The white butterfly tango

Chapter XX

It was the day of the tournament and the whole academy was quietly sharing a lunch break, weirdly for the first time ever. Usually, students had individual schedules, making them not able to communicate much during the day. Esma heard the loud communication outside the canteen door but in a second felt how tensed the whole place got. The atmosphere changed tremendously and she knew there was something that was about to happen really soon.

"Alright, here they go," Yuuwa mumbled but then both she and Kotaro stood up to hand over their empty trays to the counter near Miss Lynn.

Just as students changed their locations as well, some completely new people entered the canteen and immediately blent in with the crowd of the academy.

"Hiiii! How are you?" Some girl with dark red hair, which was probably dyed, hopped right beside the tall tattoed boy with a big excitement on her face. She had bright brown freckles and brown beer-like eyes. The girl had a short haircut, and her hair was put in a low little ponytail on the back of her head.

Hannes obviously ignored her. It wasn't a very unique reaction, though. He usually reacted like that to anyone entering him without his permission. The boy just felt completely uninterested by most of the people in his surroundings.

"Lyssa Fierce. Has the power of fire control and a huge crush on Hannes." Sora quickly took a look into her blue fluffy little note book and then glanced curiously at the first years sitting right beside her.

"That would be destructive and unhealthy," Esma mumbled under her nose without realizing. She was just observing every single person that entered.

"Right?!" Heth exclaimed in disbelief and then blushed, turning away, to take a look at the old lady behind the counter that was now ready to serve the guests as well.

"They are the same age?" Esma ignored it, mostly because didn't want Heth to feel bad.

"Yes, and they met twice before." Sora supported her on this and nodded her head while explaining it to both of them.

"You mean, the tournament takes place every year?" She then asked quite curiously again, mostly to prove her hypothesis, appearing out of the bits of information that she got before.

"Mhm." The pink-haired girl nodded again and leaned back in her chair, proud to know more than the people beside her.

"Ello! You must be the newcomers! It's nice to meet you!" Just at that second, some weird-looking girl appeared beside them, making them all quite surprised by that sudden move. She seemed to be really energetic and leaned onto the table quite loudly.

"Who are you?" Heth frowned as he didn't think someone would approach them so fast. The girl had bright, almost yellow, braided hair and some kind of symbols written on her chin, cheeks, and forehead. She looked like some kind of druid, Esma saw in those video games, they played with Dan and it made her quite nostalgic for a second.

"The name is Elletta." The girl chuckled proudly and then Esma noticed that she also had some symbol on the inside of her lip. It looked like tattoos, but the girl wasn't fully sure of that. "Whoa! Why are there 3 of you? Oi! Otto! Come here." She then finally counted the people and raised her sight, calling in the quite short dark-haired guy who seemed quite uncomfortable.

"My name is Sora. I won't participate." The pink-haired girl answered sincerely just as the boy was approaching them.

"Sad. I liked your pink hair!" The girl with symbols on her face then smiled excitingly and leaned even closer, trying to touch the little girl's head. Sora didn't resist that but quickly glanced behind, to make sure Anna wasn't watching her at that moment.