Chapter Five
-Xiao Lan-
To sum up, Shaohan and I have passed the entrance exam and become first-year students at the Spellcasting Academy. We no longer need to worry about not having enough to eat.
The only truly difficult aspect is probably interpersonal relationships.
There are very few first-year students at the Spellcasting Academy, only three... no, to correct it, only two, plus a panda.
Wu Tiao Wu prepared translation earphones for me and Shao Han. As long as we wore them, they could automatically translate every word they spoke, so we temporarily solved the language barrier problem.
The mature woman with dark green hair and glasses leaned on the table, glanced at us, and said, "Seriously, a new student is coming at this hour?"
The white-haired boy, who was covering his mouth with his collar, nodded vigorously: "Salmon."
The strange panda spoke in a human voice: "Really, Maki, don't be such a spoilsport! We have a new classmate, welcome!"
"..."
It seems that the panda was actually easier to communicate with than the two human classmates.
Shaohan, on the other hand, had already begun to embody her new persona of joining the Spellcasting Academy—a cool and aloof queen. When asked by Gojo Satoru to introduce herself, she simply uttered, "My name is Yu Shaohan," and nothing more.
Of course I can't imitate her like that.
In fact, everyone fell silent after her self-introduction, including Gojo Satoru. At that moment, I felt immense pressure, being the center of everyone's attention. The entire classroom was awkward, and I couldn't possibly expect the Instant Sword to suddenly materialize and rescue me.
"Uh... Xiao Lan, and this guy..." I cursed Yu Shaohan a hundred times in my mind for being a lunatic, then put my right hand on my hip and pointed at her with my left thumb, "This guy is my best friend. She's a little crazy from time to time, so please don't take it to heart. She probably forgot to take her medicine this morning. I'll remind her to take it later. I hope everyone won't take her occasional crazy behavior to heart, and let's just get along well."
Shaohan seemed to want to say something—she appeared somewhat unconvinced, but I stopped her in the end.
"Welcome, welcome!" The憨厚 (honest and simple) panda—whose name was Panda—stretched out his furry paw at me.
You might not be able to tell, but I'm a total plush toy fanatic. The moment I held the panda's hand, I knew something was off.
"Hey? Aren't you a real panda?"
As soon as I blurted out the sentence above, I realized I had misspoke—what if all panda cats in another world are like this? How could it not be a real panda if it can talk and move?
"Yes, I am a cursed corpse created by Principal Nightmoth."
"Hiss..." I recalled the dolls that beat us up during the entrance exam. No matter what I did, I couldn't connect the deformed dolls with the cute panda. In the end, I could only laugh awkwardly, "Ah... it's fine."
“This is dog stalk, dog stalk thorn,” Panda introduced to me again.
The boy named Goujuanji nodded at me and uttered a nonsensical phrase: "Seaweed."
I blinked, feeling a sense of doubt from the bottom of my heart—I didn't just come out of the sea... Could there be seaweed around me?
Thinking of this, I quickly turned my head, trying to find the "seaweed". The result was obvious - how could there be seaweed in the classroom?
"Are we having seaweed for lunch today?" I held out my hand to Dog Roll. "Hello, uh... you like seaweed?"
Panda, who witnessed the whole thing, laughed heartily. After laughing enough, he finally took a moment to explain to me: "That's not how it is. Dog Roll is a descendant of the Spellcaster clan, and he usually only speaks using the names of the ingredients in the rice ball."
"A spellcaster!" I blinked my eyes wide. "That's amazing! Is it like the divine beast Xuanwu's ability, where whatever you say becomes reality?"
Dog Curly seemed a little embarrassed by my praise. I turned to look at Shaohan, just about to introduce Dog Curly's special abilities to her, when I saw her exchanging friendly glances with that mature woman with dark green hair.
“That’s Maki,” the panda introduced. “By the way, Xiao Lan, what level of sorcerer are you? What are your spells?”
"A sorcerer? Spellcasters?" I shifted my attention away from Xiao Lan and Zhenxi. I'd felt these two had similar character archetypes during their self-introductions, but seeing them getting along well reassured me. "Level? What level?"
"They should have identification in their pockets, right? Just check the identification on them, won't that be enough?"
"It probably hasn't been processed yet, since they've just enrolled."
"Salmon."
...
Our enrollment time was quite coincidental; it happened to be a Friday. After Friday came two days of rest, and Gojou decided to take Shaohan and me to buy some spell tools.
To be honest, the magic items were less appealing to us than a small cake from a dessert shop. In the car that Gojo Satoru had called, I raised my hand high, indicating that I wanted to speak.
"Hi, now let's hear from Xiao Lan!"
