The Cold (6)

"We apologize, we only came for a brief greeting," Luke was beginning to turn back.

"Didn't you come for a safe place to pass the storm?" She got confused.

"We have another place to wait inside," Luke abandoned the shelter.

"Wait. I have strawberry shortcakes with me. There are also strawberry macaroons, strawberry ice cream, and milkshake with the same flavour," she blurted.

"They have strawberries in everything!" My eyes glittered.

My stomach started to grumble from only drinking snow. I wondered why we couldn't accept her generosity. If we knocked her unconscious, all those strawberry desserts could be mine. Before Luke could drag me away, I started to search for her pressure points. I brightly smiled when I found she was mostly unguarded. Trying to find a good angle to do this, I broke Luke's grasp to swing a powerful kick to her head.

Lifting my leg while switching into a fighting stance, I poured some mana into my feet to increase its impact. But I briefly froze when she was able to grab my ankle with her hand, pulling me closer to her before my leg could come near her face. Alex immediately gripped her arm, breaking her hold on me, squeezing her flesh to the point that blood couldn't flow. This gave Luke the chance to pull me behind him, increasing the distance between me and the door.

"How violent," she seemed disappointed.

"I only wanted to help. All I want is Rika and I can stop the snowstorm," she stated her terms.

"Are you my stalker?" I wondered.

"I'm just a fan club member," she denied the claim.

Taking a closer look at her, she didn't seem to be much older than us. Around the age of Lucius, her features weren't mature enough to be an adult. I wondered if she could be a student at our school, the fan site accessible only by its students from what I knew. The high school worked differently from the middle school section. There was an income of more students, the strict requirements loosening a little.

Although the class size remained the same, many of the other things were still unknown other than the fact the classes were getting a bit easier. I looked forward to graduating middle school, around a half a year away from it. I wanted to go on more missions, being stuck at school all the time was a bit suffocating. Luke would have no choice but to give me more freedom as I grew older. In elementary school, he didn't even let me leave the first district.

"You're a student at our school?" Charles realized.

"Not everyone is affluent enough to live inside the dorm building," she revealed we were inside the school grounds.

"Even the basement?" I started to pity her.

"The basement is for people who possess zero points," she had minus points.

I had forgotten that I would suffer under the point system again when I went into high school. If it wasn't for the monster incident, I would be more motivated to study to avoid the basement. I didn't think the school would become crueler in high school, seeing how she lived separately from the others. Paying attention in class was hard, my mind had a hard time concentrating for long periods of time, each class being around four hours.

"I'll study harder," I didn't want to become like her.

"The teachers don't go over everything in class like they do for the lower levels. There's a lot of self-studying," she explained.

"But this is as worse as it can get, right?" I had my hopes up.

"People with more minus points have no place to sleep. They're given nothing, no storage places, tents, and bathrooms," she shuddered.

"Then how do they survive?" I began to get scared.

"They have to beg others to take them in," she seemed to be serious.

I was shocked, the school being easy on us since we were in middle school. The shack no longer seemed a bad place to live inside anymore, better than being left with nothing. Maybe the interior would be nicer than her poor situation. They had enough points to purchase desserts so it couldn't be that bad. Trying to get a closer look by peeking through the door, my heart thumped as it seemed to resemble a normal dorm room from far away.

"Are we still inside the school grounds?" I couldn't believe the high school section was this big.

"We are, the high school grounds are a bit different," she repeated.

Looking at the others, they didn't seem to know someplace like this existed, finding out for the first time. It was likely that nobody in their families ever had to be in the same situation with their amazing grades. Maybe I would need to practice using my dimensional library before I entered high school. I didn't want to live in the middle of nowhere, stuck with Luke to keep me company.

"This place shouldn't be dangerous," I turned to them.

"Can you let us know the way back to the middle school section?" Luke decided to go back to our dorm room.

"It's a far distance away. You can only get there by teleporting. Maybe around the distance of going to another town," she didn't seem to be joking.

"Then how do you attend classes?" I felt the school was being too harsh.