Unaware chapter 2 - Private Lessons (A.k.a. "the real beginning"... or when it starts to get weird.)
^_^; More Unaware! More Rin! ...The "real" beginning of the story. The school year is over, Rin is back home, and now things start to get weird. The one thing that will plague Rin through the entire story is mentioned in this chapter (at the end), and even before that, it's the start of the stuff that takes Rin out of his comfortable life and into... Well, the world of the Nelenes and the Cellens. ^_^;
And by the way, the zoo that the end of this chapter (and the beginning of the next one) is the NEW Zoo (stands for Northeastern Wisconsin, not new as in... well, new). It's a pretty cool place, even if it's not huge. (Besides, it's affordable!) ^_^;
Chapter 2
Private Lessons* (*A.k.a. "the real beginning"... or when it starts to get weird.)
I guess by the time summer break came around, I was getting used to the Academy. I still felt a bit like an outsider, because there always seemed to be something going on that I just wasn't part of and that no one wanted to explain to me. But at the same time, I was starting to make some friends other than just Jay, Ed, and Adai, including some of the girls in my various classes. Adai told me at one point that I was strange, for the simple reason that the girls were willing to spend time with me outside of class. The Academy separated the boys and girls up until the university level, and apparently most of the students tended to unconsciously keep the separation up for the most part once it went co-ed. But not me, since I had always been in co-ed schools.
Anyway, it was actually a little weird when I finally got to go home for summer break. I had already been home for Thanksgiving, semester break, and spring break, but I think the month or two between spring break and the end of the winter semester was when I finally started to get the hang of things at the school. So really, it was going home after that that seemed awkward, almost as if I was out of place there instead of at the school. But that didn't mean that I wasn't glad to go home.
Mom or Dad, or both, had come to pick me up the other times I went home during the year. This time I flew alone, not that I had a problem with that. There was something strange about leaving the Academy in a cab, rather than the limo that had driven around Dad when he came, but even more about leaving the Academy alone, except for the cab driver, who had no connection to the Academy whatsoever.
Maybe it was because I was traveling alone, but I could swear that someone was watching me the entire time I was in the airport. Of course, I also think that might have been left over from the fact that most of the time at school there was someone looking at me and whispering, whether it was because of the known fact that I denied any sponsors whatsoever, because I was a close friend of both Jay and Ed (who were looked up to as teachers, but seen as "weird" by most of the students), or because I was roommate to Adai, who was openly hostile to the vast majority of the student body, for reasons unknown to me (as far as I could see, he was a great guy). Whatever the reason, it was an unsettling feeling that followed me through the airport, onto the plane, and all the way until I finally got in the car in Green Bay with Mom and Dad.
The first couple of days at home were nice. I didn't have to work, and I wasn't planning on finding a job for the summer either. I didn't really need the money (a rather hefty amount of spending money, as in more than I could spend without putting an effort into it, was built into the scholarship that I had received). I didn't have classes, which left me with more than enough free time to get caught up with my friends at home, who I had barely talked to in the past several months. After all, Thanksgiving and Christmas were family holidays, not for me to intrude on, and pretty much everyone had had plans for spring break when I tried to get a hold of them. And communicating with the world outside of the Academy turned out to be surprisingly difficult, even with the help of the net.
I hadn't even had time to tell any of my friends back home that I would be leaving for school in the first place. After all, I had just been dumped there when I thought I was just going to fill out paperwork and stuff like that. So for most of my friends, this was the first time they had seen me in eight or so months, except for the few I had managed to get together with during semester break. As it was, I was surprised when I got in contact with them that they weren't pissed off at me for disappearing on them like that.
So when, about a week into summer break, I got the letter from the Academy informing me that they had arranged summer classes for me, it made sense for me to get pissed off. Of course, I got even more pissed off when I read the schedule for these summer classes, which were to take place at home, not at the Academy, and noticed that they started the next day at 8 p.m. (and now that I think about it, I never really thought that time strange, just extremely aggravating). The first thing I did once I read over the letter was take it to Dad and demand to know what was going on. He, understandably, didn't know any more than I did, though he ended up spending the afternoon on the phone with the Academy, and later Nelene himself, for me trying to figure something out.
I think Dad got more of an answer out of them than he gave me, just based on the way that he told me that yes, I did have to go do it and no, I wasn't allowed to protest. The reason he gave me after getting off the phone was that the instructor for the class they were making me take over the summer was someone who rarely taught at the Academy but was the only instructor available for the class. He lived in Green Bay, just like we did, so it made sense to have him teach me while I was there rather than making him go out to the Academy for a semester and teach me there.
What pissed me off the most was that the letter didn't say what sort of class it was that they were trying to make me take. And if Dad found out over the phone, which I was sure he did, he didn't tell me. So I was being forced to give up a substantial chunk of my summer for a class that I had no information about and no way to prepare for. But what pissed me off about that more than anything else was that the same day that they wanted me to start this class I already had plans made with my friend, Mark, to go see a movie and hang out. Because of this class, I would have to cancel. He would understand, since I had already told him all about how weird the Academy was by then, but that didn't change the fact that it hardly seemed right.
That next day I showed up at the place the letter told me to go to, about five minutes after 8:00 pm. I didn't particularly care about being late, mostly because I was still more than a little pissed off at the Academy in general for pulling a stunt like that. I think that somewhere deep inside of me I blamed the instructor for the class the most, since I knew that if he hadn't lived in the area I wouldn't have had to take that class that summer.
The place was an office building that I had never been in before. I'm pretty sure that the place didn't belong to the Academy, since it hardly made sense for them to own offices in Green Bay, unless they made a habit of sending students all the way to Wisconsin to get instruction from this person instead of bringing him to campus. But when I got inside the building, there was no one else there, not even the instructor who would supposedly be teaching the class. That struck me as more than a little weird.
There was a card left on the desk at the front of the room I had been told go to, though. A strip of heavy black cloth lay next to it. The card read, "The first class will be conducted in the dark. Please turn off the lights, put the blindfold on securely, and wait for me to arrive." The handwriting was neat, but not any handwriting that I had seen before. And since I knew next to nothing about analyzing handwriting, there wasn't much I could say about the instructor based on the instructions he had given me, beside the fact that he seemed bent on confusing the hell out of me.
Still, I knew that I wouldn't be getting anywhere if I didn't cooperate, so I did as the card said. There was a chair next to the desk, so I sat there in the dark and tied the black cloth around my eyes, after removing my glasses of course, making sure that I knotted it tightly and couldn't see out the bottom. I would have liked to try and peek, but I was pretty sure that the instructor would be looking for just that. So there I sat, in the darkness, for several minutes, until I heard a door open somewhere behind me, and then a set of footsteps approached.
"It is nice to see that you know how to follow directions," a soft, deep, male voice said from right behind my head once the footsteps had stopped. I couldn't see how he could tell that I had followed his directions, since the room had been completely dark before I put the blindfold on. It was an inside room, with no windows, and with the doors closed and the lights off, there was no light in the room whatsoever.
I felt a large hand on my shoulder, leaning slightly, but not so much that I had difficulty staying in my upright position. Then he shifted slightly, and I felt warm breath tickle my neck and ear on my left side. I jumped slightly, more because I wasn't expecting it than anything else, but also slightly because it was creepy, being unable to see him but to know that he was there like that.
"Are you afraid of the dark?" His breath tickled my ear again as he whispered his question.
I swallowed. "Not really. But..."
"But things get magnified when you are like this." Had he not been speaking directly into my ear, I probably wouldn't have heard him. "Fear, excitement... They become sharper when you feel you have lost some control of the situation, don't they?" I nodded.
I heard the quiet whisper of fabric rustling as his hand left my shoulder and he moved. I felt something brush my left leg momentarily, and then before I knew it there were hands on both my thighs, and I felt him leaning forward slightly, a gentle pressure on my legs. He didn't do anything else, just sat there with his hands on my legs, but that was enough to make me more than a little nervous.
"Umm..." I swallowed, licking my lips.
"This is awkward for you?" I nodded, though I wasn't sure if he could see me or not. "That is understandable. You are here, unable to see, in an unfamiliar place, with an unknown companion. Anyone would feel awkward in this situation."
