Published at 7th of February 2023 10:58 am

Chapter 162: Bruises

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"So three heirs of prominent families all decided to become teachers?" Arthur wondered out loud, "There must be a story behind that."

"Well..." Rowan thought for a moment before thinking, "It's not that complex or interesting of a story. Actually, it's sort of silly if I say it out loud."

"Now I'm even more curious," Arthur said.

"Well, out of the three of us; Mason, Liam and Me. Only Mason wanted to be a teacher during our time in high school." She began explaining, "Liam expected to inherit his father's company, and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do."

"You didn't want to inherit your family's company too?" Arthur asked.

"No." She said as she shook her head, "My father wanted me to follow in his footsteps and start off as a surgeon in one of our hospitals in Hungary."

"A surgeon with hemophobia, what a wonderful combination," Arthur muttered.

Rowan let out a small chuckle at his response.

"Yes, fortunately, my father quickly put the thought of me becoming a surgeon behind him when he found out about my condition." She continued, "Although it left me wondering what I wanted to do, as I didn't really have any interest in studying medicine in the first place."

"As for Liam, his father was worried that he would grow up to be nothing but a spoiled brat if luxury was all he knew." She explained, "So his father added a requirement that would prevent his ability to inherit the company until it was met."

"Become a primary school teacher?" Arthur asked with a confused tone.

Rowan laughed at Arthur's quip once more.

"From what Liam told us, he was essentially asked to go experience the real world." She said, "Which apparently meant find employment within the working class and working for several years while learning common sense... It's sort of hard to believe now, but Liam was quite the troublemaker back in high school."

At this point, the gymnasium had filled up with an entire class worth of students. Which was Rowan's cue to interrupt the current conversation.

"Oh right, I need to go be a teacher," She muttered before announcing to her class that they should go to the changing rooms to change if they have a sports uniform on hand.

Quinn and Holly both made their way towards the changing rooms after she said this, but Arthur stayed behind.

"You're not going to go change?" Rowan asked him.

"I actually forgot my sports uniform," Arthur muttered, "I was too focused on trying to force all my textbooks into my bag that it went over my head."

"Oh? Fair enough," She said.

"So what about Mason?" Arthur asked, trying to open the last conversation back up.

"You're wondering why he wanted to be a teacher?" Rowan asked, "That's just how Mason is. He was the type to prefer studying over physical activity. He had no interest in doing construction work or becoming an architect, so he let his brother take his place inheriting his family's company while he became a physics teacher instead."

'A physics teacher who waves around a giant hammer in-game,' Arthur thought to himself. 'That sort of makes sense.'

"So yeah, Liam and I didn't know what we wanted to do, and since we didn't want to split up the group when we went to college, we just both followed Mason into becoming teachers." She explained.

"I guess that makes sense," Arthur said, "Although I'm still confused as to why you chose a sports teacher out of every other option."

"Why's that?" She asked with a confused expression.

"Well, besides maybe a cooking class, you picked the only class where seeing blood is a likely possibility," Arthur explained. "Scraped knees are commonplace."

"Oh..." Rowan exclaimed, "I didn't think of that, I just figured it would be the easiest class to teach."

Eventually, the other students started making their way out of the changing rooms, and out of all of them, Vasco was being the loudest.

"You actually changed in a stall?" Vasco seemed to be taunting Ruslan, "What happened to you man? You're acting like a dork."

"Alright class, we'll since it's the first lesson this year, I'll give you a choice of what you want to do," Rowan announced to the group. "Soccer or dodgeball?"

Dodgeball won almost unanimously, even by the students who didn't typically participate during sports class.

"Yeah, I figured that would be the case," Rowan muttered.

The groups were eventually split almost evenly, with the opposing side having one player more than Arthur's team.

Somehow Arthur was split up from both Holly and Quinn, as they were on the opposing side with Vasco of all people, while the only notable person on Arthur's team was Ruslan.

The game commenced, and within no time at all the slowest members of each team were quickly culled, this included Holly and Quinn.

