it again if you’re nervous.”

“Ah! Thank you! I hope it’s not rude… My name is Minerva Faust, I probably look like a commoner to you… But it’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.” Kane can’t contain a soft chuckle at that, but he does manage to not sound condescending in his response.

“I never said I looked at anyone that way. The aura is… nevermind. Minerva, it’s a pleasure to meet you too. I’d shake your hand if it wasn’t for this.” Kane points at the general area around himself. Idly, he turns to look at the sparring ground again, and then looks back at the nervous girl. “If you want to stand a little closer, it isn’t fully unsafe to do so, you just have to get used to it. I’m told it feels a little bit like I’m eating away at you.”

“I’m so sorry… I just didn’t… I suck at this, don’t I…”

“Not at all, if I’m interpreting you correctly, you came up here to ask for my number or to hang out or help you study or something like that. If that’s the case, I like this approach, and you’re also the first to do so, double points there.” Kane smiles fully at her while watching as Minerva does her best impression of a tomato. “I’ll stop teasing. Take your time.”

Kane looks away to think to himself quietly for a moment, hoping Minerva takes the hint to do the same. If he were to be completely honest with himself, her shyness is unbearably cute, but nothing else about her, including her aura, is notable. That’s not such a bad thing to him, though. Plus, if he makes a friend, Lucy probably won’t grill him about being boring or not living enough. After a couple minutes of standing around under the slightly overcast sky, Minerva speaks up.

“I… was going to come up here to subtly ask to be your girlfriend. I had a whole thing planned out, I was sleeping when you came in, you started sleeping too… I was going to invite you to my favorite napping spot in the library, something like that. I just feel defeated, now…” Minerva’s tone seems to have taken on something rather sullen, which makes Kane feel a bit nervous himself.

“Is there some reason you still can't do that? As far as I’m concerned, that doesn’t sound half bad. Though, if you think that’s a ticket to my family’s money, you’re here for the wrong reasons.”

“No no no! I wasn’t thinking like that. I don’t really know what I was thinking. Some of the girls found out you’d be attending, and a couple of them threw around talk of trying to seduce you or use you for money. I just thought you looked cute in the couple photos they found, and then you looked at me in class… I guess I bit off more than I could chew…” The tone of her voice makes her sound rather dejected and sad, which Kane wholeheartedly understands.

He even wonders if that is what Lucy’s warning was about, though he doubts it. Looking at the way Minerva is fidgeting, remembering her earlier shyness, and combined with the fact that she’d admitted her whole plan, he feels he should at least offer a lifeline. Even if only because she’s cute.

“I’m still a bit tired, want to show me to the library?”