"I..." I started to explain myself, but stumbled over my words as I tried to get my brain and my mouth to work at the same time. It didn't help that my mouth had gone completely dry and that I don't think my brain was working enough to form words in the first place. "I thought I was here for a class..."
"This is a class."
"But..."
"This is a special type of class. I find that the best way to teach what I teach is through experience." Then I felt him shift again. Rather than having his hands on my legs, this time I was fairly sure that he had his arms resting across my legs. At least, that was how it felt.
Now that I think back on it, I'm surprised that I wasn't thinking thoughts about "bad touches" (you know, like they teach little kids in school when telling them to be wary of bad adults) right about then, seeing as he was getting closer to me than I would have been comfortable with most of my friends, and I had no clue who he was. But that wasn't what was going through my mind at the time. I was just nervous, not scared, probably because somewhere deep inside of me something was telling me that I could trust him, even though I didn't even know who he was or what kind of person he was.
I think he must have felt me flinch a little when he moved around, because he sighed heavily not too long after that. "We will never get anywhere as long as you remain this stiff and jumpy." Though the words he used could have easily been scolding, he instead was gentle, his voice projecting a sort of sense that he knew exactly how I felt and that everything would be all right. Nothing bad was going to happen. I could relax, not that that was as easy as his voice seemed to indicate it was.
"I..." I wasn't exactly sure where I was supposed to go with my thought after that. Part of me wanted to apologize for being nervous, but most of me was feeling more than comfortable with the way things were in my mind at that moment. But even then, I felt like I needed to say something.
"It's all right. I was trying to start off too quickly, that's all. We can start with something relaxing instead. A massage would probably be best. Not only is it relaxing, but you can become more accustomed to my touch at the same time."
"I... I think I would be able to relax more if I could see..." That was true for the most part. I didn't like being unable to see him. I couldn't quite tell where he was just by his voice, and that bothered me. And being unable to see made every time he touched me seem that much... more, like my other senses were trying to make up for the failure of one of them.
"No, that would not be a wise idea at this stage. Taking away your ability to see is part of the lesson. You need to learn to be able to trust more. What better way to work on trust than to give yourself over to someone you cannot see with the knowledge that you will not be allowed to see the entire time?"
"But I..."
I felt him rise from his position in front of me, the arms leaving my legs. From the sounds, I was fairly sure that he was moving around to my back again, and this was confirmed when I felt his hands on my shoulders. I flinched again, even though I was already expecting this touch based on what he had said not too much earlier. This time his hands didn't just sit there the way they did before. They started moving almost immediately, rubbing and pressing in an insistent pattern that was distinctively a massage. It was strange at first, though before long I felt much of my tension disappearing under his hands.
"Trust is just the first step." He massaged my shoulders with skilled hands as he talked. "In the end, you need to be able to obey a command right away, neither hesitating nor thinking about it until you have already started acting. But we cannot work on that until you at least learn to trust and give up control of the situation completely."
"Why would I need to be able to obey? It's not like I'm going into the military or anything."
His hands froze on my shoulders, and just feeling them still like that made all of the tension come rushing back into my body. I knew it would do no good, but I couldn't resist the urge to turn around in the seat and try to "look" at him. In this case, I had my head pointed in about the direction that he should be in, based on what I was sure was his position behind me before, but I couldn't see anything because of the blindfold and the dark room.
"They didn't explain to you why you were here?" His voice was tight, strained. I shook my head. "They didn't explain to you the reason for this training either, did they? What you are supposed to do with what I teach you these next few months?"
"They didn't tell me anything. Just to be here at a certain time on a certain day to start my summer class. And Dad told me that they decided to have the class over the summer for me because you live here in the city."
"But nothing about why..." I shook my head again, even though I wasn't quite sure it was a question. "Those bastards!"
I had involuntarily shaken his hands off my shoulders when I turned around, so I couldn't feel him anymore to know where he was. I knew he was still in about the same position based on where his voice was coming from, but when I heard footsteps, angry ones, heading toward the other side of the room, I realized that he was no longer right there anymore. When the lights came on, which I realized despite the heavy blindfold, I knew that he was standing by the light switch.
I reached up to untie the blindfold, but stopped when his voice rang out. "Leave the blindfold on for a while longer. I will be back in a short while, and I do not want to chance you facing the wrong direction when I enter the room again. I will tell you when you can remove the blindfold." I heard a door open and then close, and I realized that he had left the room.
At first it made no sense to me to make me leave the blindfold on. From what he had said so far, the blindfold was supposed to be in combination with the darkness to make me feel less in control. So now that the lights were on and he seemed to have changed plans, why keep the blindfold? But, as I thought about it more, a thought started to grow in the back of my mind.
He lived in Green Bay. Dad had told me that. And while Green Bay was hardly one of those small towns where everyone knew each other (even if it's pitiful compared to a real city, it's still not a small town), there was always the chance that I knew him. He didn't sound familiar, but that meant nothing in the long run. I had never been the kind of person to pay that much attention to a person's voice, especially not enough to recognize it again if I was unable to see the owner of the voice. If I knew him, I would probably recognize him if I could see him.
Once that idea entered my head, I couldn't get it out. I had no idea which person I knew that he might be, of course. Besides, I wasn't about to test the idea right then, mostly because he had sounded angry when he left the room. I didn't want to test my luck when he was angry, especially if I was right. The situation was already too strange for me to go around complicating it at that stage. So I just sat there for what felt like an eternity, waiting for him to come back and explain to me what was going on, or at least let me take off the blindfold, which was starting to itch.
Finally he came back, though I could almost feel the air chill as he entered the room. He was still angry. It was a cold anger, though, and I got the distinct impression that it was not directed at me. How I knew all this without him saying anything and without being able to see him, I wasn't quite sure. But I would have been willing to bet my life on it.
"I called the Academy and talked to Master Nelene." At least his voice was soft towards me. There was an edge of hoarseness, though, as if maybe he had been yelling quite forcefully at someone just moments earlier. "I asked him why you had been sent to me with knowledge of neither the training you are to be receiving, nor the use you will have for this training, and he played dumb with me. All I could get out of him was that there must have been a mix up in communications somewhere.
"After that I called your father."
"You called Dad?" I could have sworn that my voice went up an entire octave from sheer surprise.
"Aside from myself, he is the only other person with a connection to you and the Academy here in the city. He knows what is going on, most likely better than anyone else involved, including myself. Possibly even more than Master Nelene himself. I managed to secure a promise from him that you would have the situation explained to you before you returned here."
"You won't tell me yourself?"
"It is not my place. I am merely a minor character in this affair, here to train you and nothing else. You are best off letting someone like Master Cellen explain it to you."
"You're the first person I've met associated with the Academy who refers to Dad by his last name since the first day I was there." I couldn't help but smile a little.
I had gotten far more used to the habit of calling everyone except for Nelene by first name while I was at the Academy, though Mom and Dad would always be Mom and Dad to me. Still, even knowing that they avoided last names at all costs and knowing from my encounter on that first day that there were rumors about Dad, it had taken me almost a month to realize that the rumors about someone named Willian from a while ago were about Dad. Since then I had gotten used to the talk about Willian, and hearing "Master Cellen" was almost strange.
"We are not on the Academy grounds. And I know exactly who you are, Arin Cellen, so I see no need to beat around the bush by avoiding family names the way I would be forced to were this a more traditional setting."
"Does that apply to you as well?" The question slipped out before I remembered that I didn't know any part of his name yet.
"You can call me Michal if you must address me by name."
"That's your first name, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Whatever happened to not beating around the bush and avoiding family names?"
"I have my reasons for choosing to use my given name only." His voice suddenly got several degrees colder, though technically I don't think voices can have temperatures.
"I know you, don't I?" I couldn't help it. I had to voice the thought that had been running around my head for the past while. "If I took this blindfold off right now and looked at you, I would recognize you, wouldn't I?"
"I cannot answer that question." The answer came back stiffly formal, with an edge of tension coloring his voice. And that, of course, just made me more determined to figure out who he was... without breaking the rules of his "game," since I was fairly sure that would just cause me trouble. Not that I was going to tell him about my plan.
