37 Disturbance

I immediately placed a barrier around myself layered with octagonal patterns. It solidified like guerilla glass as Charles ended up punching its walls. I smiled in victory as his fists increasingly became bruised with pink, raw skin.

Hooray for unlimited mana! This invisible barrier would last as long as I could keep my concentration up. I smiled again at the struggling Charles as he panted from physical exhaustion. I sliced another piece of my cake and enjoyed the other sweets.

When I finished enjoying my cake, I looked up to see Miliana hiding behind Shelly and Ellen. Charles was now sitting in the table beside us and gave up on penetrating my barrier.

"Rika, we're fine if you leave early today, so you can work on your project since Charles seems very intent on starting it today." Ellen attempted to mediate the situation.

However, I was going to show Charles that he could not order me the same way he treated Miliana. He needed to know that he could not treat people that way.

"Nah. I'm going to take a nap. I'm full after eating all that cake." I stood up and waved good-bye.

"Wait-" Charles panted.

I walked towards my dorm room and looked back to see if anyone was behind me. Thankfully, Charles looked like he was still at that café recovering from his broken pride. Unfortunately, I ran into Luke and Alex on my way to my room. I quickly turned around to get to the room with another route.

"Rika!" Luke greeted me.

"Oh, hey Luke." I groaned.

"What are you doing here? I thought Charles went to go find you." Luke continued.

"Well, I did meet Charles and now I'm going back to our dorm since we've already discussed what we're going to do" I lied flawlessly.

If everything ended there, my life would be pleasant. But of course, that couldn't happen. Just when I finished my lie, Charles ran towards me around the other corner.

"Rika! Stop right... ther..e" Charles panted.

Well, it was my mistake, I should have run as soon as I ran into Luke and Alex.

"Well, I better get going now. Bye Luke." I attempted to escape from this situation.

Alex grabbed my wrist to stop me from running away. I glared at him to let go and tried to pull away from his tight grip.

"Alex, you really better let me go," I warned him.

"Charles, I know how you feel, you can talk to Rika now," Alex responded to Charles.

Charles started complaining immediately, "Rika hit me in the head so she could run away from doing the project with me."

"Wait. Stop distorting things. I only hit you in the head because you whacked my head first." I refuted back.

Luke started to smile eerily, "Is it true that you hit Rika first?"

"I only did it because she would not listen to me!" Charles whined.

However, I soon woke up from the loud pacing of heavy footsteps outside my room. What else did Charles want from me now? I opened the door to see Charles' face flushed with anger and embarrassment.

"I apologize I acted too aggressively while I was trying to do the project with you. Would you forgive me?" Charles asked reluctantly while bowing his head.

I wanted to get rid of the loud noise outside my room to continue my nap. Maybe since I was only half-awake, I accidentally slammed the door right back at his face.

"Hey! You're supposed to say I forgive you and let's work on it together now!" Charles yelled loudly in front of my door.

I opened the door again and yelled, "Quiet! You woke me up during my nap with your loud footsteps! If you want to be forgiven, then do it after five hours from now."

With great irritation, I slammed the door even louder than the first time. Poor Miliana to have Charles as her partner! I hoped Charles would fix his annoying personality soon.

After slamming the door in front of Charles several times, he never bothered me for the rest of the week.

"Rika! Hey Rika!" Ellen waved her hand in front of my face.

"Rika, you're blanking out again," Shelly commented while laughing.

"What?" I mumbled back.

Shelly and Ellen exchanged gazes. "We don't see you with Charles nowadays, isn't the project due soon?" Shelly asked with concern.

"Oh, about that, isn't it due tomorrow morning? Maybe I'll start it today?"

Shelly gasped and Ellen glanced down towards the ground.

"We heard what happened between you and Charles but I think he really did try to apologize to you in his own way although he does have his own faults." Ellen smiled while trying to defend Charles.

"Now that I think about it, I did see Charles working on something really hard alone in the library for the past week that he came to class with really dark circles under his eyes," Shelly recalled.

I understood Ellen and Shelly were telling me that Charles was working on the project alone and asking me to forgive him as the better person since he tried to apologize.

"At first, I really didn't like Charles after how he behaved around you. But, he just seemed really pitiful being alone all the time." Ellen added.

"Doesn't he have Alex and Luke to hang out with?" I asked curiously.

"That's the thing, ever since the day of that incident, Luke and Alex never talked to Charles again," Ellen replied.

And that meant Charles was alone this entire time. Usually, partners hung out separately from each other since partners were almost always forced to be together during class time, inside the dorms, and other events. It was an unusual case seeing groups of both genders hanging out with each other without their partner as it could be seen as having an 'affair' of some sort from Shelly's words.

Although, this was not the reason I spent time with Shelly and Ellen rather than Alex and Allan. Spending time with Shelly and Ellen was truly better than Luke and his friends that liked to study in their spare time rather than truly having fun.

"Ok, fine. I'll talk to him during the break." I harrumphed.

I walked to the empty library to find Charles all alone after leaving Shelly and Ellen. Charles looked terrible. He had dull amber eyes with large dark bags underneath with skin that lost its brightness from when I last saw him.

"What do you want from me?" He scowled.

"I'm not here to apologize. But, I did want to help on the project to do my part." I stiffly replied.

I was not going to apologize to him when he made a ruckus in front of my room because he did not get what he wanted when he whacked my head first.

"It's fine, I don't need your help, I'm almost finished anyways." Charles stubbornly answered.

"I'm trying to make amends here." I gritted my teeth.

"It's all your fault anyway," Charles mumbled.

Well, if saying things calmly weren't going to get through to him, I guessed another place where we could truly talk was the best next answer. I opened a teleportation gate and pushed Charles into the circle before he had a chance to even respond.

The hover bus was as empty as last time. I looked around to see the large cushy interior and proper windows that showed the scenery outside. Good. This bus was an actual bus and not a bus leading to another dimension.

"What have you done?" Charles looked both mad and fearful.

"We're on the bus since I thought this was a more appropriate place to have a conversation."

"You do know we're not allowed to ever be off-campus without permission, right? Do you know what could happen to us?" Charles replied with a slight bit of panic present in his voice.

"Oh please, then I'll just teleport us back to that library." I tried to open another teleportation gate to see it didn't work.

Huh? Why was it not working all of a sudden? I only brought Charles to the hover bus that had the school as one of its stops. It was a good place to have a conversation where we could yell at each other a bit while not attracting any attention.

"Why aren't you opening that gate?" Charles mocked me.

"It's not working." My voice wavered.

"What do you mean it's not working?" He sneered, not grasping my serious tone.

I tried opening the teleportation gate several times again to see it fail. It was really strange, I learned in class that the teleportation gate would work up to the fourth district when Daniel yelled the fact while glaring at me as usual.

"I'm not joking. It's really not working!" I yelled.

Charles' face quickly changed from trying to get back at me to horrendous fear.

"You try!"

Charles also tried to open a teleportation gate. He initially looked surprised and had a hint of panic in his actions, but his body started to tremble with more failed attempts.

In disbelief, Charles looked outside the window as his face slowly looked soulless.

"Please tell me what I'm seeing outside the window is not true."

I never did pay attention to what was truly outside the window. I looked outside the window to see a land full of snow with signs of flame and tents far out in the distance.

"Where the heck are we Rika?" Charles trembled.