Writing drive! Starting with Unaware chapter 1!
...So, it's June. Over half a year since the last NaNo, and I've barely done any writing at all. (And yes, I know some may just want me to translate faster... I'm working on that, too.) Of course, this will not do. I want to write more, so I'm going to try to make myself write more.
That said, I'm starting a sort of "writing drive" for myself. I'll be posting stuff that I've written here on a fairly regular basis, starting today. I might even go out and do some self-pimping... All in hopes that maybe someone will read it, comment, and push me to write even more. In the meantime, I'll also be pushing myself to write at least a little bit every day, and not just in preparation for my upcoming participation in Camp NaNoWriMo. (Last I heard they're doing it in both July and August... and I haven't decided whether I want to participate in July, August, or even, maybe, both!)
So... I'm starting the drive with posting (chapter by chapter) a finished story. Or rather, the "finished" part I of a now planned to be three part story. This particular part was my 2005 NaNo story. It started out as a standalone story, with an idea sparked by the bl novel and drama cd series Gouka Kyakusen de Koi wa Hajimaru. (Believe me, it was just one little bit that came from that story. It's taken a completely different turn since then.) It also just happened to steal one of my favorite little genie boys, Jay, from another story.
Since then, I've worked the story into the universe that Jay came from and even played with dates to make it all work out right. ^_^; Arin, the main character of this story, has made an appearance in a far future story centered around Jay and his sister (though in future scenes that I haven't shared with anyone yet). And, well, the mythology behind this story has become a rather important part of the entire universe the story takes place in. Oh, and it's spawned more than one possible spinoff stories, one of which might be my Camp NaNoWriMo project. ^_^; (And some of those characters, created for that story, are going to make an appearance in part II of this one.) I'm just over 30,000 words into part II at the moment. So yeah, it's become part of my biggest universe of stories, and one of my bigger stories in general.
And I don't think I've ever posted it here on my lj. I think I posted chapter 1 of part II, but never part I. It's on my website, but not here. And, actually, the version currently on my site is a little outdated. I've been tweaking details here and there, partly for style and partly to make it fit with the time period change. (It was originally written as taking place in the present day, so mid 2000's at the time. It now definitely takes place in 2050 (to fit with ages for Jay), though with a light look at what sort of changes might happen in the next forty years. ^_^; Forgive me for the lazy future view.) I haven't updated the site version yet, and I probably won't until I finish tweaking, something I'm doing as I go with the posting. ^_^; So this is not only new to lj, but slightly new in general!
That said, I might as well give just a bit of a blurb. This is the story of Arin Cellen, a nineteen-year-old guy who's not quite sure what he wants to do with his life. He had chosen to take some time off before college, to think and all, but now he's changed his mind. Only when he starts looking around, his parents suddenly take charge of everything and send him off to a strange private school in California. A school where he is apparently someone special. And that is just the start of something that will not only change his life forever, but teach him that everything he thought he knew about himself was a lie.
Yeah, I suck at blurbs. Anyway, this is very much a bl story, with some explicit, just barely consensual scenes toward the end of the story. It's also a fantasy, though the fantasy doesn't come as much into play in this part as it does later. And, as I mentioned earlier, it's part I of a three part story. While part I is complete, I wouldn't call it a super satisfying ending. (Or much of an ending at all.) But it felt like the right place to end the first part, so that's what I did.
So, without further ado, I present chapter 1 of The Cellen, part I: Unaware.
The Cellen, part I
Unaware
Chapter 1
Jikoshoukai* (*Jikoshoukai = "self-introduction" in Japanese. I don't speak Japanese, but quite a few people around me do, and from them I've picked up the tendency to every now and then use a word that not everyone understands, including myself at times. It's fun.)
I know it's kinda overdone nowadays, but I have to say that I think the best way to start a story is with a self-introduction. It's something you see all the time in those comics that a certain someone I know likes to read. That way, you, the reader, can make your decision right away if you don't like me and don't want to have to listen to me for the next eternity or so while I babble on about my life and what happened in it. That makes a lot more sense than you reading a few chapters and then coming to the conclusion that I'm an idiot who doesn't know anything, because that way you'll be more likely to hold a grudge against me. I don't like that... so a self-introduction seems like the best way to go.
So, getting on with it, my name is Arin Cellen. Most people call me Rin, not that that's any more normal than Arin is. Though I hear that Rin is a girl's name in some places, and that doesn't make me feel much better, since I am a guy. Anyway, at the time that matters for the beginning of this story, I was just barely nineteen years old, and I was just a normal nineteen year old guy. (Like you haven't heard that line so many times you want to cry...)
I lived at home when I was nineteen, having chosen to take a little bit of time off from school after I graduated from high school. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do when I reached the end of my senior year, and it seemed like a waste to start college not knowing what the hell I was there to do (even though that's what a lot of college students do). So I turned my part-time job that I had been at all through high school into a full time job (I don't think Wal-Mart even considered not letting me go full time... but that might have been because I made barely above minimum wage at the time...) and took a bit of time to think about it.
Of course, working at Wal-Mart full time is not something I would recommend, and not just because of the clientele. (I don't claim to be the smartest person in the world, because I'm not, but a lot of the people who shop at Wal-Mart regularly make me look like a genius, or more... it's scary.) Needless to say, by the time I hit my nineteenth birthday (September after I graduated; I was one of the oldest kids in my class...) I was more than ready to jump head first back into school. Even studying, the age-old enemy of students everywhere, was better than working in retail for the rest of my life, or even the rest of the year. So, not too long after the fall semester of that year started, I was looking into schools that I could get into for the spring semester, even though I still wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do.
Now, if I was like my little sister, Karen, I wouldn't have had any problems coming up with a plan in the first place. Karen was only eleven at that time, eight years younger than I was, but I think she had had her plans for the future made since she was about four. She's that kind of person, so focused and serious that it's scary. To be honest, I don't think she ever really had a childhood, because she's been more mature than I, the big brother, ever was since she was in second or third grade. But that's Karen, and this is me, and I had no clue what I was supposed to be doing with my life, except that working at Wal-Mart was not the way to go.
I wasn't really smart or anything, so I wanted something that I could do without hurting my head. Definitely not math, probably not science either. Numbers and I did not get along well, which might have had something to do with the fact that they declared war on me in eighth grade and made that math class a living hell. But that's not to say that I was much good at anything else. I think I was leaning toward history when I started my college search, though I can't really remember anymore what was going through my head at that time. And really, it doesn't matter anymore.
Actually, it didn't even matter then, not that I realized it. I just knew that I wanted to get my ass into school as soon as I possibly could and get away from the forty hour weeks at Wal-Mart. There's only so much a person can take of that place before going crazy, and I was fast approaching that limit. The obvious choice at the time was UWGB, since it was not only fairly easy to get into, but it was in the same city. UWGB stands for University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, by the way. (Yes, I am from Green Bay, home of the Green Bay Packers... and no, I am not a cheesehead. I never have been, and I never will be, so please don't even think it.) But I was also considering UWO (Oshkosh, though that was an hour drive to the south) or maybe even starting off a little slower and going to UW Fox Valley for a while (two year college, instead of a full university, and a half hour drive away).
But, that was before I actually mentioned anything to the family. It was just me, Karen, Mom, and Dad, so there weren't too many people to tell, especially since Karen had just started middle school and didn't really need, or care, to know that I was planning on going to college a.s.a.p. That didn't change the fact that I looked for a couple of weeks before even mentioning it to Mom and Dad, and I think that pissed them off more than a little. I say this because I got a huge lecture from Mom as soon as I told her that I had been looking at schools for the past couple of weeks without even telling either of them. (That might have had something to do with the fact that Dad taught at UWGB, so I didn't want him pimping out his own school before I could get a good look at it, but I'm not quite sure anymore.)
The surprising thing was that Dad didn't really seem to care whether I choose Green Bay for school or not. Well, more than that, what surprised me was that the day after I told Mom (since I knew that it would get to Dad anyway, I didn't bother tracking him down to tell him as well), I had Dad knocking at my door to talk with me not too long after dinner. I don't really remember what I was doing then (probably playing some random game... but it doesn't really matter, because it wasn't important), but I remember the moment that he knocked on the door and the conversation that followed it like it happened yesterday.
The knock scared me, actually. I wasn't expecting anyone, and I had my door closed because I pretty much always did. Usually in the evenings Karen was off in her own little world, usually with her nose buried in a book, Dad had some sort of homework, or tests, or papers to grade, and Mom was almost always either working on her next book or doing the research that she always needed to do before she started writing. We weren't exactly the closest family in the world, except for at holiday times when the spirit got into all of us.
