Chapter 31; Please do NOT throw the spellbooks.

                                    

                                          
The following day, Graduation was announced as having been moved forward, due to 'special cercumstances'.
                          
Naturally, finding out that one is going to die sooner than expected brought quite a few boys into a panic. 
                          
All except for Adar, that is, who could've cared less.
                          
 "We've only been IN school a couple of months!" Jeremiah complained at the lunch table. "We're not ready."
                          
 "Thank you for the understatement of the year." Adar replied, smirking. 
                          
Honestly, what were they all panicking for? Asta and Nico looked as though they had both been diagnosed with the Etherian plague. Jin was barely eating, and Blue wouldn't look anyone in the eye. 
                          
The only thing that worried Adar was that his family might come to visit him before he was irrevocably torn to bits by hideous Monsters, and he really didn't want to deal with them.
                          
He'd rather deal with the Monsters.
                          
Besides, they'd only moved the ceremony to the beginning of spring rather than the end. That still gave them the rest of winter to prepare.
                          
Yet such a sentiment was not appreciated by the rest of the group.
                          
Thus, they finished lunch in silence, each one of them heading to their own classes without so much as a word of goodbye to one another.
                          
 Yet, for some reason, Adar decided to join Asta and Nico in their art class, deciding that Mrs.Hodge was nice enough not to make him leave.
                          
Granted, the walk to the art building was miserable with the snow blowing in their faces, feeling at times like tiny bits of glass that cut their skin with invisible blades.
                          
The snow was coming down harder now, and it made Adar wish for the dry deserts and hot sand of his homeland. For, in truth, he had never seen snow until now and he honestly thought he would be happy never encountering it again. Asta, on the other hand, seemed more alive in the snow.
                          
That is, until Adar pushed him face first in it.
                          
Laughing, the prince scampered away as Asta sprang up and chased after him, Nico at his heels. And it was in this way that the three of them raced to the art building and practically trampled on another to get inside-- each of them breathless and rosy cheeked.
                          
"I'll get you back." Asta said, grinning as they hung their coats on the rack.
                          
Yet Adar only smiled in reply and went to join Nico as she sat at a blank canvas, Asta following their lead a moment after, bringing over his ink and a brush.
                          
"Give me your arm." he commanded Adar, dipping his brush in the ink and waiting expectantly.
                          
Frowning suspiciously, the prince rested his arm on the table and jumped slightly when the ink touched his skin; it was wet, cold, and not altogether unpleasant, if slightly on the sticky side.
                          
 Keeping as still as possible, he watched as Asta carefully painted a picture on his skin, the details slowly appearing one by one as the boy worked.
                          
 The picture itself was a magnificent one, to be sure. 
                          
A mix of simple lines and complex ones, it was a collage of roses with a sword set in the middle, the whole picture fitting neatly on Adar's forearm in a swirl of black and empty space-- all of it entertwining to form a masterpiece.
                          
 Adar doubted he had ever had something of such beauty on his skin-- for while tattoos or swirls of golden paint on the skin were common in his culture, they tended not to be so detailed. So... alive.