“You may begin.”

Students around Yongguk began flipping the pages of their Biology paper. He sighed as he looked around the room. He watched the white and fine sand fall and gather itself with the rest that were already formed a heap at the bottom of a huge golden hourglass.

*Studying is definitely not for me, well that is at least for Biology.*

He tapped his pencil on the side of the oak table. He felt that time passed so slowly. He then begins to frantically flip through the papers. Feeling frustrated, he slammed the paper shut and lay down. He was disappointed in himself, he understood nothing in the paper. He knew that he was bright in his own ways but he just did not shine in Biology. He thought about how he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if he failed this year and could not progress to Year 2. That sinking feeling he would feel in his heart if everyone progressed to Year 2, everyone but him. He already felt bitter even though it hadn’t happen yet.

Yongguk then recalled Jaehyo’s words, about there being two different types of students; P&Ps and Guardians. The ideas of Guardians had always sparked something within Yongguk. He then remembered a group of senior boys that left the school due to a mission they had to complete. ‘CNBLUE’ was what they called themselves. The image of Jonghyun ran past Yongguk’s mind, he had no idea why but whenever he saw Jonghyun talking to Shishi he just felt a sudden urge to show Shishi a better him. Yongguk always wanted to direct her attention away from Jonghyun, he just couldn’t understand why. At times, he even felt that he was being immature and felt like a little kid. He smiled to himself and shook his head. He then noticed that a couple of professors were staring at him.

*Oh right, Biology is still going on. It just slipped my mind.*

He glanced to his left and right, and saw Tats, Jongup and a few students smiling widely, they were b with confidence. They enjoyed Biology, and that was something Yongguk could never understand. He realized that most people around him were already fast asleep. Seeing that, he felt affected by their sleepy presence. His eyelids started to get heavy as they drooped over his eyes, engulfing him in darkness.

-----

“Students you have fifteen minutes left.”

Surprised, Yongguk sat up, had he slept for that long? Time seemed to pass extremely fast. He stared at his blank paper, he wasn’t going to get a zero for this paper. It wasn’t like him to do so, not trying, it just wasn’t him. He at least had to write something. Hence, for the remaining amount of time, he crammed everything he had learned in class before he fell asleep into that blank sheet.

Without anything else to write, Yongguk glance flickered back to the hourglass, he watched the remaining sand at the top of the hourglass slide itself down and spill over the rest of the sand at the bottom. He watched it attentively till the last grain of sand touch the heap.

“Time’s up, no more writing.”                  

Yongguk glanced down at his paper, it wasn’t much but at least he had something on his paper.

One by one all the first years’ papers floated up in the air and to the front of the room. As each paper hit the desk, a number on the counter below the table top increased. ‘1.2.3.4…”

Soon the teachers nodded to one another and one of them finally said. “Students, you may leave.” The first years noisily left their seats, as the sound of dragging chairs across the floor filled the room. As the students filed out of the room, each one of them discussed about the paper.

-----

After a week of the same procedures, the first years finally finished their last paper and were exiting the room. Examinations were finally over, for now.

“We. Deserve a break.” Himchan panted heavily as if he ran a thousand miles.

“Yeah definitely, why don’t we all go wash up and meet at Elnaf? Sounds good?” Yongguk smiled, he was glad it was all over.

Yongguk and Himchan headed back to their room so did everyone else.

-----

“Elnaf?”

“Yeah, well I kind of want to know more about being a Guardian.”

“Woah, you’re already deciding what you wanna be in year 2?” Himchan seemed a little taken aback as he took fresh new clothes from the wardrobe.

“Yeah, there’s just something about it that makes me feel like I have to become one.”

“Was it because of that CNBLUE incident? And you saw your favourite idol?”

“Maybe and who would that be?”

“Me?” Himchan chuckles, “of course it’s me but besides me, Jonghyun don’t you just idolize him?” Himchan sarcastically remarks.

“Oh him, of course I do.” Yongguk laughs, “Yes it is because I want to be just like him, my idol.” Yongguk continues to play along. “What about you, thinking of becoming a Prince?”

“I already am.” He easily says as he fixes his hair in the bathroom mirror.

“You know what I mean.”

“Honestly speaking, I don’t know man. I haven’t exactly found my element yet.” He trailed off, “Be right back yeah?”

Yongguk nodded as he watched the bathroom door close behind him.

-----

Project Failure as Keke named them saw Professor Jeshire and Jaehyo sitting under a tree. They couldn’t help but feel that they were intruding them in some way, seeing Professor Jeshire leaning against Jaehyo and his arm around her shoulder, they couldn’t help but assume things.

They made their way slowly to them, hesitating their actions at each step. They were about to back again and come back later when they heard Professor Jeshire call out to them, “Hey!! How are you guys? I haven’t talked to you guys in ages, how were the papers guys?”

“We’re fine, how are you two?” Daehyun smiled. “Studying for Potions was a waste of time though.”

“We’re uhh-“ Jaehyo gave a side glance Professor Jeshire before replying, “We’re fine and why is that?” Jaehyo perked up.

“Well, the teachers basically trolled us.”

Professor Jeshire burst into laughter, “They what?”

“How?” Professor Jeshire grinned.

“Instead of giving us actual potion ingredients they gave us ingredients from the kitchen. We basically had to prepare a dish and were graded on how good our dishes tasted.”

“That is hilarious! I can’t believe that happened, now I get why studying about all the different ingredients was a waste of time. So who’s confident?”

“Of course these two.” Shishi pointed to Tats and Himchan. To which they just smiled.

“Ah the mothers of the group huh? I don’t think you guys would starve if you guys went on the exchange program then.”

“What exchange program?” They gave Professor Jeshire quizzical looks.