"Anyway, Master Cellen should explain things to you sometime tomorrow before it is time for your lessons. Unless this does not happen, I expect you here at the same time tomorrow. We will continue where we left off earlier."
"With the massage?"
"Of course. I will have the blindfold waiting for you in the same place, though I believe I will look for some less irritating fabric this time." At this I breathed a sigh of relief. The blindfold had progressed from itchy to a nightmarish hell in the short time between when he stepped out to call people and that moment. I was more than ready to remove the blindfold. I had had to refrain from even scratching at the surrounding skin to avoid the temptation to take it off right then and there. The prospect of a blindfold that would hopefully be less itchy was a happy one.
I heard his footsteps again, followed by the door opening. Then, before he exited the room, he spoke one last time, his voice echoing slightly from across the room. "Once I close the door, wait about thirty seconds. Then you can remove the blindfold. Exit the way you came in, and don't take any detours within the building. I do not want you wandering. I will see you tomorrow, though you will not see me."
I nodded, and then the door shut again. I waited the thirty seconds that he had told me to wait, and then I removed the blindfold and got my glasses back on my face. The sight that greeted my eyes, slightly sensitive after not having any stimulation from the light for a while, was completely unchanged from the sight right before I turned off the lights originally. Well, the clock was different, since it was some time later, but otherwise the room was exactly the same.
I stood up from the chair and stretched before making my way to the door I had come in by. I still wasn't feeling up to being rebellious, especially not when I knew that Michal had just arranged for someone to tell me what was going on, so I did as he said and went right out of the building. After that I went home and ended up falling asleep almost right away, even though I hadn't even been awake for twelve hours yet. Something about that night left me exhausted, and all I really wanted to do was sleep, so I did.
The next morning Dad was waiting for me when I woke up. That was weird enough, since I was sure that he had said something the day before about stuff that he had to do that day (for work, despite the fact that the semester was over and his summer semester hadn't started yet). But there he was, in the kitchen cooking something I couldn't quite identify at first. He must have heard my footsteps as I came into the room, because he looked up right after I entered and smiled broadly.
"Good morning!" he said brightly, even though it was almost noon and could barely be called morning any more. (That was the other thing that surprised me that morning, aside from the fact that Dad was there. I had slept for over twelve hours, and I still felt like doing nothing other than crawling back into bed and not emerging for the rest of the day.)
"Morning..." I wasn't quite feeling alive enough to muster even half the energy that he seemed to have at that moment.
"Would you like some breakfast?" He held up some of whatever it was that he was cooking. I went around the counter to stand next to him and peer at it, and I found myself squinting to try and figure out what it was despite the fact that I actually had my glasses on at the time. Even then, I wasn't quite sure what it was supposed to be, and I decided that eating something when I wasn't sure what it was would probably be a bad idea. Especially considering that it was black. Not just dark, but black.
"I'll have cereal." I went back around the counter and over to the closet to try to find some sort of cereal that was actually edible. Most of it was the stuff so full of sugar that it could fuel a rocket on calories alone, the kind of stuff that Dad liked to eat, though not for breakfast. And the rest of it was health stuff that either tasted awful or was as hard as rocks, that being Mom's breakfast of choice, when she was awake for breakfast. And that was it, since I had been at school up until just recently and Karen hadn't eaten cereal in at least six years (considering that Karen was just barely twelve at that time, that was a good chunk of her life).
"It's a lot better than it looks." He lifted his wooden spoon to taste a little of the thick, almost stew-like stuff. He smacked his lips a couple of times before putting the spoon down, a satisfied smile plastered across his face. "Why don't you at least try some?"
"What is it?"
To be honest, I have absolutely no recollection of what he called it. All I remember about the stuff was what it looked like, and then the flavor later on. I remember that he actually told me what it was, where it came from, what was in it, and when people usually ate it. But I remember none of that now, just that it looked like jet-black stew with small flecks of white in it. And... when I finally gave in to his begging, it tasted slightly meaty, but not overpoweringly so. It actually tasted pretty good, and I decided after that that it wouldn't kill me to make Dad happy and eat his cooking for breakfast, which was about to become lunch instead.
"I thought you had things to do today," I said once we were both sitting down at the kitchen table with our bowls of whatever. It was the one thing that had been bothering me since I first spotted him, so I figured it couldn't hurt to ask. Maybe he would actually answer, though I had started to expect answers less and less the longer I stayed at the Academy.
"I decided I had better things to do today." He gave me another big smile, very un-Dad-like. "Like spend some time with my son. I don't do anywhere near enough of that."
"You don't have to put off work just to spend time with me."
"But I want to. Can't I take some time away to get closer to my son every now and then?"
I wasn't really sure what to say in response to that. It wasn't that I didn't want to spend time with Dad. I liked Dad, most of the time (of course there were always situations, the normal things that happen when parents try to impose some sort of rules on the teenager who is finally starting to develop into a real, independent being). But I was also more than aware of the fact that he seemed to know everything that I didn't know about whatever was going on with me and the Academy. He hadn't told me anything yet, so I was feeling more than a little unwilling to cooperate with him at that time.
So I stayed silent, eating some more while I tried to think of what I should say. The silence between us grew tense as I thought. I could tell that Dad expected me to say something... and that the fact that I wasn't was starting to make him more than a little uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable too, but I still couldn't come up with the right words to convey to him how I felt, and I didn't want to try to say anything until I had made up my mind on what to say.
"Rin, I asked you a question." The reminder came gently after the tension had gotten so noticeable that I was surprised we couldn't see it.
"I know. But I'm not sure how I want to answer yet."
"Why? Don't you want to spend some time with me?"
"I'm pissed off at you right now, Dad." And as soon as that came out of my mouth, I realized that it was actually true, even though I hadn't quite realized it until just then. I was starting to get the feeling that the Academy thing was more than just a weird school, but something major that no one was explaining to me. Something that Dad seemed to know a whole hell of a lot about.
After thinking a little more and deciding that it was probably better to tell the truth in the end than try to make him feel better. "It's kinda hard to say that I want to spend time with you when I'm pissed off at you."
"Why?"
I almost said "You know why!" and left it at that. That was how I was feeling, since I was sure that he realized at least a little that I wasn't happy with the fact that everyone seemed to know what was going on except me. But the way he asked the question... that seemed almost like he really didn't understand why I was pissed off at him, and not that he was playing dumb to get me to do what he wanted me to do.
"No one will tell me what's going on! And you know all about it. You know why I'm at the Academy. You know why they're making me take this class over the summer. You know what the class is, and I don't yet. I get the feeling that you know everything, even though you aren't even involved in half of it."
"And you're angry because I haven't told you any of the things that I know?"
I nodded emphatically. "You're my father. Aren't you supposed to be on my side?"
He paused in his eating and sat there, thinking, for several moments. He didn't bother to take the spoon out and continue eating. He just sat there with the spoon hanging out of his mouth, and for about half a moment I thought that time had frozen, leaving him stuck in that position.
"Since when has this been a situation in which I need to take a side?" he asked finally, after taking the spoon out of his mouth and resting it on top of the bowl.
"Since you abandoned me at the Academy with barely any warning!" I felt a small spark of anger starting to kindle somewhere around the vicinity of my stomach. "Since they started giving me "survival lessons." What else am I supposed to think when that sort of thing happens, besides that this is me against them?"
"Oh, so they still have Jay on staff?"
"Yeah. He's a lot of fun, but..." I trailed off, realizing that he was trying to change the subject away from the matter of whether he was on my side or not. And I had gone along with it, answering his question about the Academy rather than trying to force the truth out of him, even though it hadn't worked very well in the past, both on matters of the Academy and other things from before then.
"Don't change the subject!" That spark of anger burned a little brighter at the thought of his attempt to stall.
He frowned a little, though it was almost a pout, but then smiled again. "This isn't a situation where it's necessarily you against everyone else, you know. No one needs to choose sides here."
"You're not on my side, are you?" I choose to ignore the fact that he had tried to deny being on any side at all.
"If I'm on any "side" at all," he said, sighing heavily, "it's the family's side. What the family wants might not necessarily be what you want, but in the end it will be the best thing for you. You have to keep that in mind from now on, Rin."
