"Salis," Vanilla called once we finished our last grammar exercise of the day, "It is time for you to go see Instructor Callic."

I nodded and left the room.

It was not far to Cowlick's room as it was just down the hall. Inside I saw that there were fewer children than the room I had just left but were all a few years older.

Everyone looked up when I entered.

"Greetings child, I have looked forward to seeing you," He picked up a slate and wrote something on it, "First a test." He handed the slate and chalk to me.

It was a math equation and was about as hard as the hardest questions that had been in my evaluation yesterday. I easily did it and handed the slate back to him.

"Very good," he was pleased. "I wonder what kinds of math Terra has that we have yet to dream of."

A lot. This level of math is nothing.

"Salis, you must wonder what you are doing in a math class when we have nothing to teach you. Headmaster Ury and I decided that we could use your skills to help. There are certain students that need more help than the others and if I spent all of my time with them, it would take away from the other children."

"You want me to help them?" I answered hoping I was wrong.

"Yes! Yes! Child. I do not know how well they will take to someone as… unique as you are but Headmaster Ury hopes that it will help with your… peculiarities."

So I would tutor some dumber children in this class. On a positive note dumb people are easier to manipulate if you know what to look for.

"Dario! Helnion! Calren! Please come to the front of the room." Two boys quickly appeared in front of us. The younger of the two had black hair and grey eyes just like Arty. Was this the brother she had mentioned?

"You called us?" Answered the other boy, someone I had hoped to never meet again.

It was Ferret's boyfriend, Dorito. He glanced at me but said nothing.

"Yes Dario, I have something to tell you and Calren." Cowlick looked around the room. "Helnion!" He shouted at a girl staring out the rear most window in the room.

The girl blinked and looked around. When she saw Cowlick he motioned for her to come. She slowly stood up and walked to us.

"Typical Usui born…" I heard Dorito mutter to the other boy, whom I decided to call Caldren.

"Helnion, how many times must I call you?"

Helnion tilted her head as if thinking, then shrugged.

"Sometimes I wonder what you are thinking, child."

"It is a nice day outside," Helnion said. If it was in answer to Cowlick's statement or just some random statement, I had no idea.

Cowlick shook his head and turned back towards me and the two boys, "Dario, Calren, Helnion. I have decided that Salis here will tutor you in math. I expect you to show her the same respect as you would I."

"Yes Instructor Callic!" Both boys said in unison. As for Helnion, she was looking at me curiously.

Cowlick took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to me. "For the next few days I want you to go over what I have written on this paper with them," He led us to a table and some chairs set off to the side, away from any windows, "This is where you will be studying."

I looked at my students. They looked at me.

"All right," I said to Cowlick.

"If you have any problems, let me know."

"I promise you will not hear anything bad from Calren and I," Dorito said to Cowlick.

"If you put all of that confidence into your math studies you would be in your last year by now, Dario."

"I will try harder this year Instructor."

"I hope so," Cowlick said and then left.

"I hate math…" Dorito mumbled.

"I know, I wish they would just let us only study magic. All this science and math is so boring," Caldren added.

I sat down at the table. The two boys did the same.

"So, Instructor Salis," Dorito said. "What are you going to teach us today?" It looked like he was going to say something else, but he glanced at Cowlick and said nothing.

I opened the sheet of paper and looked at what was written on it. It was easy stuff like basic multiplication and division. I wondered how anyone would have a hard time learning this.

I picked up a slate, wrote a math problem on it, and handed it to Dorito. He looked at it for a moment. Caldren also looked at it.

"Division? The number is big, but it is being divided by zero so it should not be too bad," Caldren said to Dorito.

"You think so?" Dorito said, sounding uncertain.

As I waited for the aftermath of them trying to divide by zero, I noticed Helnion had moved next to me and was studying my hair closely.

"I wish I had hair like yours. I like how it slowly turns purple near the ends." She sighed. "If only it was not so tangled."

Helnion walked over to where she had been sitting when Cowlick had called her and returned with an expensive-looking cloth bag. She pulled out an ivory comb and started brushing my hair.

"Don't do that," I told her. Not only did I not want her touching me, her brushing hurt too. I guess that was what I got for never combing my hair.

Helnion didn't pay any attention to me. I didn't really care about tutoring any of these three, but Cowlick was giving me some serious looks and I didn't feel like getting yelled at right now.

"I'll let you comb my hair whenever you want if you do your math," I told her, hating the fact that I was sounding responsible. Being responsible was a necessary evil sometimes.

"Really?" She said, somehow sounding excited but not at the same time.

