“WHO TOLD YOU THAT?!” Ginger yelled so loud that every head in the classroom turned in his direction, but he couldn’t have given an Olarmander’s arse about the attention.

Reiss and Kairos had strikingly similar reactions.

The latter immediately turned pale and his gaunt face turned gaunter. He shuddered.

Reiss, on the other hand, gaped, horrified.

“Good grief, Ginger!” he cried and tried to pry Ginger’s hand off of Kairos’ collar. The plump dragonling’s grip might have been a taut line hitch with steel cords. Reiss couldn’t disentangle the fingers. He gave Ginger a panicking look and shook when he saw the expression on his face.

The plump dragonling could have scared a Blighted with his visage. Darkness spread in webs across his face from wrinkles of a dense frown. His eyes imbibed a dark fury that was a lot more sinister than simple teenage temper.

Reiss felt Kardia pool in Ginger’s hand. Both he and Kairos exclaimed at the same:

“Ginger, stop!”

“WHO TOLD YOU ABOUT IT? TELL ME NOW!” Ginger commanded, almost oblivious to the fact that he was about to rip Kairos’ shirt.

The dragonlings in the class were gathering, curious as to what was going on. Even Caron was looking over with concern. Her view of Ginger was quickly obscured by the other students of First Blue.

“I…I only heard someone from First Red saying it!” cried Kairos, his eyes swollen to the size of oranges in fear. “I-I only thought—” He meant to pacify Ginger for anything wrong he might have said, but in the next instant, Ginger had tossed him away, over a desk and stormed through the wall of his classmates.

A series of woahs and heys rang as Ginger pushed through harshly. Reiss followed after him, yelling his name and telling him to wait.

The plump dragonling didn’t listen. Even when Fillys shrieked something about him being on a roll when it came to hogging attention, he didn’t turn. The boy secretly scratched his thigh and bit his lower lip as soon as he was out of class.

‘I shouldn’t have dismissed it!’ he thought, scolding himself. ‘I took it lightly because it was only about my identity as a halfling, but I didn’t bother to investigate what whoever spread that information knew!’

It had been Vassilis who had exposed Ginger that evening.

A halfling from the Wild.

It had caused a stir among the First Year dragonlings, and by the next day, everyone seemed to know that Ginger didn’t fit in.

Back then, the plump dragonling hadn’t piled the blame on Vassilis. From the way the prestigious boy from a Flame Seeker Family had said it, it sounded as though he had heard it from someone else. Ginger had suspected Professor Mara, and he still did, but as much as he hated the handsome instructor, he didn’t think he knew anything about his background – his family or Ancor. Ginger didn’t think any of the Professors knew about that. They couldn’t know.

The only one who knew was Ira, but would the eccentric gatekeeper really be careless with such information?

Ancor trusted the dragon, and so far, Ginger had found reason enough to trust him too.

‘No way. It couldn’t be Ira,’ he thought.

All these observations yielded no figure to blame for Ginger.

Unfortunately, when it came to irrational fury within sentient, intelligent beings, a wall was the worst thing they could encounter. Since Ginger didn’t have a target, he reached for one he could strangle with his own hands.

It must have been some measure of luck beyond the norm that First Red, quite like First Blue, was not graced with the presence of Professor right then. Ginger stormed in, Kardia livid in his fist.

Different from the chaos that erupted in First Blue every time an instructor left, however, First Red was quite orderly. It held the same structure as First Blue, down to the number of students, but they either practiced a divine technique of restraint or were compelled by someone present to behave themselves.

The answer was clear, and this answer was exactly what Ginger targeted.

“Ginger! Ginger, stop!” Reiss cried, a few paces behind. The plump dragonling ignored.

He had Vassilis in his sight. The young, handsome dragonling sat in front of the class, garnering the attention of everyone in every positive way. They copied what he did it seemed, with some – obviously girls – sitting around him, asking him questions loosely related to schoolwork. Apparently, he must have been a model everything.

Vassilis seemed to have sensed the hostility as soon as Ginger stormed into the class. He shot up from his seat at once and frowned at the dragonling. The brimming of his Kardia in a mellow shroud around him was the thing to finally give Ginger pause.

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The plump dragonling noticed then that with his Kardia pooling to his fist, it looked like he wanted to slug someone in the face.

He took a deep breath to expel some of his fury. It left his nostrils as two trails of red flame that singed the book of a girl sitting close to where he stood.

“What are you doing here?” Vassilis asked icily.

Ginger took his time to mold the words.

“Someone’s spread a… rumor about me. Someone from this class. I want to know who it is.”

Vassilis took one step forward.

“Then what?”

Ginger considered him. He stared him deep in the eye.

Ancor had often said to him that the eyes were like a sieve for the fountain which was the soul. Admittedly, Ancor had been a little drunk when he invented this analogy, but Ginger had understood what he meant.

Many things about the soul were filtered through the eyes. The greatest liars exposed this talent with the eyes… but so did the worst liars.

“I want to ask where they heard it from,” Ginger said sternly.

Vassilis scoffed. He glanced at Ginger’s fist.

