***On Planet Gieă.
*** In the Outskirts of the Continent 'Eclipse of the Oceans', Chingford's Academy's Cafeteria.
"What is?.", Navi says as he takes his gaze off Yuxi.
Wacthing Navi calmly stir up his pasta, Yuxi takes in a deep breath then forces herself to sit properly as she starts talking in an unnecessarily low yet distressed voice.
"The rumours. They say that you killed someone, Five people!. People also say you have been challenged to a death duel by a grieving family member and that you accepted!. Are any of these true?.", Yuxi asks with her face half-way across the table as her wide blue eyes scans Navi's calm face for clues.
"You are missing some details but your summary is mostly true.", Navi responds with his voice completely calm and even but Yuxi's eyes trembles and she seems to have forgotten to breath.
She blinks twice with her hands slightly dropping as she looks at Navi's calm face while processing his indifferent words.
"Y-you.. killed someone?.", Yuxi asks with a tremble in her tone while Navi looks up from his dish and into her questioning eyes.
He doesn't give any further reply to Yuxi as he only locked eyes for a moment before turning back to his meal but still, his brief and indifferent stare is enough to confirm Yuxi's fears.
Her doe blue eyes bulged for a moment and then, she seems to deflate back into her seat with disbelieve and shock written on her face.
Taking a quick glance at her, Navi is not much surprised by her reaction. She always seems to see him in this halo of purity due to his young age, infact she seems to sometimes feel protective of this inexistent 'purity'.
Finding out that he has truly been past what she seems define as the 'darkest end' would definitely bring Yuxi quite the shock.
"Why?.", Yuxi mumbles in a voice that's barely audible as her eyes wonder about as if searching for answers. A couple short seconds passes by before her glazed eyes resettles on Navi only to find him eating calmly.
Taking a deep breath, Yuxi asks her question again though this time with a shockingly loud voice.
"WHY?!!.", Yuxi asks while standing up with her plams slammed against the table.
The partly filled hall goes silent at this sudden outburst that successfully draws all attention.
A little rattled by her suddenly loud tone, Navi looks up to Yuxi once more and then offers a short and direct explanation to her question.
"They invaded my house and failed.. so I killed them.", Navi gives a small nod almost to himself as he explains simply with his jaw still making small chewing motion.
Staring into Yuxi's blue eyes, Navi calmly swallows down the spaghetti he had just slurped on mere moments ago.
Speechless at his explanation and calmness, Yuxi can only stare-on as Navi just keeps on eating.
After a whole minute of intense staring driven by multiple emotions,Yuxi packs up her tray then stands up from Navi's table before relocating to a distant one.
...
...
After a dramatic breakfast session, Navi casually strolls to the early morning meditation class.
His interaction with Yuxi as well as the results of the interaction did not linger much on his mind after all, he has got bigger things to worry about.
Summarising plans on how to get information on people in his head, Navi ignores stares from other martial disciples as he finally makes his way to the Meditation halls.
...
...
***Four Days later..
'Waking up' an hour earlier than usual, Navi goes through his simple morning routine as he takes a bath and changes his robes. The only difference in his usual dress-code and today's own is a pair of twin daggers hidden within the layers of his robes.
The atmosphere for the past couple of days has been uncomfortably warm but the heat of today seems to take it up a notch. The day is shaping up to be scorching hot and even the normally icy-water Navi uses to shower comes out a bit plain.
Navi is not a fan of warm showers and especially not on a day like this but still, he had managed to pull through as he goes through breakfast after. Exiting the Cafeteria with a fully belly but sour tongue, Navi does an internal monologue on what makes this day a bit different for the past few.
'I have been summoned.', Navi internally states to himself as he starts thinking on this matter.
It seems the investigation of the Academy proceeded faster than he expected as he got a message just about late evening yesterday telling him to report to Swordsmanship Master Gifren Chen's Office at sharp dusk (18:00/6p.m.).
Navi have expected this summoning but he thought he would get about a week before it happens though instead it happened two days earlier.