"Really, Really."

She sat down for the first time and watched me silently.

"So, what math do you know how to do?"

She thought for a while, but Dorito spoke up first.

"With how little she pays attention in class, she probably knows nothing past addition."

He and Caldren snickered.

I grabbed the slate from them and handed it to Helnion.

She looked at the slate for a minute. "You can't divide by zero, can you? I think Callic said that once."

"Nope, you can't."

"Wait!" Dorito said. "You gave us a question you knew we could not answer?"

"There's an answer which is you can't."

"How long were you going to wait until you told us?"

I shrugged.

"Whatever. Let us move on to real math if we have to."

Caldren laughed, "Why are you getting so mad? We could have acted like we were working on it and avoiding doing anything else."

"You are right! You should have said something earlier!"

"I did not think about it until now. I was too busy watching Helnion being Helnion."

Dorito laughed, "Yes, it is fun to watch her make the Instructors go crazy."

I slid the slate across the table and hit Dorito on the arm. I had written several math problems of varying difficulty on it.

"Hey!" Dorito said, rubbing the elbow I had hit. "Be nice to me or I will hold it against you."

"You can solve those," I said pointing to the slate.

"Fine."

I grabbed two more slates and wrote math problems on them like I had with Dorito and handed one to Caldren and Helnion each. Thankfully, this quieted them down other than the occasional disgruntled whisper between the two boys.

Eventually Dorito put his slate down in disgust and was soon after followed by Caldren. Helnion worked on hers for the rest of class, although I could see how hard of a time she had focusing on the board and would often look up. When she did this, I held up the comb, and she immediately went back to her math.

When I got a good look at the work the two boys had done, I saw that Caldren had done better than Dorito, though not by much.

Now that I had an idea of their math skills, I dropped the harder math and gave them some about where I thought they were and a little above. This time I watched what they were doing and occasionally did the part of a teacher and helped walk them through some problems.

When the bells chimed for class to finally end Dorito and Caldren stood up happily.

"Oh, I hate math," Dorito said with the agreement of Caldren.

He looked at me, "You may be good at math but you really are bad with people."

He walked off.

I walked over to Helnion, whom was still working on the original problems I had given her, and took her slate. She looked slightly startled when I took it but then smiled.

"I can stop now?"

I nodded.

She took the comb. "Can I?"

"Don't have time now."

Helnion frowned.

I had promised her, besides she might be a good way to escape from Ferret's likely raid on my room tonight.

"After I'm done with archery tonight."

When I mentioned archery I saw her cringe a little.

She smiled, "We can meet at the bath."

Wait, the school had a bath? I didn't really have any idea where it would be, but it was probably near wherever they got their water. I just hoped it wasn't a public bath.

"I better hurry," I told her and walked towards the door.

She followed me.

Helnion ended up following me all the way to the fields. Thankfully, she didn't say a word and just watched whatever caught her interest, which changed often.

At the field I found Medic and waited.

"Greetings child," She said when she saw me, "Please wait over there." She pointed to a small group of children by the small building. I noticed she gave Helnion a curious look.

When I got to the group, Helnion got almost as many strange looks as I did. It made sense considering she was a few years older than any of the other children gathered in this group and all the other groups.

"Isn't this a surprise!" Bench said, coming from nowhere. Ferret was with him… "I never expected you to be here." He said to Helnion and not me.

"How did you do it?" Ferret asked Helnion, grabbing Helnion’s hands.

"Hmm?" Helnion gave a confused look.

"How did you get Salis to let you follow her?" So, she had seen Helnion and I walking together. "She always runs away from me."

"How?" Helnion said, still confused. "Oh." a look of comprehension appearing on her face. "We promised to…"

I tugged on Helnion's hand. I did not want Ferret to know where I was hiding from her tonight.

"Go to the bath together." Helnion continued, ignoring my tug.

"I see…" Ferret got a suspicious look on her face, made even more suspicious by her sudden departure.

I heard Bench laugh, "Leave it to the famous Helnion to do the impossible." He turned to me. "I hope you can keep up with Helnion."

He left.

It was not long after Bench left that Helnion began to wander. Immediately she headed to a rack of bows near the targets.

"Helnion!" Medic came running over to her. "How many times must I tell you these bows are only usable by those accepted into training?"

Helnion chewed on her lip as she looked between the bow and Medic. She put the bow back and then hid behind me, which was hard considering she was a lot taller than me.

"It is all right for you to watch but I imagine there are many better ways to use your time," Medic sounded as if she knew what she was saying was going into deaf ears when she said this.

