The hall was silent as Julius stood an arm's length from Nagiri.
Everything had happened so fast: from Fenrir's transformation to the bite to Thurid's life-saving de-escalation.
Now the only sound in the hall was the dripping of blood from Julius's sleeve.
Nagiri held her breath as she watched with an uneasy expression.
Julius's sleeve was previously dressed in a cream fabric, now stained a darkening red, with jagged lines where the fabric was torn.
In the gaps of the open fabric, one could see a pattern on the skin like torn-up carpet, with multiple deep imprints in the flesh that were hard to see cause of the blood.
From this sight, one could imagine the pain!
Julius Sparrow, however, stood like an image in place of someone else, a lack of reaction as if this bloody sight were special effects.
This shook Nagiri up even more, between a general anxiety toward people, whilst subconsciously dreading the sight and what the sight indicated.
But this boy had shoved Nagiri earlier before Fenrir approached.
No matter what his intentions were, Nagiri was still protected because of it.
Not to mention earlier when Julius gave Fenrir a good punch and a few good kicks to go with it.
Nagiri was too kind to relish the beating, but plenty of others would've seen it as revenge if they had been in her shoes.
Regardless, even if Julius said he had his own intentions, one also had to see that Julius had also intervened to stop Fenrir's bullying of Nagiri.
Looking at this boy now, like a ghost under moonlight, like a spectre that shouldn't have even existed, like blank paper, Nagiri felt she had to say something.
Her hands unconsciously twisted the fabric of her skirt into a knot, her gaze resisting the urge to look down.
With an enormous guilt suddenly breaching her stomach at the thought of it all, all of it, she shamelessly welled up the courage to utter two words.
"T-Thank you." The words came out strained and shaky, like she was trying not to sob right then and there.
She wobbled for a moment, as if facing some drawback, as if saying those words were an admission of something far darker than gratitude.
She couldn't spend any more strength; her gaze fell to the linoleum flooring of the hallway, unable to meet his dark eyes or anyone's.
"I didn't do it for you." The voice was plain, simple, indifferent.
She only saw two pairs of black shoes silently step out of her sight.
...
Julius reached the infirmary door a couple of halls later, rapping his knuckles softly against the door.
"Come in!" A bubbly voice greeted him as Julius pulled the door handle and stepped inside.
The space had white walls with desks and shelves arranged around them.
At the end of the room was a desk against the wall, where a window revealed the outside.
A woman stood up from this desk, dressed in a long white coat like a lab coat.
This was Miss Hestia, the school nurse.
Her hair held a series of golden-yellow snakes, like a headful of slithering ropes.
Around her buttermilk skin, she had shiny obsidian scales trimming her cheekbones and temple.
Her expression was as bright as the sun upon seeing Julius, vanishing as quickly as it came as her eyes glanced just a little bit lower at his bloody arm.
Her face paled like a ghost, and she immediately rushed over to heal the wound, injecting her midnight blue mist into his body via snake bites, acting almost like a mana transfusion.
Her mana was slow and encroached on Julius's limb; Julius didn't feel the mana, only the gentle pinch of the snake bites.
The moment her magic manifested, Julius could feel his flesh repairing itself, an intense itchy feeling right where the flesh mended itself.
Though the look on Julius's face made it seem like he was unbothered, like being blown by a soft breeze.
"These are teeth marks; you got into another fight?" Miss Hestia questioned gently with open curiosity and a slight worry, her concentration split between healing and talking.
Julius remained silent and uncaring toward the small talk, and it only added to the nurse's worry.
It wasn't a worry about Julius's safety, but rather others' safety.
Julius's presence, to Miss Hestia, was like a ghost from her past; she couldn't help but inwardly associate Julius with old memories.
Thus, besides the student's safety, she also wanted to monitor his well-being.
But this was truly humorous! A person like Julius Sparrow- his well-being? You would have a better time asking a gravestone!
"The headmaster won't be pleased." She mentioned lightly, without any heat to it.
Then Julius finally spoke.
"I have a feeling he'll be just fine." Julius slipped the words through, passing.
