It has been one month since I got into this academy. You might be wandering, what the heck am I talking about? Aren’t I supposed to be in my high school? Let me clarify, those were the days of the old. Not that old though. It has actually been eight months since I graduated high school and a lot has happened since. Especially during this one month. What’s going on? Well, for one. I enrolled myself into one of the biggest academy in Crestia. When I say biggest, I don’t mean by the buildings are all big. What I meant was that this academy has a lot of branches across Crestia. This academy is called Infinity Academy. Quite an extravagant name, don’t you think? Now how in the world would I be able to enter such a prestigious academy? It’s all thanks to my track record in high school of course.

Let’s review back on what I did. I did nothing on my first year. I also did nothing on my second year. I got a decent grade on one of the big two test in my third year. I did nothing on my fourth year…Okay I’m starting to see a pattern here. I guess the only prominent thing that happened to me was during my final year. I entered The Magic Duel together with my team, Stardust. We got through the Qualification Round. We also got through the Group Stage afterwards. But then we lost during the semi-final round. We still did win, as a runner-up of course. But we did good enough to gain the credibility for me to enter Infinity Academy.

That’s good and all but what about my fellow teammates? They all went their separate ways unfortunately. Why? Because it looks like only 3 of us were able to make it into advanced study. Meanwhile, the others had to go through another few years of pre-advanced study. They are not repeating high school but it’s also not the same level of study as I am currently doing. It’s pretty much below my current study level.

But in any case, today I came back here at Infinity Academy from my short holiday. Now let me clarify, Infinity Academy has a lot of branches. That means I’m only enrolling on one of the faculties. This faculty I got into is called The Faculty of Advanced Magic. Yeah, I went that way. I decided to learn more about magic and how it works. So what about the other choices we can choose instead of Advanced Magic? Well there is the business faculty. There’s also a communication faculty. But the largest of them all is the services faculty. Why is it so big? Service can be expanded into foods, clothing, shelter, transport and many more.

This are all interesting and Advanced Magic has a lot of different sub categories under it. There is, Entertainment Magic, Magic Studies, Magic Advancement, Administration Magic and Magic Mastery. I’m studying Magic Studies by the way. But enough of all of that, it’s time for me to return to my dorm and see if anyone else has arrived. I opened the door to my dorm and the first thing I saw was a group of people talking with each other. They all looked at me.

One of them who had a pair of glasses spoke to me,

“Hey, White. We were just talking about you. Come, join us.”

This friendly person is Ziggs. He is also studying Magic Studies with me. He’s the only classmate I have in this dorm. We helped each other a lot in class and that’s about it for now.

I responded back to him,

“Can you wait up on that? I just got here.”

“But you’re the last person to come here. You should be punished for that.”

“Since when do we have this kind of rule, Ziggs?”

“Since today, I guess.” Ziggs laughed.

I ignored his joke and went on to unpack my belongings. As I was unpacking, another of my dorm mates greeted me.

“You’d pick a fine time to arrive.”

This dorm mate of mine wore a dark piece of robe and we call him, Azreal. He calls himself The Angel of Death just because he has the same name as the angel. Not only that, he also have a scythe to accommodate his self-proclaimed title. But there is one big flaw from him.

“Fancy meeting you, Azreal. Have you brought the thing I asked you to?”

“Oh shit! I forgot about that!”

He can be kind of clumsy at times. He always ended up becoming the butt of a joke whenever all of us hang out. But for some reason, even after all of those jokes. He is still hanging out with us. I guess he likes being laughed at? I don’t know, really.

“That’s not surprising coming from you, Az.”

“I’ll promise to bring it by next week, White. I promise.”

“Really?” I gave him an unfazed look.

Azreal was intimidated by my look and nodded quickly.

“I better get back to the lounge then. See you at dinner time.”

And there he goes. Off to being another butt of a joke later on. With him being away, another one comes in and greeted me.

“Hey there, White. How’s the journey?”

“It’s okay, Ralph.”

This person is Ralph. For this one month of getting to know each other, I come to know him as the music guy. He loves playing his acoustic guitar at the lounge every night.