"Arin?" I head Dad's voice all from the other side of the door as I tried to settle back down into my seat (after having almost jumped out of it, literally).
"What?" I called back, and he took that as a sign that he could open the door without getting me mad. (And since that was okay, I didn't do anything about it.) He came into the room and sat down on the bed, where he could see me easily and still be sitting down, since he hated standing and having a conversation with someone who was sitting. I almost protested, since I had forgotten to make my bed when I finally crawled out of it that morning, but I figured that in the end it was easier to just let him sit in the first place, instead of arguing and then just having him end up there anyway. Then he put the folder that he was carrying, probably whatever class materials he was working on just before then, or maybe planning on working on after he was done talking to me, down to his side and turned to face me fully, adjusting his glasses slightly on his nose before he started talking.
"I hear you've decided that you do want to go to school." His words came slowly and carefully, almost as if he was half dreaming, the way he always spoke. (I was once told that he even gave his lectures like that, which made me wonder how many of his students actually liked his class.)
"Yeah. I'm thinking that GB would probably be the best bet right now."
"I have a different idea that you might want to consider." He picked up the folder that he had just put down. Then he pulled out a few sheets of paper and handed them to me.
I looked down at the papers. The top one was a picture of what looked like a school, a very large and probably expensive as hell school, in the middle of the spring. Across the top of the paper, which I figured was supposed to be an ad of some sort, it read "Nelene Academy." I sat there, silent, for a while and flipped through the papers he had given me. In that time I learned that this Nelene Academy was a boarding school in California that catered to all ages, from kindergarten all the way through graduate school, and that it was highly praised by a bunch of people I had never heard of, though by the way they were quoted, I suspected that they were supposed to be quite important.
And then, having looked at the papers, I proceeded to stare at Dad as if he had gone crazy.
"What the hell is this supposed to be?"
"The place you'll be going to school." He actually sounded like he was fully awake (which was a bad sign... that meant he was serious, and not just pulling my leg).
"Some rich kid school? Why in the world would I want to go to school here? We probably couldn't even afford to send me to this place for a week, let alone long enough for me to get my degree. Besides, I don't even know what I want to go to school for yet!" I tried to give him back his promotional materials, but he wouldn't take them. He just stared at me with a serious expression on his face.
"This isn't up for discussion. I was planning on having you start this semester, but since you wanted to take a little time off to think about things, I decided to wait until you were ready. Now that you've decided that you're ready, you will be going to the Academy."
"No."
It wasn't that I didn't think that Dad was thinking for the best for me. Dad always thought the best for Karen and me. So did Mom. But there was something about this situation that bothered me, like the fact that I knew that neither Dad nor Mom had gotten any of their degrees from this place. I hadn't even heard of the place until just then, and that was another thing that bothered me. Besides, there was no way that I could get into some rich kid school, and even if I did, it would probably drain the family completely dry of money before I even finished my first semester there.
"Rin... The Academy is a very good school. No matter what you decide you want to study, you'll find the best instructors available to you there. And if they don't have an instructor for your area of study of choice, they'll find one. That's the way they do things there."
"I don't want to go to California. I like it here. The farthest away school I've looked at so far is in Oshkosh, for crying out loud!"
"I went to school there," he added, not even seeming to care about my most recent protest.
"No you didn't," I shot back. "You got your bachelor's at Madison and the rest at Purdue! I've never even heard of this place before today."
"I graduated from high school there." He started to smile slightly, as if he was remembering something funny. "But because of family situations I was unable to attend the university there."
"So you want me to go in your place? That hardly seems fair. I'm nowhere near as smart as you are, Dad."
"That doesn't matter. And no, I'm not asking you to go in my place. Your grandfather wants you to go, for the same reasons that I went there through high school."
"What in the world does Grandpa have to do with this?" For the record, my maternal grandfather was alive at this time, but for some reason, it was only Dad's dad who got referred to as my grandfather. Mom's dad was always Papa Orge, and Grandpa was Grandpa.
"He wants you at the Academy as soon as possible. I decided to give you some time to think about the future, but if your grandfather were here you would already be attending classes there.
"Well I'm not going." I crossed my arms across my chest and gave him my best defiant stare.
He didn't say anything else that night. Rather, he just smiled at me sadly, got up off the bed, and walked out of the room. I was determined not to end up doing what he wanted me to do, because I didn't think there was any point in it. I didn't need some high class fancy education. Still, though I was determined not to go along with it, I decided that I should at least look at the stuff that he had left in my room, because then I could get a better idea of just how absurd the idea was.
Sure enough it looked to be exactly the kind of place that I had assumed it was when I looked at the picture and flipped through the first pieces of paper that Dad gave me. A fancy rich kid school with way too much more than I wanted. They didn't even list tuition prices, which almost certainly meant that if you needed to know, it was too much. And all of that just made me that much more determined not to let Dad get his way.
Of course, in the end, all my determination did absolutely nothing. I went to Mom the next day and told her what Dad wanted, but she already knew about it. That wasn't surprising, but the fact that she agreed with him was! That was also the part that confused me the most. With Dad it made sense. At least, the fantasy of sending me to some fancy rich boy school that was way above anything I deserved or even needed did. But Mom... Mom lived in the real world and had common sense.
I started to suspect that there was something to the whole situation that they weren't telling me when Mom told me that she thought it would "be good for me" after I complained to her about Dad's wishes. Mom knew that I wasn't looking for the best education money could buy or anything like that. I just wanted to get away from work, and she knew it. So there had to be some sort of reason, besides the fact that Dad had gone to high school there, to send me there. I just wished that they would tell me about it, since I was the one who would be affected by it the most.
But in the end I didn't even get that much involvement in the decision. Instead, I ended up being ushered onto a plane with Dad about a week later and flying out to California so we could start on the paperwork. I was an adult and free to make my own choices, but at the same time I was living at home and eating the food that Mom and Dad provided me with. I was driving their car, under their insurance, and they were the ones who would be paying for whatever education I got. I couldn't afford to move out, and I certainly couldn't afford to pay for my own education, so the only real choice I had was to go along with Dad's crazy whims and hope that it wouldn't end up sending the family into bankruptcy.
There was someone from the school waiting for us when we got off the plane. He greeted Dad like an old friend, but an old friend who he respected greatly, which surprised me more than a little. Dad was smart and all, but I never would have pictured someone in a three piece suit representing a fancy private school to show that much respect for a plain old physics professor. I figured it was a personal thing, though, since about two minutes into our drive, in a limousine, to the campus, I came to the realization that he was the principal of the boy's high school division of the school. Of course, he more or less ignored me aside from greeting me curtly when Dad introduced me.
I think what bothered me more than the fact that this important person knew and respected Dad was the conversation that the two of them had, right in front of me in the car. I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about, and I'm certain that they not only realized that, but were glad of it. But they still talked in front of me, the other man treating me almost as if I wasn't there and Dad every now and then throwing slightly guilty looks in my direction.
"It is nice to see that you have not forgotten your duties," was the start of the conversation, from the other man to Dad.
"I wouldn't dream of it."
"When you disappeared so many years ago Master Nelene was sure that you were going to renege."
"I was acting on the family's orders." Dad's face had turned oddly wooden. He was talking in the most serious and together tone of voice that I had ever heard him use, and to be honest, it was more than a little scary realizing that even Dad could be like that sometimes. "After he decided to drop out of consideration the family decided that we would wait for the next generation. Didn't Father inform you of that decision?"
"We were not informed."
"I hope you won't hold that against me, or my son. I assumed that the orders came from outside in the first place. As it is, I was surprised when I received news of the young Master's birth. I was expecting to not be informed until something absolute was decided. Has he been confirmed yet?"
"No, not yet. He has been showing potential for the past several years, but he will not be eligible for the training until next year. But I am sure that he will accept."
"And then you will need our power."
"Of course. Come his sixteenth birthday, that is."
"He's what? Just past fifteen right now?" The other man nodded. "You can't possibly expect to have the training done in less than a year when it's supposed to take a childhood and more to complete."
"You people were the ones who decided to create this situation."
"And have the young Master do the same as his father and leave a fully awakened, fully trained one of our blood wandering around without a bond? You know just how difficult that is to deal with."
"The young Master will not do the same as the Master did."
"So you say."
"And all of the others at the Academy, including all of the young Master's instructors, and the Master himself."
