Like the day before I wake up in my bed and see the sunlight shining into my room. It's 6:45 and we start at 8:00 according to the schedule. I work out a little and then I go out for a morning jog. I get a couple of comments and looks but otherwise, it was a pretty calm experience. I get back to my dorm, I see Giovanni stand by his door. I greet him

"Good morning, Giovanni"

He drops something that looks like a key card, I ignore it. He picks it up fast and says in panic

"Oh, good morning Hikari."

I enter my room to put on my uniform, it's currently 7:30. Better to be early than late, right?

I'm sitting in the classroom, waiting for the others to show up. Giovanni, Sofia and Marie enter the classroom at the same time. I wave my hand and they walk up to their places

"Are you guys excited for school?" Marie asks

"No" Giovanni and Sofia say at the same time

"I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little bit excited" I say. It was true, I was interested to see what we would learn here.

"Right?" Marie says.

A teacher enters the room. It was a woman, she had long brown hair that shone in the sunlight. Bright blue eyes, like an ocean. A seductive smile. This was the kind of teacher all the boys went crazy for. All the guys started cheering, except me. It wasn't that I wasn't attracted to her, I was, but I feel like it would be a bit mean if I started cat-calling her. I felt bad for the teacher, what are you supposed to do if this happens? I guess she noticed because she looked at me with an "I'm fine" look, it's hard to explain how a look like that looks like but once you see it, you know it.

"Quiet!" She yelled. Everybody instantly stopped, You could still see the excitement in their eyes. Even Giovanni had the look, I sighed and looked back at the teacher to hear what she had to say.

"My name is Catherine, I'll be your teacher in pretty much everything except for English, for example, I'll teach Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology"

I could already foresee the boy's excitement for a certain part of the Biology course.

"Let us get started with this mathematics lesson then."

Mathematics, huh. I was a pretty good student before I came here if I do say so myself.

"So if you put the x here---"

So we're starting off with Algebra?

The lesson is finished, That has to be one of the easiest lessons I've ever had. Meanwhile, all the other students look confused except for Karl.

"aahhh, I understood nothing of what she said" Marie says.

"Same here, I'll probably have study extra" Giovanni says.

"What do we have now?" I ask.

"Can't you look at the schedule yourself?" Sofia says.

"Come on, I'm trying to move the conversation along. Read between the lines" I say slightly annoyed

I bring up the schedule and see that we have "combat practice", that's intriguing.

We're outside an arena, it's pretty huge. An unhealthy amount of money must have been spent on this. Class 1-E enters the arena and divides up into boys and girls to change clothes, We received a bag with clothes before we entered the locker rooms. While dressing the boys pull a couple of jokes and then we're out of there. I get out to the actual arena and it's really massive, there are tons of spectator seats. Maybe 4000 of them. There was a big square field in the middle surrounded by smaller square fields.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"Okay. Line up, students." The teacher shouted. I line up with the other students.

"As you all know, we're having a tournament tomorrow. So I thought that we'd have some sparring matches. I'll choose who's going to go against who, Line up as boys and girls."

Catherine divided us into pairs of 2, she made sure Karl and I didn't get matched up. I get paired up with Giovanni.

"You can grab weapons over there, don't worry they're made out of wood." The teacher said.

I sprinted over to see what kind of weapons there were, I see everything from throwing stars to nunchucks. I see a cool sword that I grab instantly. Giovanni gives me a weird look.

"What? It looks cool." I say with a child-like smile on me.

"Whatever" Giovanni responds and grabs a staff.

We go onto one of the smaller square fields, We have Marie and Sofia to judge us, who by coincidence got matched up together. I used a knife on my training trip so I thought that I'll use this sword the same way I did with the knife. I pull a stance with the sword and prepare to go into battle. Marie blows the whistle she got from Catherine. The seconds stand still as I'm thinking of how I'm going to attack Giovanni, He takes the opportunity and strikes me. His staff hits me in the sides, I get thrown a couple of meters to my right. I look into Giovanni's eyes, he's completely serious. I recover and start running towards Giovanni with my sword raised. He prepares par the hit, I'm 1m in front of him. I throw the sword in his face, I run up and tackle him really hard. While he's still in the air I knee him in the stomach. BAAM, He coughs really hard. I instantly regret hurting my friend, as I see him flying in the air I try rescuing him. I was so into the zone I didn't notice I was going so hard. I turn on my power for a split second to catch up to him and catch him. I catch him in my arms. Everyone in the arena is staring at me. A crowd gathers and the teacher runs up to me.

"What are you doing?"

"Look, I'm really sorry. I didn----" I say very apologetically, I stare down at the ground.

"Why are you apologizing. That was totally amazing!" Catherine says while looking as bright as ever at me.

"What do you mean? I just hurt my friend!" I say with passion.

"What do you think you're wearing right now? We gave you these suits for a reason" Catherine says with a reassuring smile.

"Well, now I just feel stupid" I say.

"Don't worry about it. Still, that was some power, and that fighting style was pretty unique" Catherine says.

"I didn't spend a week in the wilderness for nothing, you know" I say scratching my head.

"Ooooh, you were? You'll have to tell me about it later" Catherine says.

"Sure" I answer.

"Go back to your matches everybody" Catherine tells everyone.

"I'll take him to the nurse's office" I offer

"I'll go with you" Catherine counter-offers

I, carrying Giovanni, and Catherine are walking towards the nurse's office. Guys are looking at me with envy while we're walking. We reach the office and leave Giovanni there. Even though the vest took most of the damage, the force that reached him was enough to knock him out.

"Hikari, you seem to care about your friends a lot. I mean you rushed over to him immediately after you delivered the blow. But why did you hit him that hard in the first place?" Catherine wonders

"I didn't want to hit him that hard, but when I get into the zone I can't really control myself. I really regret it though." I answer

"Oh, okay. That sounds a bit like someone I met a long time ago." Catherine mutters to herself

"What?" I say

"Oh, nothing. Let's go back" Catherine says

"Yeah" I say and we start walking back to the arena.

When I walk into the arena I see Karl fighting on the big stage, This is an opportunity to analyze his fighting style. I sit down to watch and Sofia and Marie approach me.

"Is Giovanni okay?" Marie asked concerned

"Yeah, he's fine now. Look, I'm really sorry for hurting our friend" I said

Sofia was shocked to see me like this.

"It's fine" Marie says

I look back to the match. Karl is fighting very dirty, almost like me. That would make this a lot more difficult for me, since he's unpredictable. A disciplined martial artist, while being really strong, is predictable so you know roughly what they're going to do. But fighting an unpredictable fighter is really hard for the sole reason that you don't know what they're going to do, But that wasn't going to be enough to stop me.