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Jake Addams: April 20th, 20XX

“Jake!”

I turned around at the sound of the impossibly deep voice and registered the face of a familiar younger guy. His uniform told me he was a first-year student in the music department, but the rest of his group was third and second-year students of different departments, which was odd. They stopped a few feet before he did and left him to walk up to me alone.

While I didn’t think I was a scary person, I could see how it would be challenging to crowd around a graduating senior if you’d never spoken to them before. I sent them a friendly smile to acknowledge them before focusing on the first year.

He looked up at me with a burdensome expression that triggered me to search my memories for a name.

“Ah, Teor, right?”

The kid nodded so quickly that I worried he’d make himself dizzy and turned around to his crowd with a gloating expression. It was such a childish expression that it got a chuckle out of me, but I restrained it. Or well, I tried, but after seeing one of the second-year girls stick out her tongue in response to his taunt, I completely lost it.

She blushed out of embarrassment as she realized I’d seen her, and she sank into the midst of the crowd.

Teor kept his bright eyes trained on my face and that same burdensome expression coloured his features.

“Did you need anything? I’ve got some time before I have to head home.”

“Ah! Well. Uh. Wait!”

He let out a few more filler words before finally telling me his motive for accosting me with a crowd.

“We know that since you broke it off with Alice, you also left her group for the Showcase… I and my friends weren’t all that close to the group in the first place so we wanted…. to maybe... team up with you for the Showcase?”

At my surprised expression, he talked faster, like he was in a race against himself or any thoughts of rejection that I may have had.

“Don’t get us wrong! It’s not that we think you wouldn’t be able to find anyone else it’s just that we know that the seniors have to take part in order to graduate and first years cannot join without being in a senior’s group so we hoped to team up with you!”

He ran out of words to say and simply just looked at me with imploring eyes. At some point, the rest of his group of at least 20 had floated up to stand right behind him. So I struggled to think up a suitable response to so many pairs of eyes on me.

I was a sports student, so I didn’t have to do the Showcase. I’d only joined before because Alice had expected me to, and even now, I was only doing it because Sparrow had roped me into helping Finn.

Still, it was heartwarming to think that they had left the group of their own volition to help me out. Even if they were just extras in whatever setting they took part in, just the participation points for such a large group would have been a great help in their following years. The scale of Alice’s production would make it an impressive addition to their resume’s as well.

“Ah. you guys are great and I really appreciate the offer, but I already joined someone else’s group.”

Like in a cartoon, their faces simultaneously fell in disappointment, which propelled me to hurry and tack on the following sentence. A choice which I soon grew to regret.

“But since you guys already left Alice’s group on my behalf, I’ll make sure you guys can join. I’m sure she won’t mind.”

Teor’s face brightened like a lightbulb.

“Really! thank you!”

His voice was loud as he shouted his thanks, but then he caught on to something I’d said, and his eyes slightly narrowed.

“But… She?”

I didn’t have a problem with him being surprised since I’d just broken things off with Alice, but it still soured my mood.

“Yeah, I ended up pairing up with Sparrow and Finn. Right now we only have the design part so I’m sure that she won’t mind registering as a multifaceted group so you guys can take part.”

Well, I didn’t even really know if I could count Finn as a part of our group, but since Sparrow had been speaking so authoritatively about him and his role, I had begun to think that way as well.

They all murmured amongst themselves, but one of them, the girl that had previously stuck out her tongue at Teor, seamlessly diverted the conversation somewhere else.

“But the runway event? If you don’t have any other sections, then how can we-”

She said, implying that most of them were only second. She was in her third year, but she was one of few.

“Pull on our own shows? I mean, are any of your friends going to help?”

From the way she looked at Teor, I could tell that she hadn’t left Alice’s group on my behalf. Instead of looking as shy as the other students, she was much more pragmatic and immediately dove into talking logistics. I took note of her dark blue uniform and noted that she was a management student.

I could only smile in a bittersweet manner and say as lightly as I could.

“They’re already signed up under Alice... At my insistence, no less, but it’s not like they all joined because of me. I doubt any of them would want to leave a good gig just because of my breakup.”

Doubtful expressions ran through the crowd, so I hurried to put their minds at ease, thinking they were anxious because of the lack of guidance.

“Don’t worry, I’ll help as much as possible, and if needed I’ll find others to look over you guy’s projects, even if they can’t directly join us. You may not win but I guarantee that it’ll be a good experience for you guys.”

I didn’t know when it had become me begging them to join us, but somehow that was the current setting to the scene.

The girl, I think her name was Nikki, who had stuck out her tongue before suddenly put on a big smile and ushered the others away.

