Grimoire - Vol 1. Revelation of Rakshas

18 - I Hate Surprises

Life in the class was refilled within minutes. The noise and senseless chattering were ringing in the air.

Other members of our group—by which I just meant two other people—started to fill the surrounding benches. While technically, they could be considered friends, they were more like acquaintances. Maybe even friends by extension.

Kushal and Irina.

Kushal had been a friend of Idris since school days—much later than me though so I still the seniority. They both were part of our school's football team and since I was not a part of anything back then—or even now—my interactions with him had been very limited. It was a nice surprise though to see him in the same Jr. College as ours.

One can never really have too many friends, you know?

Though, when Kushal made the entry, he made the same joke about me being early with his annoyingly nasally voice, so...maybe I'm wrong. Maybe one can indeed have too many friends.

Or maybe I seriously just need to get new friends.

And then there was Irina, a friend of mine by extension of Naina. She was the most recent addition to our little group and had no prior history with any of us. Or anyone else in the class for that matter.

Remember how I said I had never seen a foreigner in our town? I might have excluded Irina from that list. Well, in my defence, she is half-Indian.

She had to transfer here last year in the middle of the semester from...I wanna say Sweden but honestly, I don't remember. The reason was something about her parent's job or some other thing that I again don't remember. What? I didn't bother to pay attention.

Unlike you all, I don't pry into other people's life.

The point being, she stood out a lot and not just because she was new.

Among the groups of uniformed black-haired classmates, her naturally blonde hair and tall features made her stick out like a sore thumb and the target of many gawking eyes. I mean, she was as tall as me and I was probably the 3rd tallest person in the class.

Ofcourse that could just be because my class is abnormally short but on the off chance that they were normal, she also became the target of a lot of girls'— and boys'— envious gaze.

Yeah, people in my class are weird. They treated her like some exotic new bird at the zoo, a target of admiration and compliments but also something that should probably be kept at an arm's length away.

In simple words, making friends was a hard thing for her.

Especially because, as I said, she didn't know a single person in the class. I mean, it's not like she was bullied or anything—was that still something people did?—but more like 'you're cool and all but we've reached the full capacity for our friendships, it's not you, it's us, thanks for understanding, okay ta-ta, bye~'.

And then Naina just...existed.

Thing is, I'm pretty sure she didn't even approach her as a way to include her in our group or make a move of friendship.

She probably just saw a lost girl in need of academic help and did what she did best—be a nerd.

After a lot of notes sharing and catching Irina up on all the topics, Naina just managed to phase her into our little group without any one of us even realizing anything. Heck, I doubt even Naina realized what she had done.

I would say that compared to Kushal, I did feel a lot closer to Irina, mostly because of the way she and I stood out among the rest of our class. Snow white and sunny blonde hair weren't something that people just naturally had in this town.