Passageway

I zipped up my track suit and put on my favourite white running shoes to get ready for gym class.

I smiled as this was the last class on the Friday and my favourite subject.

Imagine physical education class meant to train national athletes to compare the level of difficulty for theoretic classes to be beyond university level.

Starting from elementary school, physical education meant that you would practice moving your body while infusing it with your mana.

All those fantasy-like things such as gliding through the air or increasing your speed was possible. To glide through the air, you had to manipulate the mana in your body to make it weightless to make it easier to float. But increasing your speed meant that you focused most of your mana in a certain part of your body that you wanted to move faster.

I stretched my body before joining in the usual exercise of attempting to run 50 laps per person around the school as a marathon. Except that with the partner system, Alex and I would rotate every ten laps that would eventually sum up to one hundred laps.

I lightly placed my hand above my ankles to infuse my mana into my leg as the area glowed golden blue from the spell.

"Start!" Daniel yelled as he gestured to start the marathon.

I ran around the school with my lightning fast speed as my hair whooshed from the fast movements. Not even one minute after, I lightly stopped at the place where Alex was waiting for his turn after finishing 10 laps without breaking into a sweat.

The more mana you had meant that you could run even faster if you knew how to use it properly. Two hours later, both Alex and I finished running one hundred laps. I guessed Alex had less than half of my mana because it took him much more longer time to run while I waited for him while resting in the courtyard. But no one would know except for me that anyone would have less mana than me because I had unlimited amount of MP.

The next item on the list was mana practicing class. I walked down the long spiraling stairs into the basement as I followed behind Alex. Apparently, all mana practice rooms were in the basement because mana was easily combustible, such as fire and explosion magic.

"Please hit this mannequin doll with lightning magic." Daniel instructed as he pointed to the limp doll.

I imagined the crackling blue electric sparks from when I unplugged the cord from the outlet in my former life. The electric sparks were dyed with bits of purple and blue as it fizzed out flickers out of the palm of my hands. I visualized aiming those electric sparks to that mannequin doll made out of hay about one twenty metres ahead of me as I closed my eyes to increase my focus. When I had opened my eyes, mannequin doll burned up in flames and the fire quickly spread like an uncontrollable wildfire to the other mannequins around it.

'Oopps. Maybe I overdid it? It was hard to control an infinite amount of MP,' I tried to justify the scene in front of me.

"As usual, Rika learn to control your mana flow!" Daniel sternly scolded me.

"We will be moving onto another exercise since the mannequins are unusable." Daniel carried on while he looked in my direction.

Daniel led us to a room where there were magical cannons. The cannons gleamed from its great maintenance from its exquisite polishing as not a single sign of it being worn down was seen. It reminded me of the weapons used a little past the medieval times in my former life.

"Focus your mana inside the cannons and imagine a ball coming out aimed towards the middle of the dart board." Daniel instructed.

I followed his guidance as I poured my mana into the cannon while imagining my mana to be like gasoline that would fuel the cannon to create a fireball that would be thrown by the cannon.

My mana hummed inside me like it was singing a little song until I stopped pouring waves of my mana into the cannon. While I wasn't paying attention, the room rumbled from a sudden uncontrollable force creating a great force in the space.

When I finally came to my senses, I found multiple large balls of fire being thrown by the cannon towards the dart board which instantly destroyed the dart board.

Daniel walked towards me with a frown as he cleaned up my mess with a snap of his fingers, "Rika! What did I say about controlling your mana? The reason why the whole class is doing all these tedious exercises is because of you who can't control the huge amount of mana you possess!"

The destroyed ashes of the dartboard were instantly restored back to its former glory and he fixed the room that had shaken from the abrupt force.

"I'm sorry," I apologized while sulking.

I changed back into my uncomfortable uniform as I headed back to my room. Instead of staying in my uniform like usual, I changed into the clothes that I bought from the mall. I wore a pink laced dress with a white ribbon made out of silk on my waist matched with my white flats and my cute ivory cardigan.

