Chapter 26: Routine

A brief insight into Theo’s daily routine.

Every morning, he wakes up and walks to school with Shirley. Once there, he immediately heads to the clubroom, where he trains for the majority of the day. For some reason, Mary was always there, sitting in the middle of the room, usually reading a book or enjoying a plate full of butter cookies. He did not know why she was here, nor why she always came to school so early in the morning, just that her presence had become common routine for him.

In fact, it got to the point where Theo almost believed that she spent her nights inside the clubroom.

Regardless of the truth, she always left immediately after Theo arrived. Aside from his one-sided greeting, the two never once conversed.

Once the day progresses some more and the time draws nearer towards the last period of the day, Theo then leaves the clubroom and heads for his history class. He always arrives early, approximately ten minutes before the official start of the period.

Inside the classroom, he meets up with the two gaudily dressed girls from before, Maddy and Nica. They get to class fairly early as well, usually one or two minutes after Theo’s own arrival. He quickly learned that they were a rather talkative bunch. They used every chance they could get to strike up a conversation. Most of their conversations were one-sided, but it was fun in its own way.

Ah, of course, this was all on the basis that they were alone. Despite how ‘friendly’ they had gotten lately, they still couldn’t stand the idea of being seen out in public with him, a sentiment that made Theo feel rather helpless.

Their presence felt somewhat stifling. It wasn’t what he’d exactly call intimacy or even affection, but they were just a bit too clingy. No, maybe calling them clingy isn’t the right word… within that short span of ten or so minutes before class started, they gave him no respite whatsoever. Theo liked to believe that it was his springtime of youth taking effect, but he wasn’t so naïve. The most likely scenario was that the girls were just trying to use him to get to Shirley.

Well, it wasn’t like he minded all that much. After their repeated interactions, although he still felt that the two were indeed quite vain, truthfully speaking, Theo didn’t believe that they were bad people. At the very least, he didn’t mind them becoming friends with Shirley. Plus, no sane man would reject daily afternoon conversations with a pair of beautiful ladies.

After class, Shirley dragged a half-willing Theo back to the clubroom.

Theo did not go to club every day. In fact, he made it a point to only go every other day. The excuse that he used whenever Shirley questioned him was that he needed the extra time in order to prepare for his upcoming supplementary exams. Technically speaking, he wasn’t lying. He used the extra time during the late afternoons in order to get a bit more training in.

On his ‘off’ days, Theo spent the time in an empty classroom. Since it was after school hours, there were no shortages in empty classrooms. He also couldn’t just leave the schoolgrounds. After all, Shirley and him walked home together every day.

During the days that he actually did attend club, his experience there really did align with the things that Shirley previously mentioned. Club time consisted of afternoon snacks and freshly brewed instant tea.

Occasionally, Mao Lin would bring up a topic of conversation, which ranged from alien sightings, lost footage, and other sorts of innately ‘paranormal’ subjects. They would then spend the rest of the afternoon discussing said topic, which was usually just Mao Lin lecturing them on a new urban legend or scary story. Of course, half the time, the conversation derailed into her own ranting of the mysteries of Harwick city.

The club president really was quite a handful. She was the main reason why Theo decided to skip club every other day. He feared that he could only handle such a person in small doses.

An hour or two later, club eventually ended, and Shirley and Theo walked home together.

Afterward, Theo spent the remainder of the evening alone. For the past few days, Aunt Lynn’s been busy. She was always gone during the evenings. In fact, Theo only ever saw her in the mornings, during the brief span of time before he left for school. This made him somewhat worried.

That Quinn character, did she really gobble up his little Auntie?

…

…

…

Before he even noticed it, Friday rolled in.

Theo’s date with Shirley was tomorrow. He’d be lying if he were to say he wasn’t even just a little bit nervous.

It wasn’t as if the two of them never spent the weekends together. Going to the movies, seeing the animals at the zoo, dinner outside, such ‘date-like’ activities were rather commonplace for them, they just never actually called it a date. Now, an actual date where both parties actually acknowledged it as a date… that was something that Theo had yet to experience.

His day started off rather normally.

After waking up, he left his room and went downstairs to get some food. There, he saw Aunt Lynn. She was standing by the stove, cooking a plateful of pancakes.

“Morning.” She greeted.

“Morning…” Theo echoed back. He suddenly thought about the stuff that plagued his mind all week. He tried to resist, but in the end, he couldn’t help but ask, “So, about that woman, Quinn…”

“Quinn?” She raised a brow in surprise. “Are you talking about my publishing agent? Where’d you hear about her from? Was it Shirley?”

“That’s not important right now.” He dismissed, “She… she’s not like, doing anything… anything bad to you, is she?”

“Bad?” She glanced back at him with a weird look on her face. “What sort of bad things are you talking about?”

That’s…” He hesitated for a moment, before he eventually sighed and shook his head. “Never mind. It’s nothing, forget I said anything.”

Lynn kept staring at him for a while. She wondered what sort of weird thoughts filled that head of his so early in the morning. Eventually, she shrugged her shoulders. “Alright. Tomorrow you’re going with Shirley to buy a new phone. Now, you don’t do anything weird to her, got it?”