"You really do know everything that's going on, don't you?" I think I ended up sounding more suspicious than I actually was. Maybe. Though that might not have been possible, considering that I was already convinced that he knew absolutely everything, no matter what he might say.
He nodded. He didn't say anything; he just nodded. And I waited. Michal had said that Dad would explain everything to me before I went to see him again, and I trusted what he had said... for some reason. I was convinced that Dad was finally going to tell me what was going on right then, so I waited for him to start talking.
Minutes passed, and passed, and still nothing came.
"Aren't you going to explain things to me? He said you would."
"Not yet."
"Why not?" By that point I was starting to get frustrated. I had been frustrated before, of course, but that was with my own ignorance and things like that. This time the frustration was from the fact that Dad seemed ready to do everything for me except for the one thing that I wanted him to do. To me, that was one of the most frustrating feelings ever, and I would not recommend it to anyone, particularly not when trying to solve an already frustrating problem.
"It's not the right time yet. Why don't you and I go out and do some stuff? Then, when it's the right time, I can tell you some of what you want to know."
I wanted to ask why again, but by that point I was starting to sound like a broken record. "Are you going to tell me the truth yet?" "Why not?" "But he said you were going to tell me the truth before my next class!" It was all the same thing, and I knew that it would have annoyed me had I been in Dad's place, no matter how much goodwill I had toward the person wanting the information. And while I was pretty sure that Dad wasn't going to do it, I knew that had I been in his place, being bugged like that, I would decide not to tell at all. Dad wasn't like that, so I wasn't too worried about him doing something like that to spite me, but better safe than sorry.
So instead I asked, "What was it you wanted to do?"
He smiled, the kind of silly grin that some people get when they have an idea that pleases them immensely, though a good number of people other than them would think it's completely and utterly insane. "I was thinking Bay Beach. Great America would be better, but that really needs to be planned ahead of time. Can't just up and decide to drive down almost to Chicago at this time of the morning and hope to have any time to have fun there, after all."
Bay Beach was the local amusement park. Nothing fancy, just some rides. No roller coasters, or anything exciting, even. Not that I was a big fan of roller coasters in the first place. I tended to get sick on roller coasters; there was something about the way they moved that bothered my sense of balance enough to screw me up pretty badly. Spinning I could handle. Being dropped I could handle. Moving fast I could handle. It was the combination of the three that gave me problems, something we had learned during my senior year of high school in physics class when we went to do the roller coaster study. It was apparently something that developed over the course of time, because I have clear memories from when I was younger of going on roller coasters without any problem.
Great America, by the way, was a place with roller coasters. The full name was Six Flags Great America (one of the Six Flags theme parks, obviously), and it was a little past the Wisconsin-Illinois border on the way to Chicago. It was big and had lots of stuff to do besides roller coasters, but seeing as it was almost a four hour drive from Green Bay (each way), that was definitely not something you just decided to do at almost noon when you had things to do that evening.
Of course, I had never been a huge fan of amusement parks in the first place. I used to like roller coasters, before I started getting sick from them. But aside from roller coasters, the typical rides had no real thrills for me, and an amusement park was definitely not the sort of place I wanted to go to spend time with Dad that day. Not when I was still a little annoyed at not having things explained to me. Especially not when it seemed like Dad was doing nothing more than stalling.
"I don't really want to go to Bay Beach." The grin immediately disappeared from his face to be replaced by a look of dejection.
"Great America? We could go tomorrow instead..."
"Did you forget that last time I was on a roller coaster I ended up throwing up all over my physics teacher when I got off the ride? And when I tried another one at the end of the day, thinking that maybe it was just because we hadn't been off the bus all that long, it ended up the same, except that this time I threw up all over Mark?"
"I'd forgotten about that..." He looked even more dejected than before. "What about mini golf? Do you want to go mini golfing? Or go-carts? Or a water park? It's warm enough for that already, don't you think?" He actually continued to throw out suggestions after that for a while.
To be honest, I probably wouldn't have minded a water park. Mini golfing and go-carts I could do without, and I think he knew that. He was just getting desperate; I could tell by the way he kept throwing out suggestions without even listening to whether I agreed or not. He wanted to do something "fun" with me, but he knew I was going to say no to his suggestions. He had to try anyway, it seemed.
"You don't need to take me anywhere, Dad." I was trying to make him realize that I really didn't want to do any of those things, but he didn't seem to be listening.
"How about the zoo? I know it's pretty childish, but we haven't been there in forever... Would you like to go to the zoo for a bit?" He actually stopped throwing ideas out after that. I think it was because he had run out of easy suggestions.
I realized about then that he wasn't going to stop until I agreed, and his ideas would probably go downhill from then on. There was only so much "fun stuff" to do in the area, and he had covered the majority of the things that were well known already. Besides that, it was very true that neither one of us had been to the zoo in a long time, and that a lot had changed since the last time we went. So I made the choice to agree, just so we could move forward.
"That sounds good." He started smiling again. I don't think I had seen him that excited in a long time, and that made me feel good, I guess.
So, about a half hour later I was showered and completely dressed and we were on our way to the zoo. I was driving, since Dad admitted on our way out the door that he hadn't slept at all the night before. My guess was that he was too stressed about the whole having to explain things to me.
The zoo was definitely not how I remembered it. It had been decently sized back when I was kid, but it seemed to have gotten even bigger since then. I didn't mind the size, though, and I actually had quite a bit of fun that day, seeing all the animals with Dad like that. It kinda reminded me of when I was little, and that was a good thing.
We had a really late lunch, probably because breakfast was so late as well. Around 2 or so we stopped wandering the zoo and headed for the food court area to buy some overpriced food. And then, while we were enjoying our greasy, fattening not-quite fast food type lunch, Dad finally decided that he was ready to explain things to me, though he wanted to go somewhere a little farther away from people before he would start talking. So we took our food with us and found a bench along a walking trail that no one seemed to be interested in and ate there.
"I was hoping you might have figured some of this out at school..." He started reluctantly, almost as if he didn't really want to tell me.
"Figured out what?"
"All of it." He waved his hand, hamburger and all, around vaguely. "About the school. About the world that the school represents. About the people in that world and how we fit in there. You really didn't pick up any of that there?"
I thought about it for a moment and realized that he was talking about the feeling that I had had all along that the Academy was Weird, with a capital W. I had never really been able to put my finger on what it was that made the Academy Weird, but it had something to do with Dad getting all of a sudden better looking after being there for a while. It had something to do with Jay, who looked like he was in high school but claimed to be almost old enough to be my great grandpa. It had something to do with the series of tests that they put me through in the beginning, some of which were just me sitting there and waiting for something that never happened. And it had something to do with the strange early morning "practices" that Adai did almost every day where he didn't get sweaty at all but was always completely exhausted after, though I wasn't always sure about that one.
"Not really... I mean, the Academy is Weird, but I don't really know why, or how, or anything aside from the fact that it's Weird. Should I have gotten more from it than that?"
"I guess not." He sounded almost disappointed. "I guess since they have you working with Jay, he's been making sure that you don't get more than you're ready for. He's good at that sort of stuff. Blending in and keeping things in their own separate places. After all, he has a lot of practice."
I wasn't quite sure what he was talking about there, so I just watched him and tried not to look like I was too lost, though I wasn't sure if I was ever going to be not lost at the rate things were going.
"But we can talk about that later..." He smiled sheepishly for a moment. "For now, I want to start with the part that will probably shock you the most. The logical end of the story. That way you'll have some time to think about it and properly understand it as I go back to the beginning and explain everything. That's all right with you, isn't it?"
"I guess so." All I really wanted for him was to start explaining. If he wanted to start with the part that I would probably want to ask the most questions about, then I had no problem with that. As long as he realized that I would probably want to ask questions about it rather than listening to whatever it was he was trying to tell me in the meantime. Of course, I didn't think that he was thinking that far ahead, not that he was going to change his mind by that point.