"Salis, come here," beckoned at me.

I walked to her, leaving Helnion.

Medic leaned over and quietly told me, "I would appreciate it if you did not bring Helnion here from now on. She gets in the way. She has also almost gotten nearly shot a few times when she went to retrieve her arrows without looking to see if anyone was shooting at the other targets. I have yet to have a student die on me yet and that girl could easily end that. Do you understand?"

I nodded. I now knew how bad of a shot Helnion was with an arrow if she had to go into the line of fire of other targets to get her arrows.

Medic finished with, "Since she has taken a liking to you Salis, and since you are the one that brought her here I expect you to monitor her and make sure she stays out of the way."

Medic stood back up and called attention to the group of children I was with.

"Congratulations are making it to this group. I will hold all of you to the highest standards and expect you to behave as such. If you can keep the standards and do the hard work expected of you, your skills as an archer will well be on its way to being among the greats. If you cannot or do not want to, I will be more than happy to move you to one of the other groups. I will train you hard so do not expect this to be easy, especially in the upcoming days as you get used to the training, but it will be well worth it."

When Medic finished speaking she had us form lines and led us through several warm-ups. She then instructed us to each grab a bow and, for the rest of the day, we trained by either pulling the bowstring and holding it for a set amount of time or practiced proper form when holding and drawing the bow. We didn't shoot a single arrow so Helnion was safe and I didn't have to watch her closely.

As soon as Medic let us go, there being no bells since we had stayed an hour longer, Helnion grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the girl's dorm. Inside she took me up to the second floor and down the hallway.

When she opened a door and took me inside, I saw that Helnion was not from a poor family. Her room was filled with many expensive things. There was a large mirror, a large fluffy bed with equally fluffy pillows, a large set of drawers, a large desk with a lamp on it, and an expensive-looking rug.

The mirror was not made of glass and looked as if it was highly polished metal, and while it gave a good reflection, it was slightly warped. The bed and pillows had to be goose down or an equivalent, while the cotton material had to have been imported from Koa Flaer to the north where it was warm enough to grow it. The drawers were made of a heavy, expensive looking wood and had probably been crafted by a master carpenter considering how well the scenes depicting nature were carved. The desk was much the same as the drawers. The lamp on the desk was made of a high quality metal, though not gold, and held two pieces of crystal, the top round one resting inside the lower bowl shaped one.

Helnion walked to the lamp and touched the lower crystal. When she did this the round crystal inside it lit. I noticed that the round crystal was exactly the same as the ones above the doors.

When Helnion had finished with the lamp, she went to the drawers and opened two of them. From one drawer she pulled out some large pieces of cloth and a bar of soap. She then put them in her bag and pulled me out of the room.

Now back outside we headed to a small building just behind the girl's dorm. As we approached, I noticed a few things. First was the large mean-looking maid that sat by the door, occasionally feeding a fire set under the floor of the building. Second was that there was actually a small stream that had been dammed up and had partly been diverted into the building with the rest continuing past the boy's dorm and a similar building. The last thing I noticed as we got closer was that there was steam coming out of the small windows.

“You came!” Ferret said excitedly as soon as I entered the bathing room. “I have been wanting to introduce you to some of my friends and what better way than to have a small party!”

There were several girls in the room. There were also a few holding primitive-looking instruments. Ferret was holding a small harp.

Helnion looked as if she did not know what to do about this situation. I could see her eyeing the instruments but I imagine she thought this would take away from her time with my hair or whatever was going through her mind. All I knew was that it ruined my nice quiet evening.

The night ended up being horrible. Ferret and her friends had sang and danced until the maid kicked us out. I didn't have any chances to escape either, because once Helnion had gotten bored with the atmosphere she had practically held me down, washed, and then combed my hair. My hair had so many knots in it it had been quite painful and even Helnion had angrily commented on how bad it was. She had then braided my hair.

When I had finally escaped from Ferret and her friends and eventually Helnion, I returned to my room to find that my meal was long gone and Arty was sitting half asleep at her desk. When she heard me enter, she looked up. As soon as she saw me her face brightened.

"Who did your hair?”

"Helnion."

Arty thought for a moment. "I think she is in my brother's knowledge class. He said she is fun to watch when she gets in trouble. I think he has a crush on her too."

Arty's brother? If Caldren was Arty's brother… this meant I had some blackmail information.

"I tried to save your meal, but the maids say missing it is punishment." Arty yawned. "I better go to sleep."

Arty stripped into her undergarments and climbed into her bed. I followed suit.