It was Oskar, again. Even with a new body and new admissions time, Hugo still ended up with the same roommate. Hugo stood there, stunned, as he met Oskar for the first time again.

“Hello roommate! I’m Oskar, nice to meet you,” he held out his hand to shake, then said, “Let me put down my stuff first. Oh, I see you left me the bed by the door. How very considerate of you. That gets you extra roommate points for sure.” He plopped down everything onto his bed as he kept talking, “My dad told me about these rooms, but I didn’t believe him. This is the Blue Lion Academy, the only academy for mages in the whole town. There is no way. No way, I said that the dorms are that crappy. I stand corrected though. This is a dump.”

Hugo smiled. He hadn’t remembered how nervous Oskar had been when they first met. Hugo’s new body and expensive clothes probably didn’t make things easy on the son of a merchant. He knew that his roommate just wanted to make a good first impression.

Oskar wandered over to the bathroom and peeked in, continuing to talk, “And talk about small. It is just big enough to stand in. You can pee into the toilet from the shower, for goodness sake. But we aren’t here for that, are we? Here to get the best education. All the best people have come from here, I am just excited to be here among all the future greats. I plan on being one of those greats myself. I bet you will be great too, what did you say your name was?”

Deciding to mess with him for a bit, Hugo said, “I didn’t say yet. You haven’t stopped talking since you got here. I am Prince Hugo Fieraru, heir to the Fieraru fortune and scion of the Court of Owls.” Hugo held himself up straighter and straighter as he talked, eventually looking down his nose at Oskar.

Oskar’s eyes got wider and wider and he stammered out, “Nice, nice to meet you, your grace.”

Hugo held out his hand, palm down and said, “Since you are to be my roommate, you may kiss my hand.”

Oskar seemed rattled, but he slowly bent towards the outstretched hand. Hugo couldn’t keep it up though and burst out laughing.

Before he could kiss him, Hugo pulled his hand back and said, “I was just kidding. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. You seemed so nervous. I’m a nobody. A couple coppers to my name and that’s it. No need to be nervous around me.”

Standing up straight, Oskar swore and said, “You had me going. So who are you really? Just some local with a bad sense of humor?” The small smile on his face belied the angry words.

“Wrong on both counts, I am from Tallinn and I have a great sense of humor. How about you? Are you from around here?”

“You bet. My dad owns a factory in town. We make sewing machines. Do you know what those are?”

Wanting to avoid a long explanation like last time, Hugo quickly said, “Yes, I have seen them before, it’s a machine that loops thread through fabric. You can make clothing much faster with them.”

“Kinda, yeah. It’s more complicated than that, but yea.”

It took Hugo a moment to figure out how to phrase it, then he asked, “So, I think some of the other dorm rooms are nicer. How did you end up stuck in this one with me?” He was curious how he got the same roommate over two lifetimes.

“Nah, they are all pretty much the same. Except the girls dorms, those are in a different building and way nicer. But as to why we are roommates? I imagine you signed up late. The rooms are assigned by the order you apply to the academy. My dad was trying some dumb negotiation technique and so I was the last one admitted to the academy.

“I guess it worked since we got a lower tuition, but it was stressful all the way down to the wire for me. Dad never would have tried that with my older brothers, that is for sure. But I guess I shouldn’t complain. I am here after all, I am going to be a real mage, no matter how I got here.”

“You have some brothers?” Hugo said. He didn’t really remember talking about Oskar’s family last go around.

“Yeah, two brothers and a sister. My older brothers are jerks though, I don’t like to talk about them,” Oskar said.

“Well, what about your sister? Is she nice?” Hugo said. He was surprised that he didn’t know this kind of basic information. He resolved to be a better friend, better at socializing in general. He knew that Oskar was an idiot and would eventually get himself expelled, but Hugo didn't want to be mean to him today for something he would do months later.

“She is a real sweetheart, I love her. She turns ten this year, I am sad I will miss her birthday party,” Oskar said, opening up. “How about you? Do you have any siblings?”

Frowning, Hugo said, “No, no siblings.” He briefly considered lying about how his parents were awesome and living in Tallinn, but he couldn’t see any advantage to pretending to have parents. “No parents either. It’s just me now,” Hugo said.

Oskar walked up and put his hand on his shoulder and said, “I am sorry to hear that, man. Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” Hugo said and looked away.