"Well then... How to put this? I introduced you to Kallen Nelene the day I took you to the Academy. Remember, he's the chairman? Well, he has a son in the high school boys' division who will be turning sixteen in December. On his eighteenth birthday you will be entering into the Nelene family as his... Well, I guess the best way to put it is his wife, though I guess technically that's not right either... But for now we'll leave it at that. About two and a half years from now you'll become the young Master Nelene's wife."
And by the way, the zoo that the end of this chapter (and the beginning of the next one) is the NEW Zoo (stands for Northeastern Wisconsin, not new as in... well, new). It's a pretty cool place, even if it's not huge. (Besides, it's affordable!) ^_^;
Chapter 2
Private Lessons* (*A.k.a. "the real beginning"... or when it starts to get weird.)
I guess by the time summer break came around, I was getting used to the Academy. I still felt a bit like an outsider, because there always seemed to be something going on that I just wasn't part of and that no one wanted to explain to me. But at the same time, I was starting to make some friends other than just Jay, Ed, and Adai, including some of the girls in my various classes. Adai told me at one point that I was strange, for the simple reason that the girls were willing to spend time with me outside of class. The Academy separated the boys and girls up until the university level, and apparently most of the students tended to unconsciously keep the separation up for the most part once it went co-ed. But not me, since I had always been in co-ed schools.
Anyway, it was actually a little weird when I finally got to go home for summer break. I had already been home for Thanksgiving, semester break, and spring break, but I think the month or two between spring break and the end of the winter semester was when I finally started to get the hang of things at the school. So really, it was going home after that that seemed awkward, almost as if I was out of place there instead of at the school. But that didn't mean that I wasn't glad to go home.
Mom or Dad, or both, had come to pick me up the other times I went home during the year. This time I flew alone, not that I had a problem with that. There was something strange about leaving the Academy in a cab, rather than the limo that had driven around Dad when he came, but even more about leaving the Academy alone, except for the cab driver, who had no connection to the Academy whatsoever.
Maybe it was because I was traveling alone, but I could swear that someone was watching me the entire time I was in the airport. Of course, I also think that might have been left over from the fact that most of the time at school there was someone looking at me and whispering, whether it was because of the known fact that I denied any sponsors whatsoever, because I was a close friend of both Jay and Ed (who were looked up to as teachers, but seen as "weird" by most of the students), or because I was roommate to Adai, who was openly hostile to the vast majority of the student body, for reasons unknown to me (as far as I could see, he was a great guy). Whatever the reason, it was an unsettling feeling that followed me through the airport, onto the plane, and all the way until I finally got in the car in Green Bay with Mom and Dad.
The first couple of days at home were nice. I didn't have to work, and I wasn't planning on finding a job for the summer either. I didn't really need the money (a rather hefty amount of spending money, as in more than I could spend without putting an effort into it, was built into the scholarship that I had received). I didn't have classes, which left me with more than enough free time to get caught up with my friends at home, who I had barely talked to in the past several months. After all, Thanksgiving and Christmas were family holidays, not for me to intrude on, and pretty much everyone had had plans for spring break when I tried to get a hold of them. And communicating with the world outside of the Academy turned out to be surprisingly difficult, even with the help of the net.
I hadn't even had time to tell any of my friends back home that I would be leaving for school in the first place. After all, I had just been dumped there when I thought I was just going to fill out paperwork and stuff like that. So for most of my friends, this was the first time they had seen me in eight or so months, except for the few I had managed to get together with during semester break. As it was, I was surprised when I got in contact with them that they weren't pissed off at me for disappearing on them like that.
So when, about a week into summer break, I got the letter from the Academy informing me that they had arranged summer classes for me, it made sense for me to get pissed off. Of course, I got even more pissed off when I read the schedule for these summer classes, which were to take place at home, not at the Academy, and noticed that they started the next day at 8 p.m. (and now that I think about it, I never really thought that time strange, just extremely aggravating). The first thing I did once I read over the letter was take it to Dad and demand to know what was going on. He, understandably, didn't know any more than I did, though he ended up spending the afternoon on the phone with the Academy, and later Nelene himself, for me trying to figure something out.
I think Dad got more of an answer out of them than he gave me, just based on the way that he told me that yes, I did have to go do it and no, I wasn't allowed to protest. The reason he gave me after getting off the phone was that the instructor for the class they were making me take over the summer was someone who rarely taught at the Academy but was the only instructor available for the class. He lived in Green Bay, just like we did, so it made sense to have him teach me while I was there rather than making him go out to the Academy for a semester and teach me there.
What pissed me off the most was that the letter didn't say what sort of class it was that they were trying to make me take. And if Dad found out over the phone, which I was sure he did, he didn't tell me. So I was being forced to give up a substantial chunk of my summer for a class that I had no information about and no way to prepare for. But what pissed me off about that more than anything else was that the same day that they wanted me to start this class I already had plans made with my friend, Mark, to go see a movie and hang out. Because of this class, I would have to cancel. He would understand, since I had already told him all about how weird the Academy was by then, but that didn't change the fact that it hardly seemed right.
That next day I showed up at the place the letter told me to go to, about five minutes after 8:00 pm. I didn't particularly care about being late, mostly because I was still more than a little pissed off at the Academy in general for pulling a stunt like that. I think that somewhere deep inside of me I blamed the instructor for the class the most, since I knew that if he hadn't lived in the area I wouldn't have had to take that class that summer.
The place was an office building that I had never been in before. I'm pretty sure that the place didn't belong to the Academy, since it hardly made sense for them to own offices in Green Bay, unless they made a habit of sending students all the way to Wisconsin to get instruction from this person instead of bringing him to campus. But when I got inside the building, there was no one else there, not even the instructor who would supposedly be teaching the class. That struck me as more than a little weird.
There was a card left on the desk at the front of the room I had been told go to, though. A strip of heavy black cloth lay next to it. The card read, "The first class will be conducted in the dark. Please turn off the lights, put the blindfold on securely, and wait for me to arrive." The handwriting was neat, but not any handwriting that I had seen before. And since I knew next to nothing about analyzing handwriting, there wasn't much I could say about the instructor based on the instructions he had given me, beside the fact that he seemed bent on confusing the hell out of me.
Still, I knew that I wouldn't be getting anywhere if I didn't cooperate, so I did as the card said. There was a chair next to the desk, so I sat there in the dark and tied the black cloth around my eyes, after removing my glasses of course, making sure that I knotted it tightly and couldn't see out the bottom. I would have liked to try and peek, but I was pretty sure that the instructor would be looking for just that. So there I sat, in the darkness, for several minutes, until I heard a door open somewhere behind me, and then a set of footsteps approached.
"It is nice to see that you know how to follow directions," a soft, deep, male voice said from right behind my head once the footsteps had stopped. I couldn't see how he could tell that I had followed his directions, since the room had been completely dark before I put the blindfold on. It was an inside room, with no windows, and with the doors closed and the lights off, there was no light in the room whatsoever.
I felt a large hand on my shoulder, leaning slightly, but not so much that I had difficulty staying in my upright position. Then he shifted slightly, and I felt warm breath tickle my neck and ear on my left side. I jumped slightly, more because I wasn't expecting it than anything else, but also slightly because it was creepy, being unable to see him but to know that he was there like that.
"Are you afraid of the dark?" His breath tickled my ear again as he whispered his question.
I swallowed. "Not really. But..."
"But things get magnified when you are like this." Had he not been speaking directly into my ear, I probably wouldn't have heard him. "Fear, excitement... They become sharper when you feel you have lost some control of the situation, don't they?" I nodded.
I heard the quiet whisper of fabric rustling as his hand left my shoulder and he moved. I felt something brush my left leg momentarily, and then before I knew it there were hands on both my thighs, and I felt him leaning forward slightly, a gentle pressure on my legs. He didn't do anything else, just sat there with his hands on my legs, but that was enough to make me more than a little nervous.
"Umm..." I swallowed, licking my lips.
"This is awkward for you?" I nodded, though I wasn't sure if he could see me or not. "That is understandable. You are here, unable to see, in an unfamiliar place, with an unknown companion. Anyone would feel awkward in this situation."
"I..." I started to explain myself, but stumbled over my words as I tried to get my brain and my mouth to work at the same time. It didn't help that my mouth had gone completely dry and that I don't think my brain was working enough to form words in the first place. "I thought I was here for a class..."
