The scones were overall pretty tasty, it was just too bad that I had no appetite for them.

“Auro, you don’t need to force yourself to eat…” Emma looked at me with a concerned smile.

“It’s fine, I’m just taking it slow, that’s all.” Yesterday’s pizza went down without any issues after all. It just took a bit longer than usual.

“As long as you don’t push yourself.”

“I will eat the rest of your beans and sausage if need be!” Claire volunteered, making me instinctively look over at her plate. She’d only taken beans and sausage, and I’m pretty sure that was her second plate already.

“Wow, you really like beans in tomato sauce, don’t you?” I took a bite from another scone.

“Yes! They are heavenly aren’t they? The taste fits so well together. It’s like a divine marriage of flavours on my tongue.”

“It’s good but I wouldn’t say it’s ‘that’ good.” Pres commented, her plate was filled with roast beef and quite an assortment of veggies.

“Take that back! Pres, I’m disappointed in you!” Oh, overly dramatic Claire’s back.

“How can I? I am merely telling the objective truth.” Pres calmly smiled and took a good long sip from her tea.

“Heresy!” Claire dramatically looked away from Pres. “How could you fall to the dark side so easily!”

Pres shrugged. “They had tea and biscuits.”

“By the Goddess!”

While the drama was unfolding Karin and Ria continued eating quietly, undisturbed by the rising chaos around them.

“Sadly we don’t have any popcorn to go with the show.” Emma giggled.

“It’s a damn shame.” I laughed with her. “Maybe we should start a petition to get an American restaurant too.”

“We are already getting a food truck.” Karin nonchalantly commented.

“Wait, really?” I looked at her.

“Yes!” Ria continued for her friend so she didn’t have to speak any more than she wanted to. “I read it on the website last week. They are going to have hamburgers and hotdogs and things like that.”

“Oh wow, a food truck in a school like this. That’s a bit atypical.”

“They want students to spread out their culinary tastes.”

“I wouldn’t call hamburgers and hotdogs truly culinary though...”

“I guess not a lot of students have had any sort of fast food… I know we didn’t before I met you…” Emma commented, her sister nodded as well. “We were completely lost when you took us out to WcRonald’s.”

“Oh right! I remember that!”

“You were having way too much fun letting us struggle with ordering at the counter.”

“Yeah, sorry for that. That was just my evil side coming up for a bit. But is it really such a universal ‘rich kid’ thing to not know that? Ria didn’t have that.”

“That’s because Ria is your childhood friend, Rora.”

Ria nodded. “My parents would never take me to a place like that.”

“Well if you put it like that…”

“But we really should go to WcRonalds again, with the four of us.” Emma proposed.

“Definitely.” I smiled. -If Ria still wants to hang out with me at least…-

“Is everyone ready to go?” Claire got up from her seat once everyone was done eating.

“Yep.” I stretched and got up as well. Somehow I’d managed to eat everything that was on my plate. “Where are we gonna go for the rest of the break?”

“We could do a small chess tournament, if everyone’s up for that?” Our school didn’t have a lot of board games for students to play during the break, except for Diplomacy and Chess, as they were seen as games that were great for training strategy and cunning. Chess was a traditional game played by nobility, therefore it was part of the school’s curriculum since its foundation. A lot of the school’s students would go on to play in worldwide tournaments too. Diplomacy was a more recent addition, introduced after some famous politicians admitted to be a big fan of the game.

Karin nodded happily. It was her who had won our little tournament last time. By the reaction of Pres and Ria it was clear that they were burning to claim that title from her as they immediately jumped up from their chairs and agreed on the tournament as well.

Me and Emma however… I just looked at her and smiled nervously. “I guess we should just try not to get knocked out in round 1.”

Emma nodded. “Yeah… We’re going to get wrecked again, aren’t we?” It’s not that we were bad players, not at all. But what we had going against us is that we were very aggressive players with little patience. Which definitely helped against some tactics, but not against the other four who were just complete monsters at the game.