“Oh come on. They say that talking helps. I’m your roommate. If you can’t talk to me, who can you talk to?” Oskar said and then raised his hand, “I got it. This is a perfect time for you to test me. Tell me all about your parents and I will keep it secret. I won’t tell a soul. This way you can talk about it, and test my trust at the same time. You will find that I am very trustworthy.”

Hugo stared at him. From Oskar’s perspective, he was asking a stranger to spill secrets moments after meeting him. But he knew that Oskar really was pretty good with secrets, so he plopped down on his bed and started talking.

“Alright, fine. I lost my Dad a few years ago, and it still hurts. I loved my dad, he was the best. He was a mage, but he pissed off the wrong person and had to become a harvester. Mom didn't like that so he started working at the docks instead. He hated it. Eventually, he snuck out of the city with his friend to do some higher paying harvester work. He died like they all die, a monster got him. My mother was never the same after that, always angry, and didn’t seem to want to be my parent anymore. It hurt. I recently lost her too, and now I feel guilty that I don’t miss her. The loss is fresh, but I just feel relieved. I still really miss my Dad though.”

Oskar nodded and said, “Sometimes the thing that society says is the right thing, isn’t the right thing for you. Your feelings are valid, don’t feel guilty for having them.”

“Wow, Oskar, that is surprisingly insightful,” Hugo said.

They sat down and had a longer conversation about family and loss. Hugo felt like a burden was lifted off his shoulders afterwards. He renewed his resolve to be more social. This was a second chance for him, a way to be better. Classes shouldn’t be as hard this go around, so he would spend his free time being more friendly and outgoing. When Oskar asked him to go to a party later on in the year, he would accept.

Oh, and he also needed to save the city from destruction, he couldn’t forget that.

...

“Welcome to the Blue Lion Academy. My name is Marta Edge. I expect you all to show proper respect and address me as Sage Marta. I will be your teacher for the next week before you are all soulburnt into your new domain. After you have your new magic, you will be taught by one of the specialist mages for that domain. Some of you will see me again since I teach a mana control class during the regular school year.”

Hugo’s mind started to wander as he listened to the introductory speech from Marta. He hoped that he would be assigned to her mana manipulation class. He couldn’t wait to show her that he already knew Mana Dart. Now that he was thinking of it, he supposed that wasn’t that impressive at this point. What would really impress her was Mana Sight.

Only, he hadn’t regained the skill yet. He only had two points of mana at the moment, but it should be enough. He tuned out the lecture and started cycling his mana up through his eyes. At this point he knew exactly what it felt like to use the skill. The mana needed to pass through the back of his eyeballs, not the front, and it needed to be moving quickly.

To his surprise, even ten minutes later he still didn’t have the skill. He didn’t know what he was missing. Mana Dart had been easy, but this wasn’t for some reason. He let his mana take more interesting routes through his body while he pondered the problem.

He tried to isolate what was different between now and when he gained the skill the first time around. Maybe he needed to be in a dark room the first time. If the only thing he could sense was mana, maybe the system would recognize his skill faster.

Or perhaps the problem was that he didn’t have a strong source of mana for him to “see”. Marta had brought along a mana emitting box last time, maybe that was what he was missing. He had also been a higher rank when he learned the skill last time around, perhaps it is a skill the Acomarian system only granted to the higher ranked.

He decided to wait a bit to gain the skill. If he got the skill too early, he might be seen as an unnatural monster instead of a gifted prodigy. Unless he was already an unnatural monster. It really was weird that he had a twenty in dexterity. Perhaps that number was another unintended result of the ritual that brought him back in time.

After class, Hugo went up to the teacher to ask her about it.

“Sage Marta?”

“Yes?”

“Have you ever heard of someone having a sudden jump in stats? Like they are suddenly ten points stronger?”

“No, and I doubt I ever would,” she said.

“Really? Why not? The system is strange and beautiful, as they say.”

“No, stats don’t work that way. They are descriptive, not performative. The numbers don’t make you stronger. What you see on your blue screen describes you. Even if you saved up your rank up points and spent ten of them at once, you would just see brackets around the strength number. You would gain your actual strength slowly, one point at a time.”