Having been given the right to speak, I first expressed my gratitude to Gojo Satoru for being willing to pay for our purchase of magical artifacts, and then showered him with compliments for ten minutes before getting straight to the point.
"However, Fifth Teacher, I don't think we need any more magical tools. After all, it's just fighting a cursed spirit, and the tools we have are enough. But since we're already out here, could you please take us to the amusement park? The newly opened one! I really want to go to the amusement park!"
I launched a starry-eyed attack.
Gojo Satoru was practically immune to me calling him "Teacher Gojo." He pondered for a moment, then said, "Speaking of which, I haven't asked yet where you two are from. Are you from the neighboring country?"
"No, we're from another world. Hmm... if we had to name it, we could probably call our world the 'Cultivation World'."
"Hey, hey." Shaohan tugged at my sleeve, her expression shocked: "Is it really okay to tell him something like this?"
I tilted my head, expressing my confusion with my eyes: Why not? Teacher Wu is such a good person!
Gojo Satoru is quick to accept things. He soon believed what I said and decided to take us to the amusement park.
"Great!" I cheered, raising my hands.
Of course, before going to the amusement park, at Shaohan's repeated requests, Wutiao Wu still took us on a detour to a jewelry store and bought some small decorations.
After we finished picking out the jewelry, Gojo Satoru paid at the counter. He didn't even look at the prices; he just waved his hand and pulled out a card.
Damn it—when will I ever be like that? A rich person who doesn't even need to look at prices when buying things!
"Given how well you maintain your sword every day, it's probably unlikely you'll ever get it in this lifetime," Shaohan said, pouring cold water on my enthusiasm. Only then did I realize that I had inadvertently blurted out what I was really thinking.
While the other party was swiping their card and signing, Shaohan took a step back with me and whispered to me in a serious tone, "Don't you think he really seems to be raising us like daughters now?"
“Oh, is that so? But isn’t that good?” I said very seriously, “having such a wonderful father.”
Shaohan also fell silent.
Both Shaohan and I come from less than ideal family backgrounds. I grew up without parents and was raised by unreliable mentors, senior brothers, and senior sisters. Shaohan is a little better off than me, but not by much—although she has parents, her family favors boys over girls, and her parents practically treat her like a walking blood bank.
"But you must be mistaken." Feeling inexplicably awkward, I scratched my face, but finally forced myself to continue, "It's probably just a teacher showing concern for their student."
Because of this, the atmosphere between us has been a bit strange. Gojo Satoru probably noticed it too, but he didn't care. So he tossed the accessories he bought for us to us, got into the car excitedly, raised his right hand, and loudly announced, "Let's go to the amusement park!"
I:"……"
Shaohan: "..."
I can't tell for a moment... who really wants to go?
Later, at the entrance of the amusement park, after buying his ticket and preparing to enter, Gojo Satoru seemed to run into someone he knew.
He was a squinty-eyed man with a strange fringe, accompanied by two little girls who were probably around the same age as me and Shaohan.
Upon seeing me and Shaohan, a fleeting look of disgust crossed Liu Hai's brow. Although it disappeared quickly, I still noticed it very keenly.
"Wu, it's been a long time."
Gojo Satoru handed me the tickets and gave us a gentle push, presumably to let us go into the park first. But I, unusually, didn't move, pretending to be clueless and acting as if I didn't understand at all.
The guy with the strange bangs glanced at us again. Since Gojo Satoru hadn't hidden anything while making those movements, he'd seen it all. "Are you still hanging out with these annoying monkeys, Satoru?"
Although I'm not very bright, I understood that he was referring to Shaohan and me when he called us "monkeys." Being inexplicably called "monkeys" didn't sit well with Shaohan. Although I couldn't see my own face, I guessed it looked pretty bad too.
“I don’t think we’ve offended you, young man.” Shaohan tapped my shoulder with her finger, signaling me to be more vigilant. The other party’s malice came out of nowhere. Under normal circumstances, a fight would have already broken out. The only reason they haven’t attacked directly is because the other party might be a friend of “Gojo Satoru.”
Liu Hai ignored Shao Han, seemingly not wanting to acknowledge us at all. It was the brown-haired girl next to him, arms crossed, who spoke up, her first words dripping with sarcasm: "A mere monkey, daring to speak to Lord Xia You like that. Truly, a creature with no manners."
To be honest, I shouldn't have laughed out loud in this situation—but something really funny just suddenly came to mind.
"Hey, hey." I nudged Shaohan with my elbow, completely ignoring the brown-haired girl in front of me. "Tell me, tell me, they keep calling us 'monkey monkey,' what does our Victorious Fighting Buddha say?"
Shaohan: "..."
Shaohan: "Pfft."
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