“Let’s walk towards defeat with our heads held high, Em.” I reached out my hand which she gladly took.

“Let’s, Auro, let’s.” We both started giggling and followed the group towards the game room which was situated on the top floor of the main school building.

The games were a complete bloodbath. Me and Emma both got taken out in less than 3 minutes by Pres and Claire respectively. It was obvious they were taking no prisoners today. Karin and Ria ended up against two girls from a different class who asked if they could join our little tournament.

“Wow, your friends are really good at this game.” the blonde haired girl commented, they were sitting with us in the lounge, watching the other games.

“It’s crazy, I know. Sorry that you didn’t get to play that much.” I apologized to the both of them.

“It’s fine.” The brown-haired girl’s pigtails energetically bobbed around as she replied to me. “We like testing our skills against others. Next time we will surely win though!”

“As long as you don’t radio-equipment!” The blond haired girl reprimanded her friend.

“That was a one time thing!”

Me and Emma looked at each other with a confused look before I decided to change the subject. “By the way, what are your names?”

“Ah, my name is Kay and this is Alisa.” The blonde haired girl replied. “We are here on exchange from the US.”

“Wow, I didn’t know we did exchange programs?” I looked at Em.

“Very rarely.” Emma then continued on whispering to me. “Probably means their school also has a lot of money.”

“Aaaah, so why did you want to come and look at our school?”

“You see we do a certain form of martial arts and your school board ask…”

“Checkmate!” Pres yelled out, interrupting what Kay was trying to say. She had just managed to checkmate Karin. “Oh, excuse me for my sudden outburst.” she apologized to the entire room and especially to her opponent. “It was a really good game Karin.”

Karin nodded, she apparently took her loss well and smiled. “It was.” They both shook hands and Pres started preparing for the next round, which was going to be against Ria-chan.

The final game was so exciting that none of us wanted to interrupt by talking, the only sound in the room was the moving of the chess pieces and the punching of the clock. It was close, so incredibly close that after a while it became clear the game was in a complete deadlock.

Pres looked Ria in the eyes and extended her arm. “I guess we’ll have to call a tie.”

Ria looked over the board one last time and shook Pres’ hand. “Well played.”

“Oh, look at the time.” Claire looked at her watch. “We should probably go to class now.”

“Sorry that we drew out the game for that long.” Pres and Ria had rejoined the group after having cleaned up the chess pieces.

“It’s fine, it was really entertaining to watch.” I patted Ria’s head which made her smile with glee. “Kay, Alisa, see you around?”

“Yeah, see ya! It was nice meeting ya!” Kay replied with an enthusiastic wave of her hand. Alisa waved us goodbye too, with just a tiny bit less enthusiasm than her friend.

“Likewise!” And on that note our groups parted ways. Although I did keep wondering what martial arts exactly they were talking about. -Maybe I’ll ask them when I see them next time…-

“Do you think Miss Halvorsen will have corrected the test already?” Claire asked.

Emma’s face immediately contorted. “I forgot about that! Urgh. I hope they accidentally got burned in a random event of self-combustion…or something like that...”

“My thoughts and prayers are with you, Em.” I put my hand on her shoulder.

“Thanks…”

The six of us walked into our classroom and saw the rest of the class was already present, together with Miss Halvorsen.

“Ah students, I was just telling the bad news to the rest of the class. When I came home on Tuesday my big doofus of a Golden Retriever got to my bag and managed to make almost all of your tests unreadable because he used them as a chewing toy. So I must sadly inform you that the last test will be invalidated. I’m very sorry, he has never done this before.”

However, approximately halfway Miss Halvorsen’s explanation our little group had stopped listening and started staring at Emma in awe…

“How…” Claire managed to vocalise but decided not to go any further on it and sat down on her seat.

The rest of the group also decided that was the best course of action, while I whispered to Emma. “Are you sure you don’t have any supernatural abilities as well?”

Emma gulped. “I sure hope I don’t.”

-Scary coincidences do exist… I guess?-