Hugo thanked her and walked off. He had already known that of course. Maybe not as concise as what Marta had said, but he knew that he didn’t suddenly get stronger when he invested his rank up points, he grew into those points. He had just been asking the teacher again because it still astounded him that he had twenty dexterity. It would have made more sense to him if the weird ritual had bumped his stats up.

This body must just be naturally gifted. Weird, but not something he was going to complain about.

Habit had him walking out with Oskar. He almost called out to Lenna to have her join them. He only remembered at the last moment that he didn’t know her yet, in this life. He started wondering if he should connect with her again.

Whether or not to talk to Lenna was a difficult decision. He liked her. Just seeing her again made his heart flutter a bit. But at the same time, things had ended poorly last time around. She had been cruel after she dumped him. She had been stressed about the robbery though. Maybe he should give her another chance. He could shoot for friendship and see where things went after that.

Examining his past relationships made him remember that Oskar hadn’t been the greatest friend last time around. He was a good guy, but his pathological need to belong led to drug dealing and getting them both expelled.

Saving Oskar from himself just got added to the list. And finding good friends that were less likely to betray him got added as well.

As he was pondering all of this, he heard someone call out a name a few times, distracting him from his musing. They were getting weirdly insistent.

Someone touched his shoulder and said, “Cristian?”

Whoops. They had been talking to him. He was going to have to get used to answering to Cristain, particularly at the beginning of the school year.

“Oh, sorry. I go by Hugo. I wasn’t ignoring you,” he said politely.

“No worries, Hugo. I’m Elise and this is Alice. We wanted to see if the rumors were true.”

Hugo smiled as he saw another familiar face. Alice was the short friend of Lenna’s with the many jokes and puns. Elise looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her. She was tall, almost as tall as his new lanky body was tall, and she had long flowing blond hair.

“What rumor?” he said with a smile. Another girl was approaching him. Maybe he was going to have more luck with the ladies now. Was she flirting with him, or was he reading too much into this?

“Well, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Alice started.

Elise butted in and said, “But it would be great if you did tell us.”

“Tell you what? I really don’t know what you are talking about,” Hugo said. He was starting to get confused. This wasn’t how flirting usually went.

“Is it true? Do you really have twenty dexterity?” Elise said.

Hugo laughed, “Oh, that. Yeah. I have twenty dex.” He took out three charcoal pencils from his bag and juggled them one handed. He gave them his best sexy smile. Even if they weren’t flirting with him, it didn’t mean that he couldn't flirt with them.

“It isn’t really that big of a deal,” he said, while hoping that they would disagree with him, “I bet most people will catch up to me by the end of the school year.”

Elise frowned at his juggling display. Hugo reconsidered showing off, and put the pencils away. Maybe he would have to work on his flirting skills. He glanced over to Alice and saw her eyes wide and her mouth slightly open. Or maybe it was just Elise that didn’t like him.

“I don’t like you,” Elise said.

Huh. He wasn’t usually that perceptive.

Elise continued, “I have been working on my dexterity since I was eight, doing exercises my dad taught me, years and years of effort. When I got soulmarked and my stats showed me a fifteen, I thought this is it. Validation that all the years of effort was worth it. I thought I was going to be a legendary barrier mage, someone they would write books about. But now you come along, with a damn twenty dex, and I am nothing. No one remembers the second best.”

With his hands raised, Hugo said, “Woh, I didn’t do anything to spite you. I didn’t go through a lifetime of training just to make you upset. My talents don’t affect you. Besides, I don’t think we will be in the same legends. I am leaning more towards formation instead of barrier.”

Her eyes narrowed, “What is your strength stat?” Her voice had taken on a chilling effect.

“It’s eleven. I know it’s not my highest stat, but I want to create permanent stuff, not temporary barriers,” Hugo said. Hopefully she wouldn’t be so mad now that she knew he wasn’t competition.

“That’s even worse!” she said and threw her hands up, “You have the highest dex in more than a decade, and you want to throw it all away? You are just going to waste all that potential? Ug.” She walked a few steps away and then came back, close to Hugo’s face. “Some of us take this seriously alright? This isn’t just a game for nobles. This stuff matters.”

She flipped around and started walking away, anger evident in every step.

“I do take it seriously,” protested Hugo, but she didn’t turn around.

Alice shrugged apologetically at Hugo and said, “Sorry about all this. She can be a bit intense. It was good to meet you though.” She turned and hurried after her friend.