“H-high school?” Azriel muttered. “What is a high school?”

The headmaster scratched his chin, verbalizing the word, “Well…” as he considered how he would explain it. “Hmm… Perhaps it would be better if I start from the beginning.”

Azriel leaned forward intently as the headmaster explained, “All of us, reincarnations, came from another world.” He leaned forward as well. “I came from a world called Earth, named like the ground. I’m sure that, to you, the world being named like the ground may sound a tad odd. Nonetheless, after thoroughly researching this topic, I have found that the naming of this world, Aarterra, is simply a divergence between earth, as in the ground, and Earth, as in the planet. Thousands of years ago, the word used for the ground and the name of this world were synonymous.”

The headmaster picked up his teaspoon and began fiddling with it while elucidating, “I had theorized before this point but was by then certain that the world in which we are now is a mimic of my old one. There are minor differences here and there, but it still seems to follow the same general pattern. For example, we are now in the fifth era of this world. In my old world, we would have called this period ‘the dark ages,’ although now we’re closer to the renaissances, at least here in the Azurellione empire anyway.”

Lifting his leg and resting it atop his knee, the headmaster continued, “But it’s not just that. The Remun empire of the fourth era mirrors the roman empire on Earth, and the Grecia of the third is nearly identical with ancient Greece.”

“So, you are saying…,” Azriel asked, “That this world is an imitation of the original world—?”

“Well, not quite,” the headmaster rebutted, “Though it is true that I thought that at the time, I have since discovered that the circumstances are quite to the contrary.” He leaned back in his chair. “It is many times more likely that my world was an imitation of this one.”

Azriel sat in silence, listening intently to the headmaster’s explanations. So long, he had been starved of the answer for which he so desperately craved. He didn’t want to leave even a single morsel of information left out to waste.

The headmaster continued, “The first time I spoke to another reincarnation was in my late twenties. She too said she had come from Earth, the planet.” The headmaster gave the slightest of smirks. “However, upon further discussion, it became more and more apparent that her Earth was not mine. In her world, Germany had won the second world war, and fascism and communism became the dominant ideologies, whereas in mine America single-handedly won the war, and fascism and communism were utterly destroyed, with nearly every nation becoming some form of republic soon after.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Azriel interjected, causing the headmaster to sigh, “A pity that, truly… Fortunately, that much isn’t important. What you need to know is although we reincarnated people come from separate similar worlds, we’ve all come from the same high school: God’s Select Academia.”

“I still don’t know what a high school is,” Azriel huffed, a little annoyed at this point.

“Hmm— think of high school as being like all five of my academies wrapped into one minus the parts that contain fighting. It is something nearly everyone got to experience and not just the select few. In most countries, it was even mandatory and illegal to not have your kids partake in.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Azriel commented.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. A big reason why barely anyone knows about the various worlds of reincarnations is because they never cared to hear it. The future, to them, isn’t a world of cars and skyscrapers but one of marble and gold streets with marble and gold carriages pulled by fancy mechanisms probably of wooden or magical construction.”

“What is a car—?”

“The point is that we are both from the future, from the same school even. Though it is improbable that we came from the same world, we all have five things in common: one, the high school we went to was named God’s Select Academia and was located in the city that, in my world, was called Jerusalem—the equivalent in this world would be somewhere in the Nubi desert—two, it was an international school and the most prestigious school in the world with anyone who got invited into it immediately gaining celebrity status, three, you couldn’t request enrollment into the school rather the school would find you sending a formal invitation to you in the mail, four, it existed for only four years and on the day that the first generation of seniors would have graduated everyone was teleported instantaneously to the tutorial zone, and five, the year it happened was 2012, the year where the world was supposedly going to end for rationales that vary between each reincarnation’s respective world.”

Azriel felt his throat clench painfully as a thick layer of goosebumps formed upon his skin. He knew not of why things were the way they were, but now he at least knew how they were, and, for that, he was deeply gratified. A part of him he had not been aware of, until now, had been deeply afeared of not understanding even that much. That part of him had been conquered and vanquished, a stone’s throw away from abject ignorance. He’d take what he could get and take it gracefully he did.

