Her Knight In Rusty Armor

Chapter XV

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Bittersweet
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"So, students, I have usually seen that while stirring a glass containing light entities like tea leaves, the latter gathers in the middle. What leads to such a phenomenon?"

"Prolly a sick miracle," Drake muttered from his seat, followed by me snickering.

You already know which lesson it was.

Physics, featuring the one and only: Sir Bucket.

I had stopped sitting next to Booger Billy, Sir Bucket's awful memory proving the rebellion to be a lot easier than expected.

"Hmm, why don't you answer this question, Ashton?" Sir Bucket slyly asked me.

It was to no one's surprise that I was always his number one target whenever he would spew out a nonsensical question. Perhaps he was just jealous of my wit, or was it because I had become his favourite student at that point? Probably the former.

I sat up in my seat and dropped my pen onto the table before me. Every single pair of eyes in the classroom was now on me, and I didn't fail to catch some of them flicker onto the thin bandages wrapped around my wrist.

"Of course, Your Highness." I smirked at him as he shook his head in amusement. "By stirring the glass containing tea leaves, work is introduced to the glass container. This work is translated into a rotary motion on the water, which causes the water at the outer edges of the glass to go up and form a depression in the centre of the glass."

The whole class remained silent. I took in a deep breath to replace the oxygen in my lungs.

"This creates a pressure difference between the outer edge of the glass having high pressure and the low pressure in the middle. Since the natural movement of water is from higher pressure to lower pressure, this causes the tea leaves suspended in the water to gather in the middle."

The Bucket stared at me, his mouth slightly agape, his bald head glinting courtesy of the lights above us. It seemed as if my answer had left him at a complete loss of words, though I couldn't understand exactly why he was so shocked. Everyone knew I was a know-it-all at that point.

Drake kicked my foot from under the table and I spared him a glance. He passed me a thumbs up, making me wink at him in solidarity.

"Good answer," Sir Bucket grumbled at me, his spirits low and the light in his eyes completely snatched away by Ashton Miller.

He turned his back towards the class, all of the students' eyes going back to their books. However, a single pair of eyes remained locked with mine.

Blue. An extremely piercing blue, yet it radiated a certain amount of warmth.

I passed him a confused jerk of the head and he only nodded back at me.

Before he was about to look away, I caught him worriedly glance at my hand which I had raised to fidget with my earring.

Nate was a funny guy, and I wouldn't say otherwise.

After another half hour of getting tortured by the Bucket, the bell rang, signaling an end to the tedious lesson. As I stood up in my seat in the midst of the other students' shuffling, Sir Bucket's deep voice made us all stop in our tracks.

"Attention, everyone," he announced, everyone falling silent at once. "As you all may know, it is finally October: The month of spooks!"

He gazed around at us, anticipating some sort of a reaction of elation from us, though none came, considering how we all weren't nine-year-olds anymore.