"Wait, Torrance?!" Raten shouted after hearing his brother's words. He immediately stopped himself from yelling out another word as he had drawn attention from his first outburst. They moved closer to a corner of the halls to talk a bit.
"You mean, that's Torrance? The bratty kid from our village, Torrance Carmichael?! Are you sure?" Raten said quietly this time.
"Of course I am. He might look a bit different now, but I will never forget that face!" Kiyan replied.
*******
"Torrance please listen to me. My Father, he's dying. I am begging for your help. If you can help my brother and I take him to the healer. Or better still, your parents, they could help. Please Torrance." Kiyan clasped his hands together in front of Torrance begging.
"I will never do anything to help your family." Torrance said but Kiyan suddenly ran past him. "Huh?"
"Mr. Carmichael!" Kiyan fell to his knees in front of the man he ran up to. "My father, my father is dying, Sir. Please, come help us."
"You must be crazy to think..."
"Please sir, you are our last hope. No one has agreed to help. We just need to take him to a healer. That's all I ask." He placed his head at the man's feet.
"Get away from my father!" Was all he heard before being kicked away. Getting up, he saw Torrance standing next to the man.
The kick had hurt, but not as much as the words the people told them, not as much as the thought of losing his father.
*******
Kiyan furrowed his brows in remininsce of what had happened the day they almost lost their father. Torrance was now less chubby and taller than they remembered, still not taller than them anyway. He was about same height as they were but that stupid look he always had, the words that always left his lips, Kiyan was certain it was him.
"How is it that on our first day, out of the hundreds here, we mange to bump into him?! Not even a single day of no worries!" Raten said. Clearly, he was frustrated with the unexpected encounter. Everything from the village they tried to forget decided to show up in the form of a boy named Torrance.
"This is so not good. He knows who we are and already hates us," said Kiyan.
"For no reason I might add. We just have to do what Father said, we have to stay away from trouble and never admitting to our identity."
"For that, we need to also keep an eye on him."
"Hey you two, why are you talking so discreetly over here when food's that way?" Jarett asked as he laid eyes on them while walking down the hall.
"We are actually headed to the lunchroom," Kiyan replied.
"Then, let's get moving." Jarett said and walked off. They looked at each other and took in deep breaths before walking with him. They joined the queue to take their lunch with their minds elsewhere. Soon it got to their turn. After taking their meal, they turned to find a place to seat.
"You two are really something, eh? Almost blinding everyone with a spell that was supposed to be simply lit." Jarett said with a small tray of food in his hands as they searched for a place to sit.
"I wasn't listening when he talked about concentration," Raten responded.
Looking ahead, they noticed Lecter waving at them to come seat. They moved to where he was and took the empty space directly opposite him.
The room was very large fitting the students that easily numbered over a hundred. The chairs were arranged in long seats, two for each table. Making one table enough for at most ten students.
Jarett and the twins sat beside each other. Not long, Wallace joined them. Already seated were Lecter, Rodney, Damien, and two unrecognizable boys. One of them had short blond hair parted from the middle and fell short of his shoulders. He had sharp blue down-turned eyes and a pointy nose. The other had short brown hair combed to the side, falling over his right eye.
"Hey Cross, you forgot your book with me." Jarett said to the blonde one. They seemed to know each other.
"You'll keep it safe, won't you?" Cross said putting whatever slop that was on his plate into his mouth.
"Mhm.." Jarett chewed on his food. "How come you're here, I thought you'd be with Simon."
"Oh please. I would do anything to stay away from that one. Besides the both of us, everyone in that room of ours is obnoxious," Cross replied. In just a night, they had seen a lot of annoying characters from the remaining four of their roommates and they would prefer to keep the distance. Taking notice of the twins who sat together and were less interested in their food which was unusual, Jarett nudged the one closest to him which was Kiyan.
"What's on your mind? Why aren't you eating?" He asked.
"Oh, it's nothing." Kiyan answered and put the food in his mouth. Raten would look around from time to time trying to spot Torrance but it was nearly impossible with how many students were present and eating.
