Chapter 245 - Making a friend
The morning sun had arrived and it was time for Ray to get ready for his classes. As he woke up and looked around him, he felt unfamiliar with the room. Roland was clearly a place of luxury with top of the line furniture everywhere. It was something Ray couldn't get used to living his whole human life in a village and then at Avrion.
It was the morning rush so most students got out at the same time in the morning to grab some food at the canteen. Van was still lying there in his sleep, so Ray decided to go out on his own. As he closed the room's door behind him and looked up.
He noticed that everyone was looking at him. If it wasn't because of Ray's super hearing he would have thought it was just because he was the new kid but it wasn't.
"Hey did he just come out of that room?"
"Does that mean he's sharing a room with the freak?"
"What terrible luck."
The situation was worse than Ray thought. For the students to act like this just because he was sharing a room with a student. As Ray walked throughout the school it seemed like nearly all the students were already talking about it. The news had spread around fast.
While walking down the hallway. Max suddenly spotted Ray and pulled him away from everyone and headed to one of the empty storage rooms where no one could hear or see what the two of them were talking about.
"Hey Nes, I heard that you're sharing rooms with Van, is it true?" Max asked.
"Yeah, what's so wrong about that?"
Max's face suddenly dropped.
"This is bad, maybe I should have explained to you yesterday, you have to change your room, if the upper clansmen find out you're associated with Van, they will target you as well. "
"For such a petty reason like that, if they want to come to attack me for a reason like that, then so be it," Ray replied.
Again, Max's face was beginning to look like a ghost. He was trying his best to explain to Ray but it looked like Ray was unafraid. Max could only assume it was because he was new at the academy. He didn't know how scary these people were.
"Look, let me explain…" As Max was about to say something, he suddenly stopped midsentence as he saw a shadow standing behind Ray just behind a pile of boxes.
"Ahh!" Max cried like a little girl.
As the person stepped forward, they noticed who it was. It was Van, he had been in the storage room with them the whole time while the two of them were discussing things.
"What the, he was here the whole time?" Ray thought.
It was quite difficult for Ray to sense things these days. He realised that he had become too reliant on his dragon eyes to tell him where and if people were somewhere. But now he didn't have the dragon eyes anymore it was like he had lost another sense of his.
As Van moved from the pile of boxes, he continued to walk towards the door without saying a word to the two of them.
"Hey, Van." As soon as Ray said those words to call out to him, Max immediately pulled on Ray's hand to stop him.
"Hey what are you doing, that's the freak of Roland." Max said, "I'm telling you, you will be in trouble if you get involved with him".
But Ray decided to ignore his words. He knew how Van must have felt being called all these names inside the academy. How to be treated as an outcast.
"Hey, why don't me and you talk for a bit," Ray asked. Hoping he could find out what Van was like.
"No thanks," Van said as he continued to walk off.
For some reason, Van's attitude annoyed Ray a little. He wasn't used to people not listening to him these days.
"Arghh what are you doing?" Max said annoyed. "Remember when I told you not to bother the upperclassmen and specially to look out for the student named Blake. Well, Blake has personally made Van his target."
"But why, would could have happened last year that made the whole school react like this?"
Even Ray had never experienced something this drastic at his time at Avrion.
"The reason why?" Max said, "the truth is… I don't know."
"Useless," Ray said annoyed as he tried walking away.
"Wait, I mean of course I know something but I'll sound crazy," Max explained. "Long before the whole school got involved, Blake for some reason had already made Van his target but the students decided to ignore it like everything else that happens at school. But then everything started to change when an incident happened last year, I don't know the whole thing but in one of the training hall's they said he snapped and turned into a vicious creature badly hurting some of the other students. At the time classes were completely cancelled as they tried to investigate what happened? Like I said I don't know the whole details but these are the rumours."
"He transformed?" Ray thought, the way Max had described it, it sounded like something similar to what Jack was able to do, with changing into a werewolf but there weren't many types like that in this world. Where the rumours juts over exaggerated?
"So what are you going to do?" Ray asked, "Are you going to start avoiding me like everyone else?"
Max nervously smiled, he couldn't help but think Ray was a little crazy but something was attracting him to this person and he didn't know why.
As the two of them left the storage room and started to head for class, they noticed that the students were still looking at both of them more than ever. It was as much attention as Ray had received yesterday but the thought and words seemed to all be negative.
When the two of them entered the classroom, Ray could see Van sitting on his own at the back of the class with the two empty seats by either side.
When Ray looked at Van's lonely face, he felt a deep feeling of familiarity. Even though Van would probably be able to solve all his problems by using his real name, he chose not to. So why didn't Van choose to do anything?
Well, there was only one way to find out.
The whole class was stunned by Ray's next action as he went to sit by the empty seat by Van's side and Max by the other. Although Max held both his hands on his head, wondering just what on earth had he gotten himself into.