As we paired off, I wandered off to a circle with my partner. His name was Walter and was just ahead of me in the ranks at ninth. I attempted to make some small talk with him, but he was not having it. He wasn't outright rude or anything, but just rather curt with his answers.

Eventually I decided to just stand there while the knight finished calling all the pairs.

When she finished organizing us she ordered us all to face our partner and extend our arms in fists. We were then to walk towards each other until our fists met each others'. We were then told to take just a small step back. Once every pair accomplished this she told us we would be repeating the training exercises we had previously learned. We were not to move our feet during this.

I raised an eyebrow at Walt, but when I received no response I just shrugged it off.

It was initially very distracting trying to focus on my own work while watching Walt do the exact same thing just a few feet in front of me while staring me down, but maybe that was her whole point here?

Either way the training day finished just recapping what we had already learned, gosh over a month ago now. And that really wrapped up our whole day of training.

At dinner and back in the dorm I kind of complained about it to Bea and Tom non-stop, but they told me to just go along for the ride and take my time. I may have been too bummed out to watch my words, because I quickly responded to their comments with a "Oh, is that what you two are doing on the obstacle course? Taking your time and not actually trying?" I kind of meant it as a tease, but maybe my tone was a bit too snarky. Bea sat up straight as a pole and stared at me, before marching over to her bed and going to sleep, not saying another word.

I shot Tom a look, trying to make it clear I hadn't meant it too come out as a harsh criticism, but he just shook his head at me and went to his own bed as well.

Since they didn't want to talk anymore tonight I guess I had no other choice but to go to bed also.

Of course I had trouble falling asleep. Going to bed feeling like a jerk was a lot different than going to bed exhausted and in a good mood.

I'll try tomorrow to apologize.

—----

Waking up was even a different experience. I normally had either Tom or Bea waking me up because I liked sleeping once I got started!

Sitting up and looking around I noticed neither one of my friends were there. Panicking about potentially oversleeping I looked around and see the dorm is pretty much empty.

Hastily getting ready I jogged to the cafeteria and saw breakfast was still being served. Whew, I wasn't too late if at all!

Grabbing a tray I looked around, and while I saw some empty tables, I didn't see what I wanted to. Namely my friends eating somewhere. I had to wander around for a bit before I spotted them off in a corner at a table. They both seemed to be pointedly ignoring me.

Sighing, I couldn't help but think for a brief moment that if they wanted to act like that I would let them.

I was about to take a step when it hit me. That was such an utterly childish reaction from me and not how I would normally respond. Thinking for a bit I decided to blame the immature impulse on the body and realized that Tom and Bea were dealing with the same thing. However, they had not already gone through their teenage years like myself. I had the experience to shake off that feeling, where areas for them handling it as their first time would of course be different.

Having a slight chuckle I headed there way anyway.

Ahh yes, they definitely noticed as they stared even harder at their breakfast while eating.

Smiling as I reached the table I sat down.

"Morning guys! Thanks for letting me sleep in today. I was really grouchy yesterday for some reason and I think the extra time helped. Sorry if I took it out on you last night, I definitely did not mean it in a terrible way, even if it sounded like it." I tried to look suitably chagrined as I finished bowing my head pretty low as I did.

After not hearing a response for awhile I glanced up to see Bea and Tom staring at me. Bea broke first and nudged Tom, who rolled his eyes.

"Fine," he began "just don't let it happen again or we'll find a way to get even!"

Bea paused and nodded in agreement, but said nothing herself. That's new. She's normally pretty pithy.

Trying to lighten things up I started talking about the training for today and Tom opened up fairly quickly, but Bea held to her silence.

Even when we were walking the halls and heading to our sparring room she fell slightly behind us not joking at all. Sneaking a glance at her, she was just kind of staring at the ground while walking, clearly stuck in her own head about something.

This was actually the most demure she's been. I wonder what's going on there.

—----

Back at the sparring, the knight had us repeat yesterday, but instead of stepping away after touching fists, told us to maintain positions. She then ran us through our routine, and since we were of course mirroring each other we never actually touched, but it was even more unnerving than the day before. Walt kept up his intense stare while training which was already unconformable, but added on to that now I was feeling the wind and air being displaced by the moves we were performing almost on top of each other.

By the end of the day I was getting more comfortable being in such close proximity to Walt, but dude was unfriendly at a minimum. No idea what was going on in his head since he didn't want to share.

At dinner, I apologized ahead of time to my friends and vented. I speculated to them that I felt on edge since I wasn't getting social interaction with them as much, and Walt was just such a stick-in-the-mud no matter how much I tried with him. They sympathized and just told me to bear with it.

Easy for them to say. Due to Tom somehow always managing to pinpoint Bea's failures on the course they were sparring together. Shaking my head to clear it, I realized this was probably teen angst again. I really needed to keep a lid on that while I was still in these teenage years.

Getting back into the swing of things, we finished dinner on a happy note and went to sleep.

—----

Getting a normal wake-up from Tom and Bea in the morning was a relief. Glad that everything was back to normal, even with Bea. There was a bit of speculation about what we would do for training today, but I didn't have a good idea where she would take it next. Did we move even closer? Start getting physical? We'll see!

...

Technically it was neither. We stopped the distance when our fists touched again, and she had us go through the routine 1 person per pair. The other person would use the defense moves she taught us for hand-to-hand. She said we may end up touching at that point, but not follow through. The goal was still not to hit the other person, so I guess maybe this was an example of a little of column A and a little of column B?

Walt and I took turns and we had a good flow going I felt like. I noticed his face was getting a little tense as the day wore on, but if something was bothering him, he never let it show.

With how the instructor was progressing us, I couldn't wait for tomorrow. Even Walt couldn't keep me down. At dinner I was fully back to my normal peppy self. I went back to getting second trays during lunch and dinner was no exception.

I wonder if I had just been hangry all this time after getting so used to the extra food.... now there's a thought. I decided to try skipping a second lunch tomorrow to see if I was grouchy by dinner. Maybe it wasn't Walt at all?

Either way, I was still excited for tomorrow's sparring!

—----

At training I got the news I had been waiting for! Full contact sparring. No taking turns with attack and defense, full actual spars. Since it would be my first person to person "conflict" I definitely felt a nervous excitement over it.

As we paired up for our first official spar, I bowed a tiny bit to Walt. It was more of a deep nod than anything but I finally caught him by surprise as there was real shock on his face.

Recovering after a bit, he nodded and then bowed back to me.

I took a stance and Walt followed suit.

The instructor waited till we all seemed serious and in stances, before starting us off.

And with that I officially got in my first fight from either world.