"I'll believe that when I see it, and not a moment sooner." Just then, we pulled up to the gates at the outside of the school. At least, I assumed that was what the gates were, since I couldn't think of any other gates that we should be approaching. After that, both of them stopped talking, Dad to stare at the gates with me, and the other man to answer his phone, which had started ringing just as we came to a complete stop.
"I thought you went to school here before," I commented to Dad when I noticed that he was staring in just as much awe as I was at the enormous gates of iron that blocked the road in front of us. "Shouldn't you be used to this?"
"Students rarely leave campus," Dad replied, back to his usual, not-quite-attached-to-reality, self. "Almost all of those who do are at the university level or higher, so as a high school student, and before then, I rarely even got close enough to the gates to see them clearly. And when we did leave campus, it wasn't from the front. This is maybe my second or third time actually seeing these gates like this."
"Are you really sure that I have to do this?"
He looked over at me and smiled a weak smile. "Absolutely. But you'll be just fine here, Rin. It may be a bit... strange... compared to what you've become accustomed to, but I'm sure that you will grow to love it just as much as I did. The Academy can be the best thing that ever happened to you, if you make it that."
"You're acting like you're going to be leaving me here today." I was just joking, of course. There was something about the way he was all of a sudden trying to make the place seem so much better than I thought it was that made it seem like he was giving me his last advice. But I knew that that couldn't be it. After all, the new semester didn't start for another several months.
"I will." It actually took me almost a full minute to realize that he had just said what he had just said. I guess I just stared at him during that time, though I'm not quite sure, since my mind went completely and utterly blank while it was processing Dad's latest statement.
"What?" I squeaked. "But... But... But it's only October! Next semester doesn't start until January! What in the world am I supposed to do here until then?"
"The Academy doesn't work on a semester system for the most part. Most of the joint courses meet on a fixed schedule, but there are quite a few individual courses available that are not restricted by things like start date and finish date. Once all of the paperwork is completed you can start as soon as you like here. Isn't that what you were looking for, Rin?"
"I... I guess so. But... all of my stuff is back home! I haven't packed at all. You didn't tell me that I wasn't going to be going back!"
"Mom and I will pack up the things that you need. But most of your daily necessities will be provided by the school.
"Remind me again how we're supposed to be paying for all of this... There's no way in hell that we can afford to send me to some place like this."
"There is a scholarship here that is only available to Cellens." I turned to stare at him in awe again, feeling like my eyes were about to fall out of their sockets. "Though it would be more correct to say that it is only available to certain Cellens. If your grandfather were not insisting on your enrollment here you would not be eligible. But since you are eligible, we are not paying anything for you to go to school here."
"Nothing?" I squeaked, wincing inside as my voice went far too high for comfort. "As in... a full scholarship? There's no way that I deserve that!"
"On the contrary. You deserve it simply for being born into the Cellen family. I assure you, Arin, this is not something that we are doing just because. There is a reason for you to be here."
"But you won't tell me that reason."
"It's not that I won't, but that I can't." He started fiddling with his seatbelt nervously. I noticed about then that we were finally pulling up to a building, after driving through what looked like a miniature forest between the gate and the campus itself.
"And that makes me so much more willing to be here..." I muttered.
"I'm sorry, Rin. If you don't figure out the reason yourself by the start of the next school year I'll be able to tell you then."
"But you want me to figure it out before then, right?"
"You're a bright boy. I'm sure you can figure it out without being told. But then, that would mostly depend on the situation on campus, and that is not something I am familiar with at this time in my life."
"So in short you're just going to abandon me here with no clue of what I'm supposed to be doing and let me figure out why I'm here myself, though I may or may not be able to find that out?"
"It isn't as bad as it sounds."
"No, it's worse!" I think I upset him, because he didn't say anything else until after we had come to a complete stop in front of a building that couldn't have been too much bigger than our house, but was far more important looking.
"Ah, we have arrived," I heard the other man, who had been talking on his phone since before the gates, say. "I will have them in to see you any moment now. Until then." And then he hung up the phone.
The limo driver came around to the side to let the three of us out. Once we were on the ground, the other man turned to Dad. "Master Nelene wants to speak with you for now, Master Cellen." Dad nodded, and headed into the building without hesitation, proving that he knew exactly where he was going. That left me alone with the other man, whose name I still hadn't learned. He stared at me with a trace of disgust on his face, as if I wasn't quite worth his time or effort.
"You," he said, almost as if he didn't want to be saying anything to me in the first place, "can follow me."
"Where are we going?" I was more or less certain that I wasn't going to get an answer.
"You will find out when we arrive." He started walking. I almost didn't realize right away that he was quickly putting distance between the two of us, and that if I didn't hurry to follow him I was going to end up getting lost. Needless to say, I hurried to catch up to him, and ended up following him to the main administrative office for the entire school.
The place was nearly empty when we arrived, which didn't really surprise me all that much, seeing as it was a Saturday. I later learned that even on the weekends, that entire building is usually full of people, and that the only reason they weren't in the office that day was because they were all on a department-sponsored vacation, leaving a handful of kind students to handle the things that absolutely could not be left undone. And apparently processing my application and entrance papers was one of those things that absolutely could not be left undone.
It seemed to annoy my companion that things were being handled by a student, not that I blame him. The girl handling things for us, who was maybe a year or two older than I was at the time, was working slowly... mostly to make sure that she didn't screw anything up. I couldn't really blame her for that. Just judging by the number of papers that I had to sign, already filled out for me, though I wasn't sure by whom, it was an extremely complicated process. I probably would have been taking my time to make sure that I did everything right the first time too. But this just seemed to annoy the man I was with more and more with every passing moment.
In the end, the thing that broke his patience wasn't even something that the girl did. There was this guy, maybe sixteen or seventeen at the most, who had come in not too long after we arrived and was talking with one of the other students manning the office who wasn't busy at the moment. He had looked over at the two of us curiously when he first entered but otherwise hadn't really paid us any attention. I thought nothing of it, because that tended to be what most people did when they first saw me. Stare a moment, that is, because of the dark hair and pale skin that look almost like a deliberate goth look, except that they don't match with the definitely not black clothing, and then realize that it's just a coincidence so it's safe to go back to normal life.
But then, when we had been there nearly an hour, the girl ran into a problem. Apparently one of the countless pieces of paper hadn't been filled out completely. It had been a while since the last time I had been needed for a signature, so I wasn't quite paying attention to the girl and was trying not to listen in on the lively conversation between the two guys over to my left. My companion had been forced to step outside to answer another call to his phone, so the only place the girl had to go for the information was to me. When she called out to me softly the first time I didn't hear her, nor did I the second or third times, each a little louder than the one before.
"Master Cellen!" she called out finally, which made me jump. For one, I wasn't used to being called Master, or being called by my last name. I figured the Master thing had to be something about the school, since my companion had been using that term the entire time. Of course, it did catch my attention, which was what the girl wanted.
She pointed out the incomplete part to me when I went over to the desk to look at the paperwork. Luckily, it was stuff that I knew how to fill out. The rest of the sheet seemed to almost be in another language, or maybe it was just that confusing. So I was glad that I could figure out the part that she wanted, and I quickly filled in the missing pieces of information.
When I straightened up, the guy who had come into the room earlier was standing at my side, grinning. He stared at me with an amused expression on his face, almost smirking, so I stared back. I think it was the knowing laughter behind his dark gray eyes that bothered me the most, though in the end he was the one who broke the stare first and spoke.
"So you're the new Cellen, are you?"
"And if I am?" I crossed my arms across my chest and started at him, daring him to make something over it. At the same time, I was wondering why it made a difference, since I still didn't know why I was there in the first place.
"Well, I heard that your dad was quite the pretty boy in his time. Apparently he was supposed to be a rival for Lady Marguerite. So when I heard about you, I was wondering if there was any way you could live up to his legacy."
This left me even more confused than I had been before. I still had no idea why he knew about me, not that I had asked. I had just hoped that he would somehow explain that when giving me my answer. But not only had he not explained anything, now I had the thought of Dad as a pretty boy to try and work my brain around. It wasn't going well.
Dad was not a pretty boy. Dad wasn't even all that good looking, and that's coming from the point of view of multiple girls that I knew. He had glasses so thick you could see the other side of his head through them (seriously, it always freaks people out at first) and almost never combed his hair, so it was always sticking out in every direction. On school days he wore perfectly pressed and fully buttoned shirts and pants in colors so drab they sometimes made him blend into the walls, and on his off days he wore sweats. He more or less looked and acted like the nerd that he was, and that just didn't work with any thoughts of Dad as a pretty boy.