“This tutorial zone thing—” Azriel started to ask. “—is it um… was it the place that I came from right before coming to this world?”

The headmaster nodded, responding, “Yes, that it is. However, your tutorial zone was quite a peculiar case.” He smiled, “See, for most of us, we only spend a few days in the tutorial zone. The longest I had ever heard someone stay inside the tutorial zone was one hundred years, and he was an outlier.”

Leaning forward, the headmaster carefully placed the teaspoon he had been fiddling with atop his teacup while elaborating, “For you to have forgotten how to speak… well… I imagine that that would have taken more than a hundred years at the very least. And to have forgotten such simple concepts as food, drink, and sleep, I couldn’t even begin to estimate such a timeframe. It could’ve been one-hundred and one years, it could’ve been ten thousand.”

“How do you know that?” Azriel grimaced, “I can’t imagine I would’ve just told you that willingly.”

“Ah— but you did tell me for when I said, ‘Alright,’ I would simply preface what to say next with ‘but first tell me,’ and you answered nearly every time,” the headmaster gave a sly smirk, “It’s understandable for one in your circumstances to be naïve. In that way, you are more like a child than a reincarnated person. But a reincarnated person you still are, so try being more careful from now on. I recommend you watch your peers and try to imitate them; the way you fought your proctor will eventually raise suspicion, even if reincarnations are practically unheard of on this continent.”

“Reincarnations aren’t heard of on this continent?” Azriel thought to himself. “Why didn’t my father tell me about that?”

Pressing down on a service bell, the headmaster beamed, “Let’s wrap this up here. The trial will end soon, and I need to prepare for that. If you have any questions, ask them quickly.”

“Y-Yeah… Can you tell me your name?”

The headmaster bellowed, “You mean to tell me you don’t know my name? I thought there wasn’t a man under the sun who didn’t know who I was, let alone a reincarnation. Most reincarnations see my deeds and accomplishments and know nigh instantaneously to come seek me out. Then again, you aren’t most reincarnations. I suppose this turn of events is rather fitting. My name is—”

A scribe knocked on the door before stepping inside, saying, “Sorry for the intrusion, Master Jean, but the third part of the trial—” His sentence was cut short upon noticing Azriel. Nodding to the headmaster as a kind of silent apology, he took the tea tray and left the room, shutting the door behind him.

The headmaster resumed speaking, “My name is Jean of Castille, and I’m often called The Icon of Virtue but—” he stammered as though he were trying to hold back a bit of laughter, “—but, in private, you may refer to me as Jake of Nebraska, The Icon of Corn.”

Azriel didn’t get it.

He continued, “But in seriousness, my name was Jake Turner. I was a world-renowned artist, the school president, and the valedictorian of the class of 2012 in the God’s Select Academia from my world.”

While Azriel was still unsure of what school president and valedictorian meant, he nodded his head, having made a mental note of it regardless.

“You said…” Azriel cocked his head and asked with an inquisitive look, “you said reincarnations are unheard of on this continent. Why is that?”

Jean breathed, “So you don’t even know that, huh?”

Azriel furrowed his brows with a tense but quizzical look as Jean asked, “When you look at me do you see the look of a man of Azurian descent?”

Azriel was unresponsive. He wasn’t the greatest at telling apart facial features, but upon mention, he was starting to notice Jean had familiar facial features. He, however, couldn’t quite pinpoint what they were or what their significance would’ve even been.

“You still don’t get it?” Jean said with a slightly disappointed tone. “All reincarnations descend from the twelve tribes that worship The Father God.”

Azriel’s eyes widened in shock.

“You mean—”

“Yes, I mean those twelve tribes,” Jean cut Azriel off, “the twelve tribes far to the east residing in the Nubi desert, the twelve tribes who exist in a constant state of struggle, constantly being decimated, and yet still somehow still clinging to life even now. You, me, and every other reincarnation are direct descendants of these twelve tribes.”