"This is a class."
"But..."
"This is a special type of class. I find that the best way to teach what I teach is through experience." Then I felt him shift again. Rather than having his hands on my legs, this time I was fairly sure that he had his arms resting across my legs. At least, that was how it felt.
Now that I think back on it, I'm surprised that I wasn't thinking thoughts about "bad touches" (you know, like they teach little kids in school when telling them to be wary of bad adults) right about then, seeing as he was getting closer to me than I would have been comfortable with most of my friends, and I had no clue who he was. But that wasn't what was going through my mind at the time. I was just nervous, not scared, probably because somewhere deep inside of me something was telling me that I could trust him, even though I didn't even know who he was or what kind of person he was.
I think he must have felt me flinch a little when he moved around, because he sighed heavily not too long after that. "We will never get anywhere as long as you remain this stiff and jumpy." Though the words he used could have easily been scolding, he instead was gentle, his voice projecting a sort of sense that he knew exactly how I felt and that everything would be all right. Nothing bad was going to happen. I could relax, not that that was as easy as his voice seemed to indicate it was.
"I..." I wasn't exactly sure where I was supposed to go with my thought after that. Part of me wanted to apologize for being nervous, but most of me was feeling more than comfortable with the way things were in my mind at that moment. But even then, I felt like I needed to say something.
"It's all right. I was trying to start off too quickly, that's all. We can start with something relaxing instead. A massage would probably be best. Not only is it relaxing, but you can become more accustomed to my touch at the same time."
"I... I think I would be able to relax more if I could see..." That was true for the most part. I didn't like being unable to see him. I couldn't quite tell where he was just by his voice, and that bothered me. And being unable to see made every time he touched me seem that much... more, like my other senses were trying to make up for the failure of one of them.
"No, that would not be a wise idea at this stage. Taking away your ability to see is part of the lesson. You need to learn to be able to trust more. What better way to work on trust than to give yourself over to someone you cannot see with the knowledge that you will not be allowed to see the entire time?"
"But I..."
I felt him rise from his position in front of me, the arms leaving my legs. From the sounds, I was fairly sure that he was moving around to my back again, and this was confirmed when I felt his hands on my shoulders. I flinched again, even though I was already expecting this touch based on what he had said not too much earlier. This time his hands didn't just sit there the way they did before. They started moving almost immediately, rubbing and pressing in an insistent pattern that was distinctively a massage. It was strange at first, though before long I felt much of my tension disappearing under his hands.
"Trust is just the first step." He massaged my shoulders with skilled hands as he talked. "In the end, you need to be able to obey a command right away, neither hesitating nor thinking about it until you have already started acting. But we cannot work on that until you at least learn to trust and give up control of the situation completely."
"Why would I need to be able to obey? It's not like I'm going into the military or anything."
His hands froze on my shoulders, and just feeling them still like that made all of the tension come rushing back into my body. I knew it would do no good, but I couldn't resist the urge to turn around in the seat and try to "look" at him. In this case, I had my head pointed in about the direction that he should be in, based on what I was sure was his position behind me before, but I couldn't see anything because of the blindfold and the dark room.
"They didn't explain to you why you were here?" His voice was tight, strained. I shook my head. "They didn't explain to you the reason for this training either, did they? What you are supposed to do with what I teach you these next few months?"
"They didn't tell me anything. Just to be here at a certain time on a certain day to start my summer class. And Dad told me that they decided to have the class over the summer for me because you live here in the city."
"But nothing about why..." I shook my head again, even though I wasn't quite sure it was a question. "Those bastards!"
I had involuntarily shaken his hands off my shoulders when I turned around, so I couldn't feel him anymore to know where he was. I knew he was still in about the same position based on where his voice was coming from, but when I heard footsteps, angry ones, heading toward the other side of the room, I realized that he was no longer right there anymore. When the lights came on, which I realized despite the heavy blindfold, I knew that he was standing by the light switch.
I reached up to untie the blindfold, but stopped when his voice rang out. "Leave the blindfold on for a while longer. I will be back in a short while, and I do not want to chance you facing the wrong direction when I enter the room again. I will tell you when you can remove the blindfold." I heard a door open and then close, and I realized that he had left the room.
At first it made no sense to me to make me leave the blindfold on. From what he had said so far, the blindfold was supposed to be in combination with the darkness to make me feel less in control. So now that the lights were on and he seemed to have changed plans, why keep the blindfold? But, as I thought about it more, a thought started to grow in the back of my mind.
He lived in Green Bay. Dad had told me that. And while Green Bay was hardly one of those small towns where everyone knew each other (even if it's pitiful compared to a real city, it's still not a small town), there was always the chance that I knew him. He didn't sound familiar, but that meant nothing in the long run. I had never been the kind of person to pay that much attention to a person's voice, especially not enough to recognize it again if I was unable to see the owner of the voice. If I knew him, I would probably recognize him if I could see him.
Once that idea entered my head, I couldn't get it out. I had no idea which person I knew that he might be, of course. Besides, I wasn't about to test the idea right then, mostly because he had sounded angry when he left the room. I didn't want to test my luck when he was angry, especially if I was right. The situation was already too strange for me to go around complicating it at that stage. So I just sat there for what felt like an eternity, waiting for him to come back and explain to me what was going on, or at least let me take off the blindfold, which was starting to itch.
Finally he came back, though I could almost feel the air chill as he entered the room. He was still angry. It was a cold anger, though, and I got the distinct impression that it was not directed at me. How I knew all this without him saying anything and without being able to see him, I wasn't quite sure. But I would have been willing to bet my life on it.
"I called the Academy and talked to Master Nelene." At least his voice was soft towards me. There was an edge of hoarseness, though, as if maybe he had been yelling quite forcefully at someone just moments earlier. "I asked him why you had been sent to me with knowledge of neither the training you are to be receiving, nor the use you will have for this training, and he played dumb with me. All I could get out of him was that there must have been a mix up in communications somewhere.
"After that I called your father."
"You called Dad?" I could have sworn that my voice went up an entire octave from sheer surprise.
"Aside from myself, he is the only other person with a connection to you and the Academy here in the city. He knows what is going on, most likely better than anyone else involved, including myself. Possibly even more than Master Nelene himself. I managed to secure a promise from him that you would have the situation explained to you before you returned here."
"You won't tell me yourself?"
"It is not my place. I am merely a minor character in this affair, here to train you and nothing else. You are best off letting someone like Master Cellen explain it to you."
"You're the first person I've met associated with the Academy who refers to Dad by his last name since the first day I was there." I couldn't help but smile a little.
I had gotten far more used to the habit of calling everyone except for Nelene by first name while I was at the Academy, though Mom and Dad would always be Mom and Dad to me. Still, even knowing that they avoided last names at all costs and knowing from my encounter on that first day that there were rumors about Dad, it had taken me almost a month to realize that the rumors about someone named Willian from a while ago were about Dad. Since then I had gotten used to the talk about Willian, and hearing "Master Cellen" was almost strange.
"We are not on the Academy grounds. And I know exactly who you are, Arin Cellen, so I see no need to beat around the bush by avoiding family names the way I would be forced to were this a more traditional setting."
"Does that apply to you as well?" The question slipped out before I remembered that I didn't know any part of his name yet.
"You can call me Michal if you must address me by name."
"That's your first name, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Whatever happened to not beating around the bush and avoiding family names?"
"I have my reasons for choosing to use my given name only." His voice suddenly got several degrees colder, though technically I don't think voices can have temperatures.
"I know you, don't I?" I couldn't help it. I had to voice the thought that had been running around my head for the past while. "If I took this blindfold off right now and looked at you, I would recognize you, wouldn't I?"
"I cannot answer that question." The answer came back stiffly formal, with an edge of tension coloring his voice. And that, of course, just made me more determined to figure out who he was... without breaking the rules of his "game," since I was fairly sure that would just cause me trouble. Not that I was going to tell him about my plan.
"Anyway, Master Cellen should explain things to you sometime tomorrow before it is time for your lessons. Unless this does not happen, I expect you here at the same time tomorrow. We will continue where we left off earlier."
"With the massage?"
