K: (Is that the gardener's house?)
Katachi stumbled upon a small house made from stone. After a three-minute walk from where that trap was set up, a rather exquisitely built house lay before him. Plain and simple – Those words defined the hut perfectly yet the orange roof and beige walls were oddly clean, just like the pavilion.
With a window at the front and the side, and a small wooden door affixed to the granite walls, it strangely resembled a pumpkin pie house of sorts. The Keep Out sign on the door was not enough to deter his sense of adventure. Katachi pushed the door open gently and peeked into the tiny hut.
The interior could be described in one word – Messy. The cream ceiling and orange walls that contrasted its exterior, the milk carpet and pumpkin furniture, the room gave off a strange homely feeling save for the various occult artifacts and apparatus strewn about. There were magic circles etched on some sheets, a cabinet with too many wooden tablets hung onto its mounted hooks, and to his left a study desk with a cork board for securing pin-up paper documents.
K: (Wow! This... This is a gardener's house?)
He was so enthralled by the sight that he had all but forgotten that he was trespassing.
K: (There are so many things here! A blank magic circuit, a weird circle with webbings at the center, a sword hung on the wall, a portrait of a Sir Phlegmius with a huge knight's sword engraved with a serpent eating a fish on the blade, a weird... Thing with a handle, I don't even know where to begin!)
Katachi failed to notice the groceries dropping onto the floor at the doorway.
"H-Haah?!"
A piercing cry jolted him from his train of thought and made his shoulders tense up involuntarily.
K: (! Someone's there!)
Katachi recovered from his flinch and snapped around to meet a girl slightly taller than him. She had blonde hair tied into four braids and a bust size comparable to Mount. Gigraceldi, stretching the poor slightly-undersized school uniform rather tightly.
"Who are you!?"
It seemed that the lady was the owner, if not a mere resident of the hut.
K: (She's the gardener!? But... That can't be right. She's wearing the same uniform as those girls inside that classroom. Maybe she's a caretaker or student of some sort? Was she punished to stay in this place away from everyone else, or did she choose to stay here?)
Her inquiring gaze and mouth agape expected an answer from the child, so he introduced himself briefly.
K: "I'm... I'm a new student of Sage Raufid's. My- My lesson was supposed to start tomorrow or the day after, so I just- I just... I..."
Katachi was shocked. All his life, he firmly believed that Mother Rin's chest size was the biggest possible. The nun stressed that a girl's chest was sensitive so only their sires were entitled to touching them and he ought not to take advantage of them, no matter how tempted he may be to retaliate against the vulgar girls in vengeance. Having gone through such a limited education, he came to believe that Mother Rin's chests were the largest a woman could achieve.
K: (What in the- Those are huge! They don't fit her body size at all! Not even Mother Rin's were this big! If they could come in this size, I wonder how big they can actually become...)
The blond girl's presence induced the destruction of an established theory.
"You what?"
The lady before him was seething with rage that he was ogling at her chest blankly.
K: "I... I. I just- Just- Wandered around. T- Trap sprung. Al- Almost got killed... Found the hut, en- en- en- entered here. I- I wa- w- wasn't thinking much, but you have cool- Cool- Cool stuff..."
Talking to a girl face-to-face gave rise to an uncomfortable feeling within him even when they were four meters apart. The fact that he was still stammering, and not frozen on the spot completely like a block of ice was pretty remarkable.
"Pfft! What's with you? There's no need to be this tense, it's not like I'm going- ... !"
The girl scornfully mocked his erratic speech but her face changed into a serious frown as she replayed his words in her head.
"... You sprang the trap?"
K: "Y-yes, I uh... I did. I touched that uh, wire thing, and there were lots of shards that flew towards me."
The girl's eyes widened and her jaw widened in disbelief.
"Impossible...! Those shards were infused with Vithrolu's decay magic! You were supposed to rot at the parts struck and you should have no control over your body!"
K: (Wha-! I knew the trap wasn't that simple! It was a right choice protecting myself after all!) "A trap that decays bodies?! Who are you!?"
The shock incited his natural instincts to defend himself.
K: (I have no idea what she intends to do after turning me into her puppet. But I'm not going down without a fight!)
Katachi bent his legs a little and hunched his back, lowering his center of gravity. Should there be a surprise attack just like before, he would have to be ready to anticipate and intercept them.
