Michael Stonereiz, college sophomore on the Battle Ball Varsity team, chugged along as he did his laps around the track oval. He went at a brisk clip, something he could keep up for a couple of hours and come out of it moderately tired rather than completely wiped out. It was needed since Battle Ball was an exhausting sport, and it required near inhuman levels of stamina to play the entire game rather than to rotate with reserve team members. As varsity, he needed the capability to play at least half of the play time to stay in Alpha team, which gave him a full scholarship instead of the partial ones given to the Beta and Charlie teams.

Well, not that he really needed the scholarship, but it was a point of pride not to rely on his family’s wealth if he could help it.

It was a brisk, Firesday morning, just past dawn in Trinity University, and it was only another cycle until the start of the Season of Fire. There had been a light shower earlier, but now, there was mist and fog across the track, giving him the illusion of solitude even if there were another dozen guys running alongside him.

At his side, one of the freshers, Evan Andrews, The younger man had bags under his eyes, cheeks slightly sunken, and clear signs of a hangover. That wasn’t much of a surprise considering everything he said yesterday evening, during the team’s after-practice hangout.

“Lilibeth dumped you?” one of the other team members, Jack Worthingham, had asked. “Dude, you’ve been bragging about having a willing sex toy since forever, what happened? You insult her, cheat on her, what?”

“I dunno!” Evan yelled. He had already consumed two beer bottles and was well on his way to finishing a third. “I dunno. She just suddenly said–hic–that she didn’t want anything to do with me. I mean, we’ve been rocky for a while now, but still…”

Michael had only been nursing his mug of beer in the common room, while the two freshers had been sitting on the bar. Still, breakup dramas always drew his morbid interest.

“How’d you get into a Lawson’s pants anyway? Most of them are snobs.”

“Grew up together…”

Michael stopped listening at that point. Lawson? It couldn’t be the Lawson-Daublins, right? Their blood was bluer than his family, but they travelled the same circles. Wasn’t there a rumour that one of their young misses left the coop?

He shrugged to himself, thinking that it really wasn’t his business, then kept drinking, all the while mulling over the upcoming game this Goldsday.

And so, the morning after, he was running while hungover. He wasn’t as bad as Evan, thankfully, since he didn’t indulge too much. He’s had a chance to sleep on things though, so given the chance now…

“Hey, Andrews.”

“…yeah?” Evan groaned.

“That Lilibeth who you dumped,” he said, twisting what he heard to feed the younger man’s ego, “What’s her full name?”

Evan didn’t look at him, but he visibly stiffened. “Lilibeth Lawson,” he said after a long moment. He didn’t say anything else and sped up his jogging.

Michael chuckled to himself. It was interesting news, but he wasn’t sure what to do with it. He wasn’t about to stalk the poor girl who, from all the evidence he could muster, had finally wised up to the cheating braggart’s antics.

‘Oh well, what comes will come.’

___________

The next morning, Yuriko woke up earlier than normal, several hours before dawn so she could train. She did so for a couple of hours, mainly using bodyweight exercises inside her home rather than sword training outside. Once it was five o’clock in the morning, she put on her training clothes and ran for an hour, returned to her apartment at six, ate a quick breakfast, and got ready for school.

She had two subjects today: Modern Astorian Literature 10, and Creative Writing 10. Both subjects were under the general education bracket and not part of her course’s majors. Then, physical education class for half an hour. She couldn’t quite believe that though, since it said Walking class. Really?

Upon closer inspection, it really was Walking for Fitness and involved brisk walking for the entire hour. A waste of time, but the semester was two-thirds of the way done anyway, and she shouldn’t waste the time and Torries invested.

On her way to the first class, she checked her emails when she heard a notification beep.

“Your application for job number…is tentatively accepted. Please come to Bernard Hall, Room 2003, thirty minutes before the allotted time…”

“Well, that’s sixty Torries done,” Yuriko muttered. “Hopefully.”

Modern Astorian Literature 10 was also in Palmer Hall, and the classroom was just as big as the one for Natural Sciences. None of Lilibeth’s friends were with her in this class, so she was surrounded by strangers while listening to the professor dissect a poem so finely that by the end, she couldn’t even remember the original piece. They’d moved to derivative works of the same author as well as those who followed along the same vein. The syllabus indicated that they’d be tackling the original author’s predecessors on Goldsday at the end of the school week.

She noticed more than a few of her neighbours staring at her every now and then, and she noticed that her control of her Mien had slipped slightly. It took a while to pull it back, but it was…harder. How…how long has it been since she indulged with Gwendith and Heron? Her body was craving their touch, and it was affecting her incarnation. Her true body was unbothered, having a better and firmer control of the Mien, or, more likely because her true body was purely her rather than the mishmash that was the incarnation body.