"Of course. I will have the blindfold waiting for you in the same place, though I believe I will look for some less irritating fabric this time." At this I breathed a sigh of relief. The blindfold had progressed from itchy to a nightmarish hell in the short time between when he stepped out to call people and that moment. I was more than ready to remove the blindfold. I had had to refrain from even scratching at the surrounding skin to avoid the temptation to take it off right then and there. The prospect of a blindfold that would hopefully be less itchy was a happy one.
I heard his footsteps again, followed by the door opening. Then, before he exited the room, he spoke one last time, his voice echoing slightly from across the room. "Once I close the door, wait about thirty seconds. Then you can remove the blindfold. Exit the way you came in, and don't take any detours within the building. I do not want you wandering. I will see you tomorrow, though you will not see me."
I nodded, and then the door shut again. I waited the thirty seconds that he had told me to wait, and then I removed the blindfold and got my glasses back on my face. The sight that greeted my eyes, slightly sensitive after not having any stimulation from the light for a while, was completely unchanged from the sight right before I turned off the lights originally. Well, the clock was different, since it was some time later, but otherwise the room was exactly the same.
I stood up from the chair and stretched before making my way to the door I had come in by. I still wasn't feeling up to being rebellious, especially not when I knew that Michal had just arranged for someone to tell me what was going on, so I did as he said and went right out of the building. After that I went home and ended up falling asleep almost right away, even though I hadn't even been awake for twelve hours yet. Something about that night left me exhausted, and all I really wanted to do was sleep, so I did.
The next morning Dad was waiting for me when I woke up. That was weird enough, since I was sure that he had said something the day before about stuff that he had to do that day (for work, despite the fact that the semester was over and his summer semester hadn't started yet). But there he was, in the kitchen cooking something I couldn't quite identify at first. He must have heard my footsteps as I came into the room, because he looked up right after I entered and smiled broadly.
"Good morning!" he said brightly, even though it was almost noon and could barely be called morning any more. (That was the other thing that surprised me that morning, aside from the fact that Dad was there. I had slept for over twelve hours, and I still felt like doing nothing other than crawling back into bed and not emerging for the rest of the day.)
"Morning..." I wasn't quite feeling alive enough to muster even half the energy that he seemed to have at that moment.
"Would you like some breakfast?" He held up some of whatever it was that he was cooking. I went around the counter to stand next to him and peer at it, and I found myself squinting to try and figure out what it was despite the fact that I actually had my glasses on at the time. Even then, I wasn't quite sure what it was supposed to be, and I decided that eating something when I wasn't sure what it was would probably be a bad idea. Especially considering that it was black. Not just dark, but black.
"I'll have cereal." I went back around the counter and over to the closet to try to find some sort of cereal that was actually edible. Most of it was the stuff so full of sugar that it could fuel a rocket on calories alone, the kind of stuff that Dad liked to eat, though not for breakfast. And the rest of it was health stuff that either tasted awful or was as hard as rocks, that being Mom's breakfast of choice, when she was awake for breakfast. And that was it, since I had been at school up until just recently and Karen hadn't eaten cereal in at least six years (considering that Karen was just barely twelve at that time, that was a good chunk of her life).
"It's a lot better than it looks." He lifted his wooden spoon to taste a little of the thick, almost stew-like stuff. He smacked his lips a couple of times before putting the spoon down, a satisfied smile plastered across his face. "Why don't you at least try some?"
"What is it?"
To be honest, I have absolutely no recollection of what he called it. All I remember about the stuff was what it looked like, and then the flavor later on. I remember that he actually told me what it was, where it came from, what was in it, and when people usually ate it. But I remember none of that now, just that it looked like jet-black stew with small flecks of white in it. And... when I finally gave in to his begging, it tasted slightly meaty, but not overpoweringly so. It actually tasted pretty good, and I decided after that that it wouldn't kill me to make Dad happy and eat his cooking for breakfast, which was about to become lunch instead.
"I thought you had things to do today," I said once we were both sitting down at the kitchen table with our bowls of whatever. It was the one thing that had been bothering me since I first spotted him, so I figured it couldn't hurt to ask. Maybe he would actually answer, though I had started to expect answers less and less the longer I stayed at the Academy.
"I decided I had better things to do today." He gave me another big smile, very un-Dad-like. "Like spend some time with my son. I don't do anywhere near enough of that."
"You don't have to put off work just to spend time with me."
"But I want to. Can't I take some time away to get closer to my son every now and then?"
I wasn't really sure what to say in response to that. It wasn't that I didn't want to spend time with Dad. I liked Dad, most of the time (of course there were always situations, the normal things that happen when parents try to impose some sort of rules on the teenager who is finally starting to develop into a real, independent being). But I was also more than aware of the fact that he seemed to know everything that I didn't know about whatever was going on with me and the Academy. He hadn't told me anything yet, so I was feeling more than a little unwilling to cooperate with him at that time.
So I stayed silent, eating some more while I tried to think of what I should say. The silence between us grew tense as I thought. I could tell that Dad expected me to say something... and that the fact that I wasn't was starting to make him more than a little uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable too, but I still couldn't come up with the right words to convey to him how I felt, and I didn't want to try to say anything until I had made up my mind on what to say.
"Rin, I asked you a question." The reminder came gently after the tension had gotten so noticeable that I was surprised we couldn't see it.
"I know. But I'm not sure how I want to answer yet."
"Why? Don't you want to spend some time with me?"
"I'm pissed off at you right now, Dad." And as soon as that came out of my mouth, I realized that it was actually true, even though I hadn't quite realized it until just then. I was starting to get the feeling that the Academy thing was more than just a weird school, but something major that no one was explaining to me. Something that Dad seemed to know a whole hell of a lot about.
After thinking a little more and deciding that it was probably better to tell the truth in the end than try to make him feel better. "It's kinda hard to say that I want to spend time with you when I'm pissed off at you."
"Why?"
I almost said "You know why!" and left it at that. That was how I was feeling, since I was sure that he realized at least a little that I wasn't happy with the fact that everyone seemed to know what was going on except me. But the way he asked the question... that seemed almost like he really didn't understand why I was pissed off at him, and not that he was playing dumb to get me to do what he wanted me to do.
"No one will tell me what's going on! And you know all about it. You know why I'm at the Academy. You know why they're making me take this class over the summer. You know what the class is, and I don't yet. I get the feeling that you know everything, even though you aren't even involved in half of it."
"And you're angry because I haven't told you any of the things that I know?"
I nodded emphatically. "You're my father. Aren't you supposed to be on my side?"
He paused in his eating and sat there, thinking, for several moments. He didn't bother to take the spoon out and continue eating. He just sat there with the spoon hanging out of his mouth, and for about half a moment I thought that time had frozen, leaving him stuck in that position.
"Since when has this been a situation in which I need to take a side?" he asked finally, after taking the spoon out of his mouth and resting it on top of the bowl.
"Since you abandoned me at the Academy with barely any warning!" I felt a small spark of anger starting to kindle somewhere around the vicinity of my stomach. "Since they started giving me "survival lessons." What else am I supposed to think when that sort of thing happens, besides that this is me against them?"
"Oh, so they still have Jay on staff?"
"Yeah. He's a lot of fun, but..." I trailed off, realizing that he was trying to change the subject away from the matter of whether he was on my side or not. And I had gone along with it, answering his question about the Academy rather than trying to force the truth out of him, even though it hadn't worked very well in the past, both on matters of the Academy and other things from before then.
"Don't change the subject!" That spark of anger burned a little brighter at the thought of his attempt to stall.
He frowned a little, though it was almost a pout, but then smiled again. "This isn't a situation where it's necessarily you against everyone else, you know. No one needs to choose sides here."
"You're not on my side, are you?" I choose to ignore the fact that he had tried to deny being on any side at all.
"If I'm on any "side" at all," he said, sighing heavily, "it's the family's side. What the family wants might not necessarily be what you want, but in the end it will be the best thing for you. You have to keep that in mind from now on, Rin."
"You really do know everything that's going on, don't you?" I think I ended up sounding more suspicious than I actually was. Maybe. Though that might not have been possible, considering that I was already convinced that he knew absolutely everything, no matter what he might say.