"Hey white hair, if you're not going to eat that, I will be happy to take it." Wallace said slowly pulling Raten's plate to him referring to him by the colour of his hair for the didn't know which of them sat next to him. Raten hit Wallace's hand off his plate with his spoon and pulled his plate back. He was surprised to find the Wallace's plate already empty.
"You finished that in less than two minutes?!"
"What? It wasn't much anyway."
Turning his attention to another person, Wallace said, "Lecter, you're already big. Why not leave your food for the skinny ones like me?" He made to grab the food.
"There's not even much difference between us both in size!" Lecter yelled in anger and hit Wallace's hand hand hard with his fist. He withdrew his hand and winced a little.
"No need to be violent." He rubbed the back of his palm slightly and moved on to another person. "You're Cross, right? Will you finish that?" He tried his luck on someone else.
Cross looked at Wallace with his spoon filled with food in the air about to go in his mouth. "Yes." He put the spoon of food in his mouth.
"Here, have mine." A plate of food was placed in front of him as a very unfamiliar voice spoke. The voice did sting the twins. They all looked at the person who kept it.
"Aw geez," Kiyan mumbled.
"Do I know you?" Wallace asked. They were all confused with his action.
"No, you don't. But I know them." He pointed at the twins. "I'm guessing you know them as well hearing how you comfortably asked for their food. I took notice of them and just want to say a word." He smiled.
"Indeed just a word." The brown haired kid who had been silently eating scoffed on hearing Torrance's words. Torrance glared at him and he resumed eating.
"Justin, I didn't know you were here as well." He smiled again. Whatever relationship they had seemed to go way back. "I don't really care anyway, I just wanted to speak to the Teferi twins." He pointed at Kiyan and Raten who almost choked hearing that name out loud.
Wallace, who was about to put the food given to him by Torrance in his mouth, stopped upon hearing that name. Not just him but everyone on that table and around who heard him for he made sure to be very loud when he said it, paused to see who was being referred to as 'Teferi.'
"Did you just say Teferi?" Rodney who had his head down most of the time looked up in shock at Torrance thinking he must have misheard.
"Did I stutter?" Torrance answered.
Wallace placed his spoon down and stared at Torrance and then back at the twins who still hadn't said anything.
"I don't appreciate you calling them by that name, boy. You don't go about calling people that accursed name," said Jarett.
"Why would you refer to them as that? Are you trying to jinx them or something?!" Lecter said, a hint of anger in his voice.
"I see. They don't know." Lecter said to himself and an even wider grin etched on his cheek.
"Jinx them? Oh, I wouldn't want to do that. I just called them that based on my memory. Unless, my memory has failed me and that's not their names." He said.
"It's your habit that clouded your memory," Raten said and stood to face him. "Haven't we warned you repeatedly to stop calling us that?!"
"You said you wanted to talk to us, right? Let's talk." Kiyan said, getting up as well. They wanted to go somewhere private and speak with Torrance and he did oblige following them out of the cafeteria.
"Well that was strange," said Rodney.
"He had better be joking," Wallace added.
"For as long as I have known them, they have always being Silverstone," said Lecter.
"Those two years, we have never seen him and they never mentioned him, do you think he knows them from the village?" Jarett spoke to Lecter.
"Quite possibly." He answered. "They did mention having bad memories there, maybe he was one of them." Judging from their sparked anger when he said it and Kiyan's words afterwards, it was safe to believe it.
Jarett and Lecter glanced in the direction one more time and then looked at themselves with a somewhat worried look before resuming to eat.
Everyone decided to leave it at that and resumed eating whatever was left in their plates. The one called Justin just stared in the direction the boys went in His foreheads had wrinkled on them and his brows were furrowed. He clearly was annoyed.
"This is bad. After all I said to that idiot, he just came up and said it. If he does it in front of the teachers or elders, he will have those boys killed for sure."
__________
Author here,
I apologize for not posting more chapters. I've been rather unwell these past few days. More chapters will be uploaded from now on, but might be a bit slow untill I feel better.