"Did you say something?" Bai Ling asked Ash curiously.
Her hearing was excellent, but she still couldn't hear Ash's murmur, because it was almost inaudible.
"Nothing." Ash replied casually after turning around, towards Bai Ling.
"Fast, fast... Come eat your breakfast before it gets cold!" Bai Juan nagged with a smile upon seeing the kids.
"Ling." Ash stopped eating in the middle of breakfast.
"Hm?" Bai Ling looked up, waiting for Ash to continue.
"Let's go to school today." He continued.
"Didn't you say there is no point in doing so and that you wanted more time to cultivate a few days ago?" Bai Ling asked, not knowing what's going on in Ash's head.
"The sports festival is only a couple of days away, I want us to participate." Ash, responded.
"Three legged race... That's my chance!" He thought while staring at Bai Ling with a super serious expression.
'Way to go kid...' Ameron's voice sounded slowly with sarcasm.
"What do you mean, 'way to go kid'?" Ash asked in his head curiously.
'She doesn't have a bed right now, right? Then do this...' Ameron quickly explained his plan.
"I don't mind going, but... why are you nodding so excessively?" Bai Ling suddenly interrupted Ash's conversation with his past self.
"I was thinking...Now that your bed has been burnt to ashes, where will you sleep? Ash asked, trying to change the topic before it was too late. "I can get a blanket and you can sleep on the bed in my room..."
"Ash!" Bai Ling furrowed her brows, feeling a bit angry, a bit displeased, that he told about the incident and very embarrased at the same time.
"You burnt your bed, Ling... Didn't that happen when you were....?" Bai Juan asked cunfusedly with a frown. This usually only happened to babies...
"Ling, you can sleep in Ash's room while we fix this problem." Bai Cheng interrupted his wife, before she could finish her sentence while giving Bai Ling a strange look.
He didn't want his wife to finish her sentence as Bai Juan had no filter on her mouth and everything she thaught of, would be said.
It was too shameful for phoenixes to burn their beds after 6 years of age and Bai Cheng didn't want Ash to know about it.
Thus, slightly punishing Ling and giving both her and Ash a chance to get closer at the same time. Not to mention that the other rooms were dangerous to no end!
It was a 4 birds with one stone thing... If it could be called like this.
Anyway, Bai Cheng knew Ash was too little to do anything to Ling so it wasn't a big deal to let her sleep in his room for a night.
....
"Well... I haven't seen you two since last week." Karmen said with a smile.
She was the class resident and excelled in studying and sports. Her beauty often attracted all the students' eyes on her and she received love letters quite a bit of times.
Karmen was a person who cared for her reputation a lot as she liked to be the center of attention. The fact that she was foreign helped her with that too.
Now that Ash and Bai Ling came to 'Cloud Highschool', the most prestigious and hard to enter highschool in the entire Cloud empire, her confidence was being crushed from day to day.
In only 3 weeks, Ash and Bai Ling managed to skip 2 grades, meaning that these two were freaks and even if they didn't pay attention in class, every teacher in this school knew them and loved them.
The educational system in this school was rough and the teachers- strict, but those two could do whatver they wanted and nobody would say anything to them.
Karmen on the other hand worked really hard each day to keep her grades excellent every year and yet, she wouldn't be spared from scolding if she did the things Ash and Bai Ling did on a daily basis.
From the most popular girl in school, she was immediately put on second place when a beautiful girl with fiery red hair and a 'smile as beautiful as the sun', as some of her classmates said, started jumping grades like it was but a game, meant for kids.
Guys and even girls called her fairy, because she looked like a girl, that came from a fairytale.
On the other hand, there was a misterious, but cold boy, as smart as the girl, who would always stay near her.
He was handsome and although his eyes could bring chills down the spines of everybody who looked at him, girls still tried to persuade him.
There was a problem though... The boy never smiled, no matter how hard people tried to make him do it.
Only Bai Ling could do that.
"You've changed the colour of your hair?" Karmen asked after she turned towards Bai Ling. "It looks so pretty!"
Changing one's hair colour wasn't something special and a lot of students did it, but there was something particular about Bai Ling's.
Even so, Karmen wasn't a fan of this activity and she would never do something like that. Her silky golden hair was unique here, a dream for most highschool girls anyways.
"Hehe, thanks a lot." Bai Ling smiled sweetly at Karmen.
"And you look pretty fit, Ash, will you participate in the sports festival? Karmen turned towards Ash." This class is mostly composed out of girls and we dont have enough boys for the 100 meters dash and 1,6km long distance run."
Yesterday when she asked who would want to participate in these two disciplenes, nobody volunteered.
Now that Ash was here, she wanted him to take part in both of them.
"Doesn't matter, as long as i can partake in the 3 legged run with Ling, do whatever." Ash replied coldly.
"Hm... And if you get first place for at least one discipline, I'll treat you to a lunch." Beaming with joy, Karmen went to register Ash and Bai Ling.
"Strange bird, she is." Ash thought as he watched Karmen's back. "Probably some foreign thing."
Usually treating someone to dinner meant you liked that person or would want to know him or her better.
'I can smell jealousy in the air...' Ameron suddenly said.
"3 legged run?" In the meantime, Ling, who was sitting next to Ash, started thinking.
"Did he want to go to school only for that?..."
"100m dash, the long distance run, 3 legged run for both... And let's add a bunch of other disciplines for Bai Ling." Karmen wrote down as she murmured.
It would be punishable if the registered students didn't show on the discipline they agreed to participate in and Karmen would use that to vent her frustrations on Bai Ling.
Ash would be hers too, in the near future!