“Do you mind if we bring a few more people? There are others but they didn’t know if you would even want to work with us.”

I nodded immediately, thinking that it couldn’t hurt to have one or two more people.

If you choose to apply as a multifaceted group or a company, each section had to have at least seven members. If possible, I would like for each of them to participate in sections relating to their departments.

She smiled once more and pushed everyone away, leaving me by myself once again.

The quickness of what had just happened bewildered me, but I didn’t think about it too much. Either way, things would eventually clear themselves up. I took out my phone to call Sparrow and tell her about the recent changes to the group. She’d pulled me into helping her and Finn out of nowhere, so I was sure she wouldn’t turn me down on this.

According to the rankings: If you only took part in one specialized event, they would classify you as a group. If you competed in multiple related events like modelling, fashion/set design, and photography, you were a faction. If you took part in numerous varied events, they could classify you as a company, and if you competed in everything, you became a conglomerate.

Alice’s group was close to being a conglomerate, but she had failed to convince anyone from the classical music department or traditional clubs to join her.

They and the sports departments were the two who were not required to participate in the Showcase and had their separate event earlier in the year.

I called a few more times, but the phone rang to no end, and I eventually decided to stop by her workshop after school. Sparrow was likely working on one of her many projects.

Or wait, I didn’t even have any classes, so nothing was stopping me from heading over now. So I sent Sparrow a text to tell her I was on my way and headed over to my car.

It was on my way that my teammates suddenly accosted me with angry expressions on their faces. Matthew, my vice-captain for the track team, being the ringleader of the left and Conor, the vice-captain of the mixed martial arts team on the right.

“Jake!”

Conor roared, attracting the attention of everyone else in the courtyard. In a few bounds, he leaped into a grapple, trying to take me down to show his anger at me, but I had been training with him for more than just a few years and knew all of his patterns.

There was a reason he was still the vice-captain, and I was the captain, after all. I couldn’t say I was better than he was in terms of raw strength, and he was faster than I was too, but he was more predictable and defaulted to the same three moves when he attacked.

I dodged his attack and kicked backward, making him land on his face.

Taking heed of the other members of both clubs, I sank into a defensive position and waited, thoroughly enraged. More than a few of them were scholarship students, and, unlike myself, they had yet to earn any merit for the school. I feared that if the school caught them making a ruckus like this, the school would kick them out.

“Anyone else wants to completely disregard school rules and start a fight outside of the practice area? If so-”

I cracked my knuckles and made my displeasure completely clear. There were too many of them to bother with fighting fair if they did choose to jump me, so I’d have to make sure I didn’t leave any injuries that were too bad.

It was a ritual to jump the most senior team members, so I wasn’t too angry at this, but they should have invited me and the others to the gym and done it there. Doing it out in public was asking for trouble.

“I’ll have to take it upon myself to educate you guys properly before I graduate.”

I’d taken part in this ritual a few years ago, so I didn’t think my threats would do much to dissuade them, but it looked like I’d traumatized them a bit more than I’d thought.

The martial arts team backed down and stood with their arms behind their backs and their heads facing downwards as they saw their new captain on the ground. The track team looked startled as they’d never really seen me fight and backed down as well.

By this time, Conor got up with an even angrier expression on his face, but it was obscured by all the dirt that clouded his eyebrows and lashes. Perhaps I had hit him a little too harshly, but I needed to use him as an example, and I knew he could take it.

Matthew stepped forward with an uncharacteristically angry expression on his usually good-natured face.

“Captain! How could you leave Alice’s group and not tell us?! AND you decided to take a bunch of Art students with you but not us?! Why? Do you think any of us hold any sort of loyalty to Alice? Don’t remember that if not for you, all of us would have stayed out of this. We want to be sports students, not flunkies for all those annoying actors!”

Conor joined in.

“Exactly! We all already quit Alice’s group, so make sure you make space for all of us in whatever group or faction or company or whatever you joined. It’s the least you can do after all we’ve put up with on your behalf.”

I tried to convince them to go back to Alice, thinking of how burdened Sparrow would be, as well as all of Alice’s connections that they were abandoning on my behalf. But I couldn’t help but feel warm at the comradeship that they were showing me.

I ran an embarrassed hand through my hair and chuckled, not wanting to make this into a cheesy moment.

“If you guys are willing to stay with me for that long, then let’s go to the end, yeah?”

Despite my best efforts, the guys still groaned and saw me off with jeers about how I’d gotten soft and tacky.

But this time, just this once, I would let them off with only a doubled intensity practice.

While it didn’t look like they were immediately planning on continuing the tradition of jumping their seniors, I need to train the idea right out of them.