“Well…I’ll be going out to get some food for dinner. Want something?”

“Something meaty, I guess?”

“Alright then.” Ralph left. Leaving me to continue unpacking my stuff.

I decided to take a rest after unpacking my stuff until suddenly two of my other doormats slammed my door.

“White!” both of them exclaimed together.

I responded in an annoyed voice, “What now…I’m trying to rest for goodness sake.”

One of them had an intimidating face while the other one had a nice and decent look.

“It won’t be long, White. We only need your opinion on something.”

This intimidating person is called Kallen but he prefers to be called Kal. Like Ziggs, he also wears a pair of glasses. But the difference between those two lies behind their personalities. Kal is a more rowdy type of person. He’d rather do things on his own term. He acts based on his instinct. I think his motto could sound a bit like ‘If we can’t get through it, we just force our way in.”

“What kind of opinion are we talking about?”

“A very important opinion. Come on, just hear us out, White.”

Then, the other dorm mate spoken to Kal,

“Can’t you please be gentler to White? He just got here for goodness sake.”

This is Aspye. Aspye Razor. But we ended up calling him Pye because it was too hard for us to pronounce his name every single time. He is probably the straight guy in this dorm. He always tries to break up any infighting that happened between us and he’s always the person to be the most considerate of them all. But he also has his own flaws like the others. He can sometimes get way ahead of himself and be too proud himself. I we call that, self-centred.

“Now is not the time to be gentle, Pye. We need to hear his opinion.”

“What are you guys talking about?” I was still confused.

Pye explained, “Oh it’s nothing. We were just talking about Space Wizard.”

“Oh, that movie franchise?”

Pye agreed and said, “Things got crazy when I said the second movie was the best out of all of the franchise.”

“But the original is the best one!” Kal claimed.

“So…we came here to ask what you think about this. Which is the best one among all of those 6 movies?” asked Pye.

“I…don’t really have a strong opinion on any of the movies. In fact, I love it all as a whole.”

“That’s a very generic answer, White.” Kal was disappointed. “I thought you would have some standards on this kind of thing.”

Pye interrupted, “And I thought you weren’t an ‘a’ hole. This is such a stupid topic to fight over. We heard from him. He likes it just as we all like the franchise. Can we all just stay in peace?”

“Alright, that’s enough of that everyone.” Suddenly another dorm mates appear by my door.

“What do you want now, Hamlet…” Kal sounds annoyed.

“It’s Henrietta! Not Hamlet!”

“Hemrietta, Hamlet. What’s the difference? It’s way easier to call you Hamlet.”

“I’m not getting myself involved this time. I’m leaving. See you later, White.” Pye left us.

This other person is Hemrietta. We just call him Hem. But Kal insist on calling him Hamlet just because it was funny for him. I don’t know much about Hem but he is a nice fellow. The only problem is that he always goes out of the dorm and hangs out with his other classmates instead of hanging out with us. He’s kind of distant between us. But he will always strike something interesting whenever with us.

“Okay. Can you guys leave now?” I tried to stop them from making a noise in my room.

They ignored and continued to fight. I was getting annoyed by the noises and decided to use my ability. Time Manipulation. Yes, I can control time. But specifically, I can only stop the time. I can’t really travel between different times. Yet. I hope. My parents said my ability is simply called Pause. I guess that sounds about right. But there is one more thing. I also have a second ability. Yes, I’m one of the lucky few to have two of those because Pause was actually an ability I obtained. This other ability came naturally from my mother. Although, it’s a weaker version compared to my mother. It’s called Space Manipulation. Or as my mom like to call it, Blink. I’d explain it all but I’m running out of ink here…

So I paused the time and blinked both Kal and Hem out of my room. Then I manually shut the door. As I was about to climb back to my bed, I stopped.

“Get out of my room, Yumiko.”

“Wow, you really have become more observant since we first met, White.”

I sighed. Not wanting to talk more. Especially to this woman. Yes. She’s a girl. The only girl in this dorm. She’s a special case…

TO BE CONTINUED ON STARDUST UNIVERSE