“It looks to me that you’d rather do something stupid instead. Get lost. No one’s spread a rumor about you. You’re perfectly capable of making people talk on your own,” he said and sat back down.

Ginger flared. Smoke lifted from his nostrils.

Now, he wished he could slug Vassilis in the face,

Didn’t the bastard understand what it meant to Ginger for someone on this side of the world to mention anything about his family?

No one had the right to know about it, let alone tell others about it.

Ginger could bear all the burdens in the world, as long as they didn’t fall on those he had left behind, those waiting for him to come back stronger.

In his eyes, a pampered boy like Vassilis could never understand. His parents had a great reputation, as did his ancestor, the Vermillion Dragon, Avecsalot. No one could take anything away from him.

But for Ginger…

The plump dragonling felt as though he would explode.

Right then, Reiss darted into the classroom. He grabbed Ginger by the wrist and pulled.

“Stop, stop, stop, stop!” he hissed. “Don’t move a muscle!”

“Listen to your friend, halfling. He has a thousand times more sense than you,” Vassilis said and he went back to entertaining the girls around him.

As Reiss pulled Ginger back, a few boys from the class came up to shoo the duo away, shouting things, “You heard him! Go away!” and “You won’t scare us with a bit of smoke and fire. Damian is already growing horns!”

Reiss urged Ginger to block his ears if he needed to. Soon, he had pulled Ginger out of the classroom, and the first thing he did once they were a distance from First Red was to kick Ginger’s shin.

All of Ginger’s fury turned into sharp pain.

“What was that for?” cried Ginger as he grimaced and pressed his hands against his leg.

“What was that for? What was that for?” Reiss looked hysterical. He even stumbled back, a look of disbelief on his face. “Are you kidding me, Ginger? That was all it took for you to get all riled up like that?”

Ginger looked affronted.

“Of course, that was all it took! That was my—”

“Kairos didn’t badmouth your family or your mentor. He was asking a question. He didn’t deserve that!” cried Reiss.

Ginger deflated.

Right. There was Kairos. He had long forgotten that he had probably traumatized the dragonling. Kairos might never ask a question in class again for fear that Professor Edelman would tombstone him into the floor for it.

“I—” Ginger made to speak, but Reiss wouldn’t hear it.

“This isn’t how you deal with things like this, Ginger. You feel offended? Sure. Don’t go around showing it, even to people who don’t know the status quo. Now everyone is going to be curious about why you were stamping in the corridor breathing fire, including the person who spread the rumor or whatever you believe it is. Think, darn you, think!”

Reiss leaped to poke his finger at Ginger’s forehead. The plump dragonling winced.

There was nothing quite like being scolded by Reiss. He might have been a reincarnated mother.

“You’re right.” Ginger was ashamed.

Reiss gave him a sixty-second sermon, regurgitating the same thing he had just said until they got back to class. By then, Ginger was dying to apologize to Kairos but unlucky for him, the dragonling had raced to the dorms to change his shirt. If guilt could put on weight, it must have done right then. He felt heavier on the inside.

As the two took their seats, things only got worse. A Fourth Year Monitor stepped into class, a thin, straight-backed, blonde. She might have been a parody of Professor Edelman. She sentenced the class to a punishment on the last day of this Stride for the noise and would not hear a rebuttal.

Ginger was glazed with hot looks after she left. Apparently, it was his fault in the eyes of his classmates.

He couldn’t believe how shameless they all were. He cursed.

Professor Edelman returned just in time to meet the end of his lesson time. He kept the tease about what exactly could be found in Revenant Relics as a trump card for the next lesson. He seemed especially proud of himself. Many suspected he had deliberately delayed returning to class to maintain the mystery.

The dragonlings of First Blue filtered out of class afterward.

As much as they jabbed at Ginger for getting them punished, they were still curious about what had gotten his scarf in a bunch.

Fillys kept making loud comments throughout the whole day about Ginger’s outburst. The others kept trying to ask Reiss for answers whenever he parted from Ginger – such as in Professor Mara’s class. Some harassed Kairos who had returned before the start of the second lesson.

The gaunt-faced dragonling evaded Ginger and his classmates like a plague.

Ginger’s guilt had put on more weight when Kairos had started running away from him after the end of Professor Mara’s class. Ginger had raced after him but to no avail. He only awarded himself hysterical laughs from his classmates.

“He’ll come around,” Reiss said, encouraging him after they had reached Pine for Universal Knowledge of Unnatural Creatures.

Ginger wasn’t so sure about that. The fact that Caron still didn’t join them even after this didn’t help assure him either. She remained stubborn, only giving him the occasional concerned look from afar.

By the time the last lesson of the day came, Ginger felt miserable.

The last thing he needed right now was rigorous activity, but unfortunately, that was all he got.

It was time for Mortal Conflict.

And as it turned out, all Professor Cain desired of his students for the day, was a review of how his lessons in the last two Strides helped the dragonlings face off against the Blighted in the Beginner’s Den. But of course, he wasn’t satisfied with a mere telling. He wanted to see it with his own eyes, and thus, as the class began in one of the school grounds, the dragonlings of First Blue were forced to face each other in short, elaborate bouts.