Navi is ninety-nine percent sure that the death duel is going to be approved and although he is preparing well, he is not much worried about it. After all, he has no plans of dying anytime soon.
After thinking about it for a while, the Death duel is a sort of opportunity in a sense. An opportunity to get rid of a threat as cleanly as possible.
During these last four days, Navi has stuck to his familiar schedule though with some gaps. He had made it his mission to gather information about the families and close friends of the intruders and he had stuck to his goal.
Having no close friends and being infamous as a brutal young murderer definitely did not help him with his goal of getting information and so he gave up on the tactic of listening-in on day two.
Instead, Navi followed through a much more effective and simpler method..
Money.
If some students were desperate enough to kill and rob for a bit of cash then they would definitely not shy away from the opportunity of earning some money just by wagging their tongues to a possible 'Murderer'.
Unlike what people think(Including his dead home intruders), Navi isn't very rich.
Some people who know of his background may think that Navi is hiding quite the sum of wealth(since his mother is a retired and famous Geisha who worked for over Twenty-five years) but they are mostly wrong.
His mother did truly get a high severance pay of Seven hundred bronze pints but out of that, she had bought a house that's worth five hundred bronze pints and out of the rest, he had paid for a session long tier-2 martial package worth One hundred and twenty bronze pints!.
(NOTE: An average man's salary in the Outskirts is about Fifty bronze pints a year and this amount is mostly enough to support an average family of three members)
Adding these huge costs to all other expenses -before and after his mother's death- then Navi is left with a little above thirty-five bronze pints!.
For an orphaned twelve years old kid, he can be considered broke and miserable in the long-term yet despite this facts, Navi is never shy to dip his hands into his pockets when necessary.
Paying Five pints to three people, Navi was able to isolated them and hear information from three different sides before going off to compare them.
Using this method twice, Navi is able to pick out the truths and facts about the intruders close friends and family.
The beast-kin amongst the intruders has nobody around him who cares enough to do anything nasty cause he was abandoned by this mother and his father is: well.. a beast.
Anyways, due to the absurdity of the beaskkin's birth as well as his animalistic behaviour and looks, the beast-kin youth has no-one on his side.
Navi's first kill: the female he stabbed in front of his door turns out to be Marien Lee's sister.
Her name is Diane Lee and apart from Marien Lee who had already challenged him to a duel, she has no-one. Her only close friend is the female half-dwarf who he had also killed during their failed heist.
Speaking of the female half-dwarf, she is said to have lost her human mother at birth and her dwarfen father turned into a drunkard because of the loss.
He hangs about in the shady lower grounds of the Outskirts and hates his daughter to the bones. He probably doesn't even know that his daughter is still alive or rather,.. dead.
It's a miracle that the half-dwarf girl was alive long enough for Navi to kill her and honestly, Navi feels a bit from hearing a summary of her defiant story of survival.
How unfortunate,.. she just had to cross his lines!.
The hulky shield holder turned out to be Zain's(The half-dwarf's) boyfriend. Not a lot is known about his family but he is known to only care about his half-dwarf girl. They ate together, fought together and unfortunately,.. died together.
Well this is unapologetically fortunate for Navi as he has no worries of retaliation from the dead. The only person who makes him slightly worried is Troy,.. his ex-roommate.
Like fifty percent of kids in the Outskirts, he is apparently an orphan who solos through life but still, Navi is a bit worried about his side. One of the six people he had questioned had told him that Troy has once said that he had an half-sister.
For some reason, no-one knows who his half-sister is and Navi's best guess is that the half-siblings separated. They may have resentment instead of attachment to each other after their parents died.
Being the only glue that truly holds them together, the early loss of their parents might have severed their attachments.
Thinking of things in this very likely direction, Navi has nothing to worry about but still, his instincts seems to spike every time he brushes over this matter.
Maybe he is just being oversensitive.
Reviewing this matters in his heart, Navi soon makes his way to the Meditation halls for his morning classes.