'Shit.'
Giovanni believed his interview would have been enough to place him among the sleepers at the top of the rankings, but thinking now, perhaps he had gone too far.
'I should have left my true name out…'
First place was the most eye-catching, but also the most dangerous.
It was basically a message to every legacy in that cafeteria, saying, "I am better than all of you, who have trained your entire lives for this moment."
'I'm not! Get me out of here!'
He remained completely frozen for a few moments, feeling Sofia's gaze bore a hole through his face.
Anxiety surged through Giovanni's body. He struggled to regain his composure, but it was already too late.
Sofia saw him freeze! She was clearly the most intelligent person he had ever met. If there was anyone who could see through his farce, it would be her.
Within moments, an avalanche of people descended upon the two of them. Questions rained down like a storm, probing his powers, attributes, and origins. Sofia shrank beside him, as if she wanted to vanish from sight.
"Are you a legacy from a lost clan?!"
"What did you do to get a true name like that?"
"If you and Eric fought, who would win?"
"How was your nightmare? Come on, tell us!"
He wants to disappear, too. On the other side of the cafeteria, another young man was being surrounded by curious sleepers. Eric stared at the digital screen, showing no reaction.
People pestered him with questions and taunts, wanting to know how someone no one had ever seen could be ranked above him. With no interest in entertaining the curious, the giant left the room in silence.
"One at a time! One at a time, please!"
***
By the time Giovanni finally finished answering questions, it was already close to eleven at night, and the students had to be sent back to their rooms.
He told Sofia they could leave the study session for the next day.
However, she did not want to have stood there like a traffic cone in the cafeteria for nothing, so she insisted on doing it right then.
"I'm really sorry about everything earlier… things got out of control."
Sofia always seemed nervous and hesitant before speaking, and the chaos did not seem to have helped her feel any more at ease.
"It's alright! I agreed to go there."
Giovanni had not had time to see all the names, but it was quite surprising to see hers among the top forty.
It was not an outstanding position, but still very high among the more than one hundred sleepers.
Giovanni's room was exactly as he had left it, with few noteworthy belongings in sight.
Sofia seemed quite confused by what she saw, but the boy paid it no mind.
Pulling a chair closer to the desk, he offered her the seat and stood beside it.
"Show me your notes! I want to see what we're dealing with."
He had said he had gotten a little lost, but that was something of a euphemism. Giovanni had never been good at studying.
His mind simply struggled to stay focused!
Even when he decided to dedicate himself, at a certain point, it was as if a monkey with a drum replaced his brain.
When Sofia opened his notebook and was faced with notes mixed with scribbles and incomplete topics, because he would stop paying attention and catch the teacher's explanation halfway through, her face darkened.
"You… you're terrible!"
"I have no defense, miss."
Sofia covered her mouth immediately, embarrassed. Taking her own notebook out of her bag, she showed the notes she had taken in the same class.
Giovanni was blinded by the light of those divine writings. Round, legible handwriting, topics divided in a digestible way and drawings serving as visual examples. How was that even possible?!
"Your first task is to throw these pages away! Come on, rewrite this neatly!"
She tore the pages from Giovanni's notebook and crumpled them into paper balls, tossing them at him.
For long minutes, he copied every word religiously, drawing sketches and imitating the boxed topics.
At some point, Sofia, who had been merely observing, noticed something that stood out on the table. Pulling it from a dark corner, she came across a box of colored pencils.
The brand was well-known and expensive, but it did not seem like the sort of thing Giovanni would own.
"Why do you have this? You don't even draw."
She commented, shaking the sealed box in front of the boy's face.
"That? It was a gift from someone dear to me. He's like a little brother to me."
Sofia put the box back in place so quickly that her movement seemed like a blur. Giovanni could not hold back a muffled laugh.
"You can use them if you want. He'd rather the pencils be useful than gather dust."
"I was just saving them to use later, obviously!"
She looked away and opened the box, starting to separate the pencils she wanted to color her drawings.
That was how they spent the next two hours.
They alternated between explanations of the parts Giovanni had trouble remembering, especially the different group formations to face certain unique creatures, and discussing the best shades to color Bloody Pursuers.
"It's already one in the morning… I think we can stop for today."
Sofia said as she rubbed her eyes. Giovanni, on the other hand, felt… very good, actually. Whether hunger, sleep, or thirst, he never seemed to feel appetite or fatigue.
"Thank you for everything today, you really saved me!"
Sofia watched his friendly smile in silence, only to answer with a smug grin of her own.
"I know! Few have the privilege of my help, so if I find out you asked others for assistance, there will be no forgiveness."
After that, she hurriedly said goodbye, leaving the room as if fleeing from a monster.
Giovanni finally stopped acting calm and slammed his head against the desk.
"I must look so stupid…"
***
It was already the next morning when Giovanni knocked on the door of the room.
He had asked the academy's administration if there was any teacher with powers similar to his who could give private lessons.