Not to mention that I had no idea who this Lady Marguerite that this guy had mentioned was. I assumed she was beautiful, since it wouldn't make sense to compare a guy's prettiness or beauty to her if she wasn't beautiful in the first place. But the way he said it I felt like I should know the name, and that just confused me more.
"My dad isn't a pretty boy. You must have the wrong Cellen."
"There's only one Cellen family. And even if there happened to be another family wandering around on the Outside with the same name, they would never be able to get in here. So unless you're lying when you say you're a Cellen, I don't have the wrong person."
"When did I ever say I was a Cellen?" Even I didn't think I sounded very convincing.
"You answered Maria here when she called out "Master Cellen," didn't you? Pretending to be a Cellen is a pretty hefty offense around here, so I hope you weren't lying."
I stared at him, not wanting to admit that I was a Cellen, but at the same time not wanting to lie to him, and he stared back. We stayed like this for a while, and finally he broken into a huge grin. "You have absolutely no clue what's going on around here, do you?" he asked, this gigantic smile plastered across his face.
I was saved from this by the girl, Maria, who needed another signature. And right after that, before the guy could say anything else, my companion came back into the room, scowling at his phone as if he could make it burn just by glaring. He took one look around the room, spotted the guy standing near me, and stormed over to where we were standing.
"Hassen..." His voice came out as a low growl. "What in the world do you think you're doing?"
"Shouldn't that be Master Hassen?" the guy asked, smiling.
"I see no need to use formalities with you."
"It's not a good idea for a teacher to play favorites, you know. That goes for principals too. I don't like being hated any more than any other person does."
"But you will survive."
"Oh, that's kind... Are you going to chase me out of here by waving a stick now too?"
"Would you rather I call the Master here?"
This actually made the guy, Hassen, go pale. I wondered if the Master here was the same as the Master that he and Dad had been talking about during our ride. I wasn't about to ask, though, since I got the feeling that I would just be jumped on if I said anything. As it was, Hassen grumbled and ended up walking out of the room not too long after the Master was mentioned, leaving me more or less alone with the other man (Maria didn't count, since I was already falling into the habit of forgetting that she was in the room. She just didn't have enough of a presence.).
This entire episode seemed to make my companion quite angry. Angry enough, in fact, that he ended up asking Maria to give me each and every paper that I still needed to sign so that I could put my signature on all of them. Then when I was done he told the girl that she could finish it all up, and that if there was anything that wasn't quite finished she could find me some other time to get the needed information, or take it off of another sheet. And then I was ordered out of the room in a tone of voice that made it quite clear that any and all objections would be met with no sympathy whatsoever.
We marched through the building to a room that looked quite a bit fancier than any of the other ones. It had "Office of the Chairman" in wooden letters above the door itself. There my companion knocked twice and waited until a voice called from inside for us to enter. He opened the door and ushered me in, and waiting inside were Dad and a man who I had never met before, though he looked slightly familiar, as if I should know him from somewhere.
Now, earlier I said that my brain just couldn't work itself around the thought of Dad as a pretty boy, and I stand by that conviction. But at that moment, walking into the Chairman's office at Nelene Academy after Dad had been in there conversing with the chairman himself for the past hour, that changed slightly. I don't know what it was that caused it, but the Dad sitting there was definitely not the same Dad who had left the car a little over an hour earlier. That first Dad had been the same Dad that I always saw: nerdy, dressed in something stuffy and a step above office casual, hair flying in every which direction, to contrast with his perfectly pressed clothing, and just so Dad that I'm not sure how else to describe him.
The Dad in the chairman's office was still Dad, but at the same time he wasn't. The glasses had disappeared (and no matter how much I asked him afterward how he could see without them, he wouldn't explain it to me). Someone, I assumed it was the chairman, had given him an elastic band to pull his hair back into a semblance of a pony tail, though there wasn't quite enough of it to stay all the way back and half of it had fallen out. He had apparently gotten hot and had unbuttoned the top button and cuffs of his shirt (this was something that I would have thought was a sign of the Apocalypse at one time). But what surprised me the most was that he had lost most of his nerdy aura... There was still the feel of a college professor about him, as well as the sense that he knew quite a few things and that he was confident in that knowledge. But the nerdy aura was gone, which actually did a lot for his appearance, as odd as that may sound at first.
Come to think of it, I think that was the first time that I started to think that that school was actually Weird. Not just weird, because I had figured that out from the beginning, when I was told that I could get in with no problems, that I would be starting right away in the middle of the semester, and when Dad told me that there was a special scholarship just for our family. But Weird, with a capital W. That was something that I didn't start thinking until I saw how much Dad had changed just being back there for a small time, or maybe it was because of his company. Either way, it wasn't normal, and it was definitely Weird... though I wouldn't find out just how Weird it was for quite a while.
"Ah, Rin!" Dad said as he saw who it was entering the room. And while I knew that it was Dad (I could never mistake Dad for anyone else, no matter how much he might change), it was still more than a little weird confirming it when he spoke. "Come over here. Let me introduce you."
I headed over to his side, despite a slight muffled squeak of protest from the man I was still technically with and turned to face the other man in the room, who I assumed was the chairman. He was handsome, in that ageless way that very good looking older men are handsome, and he was smiling. And for some reason, when I saw him at that moment, the combination of his looks and his smile set me on edge right away, though Dad seemed perfectly comfortable. So, that left me standing next to Dad, smiling back at the man even though the hairs on the back of my neck were probably pointing straight up in total defiance of gravity.
"Rin, this is my old friend, Kallen Nelene." Dad was smiling a genuine smile, unlike my forced one. "I went to school with him, though it seems that now he's become the chairman of the Academy in his father's place. And Kallen, this is my son, Arin."
"Pleased to meet you." I tried to keep my voice completely neutral, since I wasn't sure that I could force out a genuinely pleased voice to save my life.
"The pleasure is all mine." His voice, I think, sounded just as strained as mine must have. I got the distinct impression that he liked me about as much as I liked him in that moment, and I can't say that that bothered me all that much.
Nelene (I know I was introduced to him by his full name and all, but I could never bring myself to ever think of him by his first name. He was always Nelene to me, even after I met others from his family, all of whom had the last name Nelene as well.) then turned to my former companion, the high school boys' division principal, with a serious look on his face. "All the paperwork is done?"
"Close enough. We ran into a problem in the office, so I figured it would be most prudent to speed up the process and return here as soon as possible to avoid a second occurrence."
"Did you at least wait long enough to get his room number?" Just hearing the intensity behind that slightly annoyed question was enough to tell me that I never wanted to have this man angry with me, ever. And seeing as I planned on avoiding him as much as I possibly could, I was hoping that that would be fairly easy to arrange.
"Of course I did," came the stiff answer, with the distinct implication that merely suggesting that he wouldn't have was sheer absurdity.
"Why don't you show him to his room, then? I'm sure he is getting tired by now and would appreciate a rest. We can finish the formalities in the morning."
"But, sir, I..."
"Kallen," Dad said, interrupting the principal. "If he tells me what room it is I can find it just fine. I'm going to be staying here tonight anyway, so we shouldn't bother Daniel any more than we already have."
"If you're sure you can remember your way around, then be my guest," Nelene said, beaming at Dad. Dad smiled back at him, and then quickly got the room number from the principal.
"Well then," Dad said. "We will see you in the morning."
"I'll send someone with dinner."
"That would be wonderful." Then Dad motioned for me to get up and follow him out of the room without even saying goodbye. I did so, and before long we arrived in a dorm room that looked absolutely nothing like what I ever imagined a dorm room would look like. It was far larger, better furnished, and just nicer than anything that came to mind when the words "dorm room" were said to me.
That night Dad and I slept in that room, which I was later told was a temporary arrangement, even though I thought they were talking about my actual room back in Nelene's office. I was going to be put with a roommate, but they wanted to give him a few days' advance notice before letting me move in, which worked out fine that first night because Dad stayed with me to take a flight home in the morning. That night we stayed up rather late, Dad telling me stories about the Academy and bits and pieces of information that he thought might be helpful for me, though a lot of the experiences that he had from high school were useless for me at the college level. We did not talk of Nelene, especially not of the distrust that I had felt for him from the start, and I guess that was all I could ask for.
In the morning, Dad left on a fairly early flight back to Green Bay, leaving me alone in terms of people that I knew and trusted. They introduced me to my roommate that morning, a girly-looking guy by the name of Adai, and he offered to let me borrow some clothes until my luggage arrived from home, seeing as we were actually about the same size. And then, after that, I started with the various types of testing that they wanted to put me through before they would even think of letting me start any classes there.
