Several cycles of absorbing Day's information, paraphrasing it in a notebook, then worrying about what would happen after the class later, the bells chimed throughout the hallways and classrooms. We began to pack up, Boingo rushing to get out the slim door before everyone else. I didn't rush, however; instead, I took it slow and was one of the last ones to leave.
"Don't forget to meet Midnight," my teacher chimed behind me. I peered at Day, who was frantically getting some material ready for his next class. I nodded to him and entered the bustling hallways.
Of course, I was hungry. Making my way to the cafeteria, I figured that I would have enough time to eat a few morsels of food before I was scheduled to meet the principal. The walk itself was usual; I would first walk smoothly among the crowd of students through a straight part of the hallway, occasionally having to dodge a group of creatures that had decided to chat and drift off to the side, then merge whenever I encountered an intersection. As I did this, the aliens that surrounded me would change almost every time.
"Turn right here," A voice suddenly echoed in my head. I immediately recognized it as Midnight's. Looking around, I failed to locate him. It wasn't like I was going to anyway; there was no direction that the sentence was coming from. "Yes, here."
I obeyed the command, turning right at the indicated intersection. "Yes, good," Midnight's voice continued. "Now go straight here and after that, turn left."
I kept walking, turning as the school's principal desired. "Now, climb those stairs."
At this point, few students were in my vicinity. The floor looked shiny and unused. Using these clues, I figured that only certain students and staff members were allowed up in this section of the school.
"Turn right, then enter the fifth door on the left."
This instruction led me to a door that was larger than most others, with a plaque that simply said "Midnight". This time, his muffled voice came from the room behind the door. "Come in."
Carefully entering the room, the first thing that caught my eye were the numerous bookshelves that stacked up towards the ceiling. Drifting my eyes towards the center of the room, I found Midnight sitting at a desk that was illuminated by a glowing sphere of light. He was sitting casually, leaning back into his large padded chair. He spoke once more: "Here, have a seat." He motioned towards a smaller wooden chair.
I swallowed any nervousness that I had, but it still bubbled inside of me. "Hello. Midnight."
The black-cloaked figure frowned. "There really is no need for you to be nervous. I'm as friendly, if not even kinder than Day."
"You're right," I attempted to stop shaking. "He did say that about you once."
Midnight had no hesitation in switching the subject. "So... About this labyrinth of yours," he leaned forward in his chair. "Windell told me that you consistently woke up inside of it every night since before you could remember, am I correct?"
"Yes," I nodded.
"Hmm..." Midnight mused. He leaned back in his chair again, rolling his eyes toward the top of his head. "I'll need to examine you sometime soon. Before I do that, though. We should improve our relations; I don't want you to think I'm the 'serious principal'."
I nodded again. A few seconds later, Midnight leaned forward again. "Would you like a meal on the school? It's the least we could do to repay for the damage that we have caused you." He suddenly avoided making eye contact with me. "...that I have caused you."
"Yes, sure," I agreed. I wasn't exactly in the mood to walk back down to the cafeteria. If I walked down the halls, retrieved a tray with my food and made my way back up to Midnight's office, the bells signalling the start of magic class were surely going to ring.
"Alright." In a heartbeat, Midnight blinked and a tray appeared in my lap, with utensils at the sides. It contained a meal that I would have found at the cafeteria, but something seemed different about this particular tray of food. Hesitantly taking a bite out of it, I noticed that whatever flavour it had was magnified at least tenfold.
Midnight beamed from the other side of his desk. "Do you like it? You can load certain food with magical energy and if you do it right, it will taste either vividly disgusting or heavenly."
"It's... good..." I had almost lost track of Midnight's brief explanation. I was swirling in the vast variety of flavours that the meal effectively contained, which caused me to almost automatically seek another bite out of each portion of the tray. "Very good."