Chapter 51: Beast Hunt: The Gathering

"What do you mean you're prone to hearing and seeing things you would normally walk past?" Claudia inquired, staring him dead in the face with eyes demanding an answer.

It didn't look like Arsha was going to answer that question and after keeping his gaze on her for a while, he slowly brought it down.

"I'm sorry but that's all I can tell you, for now at least." He replied.

"And why's that?" She retorted.

"Because I don't want to tell you, it's as simple as that."

"Oh, I see, it's a matter of you not trusting me then." She muttered before slowly turning away from him.

"Anyway, I'll let you figure out the mistakes you made today by yourselves, from the way they rushed to change their outfits despite it looking like they were going somewhere to the obvious lie about someone promising to make Unique tier weapons for them." He articulated as he made his way to her.

"What's the point of letting me figure it out if you're just going to blurt it out the next second?" She said just as he walked past her to get to the door.

"Sorry, I meant to say reflect on them because something tells me you knew the moment you made the wrong move but you chose to ignore the obvious sign anyway."

She didn't have any response to that and just stared at the floor with a certain thought in his mind.

'He knew all this time.'

"Anyway, I'll be leaving now, your friend will be here in two minutes." He said before proceeding to open the door.

"Hey, wait, I have a question before you go?"

"What is it?" He responded with his gaze on the door.

"Those three? Does the school know what happened to them yet?" She inquired.

"Yeah, I handed the video footage over to the Vice principal."

"You had a video footage?"

That revelation left her with a shocked expression on her face.

"Well, yes, it was necessary, this way their parents can't find a way to blame you, and no one we'll be able to say it was my fault either." He explained.

"Oh, I see. You've done more than just save me here, you also put in the effort to make sure I don't get falsely accused." She smiled. "Thank you very much, I would like to say I owe you one but I'm sure it's more than that."

"Don't get it confused, I just didn't have anything to say so I tagged along, if I had been busy with something else, I wouldn't have looked your way, you can count on that."

"That may be true but I'm still grateful." She smiled.

Arsha's reaction to that was a huff as he proceeded to step out of the room.

"I went ahead to send the video to your device in case you're wondering, you can watch it at your leisure." He disclosed.

"My device, how did you get my number?" She inquired with a confused expression on her face.

"She gave it to me."

"You mean Miss Claire?" She sighed. "Seriously? You could have asked for it and I would have given it to you."

"Well, that doesn't matter anymore." He remarked before proceeding to start making his way down the hallway.

He had only taken three steps forward when he heard the sound of something dropping to the floor and just after tracking back a little, he saw Claudia face flat on the floor.

"I guess my legs are still numb from the poison." She chuckled awkwardly as she raised her gaze.

"I'm leaving," Arsha muttered after watching her laugh for a few seconds.

"Wait, I have one more question."

That forced out a sigh from him as he turned his gaze to her with a somewhat annoyed expression on his face.

'He seems to be a lot more expressive when he's worked up.'

"Why didn't you save them from the bear?"

"Is that supposed to be a serious question?"

"Don't misunderstand, this isn't me saying you should have saved them, I just want to know why you decided not to do it." She articulated. "I know a couple of people, myself included, who would have preferred to have them punished severely and suffer than have them die."

"That's simple, they deserved to die and if the bear did not show up to do it, I would have done it myself."

Ordinarily, she would have blown that off as a silly joke but she could tell from the look in his eyes, she could tell he was serious and that sort of scared her.

"You would have done it yourself?"

__________ ___________

The case of the three girls and Claudia was the main topic throughout the weekend and Arsha also got quite a lot of attention from it.

He wanted his name to be kept out of it but for the credibility of the story, his identity had to be put out there although he did manage to get Miss Claire to spin the story around with the narrative that he was out hunting beasts when he came across them.

He got a couple of positive comments from a few people with most of the student body especially his classmates coming up with conspiracy theories to disapprove of what they were told, they just couldn't believe that he would go out of his way to save someone after everything they had seen him do especially the most recent one involving Aqua.

Claudia tried to vouch for him being the one he saved but there wasn't really much she could do against the majority.

To sum it all up, despite the news about his supposed rescue on Saturday, the condition for him didn't really change much but it wasn't like he cared anyway.

What he didn't really like was the attention he was getting from the first years now, especially the girls.

Monday had a big event planned out for the second-year students, it was the day of their team beast hunt and because of that, every second-year student was in the school gymnasium with the homeroom teachers of both class divisions standing on the podium.

At the moment they seemed to be conversing about something so the students were also doing the same among themselves.

Arsha didn't like getting mixed up in the crowd so he was standing near the entrance with his back against the wall and his gaze on his watch which had the number two displayed on it.

"Have you found any teammates yet?"

He looked up at that moment to see Claudia standing there with a smile as she waved at him.

His gaze didn't last two seconds on her before he turned back to his watch.

"You know you can drop the cold act around me, I won't bite you for acting like a normal person." She uttered with a little chuckle as she moved closer to him.

"You make it sound like getting bitten by you is going to do anything."

"Oh, do you want a quick test?" She asked before baring her teeth.

"What do you want?" He sighed.

"I asked you earlier, have you found teammates?" She repeated. "If you haven't found any then I'd be more than happy to be your teammate."

'And maybe Maya will be the third one.'

"Sorry to burst your bubbles, electric pole but you can't be in the same team with him."

"Huh?" She quickly turned around at that moment to see Aqua standing there.