That said, I'm starting a sort of "writing drive" for myself. I'll be posting stuff that I've written here on a fairly regular basis, starting today. I might even go out and do some self-pimping... All in hopes that maybe someone will read it, comment, and push me to write even more. In the meantime, I'll also be pushing myself to write at least a little bit every day, and not just in preparation for my upcoming participation in Camp NaNoWriMo. (Last I heard they're doing it in both July and August... and I haven't decided whether I want to participate in July, August, or even, maybe, both!)
So... I'm starting the drive with posting (chapter by chapter) a finished story. Or rather, the "finished" part I of a now planned to be three part story. This particular part was my 2005 NaNo story. It started out as a standalone story, with an idea sparked by the bl novel and drama cd series Gouka Kyakusen de Koi wa Hajimaru. (Believe me, it was just one little bit that came from that story. It's taken a completely different turn since then.) It also just happened to steal one of my favorite little genie boys, Jay, from another story.
Since then, I've worked the story into the universe that Jay came from and even played with dates to make it all work out right. ^_^; Arin, the main character of this story, has made an appearance in a far future story centered around Jay and his sister (though in future scenes that I haven't shared with anyone yet). And, well, the mythology behind this story has become a rather important part of the entire universe the story takes place in. Oh, and it's spawned more than one possible spinoff stories, one of which might be my Camp NaNoWriMo project. ^_^; (And some of those characters, created for that story, are going to make an appearance in part II of this one.) I'm just over 30,000 words into part II at the moment. So yeah, it's become part of my biggest universe of stories, and one of my bigger stories in general.
And I don't think I've ever posted it here on my lj. I think I posted chapter 1 of part II, but never part I. It's on my website, but not here. And, actually, the version currently on my site is a little outdated. I've been tweaking details here and there, partly for style and partly to make it fit with the time period change. (It was originally written as taking place in the present day, so mid 2000's at the time. It now definitely takes place in 2050 (to fit with ages for Jay), though with a light look at what sort of changes might happen in the next forty years. ^_^; Forgive me for the lazy future view.) I haven't updated the site version yet, and I probably won't until I finish tweaking, something I'm doing as I go with the posting. ^_^; So this is not only new to lj, but slightly new in general!
That said, I might as well give just a bit of a blurb. This is the story of Arin Cellen, a nineteen-year-old guy who's not quite sure what he wants to do with his life. He had chosen to take some time off before college, to think and all, but now he's changed his mind. Only when he starts looking around, his parents suddenly take charge of everything and send him off to a strange private school in California. A school where he is apparently someone special. And that is just the start of something that will not only change his life forever, but teach him that everything he thought he knew about himself was a lie.
Yeah, I suck at blurbs. Anyway, this is very much a bl story, with some explicit, just barely consensual scenes toward the end of the story. It's also a fantasy, though the fantasy doesn't come as much into play in this part as it does later. And, as I mentioned earlier, it's part I of a three part story. While part I is complete, I wouldn't call it a super satisfying ending. (Or much of an ending at all.) But it felt like the right place to end the first part, so that's what I did.
So, without further ado, I present chapter 1 of The Cellen, part I: Unaware.
The Cellen, part I
Unaware
Chapter 1
Jikoshoukai* (*Jikoshoukai = "self-introduction" in Japanese. I don't speak Japanese, but quite a few people around me do, and from them I've picked up the tendency to every now and then use a word that not everyone understands, including myself at times. It's fun.)
I know it's kinda overdone nowadays, but I have to say that I think the best way to start a story is with a self-introduction. It's something you see all the time in those comics that a certain someone I know likes to read. That way, you, the reader, can make your decision right away if you don't like me and don't want to have to listen to me for the next eternity or so while I babble on about my life and what happened in it. That makes a lot more sense than you reading a few chapters and then coming to the conclusion that I'm an idiot who doesn't know anything, because that way you'll be more likely to hold a grudge against me. I don't like that... so a self-introduction seems like the best way to go.
So, getting on with it, my name is Arin Cellen. Most people call me Rin, not that that's any more normal than Arin is. Though I hear that Rin is a girl's name in some places, and that doesn't make me feel much better, since I am a guy. Anyway, at the time that matters for the beginning of this story, I was just barely nineteen years old, and I was just a normal nineteen year old guy. (Like you haven't heard that line so many times you want to cry...)
I lived at home when I was nineteen, having chosen to take a little bit of time off from school after I graduated from high school. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do when I reached the end of my senior year, and it seemed like a waste to start college not knowing what the hell I was there to do (even though that's what a lot of college students do). So I turned my part-time job that I had been at all through high school into a full time job (I don't think Wal-Mart even considered not letting me go full time... but that might have been because I made barely above minimum wage at the time...) and took a bit of time to think about it.
Of course, working at Wal-Mart full time is not something I would recommend, and not just because of the clientele. (I don't claim to be the smartest person in the world, because I'm not, but a lot of the people who shop at Wal-Mart regularly make me look like a genius, or more... it's scary.) Needless to say, by the time I hit my nineteenth birthday (September after I graduated; I was one of the oldest kids in my class...) I was more than ready to jump head first back into school. Even studying, the age-old enemy of students everywhere, was better than working in retail for the rest of my life, or even the rest of the year. So, not too long after the fall semester of that year started, I was looking into schools that I could get into for the spring semester, even though I still wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do.
Now, if I was like my little sister, Karen, I wouldn't have had any problems coming up with a plan in the first place. Karen was only eleven at that time, eight years younger than I was, but I think she had had her plans for the future made since she was about four. She's that kind of person, so focused and serious that it's scary. To be honest, I don't think she ever really had a childhood, because she's been more mature than I, the big brother, ever was since she was in second or third grade. But that's Karen, and this is me, and I had no clue what I was supposed to be doing with my life, except that working at Wal-Mart was not the way to go.
I wasn't really smart or anything, so I wanted something that I could do without hurting my head. Definitely not math, probably not science either. Numbers and I did not get along well, which might have had something to do with the fact that they declared war on me in eighth grade and made that math class a living hell. But that's not to say that I was much good at anything else. I think I was leaning toward history when I started my college search, though I can't really remember anymore what was going through my head at that time. And really, it doesn't matter anymore.
Actually, it didn't even matter then, not that I realized it. I just knew that I wanted to get my ass into school as soon as I possibly could and get away from the forty hour weeks at Wal-Mart. There's only so much a person can take of that place before going crazy, and I was fast approaching that limit. The obvious choice at the time was UWGB, since it was not only fairly easy to get into, but it was in the same city. UWGB stands for University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, by the way. (Yes, I am from Green Bay, home of the Green Bay Packers... and no, I am not a cheesehead. I never have been, and I never will be, so please don't even think it.) But I was also considering UWO (Oshkosh, though that was an hour drive to the south) or maybe even starting off a little slower and going to UW Fox Valley for a while (two year college, instead of a full university, and a half hour drive away).
But, that was before I actually mentioned anything to the family. It was just me, Karen, Mom, and Dad, so there weren't too many people to tell, especially since Karen had just started middle school and didn't really need, or care, to know that I was planning on going to college a.s.a.p. That didn't change the fact that I looked for a couple of weeks before even mentioning it to Mom and Dad, and I think that pissed them off more than a little. I say this because I got a huge lecture from Mom as soon as I told her that I had been looking at schools for the past couple of weeks without even telling either of them. (That might have had something to do with the fact that Dad taught at UWGB, so I didn't want him pimping out his own school before I could get a good look at it, but I'm not quite sure anymore.)
The surprising thing was that Dad didn't really seem to care whether I choose Green Bay for school or not. Well, more than that, what surprised me was that the day after I told Mom (since I knew that it would get to Dad anyway, I didn't bother tracking him down to tell him as well), I had Dad knocking at my door to talk with me not too long after dinner. I don't really remember what I was doing then (probably playing some random game... but it doesn't really matter, because it wasn't important), but I remember the moment that he knocked on the door and the conversation that followed it like it happened yesterday.
The knock scared me, actually. I wasn't expecting anyone, and I had my door closed because I pretty much always did. Usually in the evenings Karen was off in her own little world, usually with her nose buried in a book, Dad had some sort of homework, or tests, or papers to grade, and Mom was almost always either working on her next book or doing the research that she always needed to do before she started writing. We weren't exactly the closest family in the world, except for at holiday times when the spirit got into all of us.
