Hugh understood after awhile that waltzing into the university section in his secondary school uniform might have been a bad idea. Or at least, an awkward one. It felt like everyone in the hallways was looking at him, and he could hear their question: “Is he someone’s little brother?”. That seemed to be the majority consensus anyhow.

The university section was twice bigger than the secondary school section, and what that means is that Hugh quickly got lost. (I should have asked Roman how to get to there before I left school…) Hindsight is always 20/20. At any rate, once he accepted that he was lost, he looked around to see if there was anyone he could ask. What he found was a stack of papers almost as high as he was.

He made a sound of surprise, prompting the other person to pause - just before they hit him. “Sorry!” a voice behind the papers called. They shifted the papers to see who they almost ran over, and Hugh saw that it was a Nefari girl. “So sorry about almost running into you,” she tilted her head, her tail swinging around behind her. “Oh, you’re a secondary school student. Did you have business with someone at the university section?”

“Actually I was looking for the Student Council room,” Hugh explained.

“What a coincidence, I am heading there too! Let me show you the way,” she energetically said. However, that was the moment she seemed to trip on air. Hugh managed to catch her before she met the floor, but the papers flew off in a sort of domino effect, leaving a long line of papers in the hallway.

There was a pause.

“The papers-!” she moaned at the sight of all her hard work lying haphazardly on the ground. Seeing the despair in her face, Hugh quickly offered to help her pick them up.

“You’re such a nice boy,” she commented as they slowly picked up the papers. Looking at a few of them, she groaned, “They’re all mixed up! I guess we’ll just have to sort it in the student council room…”

He offered to take half that stack, which she accepted with many thanks. “My name is Anna, what’s yours?”

“I’m Hugh, from class 1-X.”

“Ooh!” her eyes lit up. “You’re the president’s aide aren’t you.”

“Umm, yes. You know about it?”

“I think the whole university section knows about it. Ruth is kind of a big deal here, so rumours about her spread like wildfire.”

“Is that so…” Hugh didn’t know how to feel about that. At the very least, he felt a little embarrassed about it.

“Oh! You must be here to see her,” Anna figured out. Hugh nodded, saying: “I thought to… ask her to join me for lunch.”

“That’s so cute,” she gushed. Then a thoughtful look took over: “Hmm but she’s always so busy… well, it would do her good to take a break sometimes!”

“Here’s the student council room.” Hugh found himself in front of a large mahogany double-door with a gold plate sign that said ‘Student Council Room’. It certainly looked very intimidating, but Anna just pushed the door open and strolled in with ease. Hugh was forced to follow her in before he could pick up his wits.

“Hi everyone, I got the papers! But I mixed them all up, tee-hee!” Anna announced as she set the papers on the table. The trader orc girl in front of the laptop groaned loudly. “Anna, you’re the student council Secretary. You’re supposed to be in charge of the papers, which is like, not mixing them up for one thing!”

“Sorry Nina,” Anna apologised. Despite her gruff tone, Nina was already standing up, ready to help sort the papers.

“What’s with this mountain of papers, and they’re all for the president? Yikes…” Nina said, more to herself. That’s when she noticed Hugh. “Hmm? Who is this? You lost or something Secondary School boy?”

Before Hugh could say anything, Anna took over. “This here is Hugh, Ruth’s aide.”

“Ooh, Ruth’s new guy. Wait that sounds weird. Whatever. Anyway, if you’re looking for Ruth, she and the vice-president are in a meeting with the lecturers.”

“Oh, that’s unfortunate…” Anna said with a little sadness.

“Nah, they should be done soon. In the meantime, I’ll teach you how to sort these papers. Can’t rely on just Anna, or she’ll mess up the papers. Again,” Nina rolled her eyes at the last part.

Hugh became so absorbed in sorting the papers, he didn’t notice two people entering through the door until one of them tapped him on his shoulder. That made him jump in surprise, but he managed to keep his hands firm on the papers.

