For the last 3 days, the Makahoushi siblings had been preparing themselves for the trip to the Magic Side of the World to enroll into 1 of the Seven Magic Academies. They obviously didn't know which of the 7 they would get enrolled to, but I guess you could say that that was part of the excitement.
In the first day after reading the letter (the 5th of August), since Kaede was sick, the next day, Shu had to take care of everything that involved the both of them. Well, to be honest, it only included him going and telling their school, Sakura Moon Middle-High School, that they were unenrolling. A day later (August 6), Shu went to school as if it was a regular school day. Nothing interesting happened…well, the only thing that you could call "interesting" was the fact that Shu kept thinking through the entire day about the fact that this was his last day at the school. It didn't look like it, but he was actually pretty sad about it. During lunchtime, he went to hang out with his friends (3 of them, to be exact), as usual, in a table that was in the corner of the cafeteria. After a while of talking about completely random subjects, Shu finally decided that it was time to tell them the truth. He told the 3 of them that he was leaving Sakura Moon and was gonna move to another country in the world with his family due to personal reasons (although of course, he was actually moving to the Magic Side with Kaede).
"No way, Shu! Why didn't you tell us earlier?!" one of his friends, a boy with long yellow hair said.
"I agree. You can't just tell us that you're leaving a few day before you actually leave…" another of his friends, a girl with long black hair, said afterwards.
"Im really sorry, everyone. I'm not too happy about it either. I just got told this yesterday, and there wasn't any real way for me to tell you 3 about it since I was very busy taking care of Kaede." Shu responded with a sad tone.
"Oh come on, Sora and Sena, you're making him feel even worse." The last friend, a girl with shouder length blue hair said."
"No no, it's fine, Emilia. I really should have told you earlier. But don't worry, we can still message and call from time to time."
"Yeah, I know. But we're gonna miss you."
"Yeah, I agree."
Shu talked with all of them and finished his statement. After today, they wouldn't be seeing each other for a long time. And after school, he went to the Principal's office and told him everything. After talking with the Principal, both Shu and Kaede were officially out of Sakura Moon Middle-High School.
The next step of the siblings' preparations was to investigate the tickets that they received from the invitation letter. They examined the tickets, and they found all the information they needed.
"Ok, so the tickets say that the boat will leave in 3 days, as mentioned, and it will leave at 2:00 pm. The cruise ship will be in Port Eltria, which is about an hour drive from here, so we should be fine".
"That's good." His sister responded, sitting up on her bed.
Kaede was starting to feel much better. It was pretty strange that the Neutralizing Serum's side effects had lasted this long, but she was still feeling much better.
"Alright, so next step would be to pack our bags and suitcases. I'll go get to it then." Said Shu as he left his sister's room.
He went and opened Kaede's closet, which had many different things inside it, like clothes and such. Shu then found the suitcase that Kaede would often use when she went travelling. He quickly asked her if she wanted to use said suitcase, and she said yes.
"Hey, brother…"
"Hm? Something wrong?"
"It's just that...do you think I could pack my clothes this time?"
"Well, are you up for it? Do you feel strong enough to do so?"
"Yes, I think I should be fine don't worry."
"Well, okay then…I'll go and pack my things now then. I'll see you later."
"Okay. Later, brother!"
Shu went and started to pack his clothing.
That's weird. I wonder why she didn't want me to pack her things this time. She usually likes it when I do it for her, he was thinking as he was starting to pack his own things. Well, I suppose she's already 14, so I shouldn't overthink it.
He didn't even notice, but an hour had already passed when he had finished packing his things. He packed many different things, like clothing, books, basic essentials like a toothbrush and a hair comb etc.
Shu noticed this and went to his sister's room in order to check how he was doing. And to his surprise…
"Hey Kaede." He said as he was opening the door. And that's when he saw his sister actually standing up from her bed.
"Brother. I can finally stand up! I knew it!" she said with happiness in her voice.
