Reminisce | Tower of God

Chapter 9

“Mr. Laure! Did you see? I popped two!”

Elyse smiled at her brother’s beaming expression, propping her elbows on the table her, Bam, and Hoh were sitting at. 

“At first, it was hard to pop even one!” her twin admitted, his voice stirring the half-asleep boy he was talking to. “All this is thanks to you, Mr. Laure!”

Hoh frowned, glancing over at the wave controller laying on his blanket beside their table. “Thanks to Mr. Laure?” the blond regular echoed, and Elyse wasn’t so sure he was only asking out of pure curiosity. “Did you give Mr. Bam secret lessons or something?”

Laure shifted slightly, tilting his head to look at Hoh. “Well … sometimes. Actually, he and Elyse found my pillow the other day for me. So I decided to teach them.” The wave controller’s eyes met Elyse’s for a split second before he focused his attention on the blond regular once more. “I didn’t have to do very much for Elyse, though. She already seems to have … a good grasp of the fundamentals of using shinsu. All I had to do was teach her about controlling her own power.”

“Oh … I see.” Hoh paused, staring at her as he took in Laure’s words, seemingly deep in thought. Then he smiled, the expression appearing rather forced. “But still, I think you’re amazing.”

Laure didn’t seem too convinced. “Amazing? Why?”

The blond regular laughed nervously, quickly replying, “Um … you, Ms. Elyse, and Mr. Bam are taking the same exam. And you’re teaching the competition.”

“I don’t care,” Laure admitted with a yawn, sounding both tired and bored. “I won’t fail the test anyway.”

Hoh, forcing another humoured expression, murmured, “That’s … true.”

Silence took over the rooftop they were occupying after the regular’s words. Not knowing what to say, Elyse shifted uncomfortably, looking around for any sort of distraction. And as if on cue, she saw Khun step out onto the roof, walking over to them as though he had something important to tell her and Bam.

In the same instant, Hoh pushed back his chair and got to his feet, clearly in some sort of rush to get away. Elyse frowned at his actions. “Mr. Hoh?”

The regular’s eyes darted between her, her brother, and the roof’s exit. “Um … I should go now!” he said hastily, his words jumbling together. “Got things to prepare… See you at the next class!”

And with that, he hurried past Khun and disappeared behind the door that’d lead him back down to their rooms. Though the blue haired boy he’d just brushed past seemed to watch the blond’s actions with just as much suspicion as her. 

“What’s wrong with him?”

Her brother stared at the door. “I … don’t know.”

Khun sighed, shrugging off Hoh’s strange behaviour. “Anyway, did you hear the news?”

Elyse glanced at Bam for a moment, just as he turned to look at her. It seemed … they both had no idea what their friend had to say. Taking the hint from their lost expressions, Khun pulled out a chair across from the two of them before going on to explain what had happened at the fisherman class’ test that day.

“What?!” her brother blurted out at their friend’s description of the ‘big news.’ “Ms. Endorsi and Ms. Anaak might fail the test?”

It seemed Bam was just as puzzled by what apparently, according to Khun, had happened. Meanwhile, their blue haired teammate only sipped from his iced water. “I know it doesn’t make sense,” he stated with a surprisingly unconcerned look on his face, “but it’s official. I heard they can’t even walk well. People say they fought each other. For no reason.”