"Mr Jibril."
Once the fascinating class was over and the students left, leaving me alone with instructor Jibril, I approached him.
He responded without taking a look at me, for he was fixing his sewing tools.
"No need to call me "mister," boy. Jibril is just fine. It ain’t even my real name."
I felt like calling such a grand instructor simply by name was disrespectful, but I listened to him.
"Jibril, then."
He placed a stack of leather on his table with a thud. It began to stink.
"Yes?"
Where half of his cheek was missing, pus and maggots fell down in dollops. He realized this and wiped it with the sleeve of his blazer.
"What do you need?"
"May I ask something a bit personal?"
He chortled.
"I’m afraid that I’m not interested in men."
Am I that feminine that people I’ve just met think I swing that way...?
Anyways.
"Nothing of the sort, sir. Could I...?"
He turned away from me and began to wipe the chalkboard with a fabric.
Right then, I was somehow feeling nostalgic.
It was a certain ecstasy that I assumed only occurred during happy times
"Could you what, boy? Your next class will start before you know it."
"Uh, right. Could I ask what your mage title is?"
Silence.
He looked at me at last.
"You’re..."
His thin brows furrowed and his eyes squinted at me.
"Yes, sir?"
He recognized me for some odd reason, but I’d only seen him for the first time that day.
"...never mind. Why do you want to know?"
I cleared my throat.
"Sir, I myself am a mage as well.
"However, I have no idea what my title or ability is."
Jibril crossed his arms and looked at me directly.
His eyes fell on my neck.
I shifted uncomfortably.
Then...
He went to grab my neck. No, it was the collar of my uniform.
I had removed my vest and toga due to the heat, so it was an easy target for him.
His incredibly dry, bony, and wrinkly fingers had begun to unbutton my shirt when I panicked.
"Wait. Wait! What are you doing..!"
I reached for his hand to stop him.
"Calm yourself, boy."
Eventually, after accepting my fate, I let him do it.
There was a silence that came to be.
The silence lasted for minutes.
"Has anyone told you?"
"Told me what, sir?"
Jibril took a step back, his arse hitting his desk but with no regard to him, as to take in my body that was now clad in an unbuttoned white button-up, revealing a ribbed and thin figure.
When I looked down, however, what I thought was a pale and skinny figure was tainted with purple bruises and stitches all over. From around my neck to across my torso.
I had not noticed it before.
Why didn’t I?
Jibril’s voice was serious.
"You’re rotting to death."
I was eventually compelled to skip my next class which happened to be Advisory Hour. Which also was quite a minor subject as it was just meeting with my batchmates and teaching advisor, so I figured it won’t affect my grades much.
For the next few hours, with me sitting in front of him, Jibril stitched the wound on my knee that still hadn’t healed despite it being more than a month since it came to be, and rubbed ointments on my bruises.
"Who stitched these?"
Jibril said, his eyes on the stitching across my torso and around my neck.
The sewings on my body were crude and had multiple gaps in between the stitches, which made Jibril irritated.
"I don’t know."
He removed the stitching and redid it.
"You don’t know?" said Jibril, pulling on the thread.
"I’m an amnesiac, see."
The way he stretched the thread gave me excruciating pain, and I nearly screamed.
"Learn," he said, not minimizing the force he made as he stitched.
"Learn to love the pain."
I hissed as I continued to suffer.
This pain was worse than being betrayed, I’d say!
"Ow, ow, ow."
"Learn. Learn to—"
"I heard you! Heard, heard! It still hurts!"
Jibril snipped the thread that was sewed on my torso.
The next sewing would occur on my neck.
"Wait, wait! Halt! Let me prepare myself."
I stumbled off the chair where I was being sown on.
Pressing my heart while crouching, I began to breathe deeply to calm myself when I realized...
"I have no heartbeat."
I heard the shuffling of Jibril’s clothing shrug.
"Such is the life—if you can call it life—of a mage.
"A mage is closer to a dead man than a living one."
The words he said lingered in my mind.
Why did my previous self, the me of the past, drink a mage potion?
"To live eternally, of course."
Those were the words he said in a simple fashion.
"You say you are an amnesiac?" He began again. "You may not remember then, but your past self may have been in a situation that needed power or eternal life."
I swallowed.
The more I learned about mages, the more I earned questions about my past.
Why would someone willfully choose to become a mage?
It was such a risk. And besides, wouldn’t having an end be better?
What’s more is that being mage won’t even make you fully immortal!
You will eventually die lest you take care of your body.
Hell, I was walking around feeling sick and nearing death hadn’t Jibril spotted me.
"Be careful, boy."
Jibril said at once.
"Of what?"
I questioned him before turning around to face him.
Jibril pursed his lips, half of it, at least, as though he was unable to tell me the words of his caution.
"There are many secrets in this school, in the Colegio."
My mind jumped to the random door I had opened in the library, those masked men and women and the stench of slaughter as well as the metallic stench of blood.
"Don’t become a part of them."
[The Narrator tells you to not listen.]