Shu smiled whilst looking at her. "That's great! Does this mean that you finally feel good for tomorrow?"
"Yes! I think so-" *cough* cough* Kaede coughed.
"I think there's still a lingering effect, but I think we should be fine."
"I suppose so…" she responded.
It was around 6 pm. It was already pretty dark outside. In fact, it looked like it was 9 pm or something.
"Well, I'm gonna return to my room, Kaede. If you need anything, just knock alright?"
"I will! Thank you, brother. For helping me get better."
"Of course. Anything for my little sister." Shu smiled as he said that and returned to his room.
He sat down on his bed and grabbed the device from the nightstand next to his bed and started going through it. He was looking through many different things, including stuff like his friends' messages and files about magic he had stored within the device.
After 5 minutes, he stopped looking at the device and returned it to the nightstand. He laid down on top of his bed and before he knew it, completely fell asleep.
"Hey, brother! Wake up!" Shu heard a voice near him to his left. He slowly opened his eyes and saw his sister looking at him with a big smile on her face.
"Today's the day, brother! We're finally going to the Magic Side, AND we're going to enroll into the Magic Academies! How amazing!" Kaede was so happy that she could barely contain herself.
"Yeah…agreed…" Shu was too tired to sound happy but in reality, he was as excited as she was.
"Hey, Kaede…what time is it…?"
"It's currently…10 am!" She was able to figure it out by looking at her device she had in her hand.
"So we have 4 hours. Great." He said as he was getting up from his bed.
After a regular morning of them both doing a morning routine (which included things like eating breakfast, taking a shower, and brushing your teeth etc.), they were going to do one last thing before leaving: go to the nearest convenience store and buy anything that they were missing. They did pack important things like clothing and things like electronic devices, but they didn't pack things like toothbrushes and hair combs simply due to not wanting to take the ones that they had in their house in case they went missing or something.
They were currently walking on the sidewalk of their neighborhood and going somewhere they would go almost every day. It was something everyone was familiar with.
After an hour of their morning routine (they took this long due to still being pretty tired), they got ready by putting clothes on, and went on their way.
"Okay, so what else do we need from the store, brother?" Kaede said whilst looking at a paper in her hand, which was actually a list of things that they wanted to buy. She was asking him for other amenities that they could put un the list that they thought they would need.
She then started talking again: "we have hairbrushes, toothbrushes, deodorant, and toothpaste."
"Oh! Mouthwash!" Shu said with a happy tone for some reason. "Shampoo and Conditioner, too!"
"Alright then!" his sister responded. "Let's go buy everything, then!"
Since they both lived in a residential area near a city, it seemed like they could just walk into the city and do whatever they pleased. But in reality, this area of the city was practically empty, so they had to walk to the place that they were very familiar with: the train station. Its name was Huozan Station, and they used it many days of the week.
The way it worked was by buying this specific card, called a CI-Card, that you could use to store money inside it and use said money to go to specific stations all throughout the city. Depending on how far that respective station was, the more expensive the trip.
The 2 of them got off the train in the station in the Central Area of the city they lived by.
"Alright, brother. Let's go get all we need!" Kaede said excitedly.
"Yep! Let's go!" Shu said in a confident voice.
And so they spent around 2 hours going around the Central Area of the city. Buying everything they needed and even going to a restaurant to eat and talk about many miscellaneous topics, which of course, included the topic about enrolling in 1 of the 7 Magic Academies. At least Kaede was feeling a lot better since their last mission regarding the SR, which would also be their last mission for a while.
After these 2 hours, they returned back home with everything they had decided to buy and re-opened their respective suitcases to pack everything new that they had bought.
"I'm very surprised that we got back so early", Shu said thinking out loud.
"Not gonna lie, I am very surprised, too. There was so much variety I thought we were gonna get distracted during everything", his sister responded to his out loud thought.
