After dropping off the five children at their school, Hugh made his way to class 1-X which was set on the highest floor of the school building - an unusual place for a Class 1, as those were mostly on the first floor. The highest floor was mostly empty, which was why it was suitable for a class of people who came in just as the semester had started. This was a special class for people who came from another world.

Entering the class, Hugh said his thanks to the Gods as homeroom had yet to start. The person who greeted him when he entered was Xia Rong, who had to stand on a table to drape her arms around his shoulders. Evidently the downside of being a Gnome.

“Hey hey hey, I heard that someone became the aide of the famous Gawain heiress!” She put her face closer to his, perhaps to intimidate him. She wiggled her hands. “Give me the deets!”

“I think you know more about that then I do Xia Rong,” he gave an awkward laugh as he shoved her face away. She took the shove with grace and dramatically fell back into her seat.

“I’m happy that you acknowledge my skillful ways, but in fact I don’t know that much about this except that the Gawain heiress is a workaholic. So what do you do as her aide?”

“She’s a workaholic?” Hugh completely missed the point in favour of highlighting this new fact.

“Don’t you know?” Xia Rong had her brows raised high.

“Well she does always come back late. That makes sense, so she was working…”

“Oh my friend, you have a long way to go if you don’t even know this. She was made Student Council President at every level of education. And I mean Primary, Secondary and University. That’s how famous and studious she was. Well no wonder, since she’s the heir to the most famous family in Janiga City.”

“Huh. Famous for what?”

Xia Rong looked incredulously at him, then slapped her forehead. “Hugh my man, you really need to step up your game! The Gawain family is most famous for their involvement in the political world. For example, Deborah Gawain, the current matron of the family, is working as a councilman of the Alliance of Nations. Her daughter Emma Gawain was the previous Mayor of Janiga City. And apparently Ruth Gawain herself has political agendas…” Xia Rong shook her head in disappointment. “How are you her aide if you don’t even know the basic stuff about her?”

“Hey, that’s rude. And I was busy with stuff so…” Hugh actually couldn’t fault her statement, so he balked at her disappointed look.

“Okay okay, that’s enough,” Roman stepped in. “You’re kinda bullying him Xia Rong.”

“All right, I’ll let off.” Xia Rong raised her hands in defeat, then gave Hugh an wink. “You can have more info on her… for a price of course.”

Hugh shrugged back with a neutral smile, but inside he did feel bad about the fact that he barely knew his ‘friend’. Getting to his seat, he took out his smartphone and stared at it for awhile. Looking up Ruth on the net seemed a little… discomforting? So instead he looked up on tips on how to be a good friend to someone.

The conclusions he got was that he should be: 1) respectful, 2) hang out with them, 3) be dependable - and that’s when he got a scare! Someone had tapped his shoulder while he was deep in thought.

“Fiq!” his Sun Human classmate laughed. “You scared me.”

“Heh, sorry about that. Whatchu looking at?” Hugh showed him his search bar. “’How to be a good friend?’ Wow, that’s pretty dedicated of you. I mean, most people don’t have to search the Internet to know this stuff. Yo, why don’t you ask Ami and Ada? They’re like, the ‘bestest friends’ of this class.”

“I was thinking of asking Roman actually…”

“That guy? Dude, wrong call. He’s better on how to handle having a rivalry with the class pariah. Who… isn’t here, as usual.” Fiq looked around to find Oscar, but the latter was nowhere to be seen.

Hugh felt that Fiq had said something momentous, but didn’t have time to think about it as Miss Athy had entered the class at that moment.

Homeroom went fine, and soon it was their lessons.

Miss Athy stood on the table to compensate for her short height. Wielding a pointer stick, she began: “Let’s recap. What is the dominant theory of magic right now? Yes, Ada.”

“The Seven Elemental Magic Theory,” the Ornithian answered.

“Right. Those elements are: Fire-Water-Earth-Light-Darkness-Air-Wild.” She wrote those elements on the whiteboard.

“Anyone can use the basics of each element, except Wild magic. Why is that?”

Roman raised his hand. “Wild magic only appears in people who come from another world.”

“Yes, exactly.

The technology of this world is built on the assumption that everyone can use the basic six elements. This is because everyone has a magic core, the source of all magic. It’s located in the brain,” she drew a caricature of a side profile and circled the top of the head. “Using this allows us to do simple things like turn on a light with light magic, charging your phone with lightning magic (a sub-magic of Light) and so on.

To learn higher levels of magic though requires practice. Magic is a muscle you have to train, and you have six ways to choose to develop. Wild magic though is constrained to itself, so those of you with Wild Magic can only do the basic spells of each element. Which is good, because you can at least operate the majority of magical technology. But the amount of stamina used is different: wild magic users utilise more stamina to do basic magical functions than normal people.”

This is something Hugh was already cognisant of in his life. While activating a simple light spell barely took any energy from a normal person, it quickly tired him out. That was his experience when he tried to turn on all the lights in the Gawain mansion; he collapsed in exhaustion, while Sarah barely even broke a sweat in comparison.

In essence, it was considered a handicap.

With that class continued on until it was noon. At noon bell, students couldn’t get out of class fast enough - but not Hugh. Usually he would eat and then hang out in the library, but after having that talk with Xia Rong, he wondered if there was another option he could take.

(I’m always seeing Ami and Ada eating lunch together… maybe I should copy that?)

He stared at his lunch box of a moment, then nodded to himself. Decision made, he made way to the University building.