So…either she hurried up and purified herself, or she indulged in carnal pleasures to ease the ache in her loins.

Maybe Scarlett would be interested. She was certainly cute. The idle thought froze her for a long second before she chuckled to herself. Maybe and maybe not. She wasn’t even sure if she liked the small woman that way or if it was simply her body craving something. If it was the latter case, she might as well have settled for that boy’s ministrations instead.

Creative Writing 10 wasn’t held in Palmer Hall, but in the building right next to it. She wasn’t sure what its official name was, but it was also the College of Arts and Letters, so CAL for short. Nearly all higher-level literature classes were held there, though, oddly enough, not the ones that involved painting, sculpting, or other visual works. Those were held in Bernard Hall, or the College of Fine Arts.

She strolled into the CAL building and headed towards one of the smaller classrooms on the fifth floor. She was in an odd place for the class since most of the work she had to do had already been done by Lilibeth and submitted to the professor. Today was when the class would receive copies of the others’ works. She needed to read the stories they wrote, and by next Firesday, they would workshop the pieces. No Creative Writing class on Goldsday. They’d already gone through one round of submissions and workshops and this one would actually be the last piece for the semester. In other words, there was little for Yuriko to do other than read her classmates’ works and help make them better?

Sure enough, when she arrived in the classroom, it was just a class attendant standing guard while there were nearly twenty bundles of stories. Most of the works were only a few pages long, but there was one that was a hefty twenty pages. Quite voluminous for what was basically amateur work. Not that she had anything to stand on. She’d never written anything like that in her short life so far.

This should be interesting anyway, she thought to herself as she picked up her bundle and checked which work she was assigned to lead the discussion in. It was one of the shorter pieces, thankfully.

Some of her classmates stayed in the room to read and begin their critique, and since she had little else to do, she did the same. She read her assigned piece. It was a fictional story, a tragic piece about unrequited love where the leads perished after being forced apart. It read like a hurried tale, really, and a reflection of a better classic, which was undoubtedly what it was. She noticed her classmates scribbling their thoughts on the margins of the piece, so she did the same. She finished reading before her ten-minute mark and was able to finish her decidedly amateurish views before the class time ended.

Unfortunately, she didn’t own a backpack and wasn’t even carrying her duffel bag for her clothes since Walking for Fitness didn’t require her to change into anything else. She could remain in her uniform while strolling around, and most of the other attendees did the same.

The walk to the gymnasium, where all the phys ed classes were held, took less than five minutes for Yuriko, but then, she was walking quickly even if she was unhurried. She carried the packet pinned against her purse as it was too big to shove into her scooter’s storage bin too.

“If I had some extra, I should buy a bigger bag,” Yuriko muttered to herself. She arrived early in class and managed to read another story before the walking class started. As she expected, it was a rather layabout class. Since Scarlett, Jenna, and Nora were with her here, it wasn’t too boring and they chatted while they walked around the oval road that circumnavigated Trinity Park.

Afterwards, the four of them had a quick lunch at the cheap, but still satisfactory food court in Palmer Hall. Yuriko went back home to change into her casual clothes and her work uniform. She didn’t want to wear the Macy’s department store uniform while riding her scooter as the shortness of the skirt made it billow up while she was driving. Not that she minded, but she knew people would mind and force undue attention on her.

She wore a grey hoodie over her short, form-fitting, dark blue dress with had a hem that fell just a couple of inches below her hips. She wore a pair of black tights under it, of course, and Lilibeth’s sneakers. She reached the mall with half an hour to spare and was on the department store floor on the dot. She had been assigned to the toy department again, but the number of kids running around was fewer than yesterday.

She still picked up and returned the toys to their proper shelves, though today she spent more time assisting shoppers. She was mostly asked to bring copies of the display pieces since the ones on the shelves were a bit battered. She absently listened to gossip while she did her duties, but something caught her attention.

“…some kidnappings recently…”

“…disappearances, more like. Several missing persons reports, but there’s little to be done. Slums are growing…hate it…used to be better in my time…”

“…two new villains this week alone. AHRAct should be passed! We’ll find out who they are that way!”

“…agreed. But many in the House are resistant, calling it the start of segregation again.”

“…bah, cowards of paid for scum…”

Yuriko almost extended her perception to continue eavesdropping, but the two middle-aged ladies turned their conversation to the mid-afternoon dramas and while that was interesting, Yuriko thought she preferred watching it over hearing about it.

A flood of customers arrived close to the end of Yuriko’s shift and she was asked to do overtime for a couple of hours. The pay was about twenty-five percent more than the base pay, and every little bit helped. By the time she was done, it was already dark outside, though the sun had sun just an hour ago.

She changed back into her casual clothes and took her scooter to drive back to her apartment. She was halfway back when she caught a whiff of something familiar and disturbing.

Daemonfyre.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep