She also noticed his hands from into fists at his sides as he took a seat in the chair Miss Anhao had left by her bed. She noticed his eyes wandering everywhere except her hands purposefully as he said, "So, Miss Anhao finally decided to remove the bandages?"
Aria suddenly felt too much like the monster everyone who saw the real her believed her to be, and she tried to push her hands out of Joseph's line of sight as she nodded. "Yeah. She said that there's not really any risk of infection anymore." "And I should probably start getting used to my hands without bandages anyways." Aria mumbled the last line more to herself than Joseph, who very conveniently failed to hear it too.
After a few more seconds of awkward silence, Joseph cleared his throat and said, "So, you ready for today's lesson?" Aria sullenly nodded and the whole hour passed with Joseph teaching Aria theory along with trying not to stare at Aria's hands and spectacularly failing, which didn't escape Aria's attention.
After the torturous hour, they were greeted by a student walking Helen into the recovery ward. Aria greeted the boy, saying, "Hey Veto, how are you?"
Veto, who was a student in Helen's class, smiled upon seeing Aria. But his smile faltered as soon as he saw Aria's scars. "Damn!! Are those the scars you got from the battle with the night warriors?" he asked. Aria nodded with a forced smile, which turned into a shocked expression as Veto exclaimed the next instant, "You have the coolest battle scars!"
"Battle scars?" Aria frowned, and Veto waved his hand and said, "It's just something floating around in the academy. You'll know once you're discharged." "Anyway, I need to get going. I have another class. Bye Aria. Bye Helen, Joseph." he added, without giving Aria any time to reply and was out the door before she was fully aware what was happening in the academy.
Finally left to themselves, Aria turned towards Helen with a frown. "Battle scars?" she repeated, hoping to get a better answer this time. But all she got from Helen was a smile and a shake of her head as she said, "Don't ask. It's a thing the boys have come up with. To be honest, I'm not completely sure myself."
Aria turned towards Joseph upon hearing the term boys, but she didn't really expect him to have an answer. For one, he had not exclaimed battle scars upon seeing her scars, so he probably had no idea what they were. And secondly, he did not really associate with what Helen had called 'the boys'. He usually hung around with his friends from the royalty that he knew from before the academy, whereas Helen had started to make friends with people Jacob was friends with. It was inevitable, with Aria in the recovery ward. And Jacob's friends were more common people who seemed to be more fun to Aria than the stuck-up royalty Joseph preferred.
Anyways, as expected, Joseph shrugged as he got up and helped Helen into the chair he had just vacated. "I also need to get going, I need to return a book to the library. Have fun girls. Also Helen, do you need me to come fetch you for your next class?" he said, already starting to move towards the door.