While there was no one capable of controlling terrain, one awakened in particular possessed similar abilities to control things at a distance and mold them to her will. He did not hesitate to accept.
What he had not expected was that when the door opened, he would come face to face with a woman wearing striped, fluffy pajamas, a headband with two antennae, and bee-faced slippers.
She was lying at the far end of the room, legs propped against the wall while reading some papers.
The clothes were the least strange thing compared to her appearance. Her hair flowed like dripping honey, her eyes were completely dark, and her skin was bronze-toned.
"There you are! I thought I'd been tricked."
Giovanni checked the time and saw that he was ten minutes early.
"But there are still ten minutes left…"
"Everyone knows you arrive at least half an hour early! Now come in."
Giovanni gave up on trying to understand the woman and did as she asked.
Inside, several sacks of soil were waiting for him. The walls looked reinforced and thick, preventing people from eavesdropping on private conversations. The teacher continued speaking casually.
"Let me see: geokinesis, seismic sense, transmutation, mass enhancement of allies… what a capable boy I've got on my hands, don't I…"
Before she finished speaking, something tiny cut through the air and stopped just a few centimeters from Giovanni's eye.
The attack was so sudden and fast that his body took more than a second to react.
"Terrible! Is your head in the clouds, by any chance? Is my beauty that overwhelming?… No, no, this won't do."
Giovanni, who had been sitting on the floor with his mouth open, protested indignantly.
"How did you expect me to react to that?! A surprise attack is dirty!"
The woman spun and sprang to her feet. She crossed the distance between them in an instant, silencing him with a finger.
"Save your complaints for when you're crying in bed! I want to hear yes, ma'am, and no, ma'am!"
That awakened woman was crazy! What kind of mess had he gotten himself into, exactly?
"You, little sir, will now be under my tutelage until the end of your days, apparently. Because you'll definitely die at the solstice being this soft, heehee!"
With a dramatic gesture, she rested her chin in her palms, forming a heart shape.
"But fear not, I, Awakened Beako, will be your salvation! For you, Professor Bee-ako will suffice."
Silence followed the pun.
"Anyway, consider this your first lesson, golden boy! Never lower your guard. Never."
"But this is probably the safest place in the world!"
She laughed indifferently, shaking her head.
"That doesn't matter. What guarantees I'm not an infiltrator? I could be an impostor… and if that were the case, you'd already be the meat in my stew, heehee!"
With a flick of her finger, the thing that had flown toward Giovanni earlier revealed itself.
It was a bee.
"You possess a gift many would kill to have. Being able to sense your surroundings is essential when you're deprived of normal means of sight and allows you to have spatial awareness far superior to most… but that's only half the work."
Her eyes examined every detail of Giovanni, judging his posture, expression, and appearance.
"Your mindset and discipline are the other half. Just as you fail to notice something right in front of your eyes because you're distracted, sensing threats is useless if your body isn't ready to react. That's why, from this moment on, I will attack you at any time. It may take hours or mere minutes, but it will happen. I will not hold back, so I guarantee you… It will hurt. Understood?"
Giovanni swallowed hard… she was right, whether he liked it or not.
"Yes, ma'am…"
Grabbing one of the sacks of soil, she tore it open and poured it onto the smooth floor.
"Now, let's really begin your training. The test is very simple. I will throw something straight at your head. Your job is to block it."
They stood on opposite sides of the room, ten meters apart.
"Ready, golden boy?"
"Ready…"
The tension built for just a few moments before something tore through the air like a gunshot.
Giovanni knew the attack was coming. He knew where it was aimed, and even so, before he could raise a defense, the bee was already in front of his face.
"Slow! Again!"
The same exchange repeated dozens, if not hundreds, of times.
Every single time, without exception, Giovanni failed miserably to block the attack. It was simply too fast for his mind to process.
Before he could exert control over the earth and move its pieces individually, he had already lost.
His reserves of soul essence were nearing their limit, and for the first time, a genuine sense of fatigue began to build.
"I… I… can't anymore."
Beako, who had been leaning against the wall, slowly walked over to Giovanni.
"Soft indeed! Here, take this."
She slid her finger through her honey-colored hair and stuck it into the young man's mouth. As bizarre as the taste was, the feeling of being revitalized was undeniable.
"I think I understand your problem, golden boy. You're thinking too much."
Giovanni made a confused face, unable to understand how thinking could be a problem.
"I need to… think less?"
"Exactly! One of the pillars of any aspect is that it isn't an alien tool, but a part of you. If I had to make a direct comparison… It's like you're trying to manually make your heart beat! There are things your body does better on its own, and it's precisely that instinct you lack."
The woman opened her hands, revealing dozens of bees flying, rising, and falling across her skin.
"When I use my aspect, I don't think individually about the trajectory or the wingbeats of each bee… I simply do. If you truly want to survive, you'd better understand that. You don't control the earth…"
She held his face with both hands, gripping his cheeks.
"You are the earth, Giovanni."