"Hey! Hey! Wait up-" Gyasi called out through the halls, chasing after a dark-haired figure roaming with their hands in their cream pant pockets.
Julius continued forward with rippleless steps, his gaze not even pulling an inch at the recognisable sound.
Gyasi reached the boy, spinning over until he stood, until he was planting himself in the boy's path.
Julius's gaze dropped an inch immediately.
He was a bit taller than the white-haired boy; his presence was like a pillar of solitude overlooking the approaching white olive branch.
What use was this to him currently? How would this boy possibly benefit from time with this chat?
"What?" Julius spoke in a voice like dry concrete in the dead of winter night.
Gyasi paused, a confused eyebrow raised at Julius's indifference.
"Dude...seriously, not even a thank you-" Gyasi began, only for his words to brush past Julius's shoulder as Julius immediately set forward to continue ahead of Gyasi.
Gyasi didn't even feel Julius slipping past, only recognising his movement, as smooth as white silk, from the corner of his vision.
His expression wasn't strung any particular way, as he turned to watch Julius glide down the halls with steps like a feline's.
"Y'know…Thurid was really worried." He called out once casually, not particularly attached to whether his voice reached Julius's ears or not.
However, the sight before Gyasi hadn't altered a bit.
Julius continued, his cream blazer, dark hair and smooth steps constructed this scene of distorted candlelight blurring down the halls, before blowing out of sight the moment he stirred past the corner.
"...Cool." Gyasi suddenly felt a voice behind him, almost distorted but incredibly faint, as if the sound itself wanted to deny the speaker's existence.
Gyasi's mild expression, like simplicity itself, scrunched with slight confusion at the boy behind him.
Down the hall by the cafeteria doors, opposite the path Julius took, stood a small student with thin, greyish-brown hair.
His blazer was nowhere to be seen, showing his skinny and pale form, worn by the large short-sleeved school shirt.
The moment the two made eye contact, like static clinging to skin, the boy's demeanour resisted.
His posture writhing, sinking in, his worried hazel eyes wobbling before he abruptly stirred back into the cafeteria.
Gyasi's bright eyes narrowed, his innocent indifference sculpted by a thought.
"Was that Wang Yi?"
…
Julius stalked the empty halls.
Eyes fixed to the end of the hall, yet impossibly tracking each door he passed.
He passed a door, stopped, rolling his eyes lazily over his shoulder.
Empty.
His body swept over, approaching the closed door and slipping through so silently it was as if he never even touched it.
The room was dark, cold, though still faint with lingering warmth from the class that most recently ended.
The space traded single desks for multiple black tables that stood on legs as high as a juvenile's height.
On top of each table stood a series of glass contraptions and devices Julius was far too familiar with.
Bottles as round as balls, with tubes as long as a finger, made from glass as clear as breath.
He approached a desk, withdrawing a handful of golden breaded pieces from his pocket.
He placed them on the desk, along with a handful of items he picked from the servery.
Two small, round jars, dark like a pot of scented candles, with metal caps.
Both were sized as wide as a palm, and as tall as an inch.
Each jar smelled suspiciously sweet, one slightly more spicier than the other.
Then Julius turned to a row of cabinets toward one side of the room, taking two types of leaf petals and a single herb with one green stem.
The herb had a series of green ends that split off with ominous, feathery, purple bulbs.
He gathered his items, so familiar with the recipe he hadn't even internally labelled them in his mind, only noting that it brought back certain memories.
Then he arrived back at the desk, beginning to prepare the ingredients.
He had to be fast; he couldn't miss the detention, but he also couldn't show up empty-handed.
Ten minutes later.
A genius haunted over a set of glass like a shadow clinging to form.
A high table sat, around waist level, housing contraptions meant for knowledge minds.
On the surface of the table, covering the smooth wood, was a maroon flat with cracks like an elephant's skin.
On the flat was a glass container, round, an arm's breadth.
A sparing amount of magenta Liquid delicately washed the glass, adding a fascinating shine to its transparency, amounting to around a finger's length.
Thick gold pieces, discoloured now, were submerged in the crystal purple liquid.
The fragrance, like sweet metal, now absorbed the sweetness of the biscuits and delicately coats them into something else.
