Nick arrived at the spell creation club's building. Nick was about to enter the building when his phone rang.
RING RING RING RING
Nick took his phone out of his pocket and saw that he was receiving a call from someone with the caller ID Marsha Cassidy. Nick thought for a second and the image of a short woman with brown curly hair came to his mind.
(Oh, I haven't seen her or talked to her since the day of the last exam, I almost forgot about her. Why is she calling me now?)
Nick swiped his finger to answer the call and spoke:
"Hello, this is Nick Capitol."
The person on the other end replied to Nick's greeting quickly:
"Good afternoon Nick, this is Marsha Cassidy. Do you remember me, we exchanged numbers after visiting the dean's office a few months ago."
Nick replied:
"Yes, I remember you. What's going on, do you need me for something?"
Marsha was pleased that he remembered her as that will make their conversation less awkward.
"Well...My grandfather sent me this cool scroll that he got while he was visiting some rural areas in China. Most of my knowledge of magic tools doesn't involve scrolls because they are not so widely used anymore. I remembered that you can make magic scrolls and was wondering...if you don't mind could we meet up and discuss them, I would like to hear about your experiences in making them? Of course, in return I'll let you see the scroll that my grandfather sent me, you can even copy it if you want. I would also like to get your opinion on the quality of the scroll anyway."
Nick thought that talking to this woman might be interesting, he hadn't had too much interaction with people his age since coming to this academy and Marsha seemed genuinely interested in something cool that was magic related; more importantly, she didn't seem like the conceited and envious type that Nick was so wary of when it came to other Apprentice Magicians. Nick felt like he should meet up with her, if for nothing else, to see this Chinese scroll. Also, maybe this Marsha woman has some interesting things to say about magic.
"I'm okay with meeting up, how about we meet at the library in two hours?"
Marsha felt pleased with Nick's agreement.
"Yeah...It's great that you agree but why meet up at the library? Why don't you just come to my dorm room where we won't be disturbed?"
Nick was puzzled.
(What? You want a man your age that you barely know to come to your dorm room so that you and him can be alone? Is she drunk?)
"Ahhh...is that a good idea? Won't you feel weird being alone with me in your dorm room?"
Marsha wasn't sure what Nick was getting at.
"Huh, what's wrong with that? The school rules almost guarantees that you won't want to harm me and I don't see any problem with you being in my room."
Nick almost felt hurt.
(Is it that this woman doesn't see me as a hot blooded man, so she is not afraid that things will get 'weird' if I'm in her dorm room alone with her or is she just that innocent? Either way, I don't think that it's a good idea for me to be in her room alone with her.)
"Well...even if you don't have a problem with it, I have a problem with it. If you insist on meeting inside your room, we should just pretend that this conversation never happened."
Marsha felt that Nick's adamance was a little strange but tried to put her feet in his shoes, so to speak.
(Nick must not trust me enough yet since we haven't interacted much. I guess I jumped the gun in asking him to come to my room.)
"Hmmm...fine we'll do things your way and meet at the library. Shouldn't a gentle man be more willing to acquiesce to a lady's request. Girl's aren't going to like you with that my way or the high way attitude."
Nick felt that this woman was slightly 'cute'.
"I'm no gentleman and girls already don't like me anyway. Meet me at the entrance of the library in two hours. We'll have our meeting inside."
Marsha felt that this Nick was being a little cold but since she didn't have too much experience with men her age, she thought that his attitude wasn't all that peculiar.
"Okay Nick, see you in two hours."
Marsha hung up the phone. Nick proceeded into the club building and went to the spell creation club room. When he walked inside he saw Derek and Norman sitting at a desk speaking to each other and looking at documents. Lana was also in the club room looking at her own documents. Much of spell making involved writing, working out and assembling theoretical concepts and so most spell makers could usually be found working through large amounts of documents. Nick had not spoken to Lana since the last time she came to his room and she actively avoided speaking to him or even looking at him; Nick was fine with it though so long as she didn't do anything negative towards him. Norman looked away from Derek and the Documents for a moment in order to pay attention to Nick. He spoke:
"So it seems that you've finally done it, you've officially become an Apprentice Magician. Congratulations."
Norman got up from his seat to walk towards Nick. He stopped just a couple feet away from him and silently observed him for a while.
Nick felt awkward with Norman looking at him like a zoo animal so he spoke:
"Professor, I'm here to ask for more special papers, as well as, I'm planning to do some important work during the next few weeks and I'd rather not have to spend my time coming here to do tasks. Can you exempt me from them for another two months?"
Norman nodded his head once.
"I sense that you have formed your mindscape but I don't sense any magic energy coming from so you must not have carved your foundation laws into your mindscape yet so I'm assuming that you want to spend the next few weeks doing that. Why would doing that take so long?"
Nick didn't want to tell Norman too much so he said the bare minimum necessary to feed Norman's curiosity.
"I want to properly analyze the set of foundation laws that I have and make preparations before I engrave them into my mindscape. I don't have anyone's support so I feel that doing these things are necessary."
Norman nodded his head again.
"Well it just so happens that I will be doing some important research during the next few weeks and I won't be coming to the club room much. I've already asked Derek and Lana to help me out in order for them to gain additional experience and they've agreed to act as my assistants; I was going to ask you as well but since you clearly have other plans, then I won't bother. You don't have to come to the club room for the next two months or do any tasks but let me tell you, I am only cutting you so much slack because it's your first year and you are just getting your feet wet. During your second year, you will absolutely have to do tasks for this club or I will kick you out. Do you understand?"
Nick felt no surprise at what Norman said and replied:
"Yes, I understand professor. Now, about those special papers..."
Norman raised his hand and a stack of scroll writing papers appeared on the desk beside Nick. Nick said thank you and placed them in his backpack. After that, Norman went back to sitting with Derek. Derek looked at Nick before diving into his documents when Norman returned and said listlessly:
"Congratulations on becoming an Apprentice Magician. In the future, if you have any questions, It's okay to ask me."
After saying this he returned to speaking with Norman. Lana also looked at Nick and Nick looked at her. Both look at each other for about a minute, saying nothing.
Lana was the first one to give in to the awkwardness and spoke:
"Congratulations."
Nick replied without a change in his plain expression:
"Thanks."
With that, Lana started looking at her documents and seemed to ignore Nick once again. Nick left he spell creation club room and made his way to the library. When Nick got to the library, there was still about thirty minutes before the agreed meet up time so he decided that he would wait by the statues at he door entrance for Marsha to show up. When he got to the two statues, however, he saw a short woman with brown curly hair, wearing a pair of jeans shorts and a baseball shirt screaming at one of the statues:
"Come on, how do you guys work. Are you actual magical creatures or some kind of artificial life created using magic tools. I'm not leaving this entrance until I get an answer!"
Nick looked at the scene with his brows raised.
"..."
(This woman really is weird.)
Nick smiled.