He nodded. He didn't say anything; he just nodded. And I waited. Michal had said that Dad would explain everything to me before I went to see him again, and I trusted what he had said... for some reason. I was convinced that Dad was finally going to tell me what was going on right then, so I waited for him to start talking.
Minutes passed, and passed, and still nothing came.
"Aren't you going to explain things to me? He said you would."
"Not yet."
"Why not?" By that point I was starting to get frustrated. I had been frustrated before, of course, but that was with my own ignorance and things like that. This time the frustration was from the fact that Dad seemed ready to do everything for me except for the one thing that I wanted him to do. To me, that was one of the most frustrating feelings ever, and I would not recommend it to anyone, particularly not when trying to solve an already frustrating problem.
"It's not the right time yet. Why don't you and I go out and do some stuff? Then, when it's the right time, I can tell you some of what you want to know."
I wanted to ask why again, but by that point I was starting to sound like a broken record. "Are you going to tell me the truth yet?" "Why not?" "But he said you were going to tell me the truth before my next class!" It was all the same thing, and I knew that it would have annoyed me had I been in Dad's place, no matter how much goodwill I had toward the person wanting the information. And while I was pretty sure that Dad wasn't going to do it, I knew that had I been in his place, being bugged like that, I would decide not to tell at all. Dad wasn't like that, so I wasn't too worried about him doing something like that to spite me, but better safe than sorry.
So instead I asked, "What was it you wanted to do?"
He smiled, the kind of silly grin that some people get when they have an idea that pleases them immensely, though a good number of people other than them would think it's completely and utterly insane. "I was thinking Bay Beach. Great America would be better, but that really needs to be planned ahead of time. Can't just up and decide to drive down almost to Chicago at this time of the morning and hope to have any time to have fun there, after all."
Bay Beach was the local amusement park. Nothing fancy, just some rides. No roller coasters, or anything exciting, even. Not that I was a big fan of roller coasters in the first place. I tended to get sick on roller coasters; there was something about the way they moved that bothered my sense of balance enough to screw me up pretty badly. Spinning I could handle. Being dropped I could handle. Moving fast I could handle. It was the combination of the three that gave me problems, something we had learned during my senior year of high school in physics class when we went to do the roller coaster study. It was apparently something that developed over the course of time, because I have clear memories from when I was younger of going on roller coasters without any problem.
Great America, by the way, was a place with roller coasters. The full name was Six Flags Great America (one of the Six Flags theme parks, obviously), and it was a little past the Wisconsin-Illinois border on the way to Chicago. It was big and had lots of stuff to do besides roller coasters, but seeing as it was almost a four hour drive from Green Bay (each way), that was definitely not something you just decided to do at almost noon when you had things to do that evening.
Of course, I had never been a huge fan of amusement parks in the first place. I used to like roller coasters, before I started getting sick from them. But aside from roller coasters, the typical rides had no real thrills for me, and an amusement park was definitely not the sort of place I wanted to go to spend time with Dad that day. Not when I was still a little annoyed at not having things explained to me. Especially not when it seemed like Dad was doing nothing more than stalling.
"I don't really want to go to Bay Beach." The grin immediately disappeared from his face to be replaced by a look of dejection.
"Great America? We could go tomorrow instead..."
"Did you forget that last time I was on a roller coaster I ended up throwing up all over my physics teacher when I got off the ride? And when I tried another one at the end of the day, thinking that maybe it was just because we hadn't been off the bus all that long, it ended up the same, except that this time I threw up all over Mark?"
"I'd forgotten about that..." He looked even more dejected than before. "What about mini golf? Do you want to go mini golfing? Or go-carts? Or a water park? It's warm enough for that already, don't you think?" He actually continued to throw out suggestions after that for a while.
To be honest, I probably wouldn't have minded a water park. Mini golfing and go-carts I could do without, and I think he knew that. He was just getting desperate; I could tell by the way he kept throwing out suggestions without even listening to whether I agreed or not. He wanted to do something "fun" with me, but he knew I was going to say no to his suggestions. He had to try anyway, it seemed.
"You don't need to take me anywhere, Dad." I was trying to make him realize that I really didn't want to do any of those things, but he didn't seem to be listening.
"How about the zoo? I know it's pretty childish, but we haven't been there in forever... Would you like to go to the zoo for a bit?" He actually stopped throwing ideas out after that. I think it was because he had run out of easy suggestions.
I realized about then that he wasn't going to stop until I agreed, and his ideas would probably go downhill from then on. There was only so much "fun stuff" to do in the area, and he had covered the majority of the things that were well known already. Besides that, it was very true that neither one of us had been to the zoo in a long time, and that a lot had changed since the last time we went. So I made the choice to agree, just so we could move forward.
"That sounds good." He started smiling again. I don't think I had seen him that excited in a long time, and that made me feel good, I guess.
So, about a half hour later I was showered and completely dressed and we were on our way to the zoo. I was driving, since Dad admitted on our way out the door that he hadn't slept at all the night before. My guess was that he was too stressed about the whole having to explain things to me.
The zoo was definitely not how I remembered it. It had been decently sized back when I was kid, but it seemed to have gotten even bigger since then. I didn't mind the size, though, and I actually had quite a bit of fun that day, seeing all the animals with Dad like that. It kinda reminded me of when I was little, and that was a good thing.
We had a really late lunch, probably because breakfast was so late as well. Around 2 or so we stopped wandering the zoo and headed for the food court area to buy some overpriced food. And then, while we were enjoying our greasy, fattening not-quite fast food type lunch, Dad finally decided that he was ready to explain things to me, though he wanted to go somewhere a little farther away from people before he would start talking. So we took our food with us and found a bench along a walking trail that no one seemed to be interested in and ate there.
"I was hoping you might have figured some of this out at school..." He started reluctantly, almost as if he didn't really want to tell me.
"Figured out what?"
"All of it." He waved his hand, hamburger and all, around vaguely. "About the school. About the world that the school represents. About the people in that world and how we fit in there. You really didn't pick up any of that there?"
I thought about it for a moment and realized that he was talking about the feeling that I had had all along that the Academy was Weird, with a capital W. I had never really been able to put my finger on what it was that made the Academy Weird, but it had something to do with Dad getting all of a sudden better looking after being there for a while. It had something to do with Jay, who looked like he was in high school but claimed to be almost old enough to be my great grandpa. It had something to do with the series of tests that they put me through in the beginning, some of which were just me sitting there and waiting for something that never happened. And it had something to do with the strange early morning "practices" that Adai did almost every day where he didn't get sweaty at all but was always completely exhausted after, though I wasn't always sure about that one.
"Not really... I mean, the Academy is Weird, but I don't really know why, or how, or anything aside from the fact that it's Weird. Should I have gotten more from it than that?"
"I guess not." He sounded almost disappointed. "I guess since they have you working with Jay, he's been making sure that you don't get more than you're ready for. He's good at that sort of stuff. Blending in and keeping things in their own separate places. After all, he has a lot of practice."
I wasn't quite sure what he was talking about there, so I just watched him and tried not to look like I was too lost, though I wasn't sure if I was ever going to be not lost at the rate things were going.
"But we can talk about that later..." He smiled sheepishly for a moment. "For now, I want to start with the part that will probably shock you the most. The logical end of the story. That way you'll have some time to think about it and properly understand it as I go back to the beginning and explain everything. That's all right with you, isn't it?"
"I guess so." All I really wanted for him was to start explaining. If he wanted to start with the part that I would probably want to ask the most questions about, then I had no problem with that. As long as he realized that I would probably want to ask questions about it rather than listening to whatever it was he was trying to tell me in the meantime. Of course, I didn't think that he was thinking that far ahead, not that he was going to change his mind by that point.
"Well then... How to put this? I introduced you to Kallen Nelene the day I took you to the Academy. Remember, he's the chairman? Well, he has a son in the high school boys' division who will be turning sixteen in December. On his eighteenth birthday you will be entering into the Nelene family as his... Well, I guess the best way to put it is his wife, though I guess technically that's not right either... But for now we'll leave it at that. About two and a half years from now you'll become the young Master Nelene's wife."