When we came back home, I went back to my normal routine.
However, 1 week before school started all the books in my head were finished with their comprehension.
That was something strange because from the last time I remembered it took nearly 1 year to comprehend 30 books. Using that maths, it should have taken close to 7 years to learn all 200 books. But now it took only something like 3 and a half years to comprehend nearly 200 books.
Was this ability of mine growing with me? Or was it because of some other factor? I wondered.
In the end, I didn't bother about that and decided to visit the library to get more books.
Dad and I visited the library and I borrowed more than 20 books out.
Even my speed of memorising improved as I was already done with these 20 books by the end of the week and went to get another set of books. This time I took out 20 books with dad and started memorising them before returning them.
I decided to stop there, as I starting from tomorrow I could spend my time in the library on my own as my high school was pretty close to the library, about 10 minutes' walk.
High school started on mid-September, 1995. I wasn't that scared or frightened as this was my second time going to high school.
The only worry I had was that none of the people I knew from my primary school will be here.
My mum and dad came with me until I was guided by my form tutor to my appropriate class.
There was 20 of us in the class.
Our form tutor was a music teacher called Mr Thomas.
We introduced ourselves and did some activities for the whole day to get familiar with each other and the school.
We were also shown to our own lockers which we had the keys to. We kept most of our sports kit inside our lockers.
By 3:00 pm school ended and our after school activities session started. Today I had swimming and we were all taught different forms of swimming etc.
The session ended at 5:00 by which point my dad and mom were waiting outside.
Next day our official lessons started. Instead of being casual at the start our teacher just went straight to teaching after introducing themselves.
Everything was still easy for me, so I just let my ability take control of my body, while I slept in the back of my mind.
After school today was practising Rowing. We were simply taken to the side and shown the basics instead of starting straight away.
Wednesday was sports day meaning I had physical education today along with having to do archery lesson today. Wednesday I could leave early but instead I went to the library and had my parents collect me at the usual time.
Thursday, I had swimming once more after school and Rowing on Friday.
I got myself familiarised with the school after the first week.
Starting from the 2nd week I made my way to the library and spent my whole lunch break in there memorising books and taking few books out every day with my school ID before returning it the next day.
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Since I was now 11 years old and slowly started to enter puberty, I decided it was time to work out in front of my parents instead of hiding it, as I needed to increase the intensity due to my rapidly changing body.
When they asked I just gave the answer of wanting muscles to which they just laughed and let me carry on.
I used the private gym my parents used in one of the rooms in our house.
Although I didn't use the weight machines, I used all other cardio machines and dumbbells till I was dead tired after doing enough flexible exercise.
I spent only 30 minutes on all my homework due to not having to research much.
The problem, however, was my history and language lessons. The history of this world was very different albeit somethings being similar. Due to this, I had to correct many things I knew about from my time in the history lesson.
For language, I decided to simply get some books on French, German, Spanish and Latin from the library and learn it.
With the help of my ability, to prioritise learning these 4 languages, it took me nearly 2 months to learn them fully with all the books and dictionary I had used.
I could speak those languages and understand them now but didn't reveal it and instead kept quiet like all my other knowledge while doing well in my bi-weekly tests.
I kept practising the flute at home and didn't practise much of it in high school anymore or join the school band or anything like that.
It was the year 1995 and computers weren't that available throughout the world. However, grammar schools had computers just enough to learn the basics.
I was so happy to see the first computer in this world personally. I obviously knew how to handle it better than anyone here but just hid that fact and enjoyed the feel of having a mouse and keyboard with me once more.
Years passed by like this. I made some friends with a few of my classmates and people in my clubs and activities.
I always excelled in everything that I did due to obvious reasons and was known as Mr Perfect in high school.
I had started after the initial careful monitoring and guidance of my parents to start working with the weights machines in our gym by the mid-way through year 8.
However, a strange thing was I never got ripped or muscular even with the amount of food and exercise I do which was extremely strange. I could easily bench press up to 200 kg when in year 10, while only having a few muscles showing on my body. I looked more like a person who did gymnastics than a weightlifter.
This was once more blamed on my 2nd gift. I had finally figured out kind of what my 2nd gift simply was at this point. I would look average no matter how fit, healthy or smart I was. Even if I could bench press up to 500 kg I would still look like the normal person I am now.
This gift was equally as overpowered as my other gifts in my opinion. A weight lifter will always be restricted by his muscles to do certain dexterous or speed based activity. This meant a weight lifter will always have their muscles affecting their speed or training other certain muscle groups.
While for me with my gift always maintaining my same look, I will have no such problem. I could run like the fastest human and be equally as strong as the strongest human. I could train all my muscles without being worried that one group of muscles will restrain another group.
Due to this I never lifted weights in front of my parents in case they wondered how the hell I could lift that much weight without many muscles.
This wasn't the only benefit I gained from my 2nd ability. I had recently discovered from all my knowledge that training so extensively as I did when very young could potentially be very harmful to the body and its growth. However, I had no such problem with the intense workout I did. My body kept growing as it was meant to without being affected by my heavy exercise.
I was quite popular amongst girls. I wasn't handsome or beautiful just plain average as a 14-year-old. The only reason I was asked out was that I was pretty popular as Mr Perfect in school with my excelling performance in every kind of activity.
I was smart, athletic and witty with the help of my Rooted Potato gift. So quite a few girls were naturally attracted to me. I was a casual friend to everyone in my school but never close to any of them due to being very busy after school.
Few girls asked me out on dates from year 7 onward, but I always politely rejected after saying I am already seeing another girl. I did not want to waste my already precious and busy time on girls. At least not now and this was the best reason to deter them.
Of course, the news of me dating another girl spread like wildfire in the entire school. Due to being gossiping high school teenagers, I was constantly pestered by my few friends/ classmates in telling who she was. Obviously, I acted mysteriously and challenged them to find out; the only clue (obviously a false clue) I gave them was that she wasn't from our school.
Naturally almost all the girls and boys did their best to investigate and found nothing on my girlfriend. None of them knew about my after school activities as I wasn't very close to any of them.