"Oh I talked out loud again? Sorry about that."
"What are you sorry about, brother? That's pretty normal."
Shu sometimes felt awkward when people heard him talk out loud. After all, this wasn't something he did on purpose. He didn't do it enough that it could be considered a habit, but he still did it from time to time. It was something that he'd heard many people do, so maybe he did it due to osmosis.
"I can't believe it's already 12:01. We're slowly getting closer to leaving", Kaede commented out of nowhere.
Shu nodded in response to her comment. He was still finishing packing his bag, so that's all he could think of doing in response to her comment.
After a few seconds, though, they were already finished with packing their bags, so at that moment, they didn't really have much to do. Kaede grabbed her device and messaged all of her friends about the fact that they were leaving. Of course, her friends were extremely sad over the whole thing, but she told them that she would message them whenever she had time. If we had to get more specific, she told them the same thing that Shu told his friends: they were moving for personal reasons; this wasn't true of course.
"Well, in that case, I'm gonna go rest for a while. Since it's an hour drive, we should leave at around 12:50."
"Yeah, I agree. I'll let grandfather know to drive us there. We COULD just teleport there with the magic circle, but that's extremely dangerous so yeah." Kaede said.
"Alright. Well, see you later, Kaede", Shu said, and he started walking away.
His sister simply waved goodbye and he went to his room and closed the door.
Kaede sat on top of her bed and looked out her room's window into the street. It was a simple street, but you could see the city from the same view. It was always a scenery that would make Kaede feel somewhat nostalgic. It was special to her.
"I can't believe it", Kaede started. "We're going to a magic school! This all happened so quickly that it feels unreal…but I know that this experience will be something that I will cherish forever", she said and stopped for a second.
"I just hope that he realizes that…" she started again.
"No…" she stopped again. She smiled when she stopped. "Never mind. I just need to rest for now."
And with that, she tied her hair into a simple ponytail and fell asleep not before setting an alarm for 12:45.
Beep! Beep! Beep! The alarm sounded at the time that she put it for.
Kaede slowly woke up from her bed and stretched. She had a smile on her face and with said smile, she went to her brother's house and opened the door, just as she had done this morning.
She saw her brother sleeping wearing that same thing he wore to the Central Area of the city: a dark grey hoodie, a dark red shirt, and a pair of jeans. She also went to sleep wearing what she wore to the same area: a gray shirt alongside a dark grey skirt.
She went near Shu's sleeping face and looked at it for 10 seconds. Then, she proceeded to poke his left cheek, which caused him to wake up after 5 pokes.
"Huh…what…?" Shu said as he was woken up by Kaede's warm feeling finger.
"Good afternoon, brother," she said with the same smile on her face.
"Oh…is it already time…?" he said again.
"Yes! Well, it's actually 12:45, but we should start getting up and go to our grandfather's house."
"Yeah, we should. Also, are you fully recovered? From the whole Serum?"
"I would like to think so. I haven't felt any symptoms so far, so I guess I am."
"Alright then. Let's go, then." Shu exclaimed as he quickly stood up from his bed. He used his hoodie to wipe his mouth because it contained a small amount of saliva from when he was sleeping.
Kaede was so excited that she could only think of nodding quickly with an excited vibe.
They both grabbed their bags and quickly walked to the basement. They opened the door, and walked and stood on top of the giant white drawn magic circle on the floor.
"I should probably say my final goodbyes…I haven't done that yet".
"I already did." Kaede quickly responded to her brother's words.
Well, it's been fun living here just the 2 of us, dear house. We'll be back for our breaks, so don't worry. Also, I guess I should also thank you for giving us this house…Father… he said his final goodbye inside his head.
"Alright then. I'm ready". Shu said.
"Awesome! Let's go!"
The circle lit up and both the siblings became surrounded by light blue light. That light is what made them realize that something great would begin in their lives very soon. Something that felt like a fantasy…was becoming a reality.