Wake up, brush your teeth, take a shit, take a shower, put on some clothes, take your keys, go out and lock your house, and bam! I was out! On my way to the Year 2 dorms, leaving my personal abode behind at about 7 in the morning.
It was a fresh Sunday morning. This time the weather was more to my liking. There were the cold winds blowing past my face, the foggy breath that came out of my mouth, the clouds that covered the sun. Happily, I walked until I reached the agreed-upon place.
I didn't usually get up this early on a Sunday. After all, Sunday was a relaxing day. It wasn't like I was breaking bricks on the other days, but just having the freedom to lay around on a Sunday makes it the ultimate day to relax.
Although not all students were that lucky. Most had combat class on Saturday-Sunday, which would mean they would be doing the opposite of relaxing. Oh boy, was I glad to not be one of them.
Anyways, today I was going to try something new. Perhaps even the start of a new routine. If it was a year ago, I wouldn't go out of my way to screw up my schedule. But now, I had nothing going on on my Sundays, so even a wild adventure with Charles sounded good.
And speak of the devil! The unnecessarily overconfident blond prick was walking towards me right now.
"Did you bring the money?" Charles asked.
"Yes, Yes. I did." I answered back in a slightly annoyed voice.
"You know, I only ask because you often forget. And then we have to pay for your share too." Charles asked with a sour look on his face.
WOw, imagine coming from a leading sect and being that stingy.
"Hey! It's not like I do it on purpose." I replied back with a laugh.
"Yeah, yeah. We all know that." Charles spoke sarcastically, prompting me to laugh even louder. He just quietly shook his head as a smile spread across his face. Then he clapped his hands, bringing us to the main topic at hand, and we set off at a brisk pace. He seemed pretty excited for today.
And soon, his dream place was in our sight. It was a tavern covered in rags on the edge of a park that some students liked to call a forest, but I disagreed, so it will be referred to as a park.
Charles stopped a few feet away from the flap of the rag that was the entrance to the tavern. He ran a hand through his hair, puffed out his chest, and entered the tavern with confident strides. At least his weird antic allowed me to catch up to him.
So, the story behind the origin of this tavern was a bit of a mystery. All there is to know is that some Year 4 students manage it and keep it "hidden" from the teachers. And hence this tavern is for student use only. Also nicknamed the FTT(Funky Tree Tavern) lovingly by the students.
Charles had often spoken about the greatness of this place to me. He happily talked about all the crazy stuff his older brothers had done in the FTT in their times. He liked to treat the tavern like a secret club, whose ticket he had only given to me.
Although I do feel that the FTT is something of an open secret. And almost every student would flok around the place if it weren't for the fact that it was intimidating. In fact, there is almost an unspoken rule that the Year 1 student can't come here on their own.
Of course, now that we are Year 2 students, Charles had very bravely decided to try his luck with this place. And also called on me to accompany him.
Now that we were finally in the FTT, I was eager to see what it was like. But after entering, I could see it was nothing that I hadn't seen before. There was smoke in the air, the not-so-furnished tables, and overlapping chatter. I looked towards Charles, who kept his head straight, and quickly went towards the counter.
I followed behind while keeping an eye out for a free table. Since we had arrived at 7 on a Sunday morning, I was expecting the place to be almost empty, but it was surprisingly busy.
The counter was in the further back of the room with a blond-haired older teenager standing behind. Charles approached him and spoke rigidly.
"Two smokes, for me and him."
"Four copper." The seventeen-year-old boy spoke in an unusually deep voice while passing two joints.
I could probably roll up a better one for two copper, But I guess those days were long gone. So I paid my share and also ordered some chips and fries. And then we went and sat at a table in an empty corner.
"It's good that we didn't invite Micheal. He would be shitting his pants right now." Charles spoke with a chuckle as he surveyed the tavern full of drunk and high young boys, who didn't look like young students at all.
"Yeah, he would be nervous. " I agreed as I took up the lighter which sat in a jar on the table.
"Right, Plus he would never be able to keep it a secret. Never. We would practically be telling the whole school by letting him in on this." Charles spoke, chuckling at his own joke.
Welp, I don't really think it would matter even if the whole school knows of it, cause I was 90 percent sure that most of the school already knows of it. But nonetheless, I chuckled along while taking a drag. Was even nice enough to offer him the lighter.
Charles took the lighter that I offered and leaned back in his chair. I think more than not letting other people know about it, he was more focused on people of the other gender not knowing about FTT. Now, after a year, I was confident enough in my knowledge about him to speculate a guess about his ideologies.