Somehow Arthur had become one of their team's powerhouses, as most of the remaining seven players kept giving him and Ruslan the ball instead of throwing it themselves.

"Hits above the shoulders don't count," Rowan repeated a common rule for Australian schools as she watched Vasco receive a ball to the face, which seemed to make him angry, and the crowd of onlookers laughing at him only made him angrier.

Ruslan, the one who threw the ball at his face, became Vasco's main target. He seemed entirely focused on getting revenge on his supposed friend who had just bruised his ego mere moments ago.

Despite his usually foul attitude and poor behaviour, Arthur couldn't help but feel somewhat impressed at Ruslan's agility and acrobatic ability as he dodged the onslaught of dodgeballs with ease while seemingly taunting Vasco at the same time.

Although the taunting came to an end as Ruslan seemed to mistime his jump, and happened to land directly on a ball. His ankle appeared to twist painfully before his body slumped to the floor.

Ruslan's shirt slid up during the fall, showing Arthur who was standing nearby, a torso covered in bruises. Arthur took note that not all of the bruises that he could see at that moment were the same colour, some bruises indicated that they were about two weeks old, others appeared to have been made only the night before.

'Oh, so that's why he's being so docile...' Arthur thought to himself as he stared at Ruslan with pity, 'I get why he turned out this way, what a pathetic father.'

Unfortunately, Arthur realised that there was really nothing he could do, it wasn't his place to join in and try to be a hero, as his interference would only make things worse.

'It's his last year of high school, he'll legally be an adult soon... He won't have to put up for it for much longer.' Arthur thought to himself, 'And without being crushed under my father's pressure this time around, he should easily bounce back and live a proper life... Or at least I hope so.'

Ruslan was grunting in pain while holding the ankle he twisted, it seemed to be in pretty bad shape. Arthur walked over and offered Ruslan a hand, but it was pushed away, and Ruslan slowly stood up on his own and hobbled over to the wall without any assistance before sitting down.

Rowan went to talk with Ruslan, but not before signalling that the game would continue. Arthur immediately noticed a ball flying towards his face in the corner of his vision, and he instinctively reached out to grab it.

"Catch! Vasco, you're out." The crowd all cheered.

A very unhappy looking Vasco was now staring daggers at Arthur as he walked towards the wall.

The game didn't last much longer, Arthur and his team quickly finished off the rest of their opponents, it wasn't much of a fight after Vasco's group were out.

"You should get Emily to take a look at that," Arthur gave some advice as he walked over to Ruslan and Rowan. "It'll swell up pretty bad if you don't get ice on it."

"Emily is?" Rowan asked, turning to Arthur.

"The school nurse," Arthur answered.

"Oh, right. Arthur, would you please help, uh... This student to the infirmary?" Rowan began asking Arthur for a favour but seemed to have forgotten Ruslan's name.

"Yeah sure," Arthur agreed.

Arthur was eventually given the task to escort the limping Ruslan to the infirmary, much to Ruslan's disapproval.

The two walked across the yard towards one of the buildings where the infirmary was located. Rowan had essentially ordered that Ruslan not argue and allow Arthur to support him while he walked, but as they walked far enough away from the gym, Ruslan began showing his disapproval once more.

"Get off me, I can walk by myself," Ruslan argued.

"Shut up or I'll carry you like a princess," Arthur responded in a mocking tone. "If it's bad and you put too much weight on it, it'll take longer to heal or may get more damaged. Which means you'll be saying goodbye to that soccer career for a long while."

That seemed to have shut Ruslan up, not that he could easily overpower Arthur's in the first place, he wasn't the scrawny nerd he used to be in this timeline.

"I didn't want to go to the infirmary, that's why I didn't bring it up," Ruslan mumbled, he was still clearly unhappy with the situation he was forced into.

"Because you don't want the school to know that you're being abused?" Arthur decided to drop the bomb, which seemed to make Ruslan go silent.

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