Azriel, not even realizing he had slammed his fist down upon the coffee table, angrily ruminated upon the many opportunities his father had to explain this integral information to him but hadn’t.

“Why didn’t he tell me about this. Does he not trust me?” he thought to himself.

His father had told him many stories about the twelve tribes and reincarnations but didn’t once think to leave in that crucial detail. It befuddled Azriel and left him with a feeling of distrust that drew into question many other things he was taught over the years.

“No, there has to be a good reason,” Azriel reconciled, letting out an exasperated sigh, then noticing the stunned Jean looking down at Azriel’s swelling broken fist.

Upon recognition of his quickly fattened pinky, a sudden spike in searing pain shot through his nerves and to Azriel’s brain. However, he didn’t wince, blink, or give off any signs that it affected him. Instead, he started to play with it subconsciously as a girl would their hair, rubbing and twisting it like a fidget toy as he asked, “Why wouldn’t my father tell me about this stuff?”

Visibly disturbed by Azriel’s insane behavior, Jean blinked twice before stuttering, “M-May I—?”

A moment of silence passed before Azriel realized that Jean was using his Godly Precognition skill on him again. Then a sudden stunned look appeared on Jean’s face before becoming a fake smile. “Hmm… I don’t know your father so ask him, maybe,” he stated before asking, “Are you literate?”

Azriel nodded, and as he was about to speak, Jean cut him off once more, “There is a lot of literature on this topic. I suggest reading the collection of research done by the great scholar Ezekiel, who—”

Jean continued rambling for a while, conspicuously glancing at something beneath the table. Azriel could feel his hands moving in a peculiar manner underneath it.

“Is he writing on a piece of paper?” Azriel suspected.

As his simplistic rant about scholars ended, Jean stood up and, with a smile, lifted his hand for Azriel to shake. When Azriel did, he felt a folded piece of paper slip into his palm.

Jean then wrapped his other hand around the front to make Azriel squeeze his hand tightly, securing the paper’s position in Azriel’s hand while making it look like he was simply doing a polite gesture.

For only a moment, Jean lifted his index finger vertically against his pursed lips before continuing to speak, explaining, “There are other reincarnations that attend the academy. Some will even be in your age group. Be cautious of becoming too open about your true nature, though. The world of reincarnations in my academies are tightly kept secret societies, and any destruction to that dynamic won’t be tolerated.”

Azriel slipped the paper into his pockets as Jean stepped behind his desk, pulling out a decorative ring box and placing something he retrieved from the depths of his coat pocket within it.

“Here, take this. It is a gift from me,” Jean stated soon, adding, “And um— don’t open it till later.”

Azriel silently nodded with a blank expression while trying to sense any presence other than Jean within the immediate vicinity. Alas, he found no such presence giving rise to the question of why Jean acted in such a manner.

Smiling while ringing the table bell, Jean concluded, stating, “I’ll have you be taken back to the courtyard. Don’t worry, you’ve passed. Reincarnations don’t need to take the trials to be enrolled anyway.”

Azriel was then reminded of his letter of recommendation, which he then opened his pocket-dimension to retrieve. However, Jean shook his head, saying, “No point even pulling it out. You’re already in. I can only imagine that being acknowledged for such a feat at this point would only ever cause more problems than it would ever solve.”

Two Logos scribes walked through the door, stepping onto the floatation device as if they already knew what to do before entering the room.

Jean patted Azriel on the back, urging him to go with the Logos scribes, saying, “They’ll take you back to the courtyard. Good meeting you, Azriel.”

Azriel responded with a nod before stepping on the platform as it raised up through the opening hatch in the ceiling and back out into the open air.

Down below him, Azriel saw an assortment of practice dummies, some blown to bits while others were gashed and disemboweled, leaving their hay contents spilled out on the ground before them. Quite a few of the applicants remained, having crowded around a post-board, written on it the names of accepted applicants. However, many were still in the process of leaving, not seeing their names on the board.

Azriel grinned slightly upon seeing Klaus and Monika cheering beside each other. He felt proud that Klaus had made a new friend beside himself.