He probably felt like this was a place only for boys. That much, I think was apparent from the way he had defined this place to me. In his words, this was the perfect place to get drunk, drugged, and make acquaintance with the ladies from the slums. I doubt he would want to do any such things in front of the high-breed girls from our group. From the winter trip, he should've learned better.
In fact, I was informed of this place in a very secretive manner and also had to swear on my father that I wouldn't tell a soul to quell Charles's worries. And more than Micheal telling the whole school about it, I think he was more afraid of Micheal telling his sister about all this. I have wondered for long about whether I should let him know that there is a chance that he is not the only one in our group who knows about this place. But then I think again, 'where's the fun in that?'
Although I do agree that girls shouldn't be here cause from the few snippets of the conversation I could hear around me, I felt that these young gentlemen in this lovely tavern had too many hormones uprising. It was better for the experienced ladies from the slums to handle these boys than to have them wreck the life of some naive soul.
"You know, I was this close to pulling off Marty's Trick." Charles spoke up with frustration, bringing his index finger and thumb close together. If that was the estimate of how close he was to pulling Marty's trick off, I really wanted to know how he had come to measure that distance.
Welp, for the context, Marty was a student who had attended the Sectarian High school a long time ago. Exactly how long ago? I had never bothered to know. The thing to keep in mind was that Marty was a genius. A bullying genius.
In his Second year, Marty pulled off an incredible trick. Namely, provoking his juniors into duels. Now, of course, that by itself was not something that got him labeled as a genius. The events would unfold something like this;
He would first provoke the first-year students into a duel, and in those duels, he would deliberately make it a very close match. With every one of those duels resulting in barely a win or even a tie. And almost every time, he would be successful in pissing his opponent off even further after the duel had ended. Taunting the opponent after a fight, using some underhand moves to make the opponent think that he won only be cheating.
And that would result in having a series of duels with the same opponent, who became more and more irritated after every fight. And then Marty introduced the betting system to them. Which was a new concept in Sectarian High back then. Betting a large sum of money on your own win was something the teen boys at that time were unfamiliar with
.But Marty made sure they got familiar with it as soon as possible. At times, refusing to duel the second time unless a big bet was involved. Like this, Marty fought a total of 50+ students, fighting each of them no less than 8 times, at the very least. And out of all those duels, He didn't even lose one.
After seeing his incredible record and the financially poor state of the students he had fought with, the other students began to figure out that this wasn't just Marty being a troublemaker. But rather, flawlessly executing a trick to extort the students weaker than him.
And from thereon, this trick to extort juniors was dubbed Marty's trick.
"What a Shame." I replied back to Charles's sad confession.
"I even had the perfect prey. A prick from that darned Barnardy family. He must've been filled with money, bro. I could've earned so much! If it weren't for that bitch butting in."
He didn't need to tell me who the 'bitch' was. After Karen had said it a hundred times yesterday, it was quite obvious who the 'bitch' among the Year 1 was.
I continued giving my sympathies, although I got bored quite quickly. So I started looking around the FTT in hopes of some entertainment, and lo and behold! Look what familiar face I found!
There, sitting on the opposite corner of the room, were Jack and his lackeys smoking merrily away.
Coincidently, at the same time that I noticed him, Jack also noticed me. I smiled at him, and he nodded his head, and we exchanged our non-verbal greetings. Of course, that didn't escape Charles's sight. And when he noticed Jack, he acted just as I expected.
"*tch*, those class-A fuckers are just loitering at every corner, like ruffians." Charles spoke with evident disgust in his tone as he quickly took some quick drags.
We talked a bit here after that, but that ended soon too. Although Charles tried to act casual, it was clear that he was suddenly in a hurry to get out of FTT. And I knew the reason well enough. It wasn't that Charles was scared of Jack and his lackeys. Oh goodness no, There was no way that was possible. You can tell that clearly by how vehemently Charles denies that before someone even asks.
Well, I am pretty sure that deep down even Charles knows that he is just jealous of them. That he is too arrogant to admit that they are superior to him in more than just one aspect. So he lives in denial. Focusing on only their erratic reputation and labeling them as 'delinquents' to feel superior in at least some manner.
"You have to know how to conduct yourself. Mana Arts can be improved upon with time. But if your personality is rotten? How could you ever become some distinguished." Charles parted on such wisdom to me as we left the FTT.
Well, whoever had the rotten personality didn't really matter to me.
In my eyes, Charles and Jack and Jack's lackeys were all very much cut from the same cloth.