 “That was meant to be a secret, and if Headmaster Ziaco finds out you told them, he would probably torture you with his terrible body waves.”

“Oh no, tell them about it.” Professor Jeshire’s face fell as she shook her head. “I still remember when I lived with him and he sought advice from me, asking me for help with this girl he likes.” Jaehyo paused and closed his eyes, “he did body waves and asked if she would like it. Worst moment of my life he basically looked like a chicken, chicken Ziaco was what Kyung called him.” She patted his head, having sympathy for him to have seen that.

“Kyung?”

“Yes Kyung, you must’ve seen him if you went to the SkyTower right? No?” He asks seeing their blank faces, “Dude with curly orange hair?”

“OH!” They screamed in unison, “Him…” Some of them nodded.

“Why in the world are you all so in sync?” He eyed them suspiciously. To which they all shrugged, Jaehyo shook his head.

“Moving on, how were your other exams then?”

“Well for Charms we incorporated using two spells to extinguish two flames, Hexa and Solidify. It was really tricky to pour the water and then freeze it just as it touches the tip of the flame.” Jongup said in a matter-of-fact manner.

Yongguk then grunted, “I think I’m gonna fail Biology.”

“Oh well Biology is hard I can tell you that, Biology takes time to understand and plus you need to read A LOT.” Jaehyo chuckled. 

“Enough about exams, let’s talk about something else.” Keke bit her lip, she looked disappointed.

“Well how about we talk about our sister school?”

“We have a sister school?”

“Yeah, it’s called Alverine Academy, AA for short. That’s how I met Tar tar sauce. Get comfortable guys, its story time.” Professor Jeshire summoned a couple of pillows and they all lied down and stared up at the night sky.

It was night time and they hadn’t realized that they missed dinner.

“How did you do that?” Keke mumbled into her pillow.

“Oh honey, none of this is real. I’m an Illusionist. You’ll know more about my kind of guardian and maybe even become one in the future.” She winked.

“Now, I came from a really classy family I should say. My mother was so lady like. That I can’t help but think I’m adopted or something, I can’t understand why I’m so different from her. Back when I started my studies, my mother enrolled me in AA, AA was nothing like EA and for the first years we are taught etiquette, table manners, manners, how to behave properly and so on. This was to shape us to become brilliant Princes and Princesses, every student that came out of that school was always a P&P. We were of course taught these things on top of our usual lessons. My mother is a great woman that too graduated from AA and wanted me to follow her footsteps of becoming a top notch Princess. But as you can see, that didn’t happen.” She laughs with a tinge of sadness in it.  

“During my first year I met Miss Tarian, we realized how similar we were. We didn’t want to just follow blindly and carry on and out our families’ tradition, that wasn’t us. So at Year 2 we rebelled a lot, we did not like AA, at all. We sneaked out of the place pretty much every day. We just couldn’t stay cooped up in our respective rooms just studying, we couldn’t.”

“Wait, so you guys don’t have lessons after Year 1?”

“Nope, we were told to have self-disciple and to study everything on our own. The only time we ever saw other students apart from friends made in Year 1 was when we took our exams, where everyone of that year gathered in a room.”

“What about food then? Didn’t you guys have a Great Hall?” Daehyun asks.

“None of that, on weekends we were given only an hour to go out of school to buy groceries that’ll last us for a week or so. To which we had to cook our own meals in our respective rooms.” Professor Jeshire nodded her head as she saw Daehyun’s surprised face.

“So you can see why Tarian and I didn’t enjoy AA, which was why we were rebels.”

“Was it easy escape school then?” Innocent Jongup asked.

“Why? You wanna start escaping EA? I don’t think there’s a need though, considering how there’s so no curfew and you just get locked out of the castle without having to face any consequences.” Jaehyo teased.

“N-No I-I- just.” Jongup stuttered heavily making everyone laugh out loud, “you’re so innocent Jongup.”

“I cannot get enough of your cuteness.” Professor Jeshire sat up to pinch Jongup’s cheeks. Jongup just smiled.

“I love your smile, you don’t ever stop smiling do you?” Tats asked.

He nodded and continued to smile.

“Anyways enough of this cute angel,” Jongup blushed. “It was not easy to sneak in and out of school. Woah the amount of robots patrolling, was crazy. The moment you just come in their sight for like a second you’re toast. They would trigger an alarm, it feels like prison. Not that I’ve ever been in there before.” Professor Jeshire coughs, “Tarian and I got into so much trouble each time, but we didn’t back down. We still carried on rebelling, we were bad girls.” She laughs “But don’t be like us alright? It’s wrong!”

“So, AA was really high tech as compared to EA. If you wanted to enter AA, you needed a tag, which was issued to only students and staff. The tag registered you into the system and if the tag gets scanned twice, that means you left the building which also means you’re in big trouble. So the best way is to leave your tag in the room. And just climb over the gates. Wait, why am I telling you guys this? I shouldn’t be.” Professor Jeshire cleared unnecessarily.

“Yeah so… Long story short, on one of the rare days we had of getting out of school was to visit EA. We stayed in EA for about a week I think and Tarian and I did not want to leave. That’s when we both decided that we were going join EA immediately after we finished our studies in AA, so here we are. And we have never regretted in joining EA because this is where we belong, this is what we call home.”

They continue to chat till late in the night and indeed, EA was a magical place for everyone especially the first years, which had lots more to learn and experience as many adventures were to come. EA was home. 

Whoooo, hey guys it's been a while huh? Less than five months? Yeah, how has everyone been? :) I apologise for the long hiatus but I am back :) Kekekeke thanks for reading, commenting, subscribing and supporting! :DD!! Have a great Blocktober or day! :DD!!!