Theo rolled his eyes and groaned. Before she could start another awkward conversation, he hurriedly grabbed a pancake from atop the finished batch on the plate and immediately sprinted out of the house.

“Hey, Theo!” she shouted in surprise. “Don’t just take food like that! I was serious too, don’t do anything weird to her!”

Her voice echoed through the house, but the moment he closed the front door, all he could hear were muffled noises.

Theo walked to school all by himself today. This time around, Shirley wasn’t here with him. He didn’t find her absence all that weird. Knowing her, she was probably avoiding him on purpose. Considering how fidgety she’s been getting, what with tomorrow fast approaching, he figured she’d pull something like this sooner or later.

Still, he thought her actions to be unnecessary. After all, regardless of what she does or where she hides, the two would still see each other during history class and once more during club.

He shook his head.

Prior to arriving at school, Theo already decided that he’d skip today’s training.

He wasn’t some mindless training machine. He needed a break every now and then. Besides, repeated attempted breakthroughs wasn’t exactly a good thing, especially not with the destructive method that was Severance.

Tales of practitioners who crippled themselves due to carelessness was not at all uncommon back on Mistelhan. Foreign energy was innately destructive. If it wasn’t so destructive, then it wouldn’t have been used in Severance. Even the gentler variants, like mana stones were not an exception to this. Leftover residual energy had a way of incrementally damaging the human body.

Cases of self-harm through training were especially common for those who used alternate forms of energy (i.e. energy not from mana stones), much like what Theo was doing right now. The damage was especially bad for poor practitioners who specialized in mind and pit sources. Those types of people aspired to become mages. Unfortunately, they did not possess the necessary resources to purchase mana stones, so they could only settle for cheaper, but more violent alternatives.

Many aspiring mages destroy themselves before they even get the chance to officially walk the path of magehood.

Truthfully, Theo’s body was already showing signs of deterioration. Electricity was one of the more destructive energies. On occasion, he would be met with this feeling of numbness. It lasted for a few hours, but the time it persisted for had steadily increased as the days pass. He feared that if it progressed any further, then he might just end up paralyzed on a hospital bed. What’s more, there were the burns. He had several burns all over his body, most of which was concentrated on his fingers.

Theo knew of a few ways to fix his current situation. The first method was to switch to a milder form of essence. Unfortunately, such a thing was impossible. The second method was to simply strengthen his body. He could do this by shifting his focus over to the flesh source. The flesh source affected the physical body, and by breaking its shackles, not only would it make him stronger and faster, it would also increase his resilience and recovery rate.

Still, he couldn’t just switch focus halfway through. At the very least, he first needed to break through to the second shackle of the mind source.

Luckily, he was getting close. The second shackle had already cracked. He needed one more push in order to break it. In fact, one of the reasons why he decided to take a break today was so that he could relax and put himself in an optimal state for that last push.

Thinking back on it now, although he was a bit unsatisfied with his current progress, there really was no reason to. In terms of speed, he was actually considerably faster than when he first attempted Severance back on Mistelhan.

On Mistelhan, normal people took at least one month in order to break through the first shackle unassisted. The 2nd shackle usually took six months, the third a year, and so on and so on. The times between each interval only kept increasing with the number of shackles one breaks.

Theo himself was not only a genius, but also the hero. It only took him a week to break his first shackle and a month to break his second. In total, it took him a little less than three years to break his ninth. By normal standards, he was incredibly fast. Now, on Plume, he was even faster.

Less than a day’s time to break the first shackle and less than a week to break the second. He estimated that with his current rate of improvement, it would only take about a year, maybe even less for him to reach nine shackles.

He chalked up his speed to experience. Not many in both worlds could say that they experienced the process of severance more than once.

Theo shook his head.

Although he had vowed to not do anything today, before he even realized it, he found himself standing in front of the clubroom. By this point, it had already become a habit. After some thought, he decided to kill time in the clubroom. After all, he really had nothing better to do, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to spend five hours attending class and studying like an actual productive student.

He opened the door. The first thing he saw was Mary’s lonely figure. She sat by the table, a plate full of butter cookies before her. There was a thin paperback book in her hands.

“Good morning, Mary.” Like he did every morning, Theo greeted her.

“….”

And as always, she didn’t respond. Instead, she closed her book shut and stuffed it into her bag, before she got up and headed for the door. Theo was unfazed by her reaction. He simply sauntered over towards the table and placed a cookie in his mouth.

“Bye, it was a nice conversation.” He spoke through a mouthful of food. “See you this afternoon.”

Mary’s tightly shut lips slightly twitched. Just as she was about to walk out of the door, she suddenly stopped. She stared out at the hallway through a tiny crack in the glass window. Theo also noticed something with his accumulative perception.

“Oh? I wonder what’s happening now…” He mumbled to himself as he walked over towards the doorway. He entered the room only a few seconds ago, but to think that someone else was already out there… it felt as if he had missed a random event in a videogame. He shook his head. A commotion was happening in the normally abandoned halls of the old school building.