"Arin?" I head Dad's voice all from the other side of the door as I tried to settle back down into my seat (after having almost jumped out of it, literally).
"What?" I called back, and he took that as a sign that he could open the door without getting me mad. (And since that was okay, I didn't do anything about it.) He came into the room and sat down on the bed, where he could see me easily and still be sitting down, since he hated standing and having a conversation with someone who was sitting. I almost protested, since I had forgotten to make my bed when I finally crawled out of it that morning, but I figured that in the end it was easier to just let him sit in the first place, instead of arguing and then just having him end up there anyway. Then he put the folder that he was carrying, probably whatever class materials he was working on just before then, or maybe planning on working on after he was done talking to me, down to his side and turned to face me fully, adjusting his glasses slightly on his nose before he started talking.
"I hear you've decided that you do want to go to school." His words came slowly and carefully, almost as if he was half dreaming, the way he always spoke. (I was once told that he even gave his lectures like that, which made me wonder how many of his students actually liked his class.)
"Yeah. I'm thinking that GB would probably be the best bet right now."
"I have a different idea that you might want to consider." He picked up the folder that he had just put down. Then he pulled out a few sheets of paper and handed them to me.
I looked down at the papers. The top one was a picture of what looked like a school, a very large and probably expensive as hell school, in the middle of the spring. Across the top of the paper, which I figured was supposed to be an ad of some sort, it read "Nelene Academy." I sat there, silent, for a while and flipped through the papers he had given me. In that time I learned that this Nelene Academy was a boarding school in California that catered to all ages, from kindergarten all the way through graduate school, and that it was highly praised by a bunch of people I had never heard of, though by the way they were quoted, I suspected that they were supposed to be quite important.
And then, having looked at the papers, I proceeded to stare at Dad as if he had gone crazy.
"What the hell is this supposed to be?"
"The place you'll be going to school." He actually sounded like he was fully awake (which was a bad sign... that meant he was serious, and not just pulling my leg).
"Some rich kid school? Why in the world would I want to go to school here? We probably couldn't even afford to send me to this place for a week, let alone long enough for me to get my degree. Besides, I don't even know what I want to go to school for yet!" I tried to give him back his promotional materials, but he wouldn't take them. He just stared at me with a serious expression on his face.
"This isn't up for discussion. I was planning on having you start this semester, but since you wanted to take a little time off to think about things, I decided to wait until you were ready. Now that you've decided that you're ready, you will be going to the Academy."
"No."
It wasn't that I didn't think that Dad was thinking for the best for me. Dad always thought the best for Karen and me. So did Mom. But there was something about this situation that bothered me, like the fact that I knew that neither Dad nor Mom had gotten any of their degrees from this place. I hadn't even heard of the place until just then, and that was another thing that bothered me. Besides, there was no way that I could get into some rich kid school, and even if I did, it would probably drain the family completely dry of money before I even finished my first semester there.
"Rin... The Academy is a very good school. No matter what you decide you want to study, you'll find the best instructors available to you there. And if they don't have an instructor for your area of study of choice, they'll find one. That's the way they do things there."
"I don't want to go to California. I like it here. The farthest away school I've looked at so far is in Oshkosh, for crying out loud!"
"I went to school there," he added, not even seeming to care about my most recent protest.
"No you didn't," I shot back. "You got your bachelor's at Madison and the rest at Purdue! I've never even heard of this place before today."
"I graduated from high school there." He started to smile slightly, as if he was remembering something funny. "But because of family situations I was unable to attend the university there."
"So you want me to go in your place? That hardly seems fair. I'm nowhere near as smart as you are, Dad."
"That doesn't matter. And no, I'm not asking you to go in my place. Your grandfather wants you to go, for the same reasons that I went there through high school."
"What in the world does Grandpa have to do with this?" For the record, my maternal grandfather was alive at this time, but for some reason, it was only Dad's dad who got referred to as my grandfather. Mom's dad was always Papa Orge, and Grandpa was Grandpa.
"He wants you at the Academy as soon as possible. I decided to give you some time to think about the future, but if your grandfather were here you would already be attending classes there.
"Well I'm not going." I crossed my arms across my chest and gave him my best defiant stare.
He didn't say anything else that night. Rather, he just smiled at me sadly, got up off the bed, and walked out of the room. I was determined not to end up doing what he wanted me to do, because I didn't think there was any point in it. I didn't need some high class fancy education. Still, though I was determined not to go along with it, I decided that I should at least look at the stuff that he had left in my room, because then I could get a better idea of just how absurd the idea was.
Sure enough it looked to be exactly the kind of place that I had assumed it was when I looked at the picture and flipped through the first pieces of paper that Dad gave me. A fancy rich kid school with way too much more than I wanted. They didn't even list tuition prices, which almost certainly meant that if you needed to know, it was too much. And all of that just made me that much more determined not to let Dad get his way.
Of course, in the end, all my determination did absolutely nothing. I went to Mom the next day and told her what Dad wanted, but she already knew about it. That wasn't surprising, but the fact that she agreed with him was! That was also the part that confused me the most. With Dad it made sense. At least, the fantasy of sending me to some fancy rich boy school that was way above anything I deserved or even needed did. But Mom... Mom lived in the real world and had common sense.
I started to suspect that there was something to the whole situation that they weren't telling me when Mom told me that she thought it would "be good for me" after I complained to her about Dad's wishes. Mom knew that I wasn't looking for the best education money could buy or anything like that. I just wanted to get away from work, and she knew it. So there had to be some sort of reason, besides the fact that Dad had gone to high school there, to send me there. I just wished that they would tell me about it, since I was the one who would be affected by it the most.
But in the end I didn't even get that much involvement in the decision. Instead, I ended up being ushered onto a plane with Dad about a week later and flying out to California so we could start on the paperwork. I was an adult and free to make my own choices, but at the same time I was living at home and eating the food that Mom and Dad provided me with. I was driving their car, under their insurance, and they were the ones who would be paying for whatever education I got. I couldn't afford to move out, and I certainly couldn't afford to pay for my own education, so the only real choice I had was to go along with Dad's crazy whims and hope that it wouldn't end up sending the family into bankruptcy.
There was someone from the school waiting for us when we got off the plane. He greeted Dad like an old friend, but an old friend who he respected greatly, which surprised me more than a little. Dad was smart and all, but I never would have pictured someone in a three piece suit representing a fancy private school to show that much respect for a plain old physics professor. I figured it was a personal thing, though, since about two minutes into our drive, in a limousine, to the campus, I came to the realization that he was the principal of the boy's high school division of the school. Of course, he more or less ignored me aside from greeting me curtly when Dad introduced me.
I think what bothered me more than the fact that this important person knew and respected Dad was the conversation that the two of them had, right in front of me in the car. I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about, and I'm certain that they not only realized that, but were glad of it. But they still talked in front of me, the other man treating me almost as if I wasn't there and Dad every now and then throwing slightly guilty looks in my direction.
"It is nice to see that you have not forgotten your duties," was the start of the conversation, from the other man to Dad.
"I wouldn't dream of it."
"When you disappeared so many years ago Master Nelene was sure that you were going to renege."
"I was acting on the family's orders." Dad's face had turned oddly wooden. He was talking in the most serious and together tone of voice that I had ever heard him use, and to be honest, it was more than a little scary realizing that even Dad could be like that sometimes. "After he decided to drop out of consideration the family decided that we would wait for the next generation. Didn't Father inform you of that decision?"
"We were not informed."
"I hope you won't hold that against me, or my son. I assumed that the orders came from outside in the first place. As it is, I was surprised when I received news of the young Master's birth. I was expecting to not be informed until something absolute was decided. Has he been confirmed yet?"
"No, not yet. He has been showing potential for the past several years, but he will not be eligible for the training until next year. But I am sure that he will accept."
"And then you will need our power."
"Of course. Come his sixteenth birthday, that is."
"He's what? Just past fifteen right now?" The other man nodded. "You can't possibly expect to have the training done in less than a year when it's supposed to take a childhood and more to complete."
"You people were the ones who decided to create this situation."
"And have the young Master do the same as his father and leave a fully awakened, fully trained one of our blood wandering around without a bond? You know just how difficult that is to deal with."
"The young Master will not do the same as the Master did."
"So you say."
"And all of the others at the Academy, including all of the young Master's instructors, and the Master himself."
"I'll believe that when I see it, and not a moment sooner." Just then, we pulled up to the gates at the outside of the school. At least, I assumed that was what the gates were, since I couldn't think of any other gates that we should be approaching. After that, both of them stopped talking, Dad to stare at the gates with me, and the other man to answer his phone, which had started ringing just as we came to a complete stop.
