▌│█║▌║▌║Chapter 39║▌║▌║█│▌

While walking back through the hallways, there was an awkward silence between Mr. Grey and I. Mr. Grey was quiet normally, but there was a certain tension now. Maybe it was just me, I do feel a little guilty for putting my knife in his arm. I am also a little curious about why everyone was so shocked that I woke up so early. I looked up at Mr. Grey’s intimidating figure, and I remembered the scary image of him during the quiz and terrorist attack. Quickly looking back down, I asked him, “Is it really that abnormal that I woke up so soon after getting medical treatment? During our first training day, the other team didn’t seem to take that long to get healed, so what is different this time?”

“Well, they got hurt a lot worse today than yesterday.” He explained, “And I don’t know if you healing is abnormal or not. It may be normal for a sagaru to heal that fast. Crystal High has never had a sagaru here before, so we don’t have anything to base it off of. Maybe since you don’t have any powers to use, it helps the healing process along. In the end, it isn’t anything to worry about. I would just forget about it to be honest.”

I nodded and looked down in thought. I guess that makes sense. I have a lot of other things to think about, so I shouldn’t focus much on something that is relatively unimportant. We moved through the hallways, and I could see people looking at us through the hallway. Compared to this morning though, I felt the eyes move toward Mr. Grey instead of me. As we walked down the hall, we passed Mr. Shadowfox’s classroom. Mr. Shadowfox noticed Mr. Grey through the open door, and he walked outside to him. He asked Mr. Grey with a shocked face, “Is what I heard about what you did to those kids today true? Did you actually brutalize those kids that much?”

Mr. Grey continued to walk right past him as he said in his usual voice, “Maybe, it depends on what your definition of brutalize is really. I think I did what was necessary to provide positive results.”

Stopping for a second at Mr. Shadowfox, I rushed to get back to Mr. Grey’s side. Mr. Shadowfox responded to Mr. Grey in a stern voice saying, “I always thought you were insane. You are going to get your kids killed doing that!”

Mr. Grey turned to go into our classroom, and he turned toward Mr. Shadowfox and looked at him with his nonchalant face. He told him, “You have your teaching style. I have mine.”

After he said that, he walked into the classroom. I gave Mr. Shadowfox a guilty smile to signal a sorry for Mr. Grey’s rudeness to him, and I followed Mr. Grey into the classroom. I have spent so much time with Mr. Grey over the past couple of weeks that I forget how standoffish and rude he can be sometimes to some people. As I walked into the classroom, Via’s head lifted off of her desk. I noticed that her cheeks and her eyes were blood red. Mr. Grey commented as he sat down at his desk, “I guess you two would like a couple of minutes to talk about the quiz. We probably won’t do anything else today though seeing as how most of the class won’t be here for it. I can’t let you go home early either, so you two just sit and keep semi-quiet. I really want to finish this book today.”

I walked over to my desk, and Via got up and hugged me. I didn’t see this coming, and I was shocked by it. I didn’t wrap my arms around her body like she did mine at first too. I think this is the first time a person other than my family has hugged me. I could hear her nose sniffle into my chest as she grasped me. Her hair was out of the braid she had it in earlier, and it was down. I heard her say, “Idiot! Don’t do that again.”

Not sure what she said, I looked down and voiced a, “Hm?”

She let go of me, and we went to sit down in our seats. She told me, “Never mind.” As she let go of me.

We sat down in our seats, and she asked me, “Where are the others? Aren’t they going to be getting out soon too?”

I chuckled a bit as I told her, “Apparently not, I recovered quicker than the others somehow. Everyone else is still in their bed unconscious. Mr. Grey said it might be because I have no powers to use as the reason why I recovered faster. I don’t know myself to be honest. It’s best not to worry about it. What happened once I went out?”

“Well, after you went unconscious, the last bell rang out through the arena. Mr. Grey set me down, and he told me to go back and get changed in the locker room then go back to the classroom. After that, He shot up through the air carrying you. I had no idea how badly hurt you were, or if you were going to be okay. Why were you trying to get him to let go of me at the end anyway? Shouldn’t you have been trying to get him to let go of you?”

Embarrassed a bit at my reason to hit the arm holding her, I looked away from her earnest face. I told her in a quiet voice, almost a mumble, “Well I wanted you to pass the quiz the most since you were worried about quizzes so much and wanted to do well today. What happened to you yesterday at training got me fired up too to help you do better than the rest of your former team.”

“Oh.” She responded simply, and there was a long silence afterwards. Trying to pick the conversation back up, I asked her, “Did you know that Mr. Grey’s last name is Summers? Apparently, he was a student here too, and he got hurt A LOT.”

She smiled, and exclaimed, “No way. You mean to tell me that monster we just fought got hurt a lot?”

Off in the front of the room, Mr. Grey piped up his voice in defense saying, “I just didn’t know how to control my power! That’s why I’m going hard on you guys, so you learn how to use your powers most effectively and level up fast.”

We laughed at his objection to the subject and he turned back to reading his book. I looked at Via and told her, “I’m sorry for not coming up with a better plan today. If I thought of a better plan, and I executed it better then maybe Zen, Itsuki, Thomas, and Jack could have lasted to the end.”

She put her hand on my shoulder and comforted me saying, “There isn’t any plan you could have thought of that would be able to stop that.”

Mr. Grey looked up at the weird phrase that was used to describe him. I nodded my head, but I thought in my head that there is always a plan that can work. Via and I continued to talk about how to better ourselves the rest of the day and eventually Via and I walked out of the school together talking about the same thing. We were both tired from the day, and walked slowly on the way to our homes. So much has happened today, and my mind was shot from the events. I was so shot from the events, that I didn’t see the figures following behind us.

▌│█║▌║▌║To be Continued║▌║▌║█│▌