The pieces looked soggy, and the surface of what resembled brick now looked like golden styrofoam.
Slight pieces broke off, the crumbs swimming in the murky magenta depths, continuing to break off before they eventually dissolved into nothingness.
Step, step, step.
Julius's ear twitched, eyelid spacing a fraction before he carefully strained the liquid from the container, pocketing the jar in the front pocket of his blazer so a slight bulge protruded out.
He took a single piece of tissue from a teacher's desk and placed it neatly between the pocket and the container.
C r e a k
"Julius?" A voice called out, educated and polite.
Eyes narrowed with the vision of a bird, behind rectangular lenses.
The figure, with fine, brown, feathered arms like wings, stood staring into the dim room.
"Mr Wickerson." Julius greeted in a plain voice, free from all things that could be identified as significant.
The birdman's eyes narrowed behind the glasses a tad.
"What are you doing here?" His voice, formal and clear, seemed confused.
Julius stood silently for a second.
He stood two steps away from the table he worked at, the table clear now, any evidence of his existence nothing more than an illusion.
"I was looking for my pen." He answered back easily, almost naturally, his voice never wavering from its plain tone.
"Oh." Mr Wickerson replied.
"Well-" He began, stepping completely into the room as he reached for his waistcoat, pulling from it a ballpoint pen.
"You left it in my class, I found it when I took a look at your work, I must say-" Just as he was about to bring up the magic formula theory that Julius drew in his class, Julius moved to take the pen.
"Thank you, Mr Wickerson." He said, moving gracefully without showing an inch of emotion on his face.
The only thing Mr Wickerson could've caught was the slight narrowing of Julius's eyes.
"Oh, you're welcome. Though Julius, I must ask, why don't you use a manae pensum?" Mr Wickerson asked right after, his confusion now replaced with gentle curiosity.
A manae pensum was a device used to transmit mana into a special written form, much like projecting three-dimensional lines.
Julius thought to himself in an inner voice, as clear as crystal, "He asks a lot of questions."
Julius had never attended a magic academy before, so the idea of using such an instrument hadn't occurred to him.
His first day had been interrupted by the headmaster finding fault with him, thus he hadn't learned of such a specific device until today.
Julius also was not capable of using such a device anyway, so there was no point in his having one.
Not to mention he was only experienced in writing formulas with a regular pen anyway, a manae pensum might only make it harder because it deviated from the method he knew.
Though actually, Julius being able to understand magic theory in regular ink was much more impressive than any magician's theory with any sort of device.
Though the lack of a manae pensum, such a normalised item in the academy, would of course raise questions like the one Mr Wickerson asked.
"I should make a case of my own to disguise my pen." The thought flashed behind Julius's rich muddy eyes, like the shine of steel.
In class hadn't put a lot of thought into it before, but he did know that people would naturally find it suspicious and that he had to do something about it.
Otherwise, he would keep facing questions like these, and that meant risking people realising the truth.
Julius Sparrow couldn't use a manae pensum.
If people found out Julius couldn't use mana, and therefore magic, any student could easily take advantage of his powerlessness.
Imagine if Adrian Zephyr knew Julius Sparrow was a mortal, going into this detention with him now, Julius Sparrow would be in danger.
That was why he was in this classroom now…
The pen was just one of many ways his secret could be revealed.
In the case of the pen, his reputation had grown that morning, too.
Everything had its positives, but everything also had its negatives.
With growing popularity, there was a chance people might've lent an ounce of attention and caught the regular pen in his hand.
Even if they hadn't caught it, they would eventually catch ink on his work just like Mr Wickerson did.
The only thing Julius could say was-
"I can't afford one-" In the same voice, like a clear and concise snap of a briefcase, leaving the room without saying another word.
Mr Wickerson blinked, taken aback, allowing Julius to slip past in that intangible slip of time.
Mr Wickerson turned his beak toward the cream figure already beyond the narrowing crack of the door.
He blinked again, digesting the unexpected answer.
Couldn't he afford a manae pensum?
Really?
It seemed impossible; every student had one.
Then Mr Wickerson's eyes narrowed with sudden thought.
"Is he…embarrassed? Is that why he left so fast..?"
Leaving the teacher to make his own conclusions.
Just as Julius Sparrow predicted he would…