98 Birthday 3

The room exploded with a loud boom before I fainted.

When I opened my eyes, Shelly held up a protective barrier with her mana as Ellen tried to shake me awake.

The entire dorm building was in shambles. Some parts of the room was swallowed up by the fire from the candles.

The fire danced to present a play of a frog turning into a prince. The fire mimicked the expressions of a lovely princess who became enthralled by the prince who used to be a frog.

I heard a faint hum of a sweet lullaby ringing in my ears as if it was desperately trying to lull someone to sleep.

There was glitter and petals of flowers made from fire that drifted in the air as the wind from one of the candles kept them afloat.

The ceiling fell down to show a beautiful night sky filled with brilliant stars populating the wide space of darkness.

The fire sparkled colours of red, blue and orange as it carried onto the perfect green grass fields as it escaped the building.

Was I dreaming? The scene in front of me resembled a wonderful apocalypse as the fire spreading out was beautiful but tragic.

"We should get out of this building," Ellen supported me as Shelly kept her barrier up.

Shelly concentrated on adding more defences to her barrier as she calculated where to add more mana.

Thankfully, the other students did the same as they protected themselves by forming a barrier.

Fortunately, it was only the middle school section of the campus that was filled by the raging fire.

"Go get more teachers!" Daniel yelled at the students as he used mana to try to put out the spreading fire.

However, Daniel's spell was quickly turned useless as the fire was not an ordinary fire. Fire that was fueled by mana would be unstoppable unless the spellcaster was dead, ran out of mana or decided to cancel the spell.

That was the reason why there were no big fires that spread like wildfire in the first district. No one had enough mana to cause a catastrophe.

'How I wish the school was destroyed to go back to the third district,' I had always unconsciously thought in my mind.

Maybe my strong urge to escape from the school had caused the fire to uncontrollably damage only the middle school section of the large campus.

When one of the barriers broke from the student beside me, the student screamed from fear, "I don't want to die today!"

The student cried as she could not summon enough mana to create another barrier.

She desperately chanted more spells as another kind student let her inside their barrier.

I instantly felt guilty as I never intended for this scene to happen.

'Put the fire out immediately!' I thought as I visualized everything going back to normal before the disaster happened.

The fire had immediately disappeared as all the students and teachers glanced at each other in confusion.

However, the building remained in ruins from the fire.

"I will make sure to investigate the reason for this incident," Daniel tried to assure the students as he promised to find the culprits.

Shelly, Ellen, and I instantly ran back to my room to get rid of the evidence.

Who knew what the consequences would be if they discovered the cause of the fire!

I knew it would be incomparable to the previous incidents where I went to the dean's office to get punished.

Unfortunately, both Luke and Alex held the burnt crystal candles in their hands in my torn down room.

I hid behind Ellen as Shelly avoided the gazes of both Luke and Alex as she stared at the floor.

"Buying candles?" Alex questioned me as he gripped one of the candles tightly enough to break it in half.

I didn't answer Alex as I trembled while gripping onto the back of Ellen's pyjamas.

"Rika is not from the first district, so she didn't know that she wasn't supposed to light up all the candles at once," Ellen tried to defend me.

I nodded my head even though I knew it was a pathetic excuse.

I knew that not knowing didn't excuse that I burned down the entire dorm and endangered the lives of other people.

"Where did you get these toys from?" Luke scarily asked me.

"From the shopping mall," Shelly answered for me as her voice staggered into silence.

I was too scared to face both Luke and Alex as they focused most of their attention on me rather than Ellen and Shelly.

"Who would think those cheap crystal candles would cause this?" Ellen confessed under the pressure while gesturing to the ruins.

I couldn't let Shelly and Ellen cover for me anymore. I possessed the most amount of blame from the three of us as I was the one to light up all the candles.

"I lit up those candles to celebrate my birthday," I cried as I confessed my mistake.

My legs collapsed as I broke under the intense pressuring stares from both Luke and Alex.

"I put them all on a cake and lit them all up at the same time because that's what we do in the third district," I revealed one of the traditions from my past life.