Looking back at his was a concerned Ruth. “Hugh, are you all right? You weren’t answering me.”

“Oh, uh- I guess I was pretty into sorting these papers,” Hugh answered, stumbling over his words.

She smiled kindly at him. “Were you looking for me? Oh, it’s all right, we’ll sort these papers-”

“Stop right there president!” Anna dramatically ordered, pointing at both Ruth and Hugh. “You are going to go with your aide to lunch. We’ll need more time to sort these documents for you to look through anyway, so you can take your time.”

“Ugh, double work,” Nina muttered to herself, rolling her eyes.

The other girl - the vice-president it seemed - took one look at everything, frowned, but sighed and said, “Anna’s right. It’ll go faster with three people who know what they’re doing. And you could use the rest; you’ve been in meetings since morning, and you still have afternoon classes.” She gently patted Ruth’s cheeks with a smile.

“All right, out out out!” Anna shoved Ruth and Hugh out the door and closed it behind them.

(I have a feeling the vice-president was subtly insulting me…) he shrugged, then turned to Ruth to voice out, “You have nice people working with you.”

Ruth smiled at the praise. “They’re my reliable allies.” Turning, she signalled Hugh to follow her. “I know a secluded spot on the university grounds. Why don’t we take our lunch there?”

While they walked, Hugh recounted the story of how he ended up sorting papers at the university student council room. Ruth winced at the part when Anna tripped on air - “She does do that sometimes, yes,” - and calmly nodded when Hugh expressed his awkwardness of walking around the university area in his secondary school uniform.

Eventually they arrived at the secluded spot; a large tree surrounded by bushes, with benches on each side. Indeed there were no students here, but the general hubbub of the university could still be distantly heard.

Sitting together on the same bench, Hugh was suddenly hit by a wave of awkwardness and insecurity. Here he was, a general nobody sitting with a famous person. He still felt that there was nothing special about him (apart from being a shapeshifter), so he felt rather… unbalanced, perhaps? At any rate, an awkward silence descended upon the two as they ate their lunch. They were so different in many ways that it seemed difficult to start a conversation.

(Think, think! There must be some way to break this awkward silence… what do friends talk about anyway?)

That he could ask such a sad question proved that Hugh really didn’t have the experience of having friends. Was he such a sad person prior to coming to this world? He didn’t have his memories of that time yes, but the whiff of feelings within him told him that he probably… didn’t have any friends back then too.

(At this rate we’ll finish eating without saying a word to each other!)

Which is exactly what happened.

Hugh could almost cry as he ate the last of his rice, so at the sight of her closing her food container, he could only blurt out - with no particular direction -

“Ruth!” “Hugh.”

They ended up calling each other’s name. Staring at the awkward expression each other had, they ended up laughing. It lifted the uncomfortable atmosphere a little.

Feeling a little better, Hugh decided to just state the obvious. “This is a nice place.”

“Isn’t it?” Ruth’s eyes lit up. “I used to come here and study during those few months before I was voted as president. I’ve only ever seen the gardener spending time here.”

“Umm, sorry for asking such a basic question, but what do you study actually?”

“It’s all right. I study political science.”

“Oh wow, that really sounds heavy.”

“I find it quite fun actually. Perhaps because I’ve been a student council president since I was enrolled here, but I relate to a lot of the case studies we use during lectures.”

She took a deep breath and asked, “What about you, Hugh? What’s your favourite subject?”

“Hmm, I’d say it’s a toss up between Magic Studies and Social Studies. It’s interesting to learn about the magic in this world, and of the different races here too. I mean, I don’t remember my life in the previous world, but I think we didn’t have those things, at least not the way Izgaea has.”

“I see…” her mood turned sombre. Was it something he said? He gave her an inquisitive look which she picked up.

“I have a confession to make. And an apology as well.”

He motioned at her to continue. What she said next was something he never would have imagined.

“It was my family’s fault that you were summoned into this world.”