"I thought you went to school here before," I commented to Dad when I noticed that he was staring in just as much awe as I was at the enormous gates of iron that blocked the road in front of us. "Shouldn't you be used to this?"
"Students rarely leave campus," Dad replied, back to his usual, not-quite-attached-to-reality, self. "Almost all of those who do are at the university level or higher, so as a high school student, and before then, I rarely even got close enough to the gates to see them clearly. And when we did leave campus, it wasn't from the front. This is maybe my second or third time actually seeing these gates like this."
"Are you really sure that I have to do this?"
He looked over at me and smiled a weak smile. "Absolutely. But you'll be just fine here, Rin. It may be a bit... strange... compared to what you've become accustomed to, but I'm sure that you will grow to love it just as much as I did. The Academy can be the best thing that ever happened to you, if you make it that."
"You're acting like you're going to be leaving me here today." I was just joking, of course. There was something about the way he was all of a sudden trying to make the place seem so much better than I thought it was that made it seem like he was giving me his last advice. But I knew that that couldn't be it. After all, the new semester didn't start for another several months.
"I will." It actually took me almost a full minute to realize that he had just said what he had just said. I guess I just stared at him during that time, though I'm not quite sure, since my mind went completely and utterly blank while it was processing Dad's latest statement.
"What?" I squeaked. "But... But... But it's only October! Next semester doesn't start until January! What in the world am I supposed to do here until then?"
"The Academy doesn't work on a semester system for the most part. Most of the joint courses meet on a fixed schedule, but there are quite a few individual courses available that are not restricted by things like start date and finish date. Once all of the paperwork is completed you can start as soon as you like here. Isn't that what you were looking for, Rin?"
"I... I guess so. But... all of my stuff is back home! I haven't packed at all. You didn't tell me that I wasn't going to be going back!"
"Mom and I will pack up the things that you need. But most of your daily necessities will be provided by the school.
"Remind me again how we're supposed to be paying for all of this... There's no way in hell that we can afford to send me to some place like this."
"There is a scholarship here that is only available to Cellens." I turned to stare at him in awe again, feeling like my eyes were about to fall out of their sockets. "Though it would be more correct to say that it is only available to certain Cellens. If your grandfather were not insisting on your enrollment here you would not be eligible. But since you are eligible, we are not paying anything for you to go to school here."
"Nothing?" I squeaked, wincing inside as my voice went far too high for comfort. "As in... a full scholarship? There's no way that I deserve that!"
"On the contrary. You deserve it simply for being born into the Cellen family. I assure you, Arin, this is not something that we are doing just because. There is a reason for you to be here."
"But you won't tell me that reason."
"It's not that I won't, but that I can't." He started fiddling with his seatbelt nervously. I noticed about then that we were finally pulling up to a building, after driving through what looked like a miniature forest between the gate and the campus itself.
"And that makes me so much more willing to be here..." I muttered.
"I'm sorry, Rin. If you don't figure out the reason yourself by the start of the next school year I'll be able to tell you then."
"But you want me to figure it out before then, right?"
"You're a bright boy. I'm sure you can figure it out without being told. But then, that would mostly depend on the situation on campus, and that is not something I am familiar with at this time in my life."
"So in short you're just going to abandon me here with no clue of what I'm supposed to be doing and let me figure out why I'm here myself, though I may or may not be able to find that out?"
"It isn't as bad as it sounds."
"No, it's worse!" I think I upset him, because he didn't say anything else until after we had come to a complete stop in front of a building that couldn't have been too much bigger than our house, but was far more important looking.
"Ah, we have arrived," I heard the other man, who had been talking on his phone since before the gates, say. "I will have them in to see you any moment now. Until then." And then he hung up the phone.
The limo driver came around to the side to let the three of us out. Once we were on the ground, the other man turned to Dad. "Master Nelene wants to speak with you for now, Master Cellen." Dad nodded, and headed into the building without hesitation, proving that he knew exactly where he was going. That left me alone with the other man, whose name I still hadn't learned. He stared at me with a trace of disgust on his face, as if I wasn't quite worth his time or effort.
"You," he said, almost as if he didn't want to be saying anything to me in the first place, "can follow me."
"Where are we going?" I was more or less certain that I wasn't going to get an answer.
"You will find out when we arrive." He started walking. I almost didn't realize right away that he was quickly putting distance between the two of us, and that if I didn't hurry to follow him I was going to end up getting lost. Needless to say, I hurried to catch up to him, and ended up following him to the main administrative office for the entire school.
The place was nearly empty when we arrived, which didn't really surprise me all that much, seeing as it was a Saturday. I later learned that even on the weekends, that entire building is usually full of people, and that the only reason they weren't in the office that day was because they were all on a department-sponsored vacation, leaving a handful of kind students to handle the things that absolutely could not be left undone. And apparently processing my application and entrance papers was one of those things that absolutely could not be left undone.
It seemed to annoy my companion that things were being handled by a student, not that I blame him. The girl handling things for us, who was maybe a year or two older than I was at the time, was working slowly... mostly to make sure that she didn't screw anything up. I couldn't really blame her for that. Just judging by the number of papers that I had to sign, already filled out for me, though I wasn't sure by whom, it was an extremely complicated process. I probably would have been taking my time to make sure that I did everything right the first time too. But this just seemed to annoy the man I was with more and more with every passing moment.
In the end, the thing that broke his patience wasn't even something that the girl did. There was this guy, maybe sixteen or seventeen at the most, who had come in not too long after we arrived and was talking with one of the other students manning the office who wasn't busy at the moment. He had looked over at the two of us curiously when he first entered but otherwise hadn't really paid us any attention. I thought nothing of it, because that tended to be what most people did when they first saw me. Stare a moment, that is, because of the dark hair and pale skin that look almost like a deliberate goth look, except that they don't match with the definitely not black clothing, and then realize that it's just a coincidence so it's safe to go back to normal life.
But then, when we had been there nearly an hour, the girl ran into a problem. Apparently one of the countless pieces of paper hadn't been filled out completely. It had been a while since the last time I had been needed for a signature, so I wasn't quite paying attention to the girl and was trying not to listen in on the lively conversation between the two guys over to my left. My companion had been forced to step outside to answer another call to his phone, so the only place the girl had to go for the information was to me. When she called out to me softly the first time I didn't hear her, nor did I the second or third times, each a little louder than the one before.
"Master Cellen!" she called out finally, which made me jump. For one, I wasn't used to being called Master, or being called by my last name. I figured the Master thing had to be something about the school, since my companion had been using that term the entire time. Of course, it did catch my attention, which was what the girl wanted.
She pointed out the incomplete part to me when I went over to the desk to look at the paperwork. Luckily, it was stuff that I knew how to fill out. The rest of the sheet seemed to almost be in another language, or maybe it was just that confusing. So I was glad that I could figure out the part that she wanted, and I quickly filled in the missing pieces of information.
When I straightened up, the guy who had come into the room earlier was standing at my side, grinning. He stared at me with an amused expression on his face, almost smirking, so I stared back. I think it was the knowing laughter behind his dark gray eyes that bothered me the most, though in the end he was the one who broke the stare first and spoke.
"So you're the new Cellen, are you?"
"And if I am?" I crossed my arms across my chest and started at him, daring him to make something over it. At the same time, I was wondering why it made a difference, since I still didn't know why I was there in the first place.
"Well, I heard that your dad was quite the pretty boy in his time. Apparently he was supposed to be a rival for Lady Marguerite. So when I heard about you, I was wondering if there was any way you could live up to his legacy."
This left me even more confused than I had been before. I still had no idea why he knew about me, not that I had asked. I had just hoped that he would somehow explain that when giving me my answer. But not only had he not explained anything, now I had the thought of Dad as a pretty boy to try and work my brain around. It wasn't going well.
Dad was not a pretty boy. Dad wasn't even all that good looking, and that's coming from the point of view of multiple girls that I knew. He had glasses so thick you could see the other side of his head through them (seriously, it always freaks people out at first) and almost never combed his hair, so it was always sticking out in every direction. On school days he wore perfectly pressed and fully buttoned shirts and pants in colors so drab they sometimes made him blend into the walls, and on his off days he wore sweats. He more or less looked and acted like the nerd that he was, and that just didn't work with any thoughts of Dad as a pretty boy.
