“Haa ....I want to take my brain out of my skull and chuck it into a gutter.” Felix said.”Why does everything have to be complicated? Why did you have to make everything difficult?”

“Hey don’t blame me. I didn’t write stuff like this. This whole incident has been alien for me too.”Lim said. He opened the lunch box on his lap and started eating.

They were at their usual spot, the small forest behind Arcadia’s cafeteria. After their talk with Sebastian ended, they left with the box with enhancement pills. Well only Lim, Felix refused to take it.

Once Sebastian revealed there was a traitor, there was no need to talk further. If he knew who it was, he would have told them.

Felix couldn’t trust him either. Just cause he was the headmaster didn’t mean, he couldn’t have the desire to bring everything he owned down to his knees. After all, that’s what traitors do.

‘I need a good hot shower.’

Felix had a lunch box as well but didn’t want to eat at all. All he wanted was a shower and the soft feeling of the pillow on his head.

“So what was the reason you were late coming to the headmaster’s office? Felix asked, opening his lunchbox. He never wasted food.

“Oh, that,” Lim said, taking a bite from his chicken and rice.

“Rose approached me. Well, she waited for me in the class before everyone left..”

“Rose?Why?”

“She wants me in her Circle,” Lim said.

Felix just nodded and took a bite from his meal.

“Aren’t you surprised?”

Lim had thought Felix to ask a bit more about why she did it, but he acted as if it was normal for her to do so.

“I mean, it makes sense. You were called almost last during the test when every low-ranked student was called earlier. That made you part of the labyrinth incident which you survived and you’re part of a class full of top 100 students despite being eight hundred something. That must have made her curious about you.” Felix said.

Rose had always been a curious person…..sometimes a bit too much. She approached Felix for the same reason. He didn’t talk much and except for the rumours about him, there wasn’t much Rose knew about him.

‘I have never shared anything about me…….except my birthday, nor has she told me anything about her.’

She too had her secrets, but Felix had no intentions of knowing them.

“So did you accept her offer?” Felix asked.

Lim shook his head.

“I said I would think about it. Her proposal was unexpected. I am leaning towards joining her but I had plans to make a Circle with you and then explore the labyrinth.”

“Join her,” Felix said.

“That seems for the best. I think it’s good for us to be in separate Circles. You and I aren’t meant to be here but you know the future and Rose too. The story has to progress like how you made it and like you said the story will revolve around her. You have to be near her, so most of the things are how you wrote them to be.”

Lim nodded. He couldn’t argue with that. He planned to work from the shadows, laying his strings and playing with fate like a puppeteer. Though he was supposed to work with Felix, his existence could cause a butterfly effect that already seemed to be in action.

“You're right. Our existence has caused ripples to occur in the world’s fate. Splitting up into different teams might be the best thing to do.”

Lim said.

Being in different Circles didn’t matter. Both had the same objective, Lim to save the world, and Felix to help him only for a year.

“So how many are there in her Circle?”

Felix asked.

“Five.” Lim pointed with his finger. “ As far as I remember, everyone except me is the same as I made it to be. Rose, then….... I still can’t remember their names. Two Stars, Rank 4 Jacob and Rank 7 Ruben then Nino, Rank 11 and me.”

Lim paused as he struck his chest, because of the big piece of meat, he tried to swallow without chewing.

“Also Nino’s position is complicated. She was supposed to be the 10th star. You took her spot, but just cause she’s not a Star I can’t ignore her. She played some crucial role in the story and has the strength to be one of the Stars.”

“ Does she use a rapier as her main weapon?”

Felix asked.

Lim nodded

“Yeah? You know her”

“No. We met for the first time during the entrance test. I remember having a rapier around her waist and someone calling her name.”

Felix couldn’t tell what her body looked like.

He did feel guilty staring at people’s bodies to remember them, but he had no choice. Especially when he hadn’t heard their voice and knew what they smelled like.

Both didn’t speak for a while and finished their lunches. As Lim burped loud enough to wake every bird in the forest, he asked.

“Anything notable happened to you?”

“Professor Vincent asked to be his disciple,” Felix said.

“He was ready to teach me an Art that didn’t require any element, but I passed on it. Whatever his Art was wouldn’t work for me anyway.”

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Felix had forgotten to tell Lim, that he was an element and Lim had figured it out through the rumours that always circulated about Felix. He didn’t blame Felix for not saying it.

It had only been four days since they met and shared their secrets. And this thing had just slipped out of Felix’s mind.

“Why are you so sure that art won’t work?”

Lim wondered. It would have made sense if Felix rejected the proposal because of the curse he had, which made it difficult to interact with others. There was also the risk of Vincent finding out about it.

“ I am not just elements, Lim. My mana is cursed.”

Felix said.

“Cursed?”

“Yeah. So cursed that I can’t even learn curse magic, unlike others who are cursed just like me. It is difficult to control my mana flow even for three seconds. And most 10-year-olds can do it for 2 minutes..”

Felix was a bit embarrassed by this.

Lim leaned back on the tree. This was a problem.....a big problem.

“When did you get the curse?” Lim asked.

“The same time when my vision got cursed.”

Felix was strong but this was a major obstacle, that even Lim, as the author, would have a hard time finding the solution to.

“Then how do you use your Art? Doesn’t any Art need you to have control of your mana for more than three seconds?”

Lim was curious. He also had no idea about Felix’s art. He had been meaning to ask it but conversations never went as planned.