Such casual words, yet Miss Hestia could feel a meaning to them that she did not understand, like noticing a person in the dark but not being able to tell if the person was a man or woman, old or young.
This caused a mild anxiety to well up in her heart, not particularly because of Julius, but rather because of the memories that surfaced when she was around him.
"What?" She questioned it on the spot, curiosity present, but now something else too, something uncertain.
But how could Julius tell her that the hydra detention went horribly wrong- the one the headmaster had personally sent them both to, and if not for Julius, the son of Zeus would be hydra food!
No, rather, when Adrian went to inform the headmaster yesterday, Julius was certain that Mr Ignis would rather no one found out; thus, Julius had leverage.
What did leverage mean to Julius Sparrow? It meant an opportunity to exploit; it was the knife he used to cut all his enemies at their weakest spots.
Julius already knew that Mr Ignis wouldn't find trouble for him; he would want to avoid angering Julius and having him leak anything.
If anything, now that Mr Ignis understood Julius was trouble, he would rather avoid him in general, as if sensing Julius might use this as an opportunity to blackmail Mr Ignis.
Thus, Julius could only say, "Just a hunch."
But this was worse than a direct answer! It only made Miss Hestia's heart heavier.
With a hiss, the snakes loosened their hold on Julius's arm, retracting themselves and settling into waves on Miss Hestia's head.
Julius sleeves were still stained, but through the torn fabric, one could see the healthy skin underneath.
"There, all better." Miss Hestia smiled as she released Julius.
Julius took the moment to clench his fist, tensing his arm, like a customer inspecting the quality of goods.
When he saw that all was well, he nodded, satisfied with the work, and left without another word.
When Miss Hestia tried to speak, he was already gone; after all, he was technically late for class.
...
"Alright class, time is up, please hand in your tests." Mrs Hatch ordered as she tapped an empty hourglass on her desk at the front of the classroom.
The hourglass was brown, with four wooden columns to hold the piece together.
Unlike normal hourglasses, the sand in this one disappeared when it passed from one glass bulb to the next.
This was, of course, not a regular hourglass, but an artefact, an item imbued with magic.
Artefacts were a common part of the magic world; some were more common than others, while some were like masterpieces, capable of unfathomable power and were of extreme value.
Even the manae pensum the students used was technically an artefact, a pentagonal prism-shaped crystal device that turned mana into a glowing three-dimensional line used for drawing and writing, most commonly used to draft magic theory and magic formulas.
Of course, its use was so mild compared to other artefacts, which made it less valuable and thus easier to acquire.
In front of all the students, apart from one, was a stack of paper clipped together at one corner with a staple.
The test involved plenty of tasks and questions, like drawing formulas the students had previously gone over in class, and questions about how magic works, and even about magical beasts.
All the students lifted their manae pensum from their papers; some sighed in relief, all of them closing their papers and passing them to the desk in front of them.
"Ahhh, that was so boring." Thurid sighed like she could exhale the boredom itself.
"Hehe, Julius, too bad you were late; I would've made fun of your bad score if you were allowed to take the test." Thurid looked beside her at a young man with dark hair and eyes like a tiger.
His expression was calm in the face of Thurid's banter, not even shifting an inch; unlike the rest of the students, he had a ballpoint pen in his hand.
He had no care for not taking the test; if anything, it served as the perfect excuse to not need a manae pensum.
Why did Julius need an excuse for not using a pensum manae?
Because he had no mana! He was a mortal, and more than that, without his knowledge, he had no aperture!
All life contained a trace of mana, and most living beings contained a pocket of space containing mana referred to as an aperture or a veil.
Julius Sparrow was an anomaly; he simply did not have it.
He did not even know this himself; he had just assumed that, like the rest of humankind, he did not contain enough mana to be able to use any of it.
Thus, not participating in the test meant he could use a regular pen without suspicion under the excuse of taking "notes."
At the moment, he was drawing some pattern; if Mr Wickerson were here, he would've recognised this drawing.
It was a magic formula, above rank 5 at least, some type of advancement of the star-shaped rank 1 formula, fire magic.