Today, Shelly promised to treat me to some pudding at the school cafe. However, we were also there to confirm a rumor circulating inside the school. Apparently, Shelly heard from the rare encounters of our upperclassmen that the school cafe was connected to a tunnel that led to the second district. I eagerly supported her in finding out the truth as we decided to meet up today.

"You look cute today Rika!" Shelly waved at me.

"You too Shelly!" I hugged Shelly before taking my seat.

Unfortunately, Ellen was busy with some private family affairs today, so she wasn't able to join us. But, we promised to fill her in on what we discovered today.

Shelly wore a pretty red and blue striped T-shirt and a white tennis skirt matched with her blue flats. She looked absolutely lovely with her silky black hair and luring silver eyes.

"You know Alex was really worried for you the other day," Shelly told me when I lost my consciousness last weekend.

"I just remember waking up in my room after collapsing onto my bed," I couldn't remember meeting with Alex that day.

I knew I remembered talking to Alex in the cafeteria earlier on in the day that day, but I couldn't remember much after that.

My brain was somehow fuzzy whenever I tried to remember more than what I currently did. It was like someone was trying to block those memories on purpose. I didn't look further into it, but it was suspicious. Who would want to tamper with my memories and why?

Shelly tried to change the serious mood as she ordered some delicious strawberry jelly pudding with her points. Once we elegantly finished our desserts, we dropped all the pleasantries as we hurriedly got down into business.

It wouldn't be long until Alex would come through the doors while demanding another carefully planned study session. Apparently, Alex received some advice from Luke about his intense study sessions with me throughout the years we have been together. I wasn't looking forward to what Alex got out of it as I shivered from what was to come.

"I wonder where the entrance to tunnel may be." I looked around the cafe.

'Of course, the tunnel wouldn't be where it was exactly noticeable to the customers. What was I thinking? It would probably be in somewhere only the staff can enter (not that there was any staff anyways),' I tried to identify where the tunnel could be.

"Maybe it would be inside that staff only room!" I whispered to Shelly as a lightbulb lit up in my head.

There was a staff only door right at the back of the last table near the washroom. However, there were no staff in this café, since everything was served by robots through the tablet.

"It is weird that there is a staff only room even though there is no staff in this cafe," Shelly answered while raising one of her eyebrows.

Shelly and I walked toward the staff only door as I carefully turned the door knob to find it surprisingly unlocked.

At first, nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. There were cleaning supplies such as mops and stored ingredients to make our desserts on the tall shelves.

'This is where there's a secret lair when you search the floor disguised as a trap door or take out one of the ingredients off the shelves to have one of them turn to lead to a secret passage.' I randomly lifted a medium-sized bag of cake flour off one of the shelves.

Maybe I was lucky that day, but Shelly's eyes widened in surprise as the shelf turned to open an entrance into one of the school's secret passageways.

The walls looked like they were made of cold cement and there was long staircase rather than a room after few steps into the passageway.

The air felt dry with presumed ventilated air as we travelled deeper down the stairs with firm determination.

"I feel like these stairs are never going to end," I said while panting.

After two hours of going down the spiral staircase, the stairs never seemed to end. I checked the time on my marble as Shelly and I were noticeably exhausted from the workout. As the two of us mostly spent our time sitting down as we desperately studied for our next exam, we never exercised as much as we did today. We chose to spend out free time at our usual café while enjoying desserts. Not like Alex and Luke who strangely immersed themselves with practicing with a wooden sword as they spared against each other.

It was like the stairs were a never-ending illusion schemed to deceive people. I sighed as at this rate, it would be faster to fall down to the tunnel rather than to keep walking down.

"Shelly! Are you ok with falling?" I was going through the worse that could happen from the result of my new plan in my head.

"Huh? What do you mean by falling?" Shelly suddenly became more alert.

Shelly looked very pale with her clothes and hair disheveled. She was constantly panting to catch her breath and appeared like she was going to faint any minute.

With Shelly's silence, I took it as a 'yes' as I pitied both of our appearance.

I closed my eyes and imagined a laser beam shooting down a step below where I was standing to visualize the spell better. The laser beam would destroy the whole set of stairs underneath as well and all I had to was to yell, "Releeeaaassseee!"