Tom gets close while the rest wait for him in an awkward silence.

Stefan:”Sup?”

Tom:”I’m good! How about you?”

Stefan:”I’m good….”

The conversation feels like it ended there for some reason as the awkward tension is almost touchable.

They exchange some looks one to another and Jo speaks up.

Jo:”Anyway….Moving on…How old were you before you came here?”

Edward:”Well, you mean before I came into this world or when I came into this facility?”

Jo:”Before you came into this world I mean.”

Edward:”Well I was 21. How about you Stefan?”

Stefan:”I was almost 18. Now it’s yall’s turn to tell your ages.”

Stefan looks at Jo.

Jo:”I was 18. Your turn Iuustin!”

Iuustin:”38… With a good paying job… Yeah…There goes years of work with this reincarnation.”

Now every one looks at Tom and he realizes that he is young enough to be made fun of by the others so he decides to lie.

Tom:”Before coming here I was 17.”

Stefan:”Cool, that makes you our junior….”

Tom thinks to himself:”Oh boy! What have I done now! I will still made fun of!”

They all see the troubled look on his face, so Stefan continues.

Stefan:”…but don’t worry we won’t marginalize you because of that!”

Tom:”So you will marginalize me!”

Stefan;”No, no, no! I didn’t mean it like that! What I wanted to say is that we won’t treat you badly unless you do something bad!”

Tom:”Oh…”

They chit-chat a little more and the bell rings once again. They all get inside their classes, on their desk were waiting patiently a couple of pieces of paper and a pencil on everyone’s desks to start to learn to write.

Here Tom, out of fear to not be looked upon as an abnormality, he struggles to slow down his writing, but the teacher eventually cached up to Tom’s poor acting skills after complimenting his friends for writing so many letters in such a short time compared to the other students.

It was planned for the kids to study 3 hours that day and have the rest free to play, but Zoya and another professor grew curious of how much academic capabilities do the kids that were isekai’d have. So after those 3 hours pass Sefan was took to the classroom where the rest .

Zoya:”Now, Jo, Iuustin, Tom, Stefan and Edward please wait in the classroom in silence, the rest are free to play in the yard.” After this she goes outside in the hallway and Tom and the others in confused, thinking that they did something bad.

Zoya talks to some other teacher on the hallway. Something that they are not able to hear and just sit in silence for a few minutes, while Jo was desperately trying to make conversation with the others.

The new professor enters the class and Zoya walks off somewhere.

Professor:”Hello, kids! I heard that ya’ll were quite the bunch! Let me introduce myself! I am Albert. And it is no need to introduce yourselves, because I already know that he is Stefan and the rest Zoya told me. I understand that you might just want to get the hell out of here, but it seems like you are special and we are trying to figure out what will we do with you.”

Albert look at them as if he was expecting some questions or for them to jump out of their benches, but they just end up staring at each other.

Albert:”…Well we have to wait for Zoya to return and we’ll see from there.’’

They wait a couple of minutes and she get’s back and both of them start to test their capabilities and knowledge thru random simple math problems and a couple of card games Zoya brought with her for some reason.

Tom, Iuustin and Edward tried their hardest not to look like they understand math, but Iuustin gives up and starts to solve them at lightning speed.

The two teachers and the children there had quite a difficult time with these games, as Jo seemed to have played these games before and did not understand that they need to hold back in order to not cause a fuss.

At some point they are let out to play with the rest of the kids.

Iuustin, Jo and Edward went to play while Tom found himself a spot with a good amount of shade and sat there looking around.

Stefan was looking around too, he was looking around to see with who should he play with and sees Tom.

Stefan :”Damn! He must be lonely! Shame on the others! Isolating him like that! said to himself.”

He slowly makes his way to him and sits down next to him.

Stefan:”Are you sad?”

Tom:”No, do I look like I am?”

Stefan:”Well you are sitting here alone…”

Tom:”Ah! About that! I usually don’t feel like talking to people, so I just sit around here.

Stefan:”Do I disturb you?”

Tom:”Nah.”

Stefan sits down next to him and starts to ramble about life.

Stefan:”Well to be honest I too kind of feel like not talking to people sometimes. Y’ know? Before I ran into Edward I lived with some pretty loving parents. How about you?”

