Control Comes from Within

The following two classes were tame in comparison to the first one. The second class, literature, introduced the class to various forms of prose and poetry, improving reading comprehension, and analyzing other forms of literature such as books or plays. The more mundane tasks would also be covered, such as how to properly write a letter or official report, or properly filing various legal documents.

Our literature teacher was thankfully not a royal, but just an older noble gentleman. The class seemed at least a bit interesting, as it would refer me to more works of possibly decent entertainment.

The third class of the day was history and geography. The professor, a young noblewoman maybe in her thirties, summarized it in one sentence: ‘I’ll tell you the names and dates of things that happened, and I expect you to know ‘em all by the end of the year.’

At the very least, she was succinct. A trait that might not be the best fit for a subject requiring lengthy explanations, but, hey, who was I to question the hiring methods of the academy?

Finally, the last class of the day and the one I was looking forward to the most arrived:

Introduction to Magic.

Needless to say, I hoped that I could answer some of my burning questions here; if not, then at least I would be pointed in the right direction, or given a solid foundation to search by myself.

Typically, there was a few minutes’ break between classes for students or staff to reach their respective classrooms. The first three subjects were all taught in the arts and literature building, so my class simply stayed in the same room, as apparently, all first-years were handled that way.

The intro to magic class, obviously being magic themed, was held in one of the buildings dedicated solely to magic. It was a quick trip, and our class reached the correct classroom well before the start of the period.

However, our teacher was nowhere to be found.

So we waited.

And waited.

And eventually, some people couldn’t wait in silence any longer and started talking about who liked whom, and who had an engagement already, and had they seen this play. I tuned out all the chatter, none of which was directed at me.

I had made myself perfectly clear to everyone after I was accosted by the entire class after Lady Degrachaff spoke to me in the morning. I didn’t want to be bothered, and it seemed like some people took ‘bothered’ to mean spoken to at all. Whether people were being deliberately exclusionary or just taking my words at face value was up for debate.

Either way, I was basically alone for the first day.

The professor didn’t walk in until the class was half-over, and I was more than a bit surprised at his tardiness, and his state of…drunkenness?

Is this guy hungover? And he showed up to class like that? Or…is it possible this is all an illusion? Maybe he’s testing our magical perception or something like that?

He was at most in his mid-thirties, with something that looked an awful lot like dark tinted sunglasses covering his eyes. There was a magic spell visibly hovering around him, a pair of mini-tornadoes covering his ears. And he was holding a metal flask of some hot liquid, steam wafting off it.

He waved his hands, and instantly, the room was much darker. The class quieted down at the display of magic, and he approached the board at the front, writing his name with the chalk.

Without using his hands.

The chalk eventually spelled out ‘Lord Shuubert’ in huge looping letters, the professor sipping from his flask while that happened in the background.

After that, he…well, it wasn’t an introduction so much as a…request?

It was clear this was no magical illusion to test new students. He was truly hungover, and the stench attested to that.

“I’m assuming all of you are part of the new incoming class, here for Introduction to Magic, as quite frankly, I don’t care enough to go through the entire attendance roster and check. Today will be an unofficial break and I’ll start the coursework tomorrow, so for now, just shut up and be quiet. Study, make out, kill each other; I don’t care what you do, as long as you do it silently.”

And with that, he fell into his seat at the front and just laid there, unmoving.

Nobody did anything for the rest of the class. Nobody spoke or even whispered to each other. The professor, if that was the sleeping man in the front of the room, continued to sleep for the duration of the class, his snoring punctuating the silence occasionally.

The only interesting thing was that his spells continued to be active even after he fell asleep.

I doodled in the back of my notebook for the rest of the hour, until the class ended and everyone rushed out of the room as silently as possible, leaving the professor sleeping there alone.

I was torn on whether or not I should wake him up, but decided against it, not wanting to draw any more attention to myself.

The first day was an emotional…not rollercoaster….maybe waterfall? Whatever, it started high and got lower as the day progressed. The highs of the morning and the shock of the archduchess’ presence was matched by the waning enthusiasm of each successive teacher for the other subjects.

Overall, my first day at the academy averaged out to be relatively normal.

And, evidently, it turned out to be an indicator of how relaxed the classes would be.

For the rest of the first week, every professor was thorough in the subjects they covered. The first week of etiquette, for example, covered the broad differences between each noble tier. In literature, we were taught the proper way to write formal letters. History started off at the very beginning, the formation of the world and its continents, which was apparently millions of years ago.

And intro to magic, despite the laissez-faire attitude of the professor, was equally thorough, with the professor actively teaching, describing the known schools of magic and giving examples of spells in each category.

There were hours allotted for self-study every so often, and one of the teachers would just supervise the class as we reviewed the subject material.

Most of my teachers in the past either sped through the syllabus, covering everything at an insane pace so they had bragging rights and could plead for extra funding, or they moved at an excruciatingly slow, nearly glacial pace.

I had no idea the middle ground I was looking for would require me to go to another world. But the pace wasn’t the only thing I didn’t expect.

The school day was roughly four hours long, each class taking up an hour with a few minutes break in between. With the last class ending at 12:30 in the afternoon, the rest of the day was free. The archduchess explained that the schedule was set leniently for the first-years, to help them adapt to academy life, but from the second year onwards, there would be a total of six classes per day, instead of the four we had now.

Another environmental change I had to adjust to was that the week was longer than I was used to, six days of classes and the two weekend days off. The longer week was offset by the short duration of classes, so I viewed it as a net positive.

They didn’t even name their days of the week, just calling them first-day, second-day, etc. I vaguely remember Khime telling me that the world was young during his welcome speech, but I didn’t realize how young it was, despite the world itself being millions of years old, if their culture hadn’t progressed to that point yet. Even their months weren’t named, with people referring to them as the first month of summer, or the second month of spring, etc.

I was struck by the dissonance of the worlds I knew, both large and tiny changes here and there affecting me. There were no bells to announce the start or end of classes, and there were no cases of overt bullying that I could notice. Teachers and students could be found socializing after classes, and there were no textbooks to study from, the teachers apparently disseminating their class subjects without referencing source materials.

The library did prove somewhat useful in that regard, giving me context for some of the issues raised in class that I had no background knowledge of. But overall, it was limited in its utility. The library was divided by year, meaning the books on magic that I wanted to look at were only accessible to second-years or above.

At the end of every month, each class was tested on the subjects covered. Most tests were written, with short-answer or essay type questions. Some tests had a practical or verbal component. The etiquette test had a practical section where a student would act according to a situation presented by the professor, such as accidentally bumping into an old friend who was now a lower tier, or two commoners presenting a petition before a noble.

The practical section of the intro to magic test was easier in my opinion, as we only needed to state the effects of various spells, solely based on their name, and demonstrate proper hand gestures for some basic spells we were taught, such as the ‘flashlight’ or ‘clean drinking water’ spell.

Those weren’t their actual names, but it was more effective for me to remember them like that.

Eventually the result for the first month’s tests came out, and the teachers introduced us to the concept of points, enlightening me on the purpose of that little section of my student card I had unknowingly ignored for the past month.