Chapter 1
“Don’t stay up too late, okay!” I heard mom say from downstairs. I was sitting at my desk doing homework, it was late, about 11:00 PM, “Guess I’ll go to bed now”. I closed my laptop and turned off my light and got into bed. I fell asleep instantly, but when I woke up in the morning it felt different, the air smelled different, and it didn’t look anything like my room at all. There was a large bookshelf to the left of the room. I got up to check out the books, they ranged from general history books to something called Ki. I started to read one of the books about the thing called Ki when I heard a knock on the door, and a voice telling me that if I don’t get ready, we would be late. I didn’t know what we would be late for, since to me this was all new. Anyways I got ready and went outside where I met my first friend in this world named Okamaru. Walking through town we chatted, and even he could tell that something was off.
“You, Okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“You just don’t look as put together as you normally do. Did something happen?”.
We walked through the town, and I explained to him that I wasn’t from this world.
“I mean I guess it could be possible, but still… don’t go around claiming something like that.”
He seemed to believe me but also thought that it was a little bizarre. It was a strange experience walking through town, you could smell the air and the smell of fresh pastries from the bakeries wafting through the air, you could feel the ground underneath your feet. Part of me started to think I was just dreaming, I mean after all dreams can be incredibly life-like, but I quickly dismissed that thought as this all felt too real to be a dream. After a bit of walking, we had arrived at our destination, Omura Academy. As we got there the bell for midday rang and we were now officially considered late, but we were not the only ones, there was another student, and she would join us as we went into the opening ceremony. The three of us sat down but we were too late as we were spotted by one of the teachers, but they waited until the ceremony was over to talk to us. Anyways after the teacher was finished talking to us everyone was assigned to dorm rooms, but since we were late, we were the last ones to get assigned to a room. When it was our turn, they brought us to one of the downstairs areas and showed us to a door. The door was not very big, and we all thought that we were being punished with the worst room that the school had for being late. The teacher opened the door and handed me the key, we walked in, and I swear you could just see the relief on our faces as we saw the room. The room was actually quite big, with a full kitchen and living room (obviously not the kind I was used to). The teacher had shown us our own rooms inside the already huge dorm room. I turned to Okamaru and said, “how big is this room, I mean we are literally inside the thinnest stairs in the entire school.” he just looked at me and shrugged, but the teacher left, and we all just stayed in our rooms since we were tired from the long wait during the ceremony.
We woke up the next day and did the essentials, got dressed, and brushed our teeth. We had a little time before classes started for the day so me and Okamaru decided to go to our favorite Bakery for breakfast. The girl whose name I learned was, Rukia, decided to stay at the dorm and study, and told us to get her something at the bakery. We left and went to the bakery and arrived right as the cinnamon buns came out of the oven, as usual they smelled incredible. We got our breakfast and headed back to the dorm. On the way back Okamaru looked at me and said “you look better than you did yesterday”
“Really? I don’t feel any different.” I replied
“That’s what you think, yesterday you told me that you weren’t from this world, but now you’re acting like you have always lived here.”
“it’s that noticeable?”
″ Yeah, you even knew where our favorite bakery was.”
“Yeah, I mean if you had asked me yesterday, I couldn’t have told you where anything in town was” “. We got back to the dorm and gave Rukia her breakfast. After we ate, we quickly grabbed our bags and went to the courtyard.
This time we all made sure to arrive on time and made it before the 9:00 bells rang. The headmaster of the school divided us into three groups. One group for magic students only, one group for swordcraft students only and one for both. Rukia was only there for magic, and Okamaru was only there for Swordcraft, but I was there for both magic and swordcraft, so I stayed with the middle group, each group was given a number, magic was group 1, magic and swordcraft was group 2, and swordcraft was group 3. Groups 1 and 2 were instructed to head to the stands surrounding the courtyard while all the students in group 3 were given training swords for a duel (this would determine their place in the class). The headmaster looked up at the stands
“We require an additional student for the duel, are there any volunteers?”
seeing as there were not many students in group 2 and no one else raised their hand, I raised my hand so that the others could just watch.
“Thank you for volunteering, you will be the student that everyone in group 3 will be facing.”
I whispered to myself “why did I have to volunteer”
I walked down and as I walked by the headmaster whispered to me “don’t hold back.”
“don’t hold back? What does he mean by ``don’t hold back’’?”
I walked to the instructor, and he gave me my sword, as we waited for the duels to start Okamaru had noticed that the headmaster had said something to me “what did he say to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“The headmaster”
“He told me not to hold back, but I don’t know what he meant by that”
“I guess you wouldn’t, considering that your memory is a bit foggy”
“And you do”
“Let me fill you in on something Shoji, have you heard of the 4 great generals of the 4 kingdoms?”
“Yeah, I remember reading a bit about them yesterday. Why?”
“About 20 years ago they all banded together to bring down the old empire, while they were successful the unity between the 4 new kingdoms did not last long. The General of this kingdom is also your father.”
There was a pause, and then the headmaster started talking.
“We will now begin the duels; we also have a special guest today.”
The doors to the courtyard open, I don’t look to see who is coming, but I feel a hand on my head, and as anyone would be, I was annoyed.
“Hey there son.” I could hear everyone whispering in the background. “How long has it been? 2 years.”
The headmaster introduced the guest “I would like to welcome General Gaius.”
