36 New Classmates

I had never seen a single tear from Luke before as I had never seen him ever close to crying. His blue eyes were gleaming from the tears forming in his eyes and he hugged me like he was making sure I was real.

"I'll talk about what happened after work," I whispered into his ear.

Luke nodded as he knew it was essential that we got all the points we needed from this assignment. There were only three more hours until our week at this company ended anyways. Since I knew what to do from working on Monday, we silently continued to work along with each other until the workday was over.

The man in a fancy business suit from the first day came up to us as we packed up our stuff to leave. "The work you two did was pretty impressive, so I will reward you with 150,000 points."

After he updated the points we had, we were free to leave.

While I formed a plan inside my head to tell Luke what happened, I found myself in Luke's house. I was in the familiar yellow wallpapered room where I was scolded when I went to the mall with Luke and I left him alone and made him worry about me.

I sat down in the armchair while fiddling with my fingers, "It wasn't intentional, I was going to take a stroll near the estate and come back after an hour," I started.

"But-" I gasped for air as I felt a choking sensation around my neck when I attempted to talk more about the event.

When I tried getting another word out, I started to cough unstoppably and I gave up trying to explain what happened.

"You know I'm not pretending to do this so I don't have to tell you about this, right?" I finally coughed the words to Luke.

Luke's stern expression quickly turned into a face full of worry and contemplation as he paced back and forth. Since I was finished with the conversation, I walked out of the room to my bedroom in Luke's house.

When I was sure that no one was watching, I tapped my wrist wishing for one light Memor to appear. Unfortunately, no Memors came out. I got disappointed and I hoped that I didn't get scammed for my money (even though the money was technically Luke's, not mine) and went to sleep soon after.

For the next few days, whenever I found myself alone, I tapped my tattooed wrist many times. But no Memors ever appeared. I sulked as I wanted a vacation more than ever as I anticipated more torture from studying to come.

"Rika!" Shelly jumped to hug me while I was paralyzed from surprise.

"I was worried about you when Luke secretly sent out a search party for you."

"What?" I spitted out.

"He only sent out the notice to close friends in our circle." Shelly tightly hugged me.

When I didn't respond, Shelly continued, "Even Alex was really worried for you. Since you were working at his company, he made his employees search for you near the area for three days before giving up."

When I recalled the nasty time flow in the other dimension, I simply responded, "It was nothing like a kidnapping. I just forgot to keep track of time."

I thought it would simply end there with my friends worried about me, but I was wrong.

"Welcome back from your assignments! I know some of you had some hardships in the first district so there will be no assignments in the first district anymore for middle school students as measures taken so certain incidents will never happen again." Daniel announced.

Wow. The school forbids any practical assignments in the first district after my supposedly "kidnapping". Apparently my 'incident' was a lot more serious than I thought it would be.

A few weeks later, Daniel came into the classroom with two children standing by the door. Up till now, my classmates had always remained the same. It was my close friends, Shelly and Ellen, and their respective partners Alex and Allan.

That's why I was excited when I heard about a new pair transferring into the school, we would have two new classmates joining us from the classes being rearranged. One disadvantage in extremely small classes was that it was more noticeable if you were drawing in your notebook during class or daydreaming.

I hoped that with two new classmates, the teachers wouldn't pay much attention to me. Up till now, their stabbing glares were mostly focused on me than teaching.

"Let's welcome Charles and his partner Miliana to our class. They used to be in the class right beside you so you may be already familiar with them, but this is a chance to get better along with them." Daniel announced.

Miliana shyly smiled while Charles waved to Allan.

"Now, we will have group assignments, but you cannot be with your partner as a new twist! When you find your groups, I will tell you the task." Daniel continued.

Ellen, with her motherly nature from taking care of Allan, asked Miliana, "Do you want to be partners?"

"Thank you for taking me," Miliana elegantly replied.

While I was watching that heartwarming scene, somehow everyone already had a partner. When I glared at Shelly, she mouthed 'Sorry, Allan begged me'.

Traitor! After standing alone, unable to find a partner, Daniel with his pitying gaze asked, "Who wants to be with Rika?"

The only person without a group hid away behind Alex and Luke, unwilling to move.

"How about you, Charles? You're also the only one without a group as well." Daniel suggested.

"Wait- . Come on Alex?" Charles turned to whine.

When Alex shook his head while he clung onto Luke harder than before. Giving up on Alex, Charles glanced at Allan like he was pleading for help. However, Allan quickly looked away as he latched onto Shelly's arm.

When no one else was willing to switch partners, Charles started begging, "Can I be alone then? I would rather do this alone than to be with Rika."

How rude!

"Hey! We're meeting after school tomorrow to start." Charles turned to me with no other choice with his arms crossed.

"Unfortunately, I have plans." I declined.

I made plans with Shelly and Ellen today to meet at a cafe tomorrow to welcome Miliana to our group.

"Well, cancel them." Charles rolled his eyes.

"Whatever," I walked away from Charles and thought how pitiful Miliana was to have Charles as her partner.

***

I cut a piece of my favorite strawberry shortcake as MIliana shyly started the conversation, "You know that you're really famous here Rika. I became a fan of you ever since you entered middle school."

"What? How?" I dropped my utensils.

"Well, you had the courage to skip class at the start of middle school." Miliana hesitantly replied.

Hmm. So skipping class was something major in the first district.

"Skipping school isn't that hard. You should do it too when you get too tired. It's not good to keep on working all the time. A human being needs occasional breaks as well!" I encouraged Miliana.

Shelly and Ellen strangely looked away before someone behind me whacked my head.

"Hey!" I yelled.

"Stop being a bad influence on my partner!" Charles shouted.

"Why are you even here anyway? Don't you have your own things to do?"

"Remember we decided to meet today for the project?" Charles said as if it was confirmed.

"I declined, Remember?" I had to hold myself from throwing a sharp fork into his smug face.

I stretched my arms to whack him in the face in the process when he continued to stand behind me.

"Oopps. Sorry, it seems that idiocy is not easy to fix." I taunted back.

Charles' face transitioned into a red tomato from the humiliation while he tried to compress his anger. Nobody had ever hit Charles before, not even his parents. His partner, Miliana was usually very obedient that she listened to almost everything he said.

Ellen and Shelly could sense the steam from Charles as they cautiously moved further away from the table.

"Just you wait, you brat-." He raised his arms.