“Yeah, even Valerius’s Art does but not the Art I created”

Felix said. Lim got closer to him. His eyes were wide and his breath smelled of garlic and chicken.

“Wait, hold on, you created an Art? ”

Lim was shocked because creating Art wasn’t a child’s play……or even adults. Only masters of their craft could do so, with extensive research, years of failure, determination and a sprinkle of luck.

“Shocking right, I was shocked too 'cause I made it by accident. Pure luck you could say. I was pretty desperate after not being able to use my family's Art. So I was messing around with my mana when I found out that my cursed mana repelled itself when I started taking control of it. That is also why I can only command it for three seconds.”

Felix’s mana was like microorganisms made of magnets, but they only repelled each other, once he started moving it.”

“But I found a way to use that repel. I try to push as much mana as soon as I can to my fingertips or any other part of my body. As the mana repels itself, the force it creates produces a roar, and a vibration that makes my attack stronger.”

Not just that the vibration travelled through objects making it even more deadly.

Lim looked at the sky and processed what Felix just said.

‘He made it sound so easy.’

He was impressed that Felix never gave up and paved his path to be one of the strongest of his age.

“No wonder you managed to beat 56 students with this Art without getting touched.”

Lim knew about what Felix did. In the third class, one of his classmates came running in and shouted,

“That Felix…..he beat his entire class in a fight without being touched once.”

That was enough to get everyone’s attention and make them fear Felix even more.

“Gossip travels fast.”

Felix said, crumpling his finished lunch box. It hadn’t been even a day since he did this and now probably the whole academy knew about it.

‘Things are getting worse for my mental health.’

“ So you created an Art out of necessity but what got you interested in alchemy?”

Lim asked. He was pretty shocked when Felix asked for an alchemy room of his own.

“I am not interested in alchemy but only in one aspect of it, Arcane Apothecary. Most of the tools and items that I need for it are related to alchemy, that is why I asked for an alchemy room.”

Felix said. He watched Lim scratching his head, trying to pronounce “apothecary.”

“Arcane apo-apollo,apothi-

“Apothecary.”

Felix interrupted.

“Yeah that- what does it mean?”

Lim had never heard such fancy terms in his life.

“It’s just a complicated and cool way of saying pharmacy.”

“Ohh.”

Lim nodded. He didn’t ask why Felix was interested in that. It didn’t take a genius to connect the dots.

Felix’s goal to get the Orchid and interest in arcane apothecary meant he was trying to cure someone. It would be better to know who it was, but he doubted he could do anything.

After all the flowers Felix wanted, he had never heard of it. And Lim had no idea of a disease that needed a flower that bloomed once every thousand years.

For Lim, he found it better to help Felix reach his end goal and get the Orchid, rather than keep questioning about stuff he wouldn’t be comfortable talking about.

Lim stood up and stretched his back.

“We should get going. The club orientation is about to start.”

“Are you joining one?”

Felix asked.

“Yeah. Travel and Exploration Club. Every main character in the story will be a part of it and some plot happens during the Club’s travel. Things will go wrong and I want to see if anything happens outside the story.”

Lim wasn’t obsessed about making sure everything was according to the plot, but that didn’t mean everything had to turn into a big mess, that further ruined his plans and him too.

“Aren’t you joining any?”

Lim asked.

Felix stood up.

”No, not even a bit interested in them.”

He threw the crumpled lunch box at the trash bin about twenty metres in front of him. It went in. He raised his eyebrows looking at Lim with a grin.

“Anyone can do that.”

Lim threw his box but didn’t go in.

“Yeah, anyone but you.”

Felix said as he walked away waving his hand.

“Your’s was just a fluke.”

Lim shouted and walked toward the trash bin. He picked up the lunchbox, walked back and started throwing it again.

Once he got it in he flared his nose and grinned.

“I knew I was a basketball prodigy.”

Said the sore loser who got a clean shot in forty-seven attempts.

********

“Was Felix a criminal in his past life or something?”

Lim wondered. Even after he finished talking with Felix, the conversation about the curse he had still lingered.

Others can have cursed mana too which made them unable to use any element. However, that is a boon, because now a new element opened up for them which not everyone with normal mana can use. They can use curse magic. Though any cursed user was frowned upon because of the weird effects it has on the caster as well as the target, using it wasn’t illegal.

But what kind of curse was it on Felix that didn’t even allow him to use curse magic?

“He must have killed a god in his past life”

As he was racking his brain, trying to figure out any details he forgot that could help Felix, he remembered something important he forgot to say-

“Ahh…I forgot to tell him that thing about Rose. I will have to tell him anyhow the next time we meet. Should I go to his room after this?”

He made plans and walked through the long hallway. He took a turn to the left where the Travel and Exploration Club was.

Many students were here. Some passed by while some standing in a line outside the Travel and Exploration Club.

As he was about to join the line, chills ran down his spine. Everything came to a halt for a moment, his breathing, his heartbeat. From the corner of his eye, he turned to the clock on his left. The hand on it had stopped.

Every student in the hallway had disappeared in plain sight. Not a single gossip, laughter and shouting could be heard. The silence was so suffocating, that Lim focused on his heartbeat, to hear a thump, but that too didn’t work.

“Come to me”

A whisper, soft as a breeze touched him, but its lingering presence crawled in as if trying to get inside his head.

Lim could move again. He took in a deep breath and placed a hand on his chest. It was beating again. He looked at the clock, it was moving and the students were back at their place filling the hallway with their chatter.

Lim walked to the club room, wiping his forehead.

‘Were they supposed to be this strong?’