Not to mention that I had no idea who this Lady Marguerite that this guy had mentioned was. I assumed she was beautiful, since it wouldn't make sense to compare a guy's prettiness or beauty to her if she wasn't beautiful in the first place. But the way he said it I felt like I should know the name, and that just confused me more.
"My dad isn't a pretty boy. You must have the wrong Cellen."
"There's only one Cellen family. And even if there happened to be another family wandering around on the Outside with the same name, they would never be able to get in here. So unless you're lying when you say you're a Cellen, I don't have the wrong person."
"When did I ever say I was a Cellen?" Even I didn't think I sounded very convincing.
"You answered Maria here when she called out "Master Cellen," didn't you? Pretending to be a Cellen is a pretty hefty offense around here, so I hope you weren't lying."
I stared at him, not wanting to admit that I was a Cellen, but at the same time not wanting to lie to him, and he stared back. We stayed like this for a while, and finally he broken into a huge grin. "You have absolutely no clue what's going on around here, do you?" he asked, this gigantic smile plastered across his face.
I was saved from this by the girl, Maria, who needed another signature. And right after that, before the guy could say anything else, my companion came back into the room, scowling at his phone as if he could make it burn just by glaring. He took one look around the room, spotted the guy standing near me, and stormed over to where we were standing.
"Hassen..." His voice came out as a low growl. "What in the world do you think you're doing?"
"Shouldn't that be Master Hassen?" the guy asked, smiling.
"I see no need to use formalities with you."
"It's not a good idea for a teacher to play favorites, you know. That goes for principals too. I don't like being hated any more than any other person does."
"But you will survive."
"Oh, that's kind... Are you going to chase me out of here by waving a stick now too?"
"Would you rather I call the Master here?"
This actually made the guy, Hassen, go pale. I wondered if the Master here was the same as the Master that he and Dad had been talking about during our ride. I wasn't about to ask, though, since I got the feeling that I would just be jumped on if I said anything. As it was, Hassen grumbled and ended up walking out of the room not too long after the Master was mentioned, leaving me more or less alone with the other man (Maria didn't count, since I was already falling into the habit of forgetting that she was in the room. She just didn't have enough of a presence.).
This entire episode seemed to make my companion quite angry. Angry enough, in fact, that he ended up asking Maria to give me each and every paper that I still needed to sign so that I could put my signature on all of them. Then when I was done he told the girl that she could finish it all up, and that if there was anything that wasn't quite finished she could find me some other time to get the needed information, or take it off of another sheet. And then I was ordered out of the room in a tone of voice that made it quite clear that any and all objections would be met with no sympathy whatsoever.
We marched through the building to a room that looked quite a bit fancier than any of the other ones. It had "Office of the Chairman" in wooden letters above the door itself. There my companion knocked twice and waited until a voice called from inside for us to enter. He opened the door and ushered me in, and waiting inside were Dad and a man who I had never met before, though he looked slightly familiar, as if I should know him from somewhere.
Now, earlier I said that my brain just couldn't work itself around the thought of Dad as a pretty boy, and I stand by that conviction. But at that moment, walking into the Chairman's office at Nelene Academy after Dad had been in there conversing with the chairman himself for the past hour, that changed slightly. I don't know what it was that caused it, but the Dad sitting there was definitely not the same Dad who had left the car a little over an hour earlier. That first Dad had been the same Dad that I always saw: nerdy, dressed in something stuffy and a step above office casual, hair flying in every which direction, to contrast with his perfectly pressed clothing, and just so Dad that I'm not sure how else to describe him.
The Dad in the chairman's office was still Dad, but at the same time he wasn't. The glasses had disappeared (and no matter how much I asked him afterward how he could see without them, he wouldn't explain it to me). Someone, I assumed it was the chairman, had given him an elastic band to pull his hair back into a semblance of a pony tail, though there wasn't quite enough of it to stay all the way back and half of it had fallen out. He had apparently gotten hot and had unbuttoned the top button and cuffs of his shirt (this was something that I would have thought was a sign of the Apocalypse at one time). But what surprised me the most was that he had lost most of his nerdy aura... There was still the feel of a college professor about him, as well as the sense that he knew quite a few things and that he was confident in that knowledge. But the nerdy aura was gone, which actually did a lot for his appearance, as odd as that may sound at first.
Come to think of it, I think that was the first time that I started to think that that school was actually Weird. Not just weird, because I had figured that out from the beginning, when I was told that I could get in with no problems, that I would be starting right away in the middle of the semester, and when Dad told me that there was a special scholarship just for our family. But Weird, with a capital W. That was something that I didn't start thinking until I saw how much Dad had changed just being back there for a small time, or maybe it was because of his company. Either way, it wasn't normal, and it was definitely Weird... though I wouldn't find out just how Weird it was for quite a while.
"Ah, Rin!" Dad said as he saw who it was entering the room. And while I knew that it was Dad (I could never mistake Dad for anyone else, no matter how much he might change), it was still more than a little weird confirming it when he spoke. "Come over here. Let me introduce you."
I headed over to his side, despite a slight muffled squeak of protest from the man I was still technically with and turned to face the other man in the room, who I assumed was the chairman. He was handsome, in that ageless way that very good looking older men are handsome, and he was smiling. And for some reason, when I saw him at that moment, the combination of his looks and his smile set me on edge right away, though Dad seemed perfectly comfortable. So, that left me standing next to Dad, smiling back at the man even though the hairs on the back of my neck were probably pointing straight up in total defiance of gravity.
"Rin, this is my old friend, Kallen Nelene." Dad was smiling a genuine smile, unlike my forced one. "I went to school with him, though it seems that now he's become the chairman of the Academy in his father's place. And Kallen, this is my son, Arin."
"Pleased to meet you." I tried to keep my voice completely neutral, since I wasn't sure that I could force out a genuinely pleased voice to save my life.
"The pleasure is all mine." His voice, I think, sounded just as strained as mine must have. I got the distinct impression that he liked me about as much as I liked him in that moment, and I can't say that that bothered me all that much.
Nelene (I know I was introduced to him by his full name and all, but I could never bring myself to ever think of him by his first name. He was always Nelene to me, even after I met others from his family, all of whom had the last name Nelene as well.) then turned to my former companion, the high school boys' division principal, with a serious look on his face. "All the paperwork is done?"
"Close enough. We ran into a problem in the office, so I figured it would be most prudent to speed up the process and return here as soon as possible to avoid a second occurrence."
"Did you at least wait long enough to get his room number?" Just hearing the intensity behind that slightly annoyed question was enough to tell me that I never wanted to have this man angry with me, ever. And seeing as I planned on avoiding him as much as I possibly could, I was hoping that that would be fairly easy to arrange.
"Of course I did," came the stiff answer, with the distinct implication that merely suggesting that he wouldn't have was sheer absurdity.
"Why don't you show him to his room, then? I'm sure he is getting tired by now and would appreciate a rest. We can finish the formalities in the morning."
"But, sir, I..."
"Kallen," Dad said, interrupting the principal. "If he tells me what room it is I can find it just fine. I'm going to be staying here tonight anyway, so we shouldn't bother Daniel any more than we already have."
"If you're sure you can remember your way around, then be my guest," Nelene said, beaming at Dad. Dad smiled back at him, and then quickly got the room number from the principal.
"Well then," Dad said. "We will see you in the morning."
"I'll send someone with dinner."
"That would be wonderful." Then Dad motioned for me to get up and follow him out of the room without even saying goodbye. I did so, and before long we arrived in a dorm room that looked absolutely nothing like what I ever imagined a dorm room would look like. It was far larger, better furnished, and just nicer than anything that came to mind when the words "dorm room" were said to me.
That night Dad and I slept in that room, which I was later told was a temporary arrangement, even though I thought they were talking about my actual room back in Nelene's office. I was going to be put with a roommate, but they wanted to give him a few days' advance notice before letting me move in, which worked out fine that first night because Dad stayed with me to take a flight home in the morning. That night we stayed up rather late, Dad telling me stories about the Academy and bits and pieces of information that he thought might be helpful for me, though a lot of the experiences that he had from high school were useless for me at the college level. We did not talk of Nelene, especially not of the distrust that I had felt for him from the start, and I guess that was all I could ask for.
In the morning, Dad left on a fairly early flight back to Green Bay, leaving me alone in terms of people that I knew and trusted. They introduced me to my roommate that morning, a girly-looking guy by the name of Adai, and he offered to let me borrow some clothes until my luggage arrived from home, seeing as we were actually about the same size. And then, after that, I started with the various types of testing that they wanted to put me through before they would even think of letting me start any classes there.