1712 A Chaotic Day
Listen closely...
Can you hear it? Can you hear the sounds of thousands of hearts churning like engines?
Good God!
From the moment Raven woke up, she felt swelled with anxiety that ate her to the bone.
When taking brushing her teeth, showing and even eating, she had been doing so in a daze.
It was only when she wanted to put it into her Frootyloops cereal that she realized she had used orange juice as milk.
Heading back to her room, she decided to rearrange her school supplies for the umpteenth time.
First, she placed all her pencils, pens, rulers, erasers, sharpeners, erasing ink, sticky notebooks, and calculators on her bed before rearranging them according to color again.
Her notebooks were also well organized, though her mind was still in full disarray.
Augh~
What can she do to calm down?
RING!~
Raven jumped back, not expecting any calls today.
Who could it be?
"Hello?"
[Raven, it's your father. You haven't forgotten that we were coming to visit you, right?]
Ahh--
Raven almost fell from the edge of her bed, shocked by the calendar date on the wall.
It was funny that she had indeed circled the date but had forgotten all about it because of the final exams and now this.
Yes!
The blue-toned Raven came from the Empire Femolia, an empire in Zohl that has already formed a treaty with Baymard, joining in as one of the UN empires.
It's been 1 year and 1 month since they joined, and everything has been going great for her people so far.
For Raven and many people currently in Baymard Femolia, this past semester was their first schooling semester here.
It started around August 4th and officially ended around November 5th.
Following that, they had 1 week of no classes, before exam week began and ended on November 23rd.
Some people's exams ended around November 18th, and some people's exams ended around November 20th.
It all depended on what courses one was taking and when their exams were scheduled.
For her, her exams ended on the 17th.
It was hectic for her since her exams were not spread out, as almost every day before the 17th, she would be taking examinations, sometimes 2 in one day.
After the last exams on the 23rd, the school would take 2 weeks to mark, score and tally everything up. At least that's what she and many have been told.
Compared to the many ordinary people who came here Raven was of noble descent, as her father was a prominent Earl in her home city.
So when she came, she already had the money to pay for her tuition and even get a luxurious 5-bedroom home in District H too.
It had an indoor pool, an indoor tennis court, great security she could control at the touch of a button from home, and so many features that made it all worthwhile.
One shouldn't also forget the luxurious and chic furniture pieces that make each room seem like a painting in motion.
Raven loved this 3 story high ceiling home very much.
She loved it even more than her courtyard home back in her father's estate.
Since she was one of the first to come here for studies from her empire, she wasn't allowed any maids.
For one, the maid system does not exist in Baymard. If one must bring a maid, it was best to define that maid as a HELPER.
There are specific guidelines for how helpers have to be treated here.
Baymard frowned upon the action of yelling at a helper out in public, beating them up for every little thing and treating them like objects rather than humans.
Baymard preferred people come here without such helpers
Guards are okay for only a short while, but maids... no!
At first, Raven was annoyed, thinking Baymard was so arrogant to demand such from her and other nobles.
But it was only after coming here that she realized just how useless she was.
She couldn't cook, she couldn't clean, and she couldn't even take care of herself without anyone doing it for her.
It's TRUE!
Do you know that she has never bathed herself before?
All she did was sit in the large bathing pool and allow the servant girls to scrub her with whatever oils and cleaning herbs they could get from the merchants who sold high-quality goods.
The first day she bathed herself here, she over-scrubbed her body till she was red as a tomato.
In school, she didn't want to make friends with people beneath her social standing, always carrying her snobbish attitude around.
But the more she stayed in Baymard, the more she regretted her earlier actions.
She felt so alone and ashamed, not knowing how to strike up a conversation with others now.
It was only after another girl approached her that she realized there were some nobles in her class who had stayed in Baymard longer than her and only spoke to her out of pity.
They advised her to change her attitude and helped her ease herself with the other classmates.
It was funny to say that after that, her best friend was a bubbly peasant girl from Carona whom she loved dearly as if she were her blood sister.
That wasn't all.
She also had other friends she valued, some boys and some girls from many UN empires.
It was amazing that they would go out to touristic sights and even play games in the arcade center.
Hey, they mostly grew closer because they were in the same class.
As a girl, she has never gone to school before, only taking etiquette lessons, calligraphy and various classes at home from female teachers.
Sometimes, she and other noble girls would head to a teacher's home for lessons but it wasn't like school.
Even the boys from here say Baymardian schools are different from their academy schools back in their empires.
For one, boys and girls can go to school together which is very strange.
She never knew such a concept could work at all, but it did.
The boys in her class were funny, and so were the girls.
She liked how free everyone was during lunch, as she always witnessed crazy scenes that made her laugh so hard milk came out her nose, like the time the school cafeteria was selling out the most valued lunch, every student loved it to death.
Immediately, she and her friends went into formation, planning how they would make their way to the cafeteria and hurdle past the mob of students who also wanted to eat it.
Raven never knew she could be an assassin until that day.
Everyone had red eyes as they jumped over each other with some even crowd surfing too.
With her gym pants underneath her skirt, she wasn't shy to crawl or jump, as she brutally reached the front with 2 others in her team, grabbing as many as she could.
Success!
They only got 4, though there were 11 of them in their group.
So they broke it even and everyone got a taste of what victory felt like.
Sigh...
Thinking of how she was before coming to Baymard, Raven felt her former self was too arrogant for no reason.
Her father's accomplishments were not hers. She should be proud when she makes her own money.
Her father can decide to give her money or give her nothing. She can one day fall out of grace and end up just like the many peasants she used to despise.
So if she cannot be self-sufficient and reliable for herself, how will she survive?
Living in Baymard taught her to think more about herself and what future she truly wanted.
She could now live without maids, and could even make a mean rice porridge too.
Well, she wasn't the best cook, as her foods typically taste too salty, but she was learning and this was all that mattered.
----
'It's today?'
Raven ran like crazy, cleaning up her messy room as fast as she could.
Her parents and her little brother of 6 were coming to visit her for the first time!
It would also be their first time coming to Baymard too. She would've loved to pick them up from the Seaport, but hey... who made her forget?
Who made her leave the house so messy?
They were calling her from one of the phones in the Coastal port, meaning it won't be long before they got a taxi and headed over here.
All they had to do was tell the taxi man the address she gave them and the rest was history.
Raven looked at her watch and didn't know whether to laugh or cry at their perfect timing.
Who would've thought they would be coming here on the same day the exam results would be out?
Crossing her fingers, Raven hoped her results weren't below an B+ range.
She knew she would pass, but she wanted to pass well and make them proud!
Like so, Raven rushed to clean up. And soon, she heard her doorbell ring several times.
~Zzzzipp!
They were here!
