After exiting the front door the first problem had already occurred. An Outer Court Disciple who happened to live on the other side of the path saw me go out with Yao Ya. His eyes widened and his jaw seemed to just want to fall off as he looked over.
I knew this might happen and why I really didn't want to be so close to each other. The words were about to come out my mouth before I remembered the earlier incident. This is what she wants, I'll let her be.
Although the more I thought about it, the more I knew for certain her earlier actions was almost definitely a trick. Her emotions changed way too rapidly after I gave way for her. And now I'm still doing it! Letting her embrace my right arm as we walked down the path.
It takes five minutes to exit the male outer disciple living quarters and fifteen to climb the stairs. After only two minutes I feel the collective gazes slowly accumulating like they were following us or something. At first it was tens, dozens, before it quickly rose to hundreds of pairs of eyes.
The path we chose was the fastest to the grand stair case on the mountain. That of course just so happened to be the main path where hundreds of living spaces were placed for us. The homes connected directly to the path the moment you step outside the door.
'Oh my god! Is there a way for me to back out from this?! She's supposed to be the sect's beauty and here I am being affectionate with her! Every man in the sect is going to hate me or probably at least, there's going to be some dude higher level than I am coming to challenge me!
That's how it always goes in these novels! Maybe if I had protagonist levels of strength I would be able to hold out or maybe some kinds of unique methods? ….Fuck! the only thing I could consider unique would probably be my experience with these kinds of fiction novels. I guess their not fiction any more though.
Wait, these experiences aren't unique, are they? Although I might be the first person from my world to venture out here, I certainly won't be the last. This genre of fiction might be extremely niche in the other four nations, but the middle kingdom? They invented the genre! Of course there will be others who try to seize opportunities written in those books.
I have to stop thinking about that and focus on what's happening now. The future can wait! On second thought I suddenly feel the need to gather as much as possible in that small realm so I'll be at least strong enough to attempt to protect all these cute girls. I can't forget my one of my original goals though, it was something like integrate my world to the system, right?'
I looked at the girl hugging my arms as if it was a treasure. Yao Ya is causing me so much trouble right now, yet she seems blissfully unaware of the changes and looks around us. Maybe it's because I'm the one they're looking at.
Every once in a while I looked into the corners of my vision, emotions ranging from admiration and adoration to shock and jealousy. I'm sure I know who those latter emotions are aimed at though.
The feeling from all those gazes terrified me and started to stress me out.
Back when I was in school I felt my popularity was great. At that time I had different small groups of friends I could go to in each class no matter what. Those groups usually had members around 3-5 each unless they were a special group.
How I even managed such a feat was beyond me. The moment I started going into the final few years of free education, I had to change schools and that drastically altered my social life.
When I started going into those final years, I was lucky to even have one friend in a class let alone a group. I wasn't an outcast by any means nor did my personality change too much from the year before. During those final years I went from someone who could of been considered a side character to a mere mob in the background.
In College I decided to try to get a girlfriend and finally stop doing nothing. I went on many dates to find someone and I for one at least felt like they went well. No matter what though they would never respond after those dates and we said our goodbyes.
At one point people would even stop showing interest halfway through our texts. It was like there was some force that prevented me from having a good romantic life. I started excessively eating to drown out my sorrows in any way possible.
To be honest I was shocked that Yao Ya had even recognized me at the time. I'm sure even though my looks don't really change too extremely as I age, the shape of my body would definitely be something not many could imagine happening to what I looked like before.
The one thing those level of education all had which I dreaded was a presentation project. It didn't matter too much, the size of those present, but just having people staring look that made me uncomfortable. It could of been one of my very own teammates that while we were practicing and I still would have been a nervous wreak after a few sentences if I even made it there.
The stage freight I had was awful and now that feeling is even worse knowing that they actually have a stance of me that was probably negative and that the number of people here is multiple times that of a single class.
Of course that's what I thought until now. The numerous pairs of eyes felt like hidden weapons that could strike at any moment.
I had been staying perfectly in the dark, just out of everyone's sight before. I could count the people I had spoken to with both my hands, and they were probably the only people who interacted with me or could have a memory of me.
Now I was basically brought to the center of attention by Yao Ya. People would definitely start to investigate me and my origins now.
When I stopped thinking those things I realized we had only maybe a minute left of walking left before we reached the ceremony grounds.
The staring sets of eyes drastically decreased as well. We had entered the Inner Disciple grounds, a place where the Outer Disciples could not enter as they pleased.
I spun my head back to see how far we've been walking inside the Inner Disciple grounds. The Gate which signaled the passage into the Inner Disciple territory was a bit away maybe around four minutes.
"Ah! Are you awake from your trance?"
The voice shifted my attention away from receding back into some more thoughts.
"Are you ready to become these Inner Disciples? These people should be more uniformly dressed then the Outer Court right? You think the outfits will look cool?" The energic voice spoke out right into my ear.
With a slight turn of my head I saw as she was staring directly at me
"Yeah, I hope those outfits would look cool, but I would really wear anything else besides this one set that I've kinda ruined and patched over and over again. They would give us these outfits for free, right?"
"Don't worry about it too much. If you want you could come to me whenever you're outfit is ripped and I'll fix it up back to it's original state if not even better!" She spoke with confidence eluding from her voice.
"Hey is that where we need to go?" I said pointing towards a gate on the side of the stairs that we were approaching.
"That's right!" She smiled
The gate had a circular shape perfect for three people to walk through at once, was made of stone and flanked by stone walls on either side. The stones were painted white and roof shingles laced the top.