Chapter 5: Partners in Not Crime

                                    

                                          
As expected, their Magic and Science teacher, Mister Gabriel, greeted them with the quiz he repeatedly reminded them about. As if the midterms didn't just finish last week and barely scratched the surface of the new lesson. It was a good thing she thought of rewriting her notes earlier. Once she gave her paper to him, she sat back down and opened her notebook again. It wasn't difficult to find where she ended her rewriting earlier. When she finished the last bit, there were two pages left. 
Perhaps it was a good thing she stopped instead of rewriting them for the eighth time. She didn't know if she could still use this notebook with just these two pages left. She had one remaining spare notebook left at home. It was also the weekend tomorrow, so maybe she could buy a new one.
Just thinking about that made her fingers ache again. Parts of her left middle finger had stiffened, and there was a small bump on it. As she brushed that finger with her right finger, she sighed to herself. Perhaps she should write with her right hand for the rest of the day.
"Alright. Settle down, everyone," Mister Gabriel said as he tapped his chalk on the board twice. Tala almost flinched at the sound. She didn't know if her ears were just extra sensitive today or if he intentionally scratched the board like that to get their attention.
"The school year is almost over," he continued. "Not only that, this is your last year in junior year. I'm sure your history teacher had already told you about your final class collaboration product earlier. As of now, Miss Isolde has only asked me to collaborate. We'll ask the other teachers about it later.
"For your final product, you're going to make a model based on a historical event you learned ever since the beginning of the school year, and the best one will be displayed in the Starfell Fest Dance. Isolde will be grading your historical accuracies and how well the model is made, but I'll be grading a different thing. Instead, I'll be grading how well your control over the model is and what part of Magic and Science you've applied. You will also be writing an essay of how you've used your magic in the model.
"Now." He clapped his hands. "Please write all of your names in a slip of paper so I can group you into pairs."
Tala furrowed her brows, and she raised her arm. "Mister Gabriel, there's thirty-three of us."
Mister Gabriel hummed at that. Soft brown, almost black, eyes scanned the classroom. They stopped in a specific spot. But before Tala could even turn around to check what he was staring at, he had already turned away and waved a hand. "I see. This project has always been in pairs, so one of you will be working as a trio. Alright, names, please. And be quick; there's fifteen minutes left of class."
She quickly did what he asked. When she was seated again, she sighed and rested her chin on her palm. She knew how this was going to go down. It didn't matter whether she had the trio or the pair. She was going to do the heavy lifting, like always. The first Starfell was one of their earlier lessons all the way back from the first semester. They would definitely expect her to be the one recreating it.
Maybe she could ask them to do the essay? Or would they also ask her to do it? She could already imagine their reasons.
It's your magic. It's your historical event. I think the Starblessed should write about the star-related event. You know more about this than we do, after all.
Back then, she would have been glad if she got paired up with Cess or Lysandre, maybe even Kael. But after that memory dive from Cess's head earlier...
Just how long had she thought of Tala like that?
At least Lysandre and Kael were more reliable, right? Right? 
Lysandre was the no-nonsense to Kael's troublemaking tendencies. There was no way the two of them thought of her the same way like Cess.