"Brother..." I sprawled miserably across the desk, smearing my cheek against the wood. "I'm bored. Brothe-e-er. Brother..."

  He didn't even turn around. He sat perfectly straight, methodically scribbling something in his notebook. Nerd.

  "What are we even doing here?" I groaned. "Why waste time on this tedious nonsense? It's so boring."

  My brother finally smiled, still not looking up from his work. "Not everyone is a genius like you, little sister. Bear with it."

  "Ugh, but you know all these topics by heart yourself!" I lazily thumped my little fist against the tabletop. "Let's ditch?" "We already ditched." "Repetition is the mother of learning," he reminded me instructively.

  And then I froze. Outside the door, a part of the world suddenly... vanished.

  "What is that?" I snapped my head up, staring at the oak panel. "Who is coming?"

  I tried to feel the aura of the person approaching, but my senses simply fell into nothingness. "Mana... I don't feel any mana. At all. What the hell is this?"

  "What's wrong?" my brother put down his quill and looked at me with concern.

  I didn't answer. I just kept staring at the door. It was approaching. Every step was like the beat of a heart that didn't exist. And the smell... he didn't smell like magic, and he didn't smell like dust. What did he smell like? I couldn't understand. Like nothing? Impossible.

  The door swung open. I jumped up from my seat, knocking over my chair.

  "Sit down!" my brother hissed.

  A guy in a mask walked into the classroom. But the mask was transparent to me. I saw his eyes. Different ones. One was completely black. The other was ashen gray.

  "Brother..." I stared at the newbie with wide eyes. "It's him." "Sit down!" my brother pulled me back down. "You're acting like a fool."

  I obediently sank back into my chair, but everything inside me was trembling. "Don't you see it?" I whispered in his ear. "It's him. The man from the fairy tales."

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "What fairy tales?" my brother frowned. "You know the ones! Brother, we absolutely have to meet him."

  "What? This morning you were screaming that you didn't want to meet anyone because 'everyone around here is a boring idiot'."

  I frowned and glared at Kael. "This one isn't boring."

  My brother sighed. He had no chance against my stubbornness. "Alright, alright... just don't scare him right away with your 'sense'. Let's see how he brews poisons first."

  I nodded, trying not to let him out of my sight. He was acting as if this lesson was just a minor obstacle on his way to a couch. I definitely liked that.

  An hour and a half of unbearable boredom passed. During that time, the guy in the mask... I think he just stopped showing signs of life. He fell asleep. Brazenly, right under the noses of two magisters.

  I saw those "red-eyes" wake him up.

  "Come on, Kael!" I nudged my brother with my elbow. "Go ask them." "Did your tongue fall off?" he snapped back, packing up his things. "I'll ask during the long break, leave me alone."

  "You're such a coward, brother." "I'm not a coward, but it seems you are!"

  I just snorted. Kael grumbles, but I know—he's curious too. He just loves the rules too much, while this guy...

  I fell asleep. Seriously, when they stuff you for an hour and a half with the theory of poisons that you knew before you were even born, the only way to survive is to slip into the astral plane. Meaning, take a nap.

  Alexia woke me up. She shook my shoulder as if a fire had broken out. "Greg, get up! The next class is about to start."

  "What?" I rubbed my eyes, trying to figure out what century it was. "We just got here. What classes? I was planning to find the nearest bed and not leave it until tomorrow."

  "Keep dreaming," Alexia shoved a schedule under my nose. "Look."

  I squinted. In the row for the next class, instead of a name, there were question marks. "????". "And what is this? A lesson in intuition?"

  "The students say it's always like this here," Lianel explained, walking up to us. "One or two classes a day remain unknown until the very beginning. Room 113. Main Building."

  I groaned, remembering my late-night parkour. "Jumping across islands again? Damn it, my legs are going to fall off. I'm not a mountain goat, I'm a lazy teenager."

  Alexia raised an eyebrow in surprise. "Why jump?" "Well, how else do you get into a building that decided the ground is too cliché?"

  "Greg, didn't they show you the mirrors?" Alexia pointed to a massive full-length mirror at the end of the corridor. "There are 'mirror portals' everywhere here. They work as portals between buildings. Granted... I haven't entirely figured out which mirror leads where yet. But we've already made a couple of acquaintances..."

  She pointed a finger to the side. Standing there were a human guy and some elf girl. "It turns out there are no fixed groups here," Lianel added. "Today you have a class with one set of people, tomorrow with another. It's a randomized system. They say it's to force everyone to communicate and keep anyone from stagnating in one place."

  "A randomizer?" I pulled my crumpled piece of paper out of my pocket. "So I'm going to be tossed from group to group, forced to interact with strangers? What a sophisticated form of torture."

  I checked the room number. Yes, 113. Everything matched. Looks like I'll have to use the mirror after all.