*** ***
(This boy barged into my house and now he wants to fight me? He doesn't seem to know who I am, though. I guess I can try to calm him down for now.)
The rational approach was often the correct one.
B: "I'm Bael. I'm an animationist, or, well, reanimator if you rather that. I live here because my room-mates often complain about a rotting smell coming from me, but I can't help it if I want to be proficient in my studies."
The boy wore a dumb look on his face.
K: (Smell? I don't smell anything.) "You're not going to fight me?"
B: "You're in my house. If anything, I should be the one starting the fight against a stranger like you."
K: "Oh."
The boy lowered his arms and blushed at the misjudged situation. He seemed to have noticed that he was the one intruding and should, therefore, expect to be attacked. To have his guard down for even a slight moment showed how long his road to maturity and situational awareness was.
B: (C- Cute!)
Bael started constructing twisted thoughts in her head.
B: (He's so... So stupid, so pure! He's like a clay doll that's still moist! Mmhmm, I want to mold him into a shape that suits me!)
Her face started to contort into a very wide and sinister smile. The boy must have noticed because he took a few steps back in horror when he noticed the shifting eyebrows and lips on Bael's face.
B: "Let's start over. What's your name?"
The boy retracted his neck further and further.
K: "You're... not going to use my name for some curse or something, are you?"
B: "I can't curse you even if I had your name."
The boy finally stood down after hearing that response. He reached his hand out slowly for a handshake and muttered softly.
K: "Then... Katachi. Kotsuba Katachi."
The words escaped his lips in a quick hiss, hiding his emotions well.
B: (Kotsuba? That's... familiar. The structure suggests that he might have come from the Far East, or maybe his parents did. Is he an Ohdean?) "I see. It's nice to meet you, Kotsuba Katachi."
She uttered his name in an unusually fast tempo, as though she were exhaling it in an attempt to replicate the speed which he coughed his name out. Katachi's face curled into an irritated frown upon hearing that.
K: "I would rather you omit my surname."
B: (His name... ! Wait, his name! I know it means something in Ohdean! I don't really know what it represents, but I've heard of it before!)
Bael's head brewed with a nasty idea.
B: "I have a better idea. I'll just call you 'Baka'."
K: "..."
It was common knowledge that Ohdean words were strangely designed. Any random combination of syllables gave a different meaning, and among them 'baka' was supposedly a demeaning term. For his name to match with that coincidence was in utter bad taste, much to Katachi's distaste. Bael was going to love teasing the daylights out of him.
*** ***
Katachi walked out of Cosmatral Neud and rested on a bench right outside an archway that led to the halls. His shirt was mended with scraps of varying colors and a small handkerchief dyed beige along with the words 'Micha' cropped by the cloth's edges.
K: (What a difficult woman.)
After mocking his name for a good five minutes, the large lady proceeded to pour some tea for him and they chatted for around three hours with her talking excitedly about the school's history and facilities he wasn't particularly interested in. The only thing he could have done was to tolerate and endure until her mouth ran dry, which was a bad idea in every definition of the term.
She animated her teapots to refill her cup on a regular basis so even before a quarter of the way through Katachi succumbed to torpor. By the time he came to, the rips in his ragged shirt were patched by various pieces of cloth. He was quite shocked to realize that the sun was almost halfway down given that he entered the garden while the sun was still high.
K: (I should head back to my room. Where is it?)
No sooner had he stepped through the archway did he feel the directional magic control his limbs oppressively. Katachi headed left as he entered the doorway but the magic forced his body to spin around and walk to his right. That was certainly disorienting, but thankfully it was short-lived. Had one suffered that effect for long periods, one would most likely vomit from dizziness.
K: (So, from the garden to my room I would have to take a right, then a left, up the stairs, walk along the handles of the stairs and loop over it, down the corridor, take a sharp right and go to the third room to the right. My room's not that far from the garden area, it's a good landmark to know.)
The interior was a plain room with a book rack, a bed and some clean uniforms neatly folded on a small dusty desk. The only odd thing about the room was that the rack had been deliberately mounted atop the bed so if he tried to get up normally his head would collide with the rack. On the table was a Dousala wooden screen.
K: (This is probably where the timetable will surface.)
He gently lowered his sling cloth onto the table and walked out of his room.
K: (I should bathe soon. I wonder if they have any ash soap catered to the students.)
He started marching towards the boys' bathing space.