While he was cursing himself. A small apple-like, red fruit came flying towards him and landed into his lap, followed by the voice of Isabella. Which for some odd reason was extremely sweet for him even though physically it was cold and emotionless.
"I don't have anything else, Eat this."
He came back to the real world from the world of self cursing and picked up the red shiny fruit and felt that it looked really familiar.
He brought it near the nose to smell after rotating it around, round and round, looking at its exterior.
"What are you looking for? It isn't poisonous. I checked it. Look." Speaking with slight displeasure for the first time, Isabella took a crisp bite of the fruit in her hand. And chewed slowly on it before continuing, "If you don't want to eat then just pass it back to me."
Alexander looked at her, eating the fruit and was relieved but when he heard that she was asking it back and as her hand extended out towards him, he hurriedly waved his hands in denial and took a bite as well before speaking, "No worries senior. I'll finish it soon."
"Hmm" Isabella made a sound and retraced her hands back while she ate her fruit with a frown. As if she recalled something or as if she was thinking of something.
Alexander didn't worry about her frown and just gulped down the entire fruit in another bite. Experiencing the sweet cherry-like flavor spreading in his mouth, he asked back, "Senior, it was tasty. Where did you get it from?"
"I found these two in your sack. Since they weren't poisonous. I gave it to you."
"Oh…" Alexander replied normally upon hearing this but then went into deep thought, while Isabella continued,
"Speaking of it, why are there so many medicinal herbs…"
"Crap! It wasn't poisonous!" Mid-way through her sentence, Alexander's loud voice interrupted her. His voice was filled with anxiousness and worry.
"It wasn't a poison it was… " Trembling, while he pushed himself hard to speak out his remaining words. He felt his body warming up from the direction of his legs, accompanied by boiling of the blood in his entire body before his vision darkened and he collapsed again.
He fainted again.
*****
The singing of birds resounded in the entire forest as the day was breaking through the sky along with the sun which was peeking through the horizon.
However, deep inside the forest, near an abandoned cottage, it was still quite dark due to thick layers of trees and shrubs and a bit of smoke was rising from the pile of ashes collected near a man who was lying flat on the ground with his nose pointing up towards the sky.
Drip.
A drop of silvery-white dew fell from the highest leaf of the tallest tree around and it headed towards the green grassy ground passing through layers of cold, cloudy mist and grey-warm, sooty smoke. It headed down in its small spherical shape and hit its target. The eyelids of the man.
As drop hit his eyes, feeling the wetness, his eyelids twitched a bit before his hands lazily rubbed them, reinforcing some blood pressure in them.
Who could it be if not Little Pervert? Cough. Cough… Little Fatty aka Alexander.
He opened his eyes and then slowly sat up on his bit soft, bit hard bed.
'Hmm?' As he looked around and his vision penetrated thin mist. He wasn't able to find anyone else around. Isabella was nowhere to be seen.
Then, he looked down at himself, his clothes were now dirty due to sleeping on the wet-due-to-dew ground and heaved a sigh, "Haiz…"
His waist was aching may be due to sleeping on the hard ground but he stood up and walked towards his sack. He opened it and was relaxed after he found that his treasure was still inside.
But, what caught his eyes was a piece of paper in his sack. He fished it out and unfolded it before reading.
[ I am heading back. The event should be over by the time you are reading it. I have drawn a map below. Follow it and go back to the academy. ]
[ - Isabella Davis ]
"Oh… she went back alone." He muttered with a slight unknown sadness and then without thinking about anything else, he put off the fire, picked up his heavy sack, and rushed back towards Academy.