Tom looks away from Stefan and says:”Same…”

Stefan:”What country were you from?”

Tom:”You say it first!”

Stefan:”Aight’, well I was Romanian. Your turn now!”

Tom feels pressured by his intense glare so gives him a response:”Russian…”

Stefan:”Cool! Before I came here I studied at some school….”

Tom listened to most of Stefan’s ramble about his former life.

He starts to talk about the country he came from, Romania, and how he wished that he could just keep his mouth shut like him. Tom feels weird seeing a person he barely knew talking about this kind of stuff, even if it made sense that he would be a loud mouth from what he said.

Their discussion ends when the guards told everyone to get out of the presumed school yard and tell the kids to go play around their dorms and on their way out. Edward overhears their teachers talk about them and some special class.

When they arrive at their dorms, Iuustin looked as depressed as the first time Tom met him and disappeared when no one looked at him, probably hiding somewhere for a moment alone. Meanwhile Jo just couldn’t shut up.

Even thou Tom was planning to go look for Iuustin to see what was bother him all of the sudden, but his plan was destroyed by Jo’s overly enthusiastic nature which forced him to also seek a quiet place to recharge his social batteries.

He finds himself a nice place somewhere near a cement wall that had a wooden a bench build next to it. He sits there for a while there, probably for hours till overhears some voices on the other side of the wall.

Tom listens and realizes that they were the voices of some little girls and that fence probably served as a barrier between the boys camps and girl camps, but just to make sure he gets up on his feet on the bench and jumps on it till he realizes that there is a gap between the dirt and the wall a bit to the right of the bench.

He decides to take a peek from there. He indeed saw two little girls playing in the grass on the other side calls out to them to ask if their training was any different they were put thru, just to regret it the second after he does it, as the social awqwardness creped down his spine.

The girls look around and get closer to the wall and Tom makes up an excuse for himself that ”If there would be guards to be hearing me I would be in trouble” and runs away, back to the dorm to find a new place to rest.

When he arrives there he meets up with Jo, Edward and Stefan that were sitting and talking under the tree that he would usually rest after finishing his chores.

Edward sees him, gets up and shouts.

Edward:”Hey! Your Tom right?”

Jo on a normal tone reassures him:”Yeah that’s him.”

Edward:”Well come here! I have something to tell ya’!”

Tom, curious, walks up to him.

Edward:”So…I don’t know how you will see this, but I overheard the teachers talk on my way out about a new classroom, for us and we were talking about that. Would you like to give your opinion on it?”

Tom:”Aight’. It’s cool I guess.”

Edward:”Y probably were put in a room with a soldier to solve some puzzles or something before coming here, right?”

Tom:”Yeah.”

Edward:”And before I managed to come into this world I took an iq test and the problems there were similar to those puzzles, but a lot harder.”

Tom:”Uh…And? What’s up with that?”

Edward:” I am not done talking! To continue, they tested us once more at the end of the classes and on my way out they talked about creating a new class for some smart children, which “the kids” were probably going to be us. What I want to say is that they pretty much put us thru an iq test and now they are going to do something different with us.”

Tom:”Well, that could be a very good thing, or a very bad thing.”

Stefan:”What do you mean “a bad thing”? We are getting recognized! Like we should be! We are the protagonists of this world after all!”

Jo:”Exactly! Plus, why don’t you come out and express yourself a little more?”

Tom, a bit pissed off:”Well, I still don’t understand this world. If it has the same principles as the other one, we will be nothing but some material for propaganda if we go all out. I don’t want that!”

Edward:”I agree with Tom, we still don’t know sh*t about this place, it’s better to play it safe, than to regret it later.”

Stefan remains silent, as if he understood and accepted Edward’s point. Jo, on the other hand still didn’t change his mind, but before to open his moth again he look at Stefan to see if he will still support him, but disappointed lowers his head admitting defeat.

They look at the ground or at each other for a while other in silence and Edward and Stefan head off when it was almost time for bed.

Jo and Tom also head off to their beds, where they meet Iuustin. He sat on his bed the whole time and didn’t say a word even if Jo teased him to speak, but at some point he finds some other kids to talk to and Tom and Iuustin just straight to sleep after that.