VARSITY 9 | BL

SEVEN | THE EVALUATION

Saturday 4845.9.21

Lay stared with wide eyes at Stryke as the two basketball jocks walked past him and Wen. Since this event was not officially held by the school, uniforms were not enforced. As a result, Stryke wore a sleeveless tank that displayed his strong arms and broad shoulders and was the cause of Lay's widened eyes.

"We're going up against that?" Lay whispered in horror as he gestured to the co-captain's arms.

"Mm," Wen sounded in response as he watched Kean and Stryke joke around with a few players from the volleyball team. 

Besides Wen and Lay, there were eight other students who had tested positive and were not part of a sports team, so Wen and Lay showing up in their school P.E. clothes was not out of the ordinary. However, the cliques were made visible when those on a sports team who had not worn their P.E. uniform grouped together, leaving the non-sports students to stand about awkwardly.

But Wen was having none of this. He hated watching the jocks leave out their non-sport classmates, so he motioned for Lay to follow him and walked up to the girl they had sat beside the day prior. "I don't think I properly introduced myself yesterday," Wen said as he and Lay reached the girl. "I'm Wen."

The girl turned to face Wen with large eyes. Her gaze lingered on his face for a moment before moving down to the hand that was extended toward her. "Lissa," she responded before reaching out and gently shaking Wen's hand. OMG. OMG! I just touched Wen Kaihan's hand!! Although excited on the inside, Lissa did not let her eccentric fangirling show and politely smiled before introducing herself to Lay.

Lay bowed and quietly introduced himself before Lissa abruptly left the small group to call over another girl. "This is Wen Kaihan and Lay Khass. They're super nice." Although she tried to tell the girl in a whisper, her excitement showed through enough to make her voice loud enough for Wen and Lay to both hear.

Once the new girl, Jess, had been inducted into their small group, two boys who had been hanging around quite awkwardly carefully walked up to the four and joined in on the introductions. Before long, Wen's group had amassed to be all ten non-sport students laughing and joking and wondering about what the evaluation was going to be like.

Ambassador Fortin was pleased to see this, as he had been watching the student body since the moment he opened the gym doors, and jotted down a positive note on his holographic sketch pad. Closing his notegraph, Fortin cleared his throat before addressing the twenty-five students who had arrived. "We seem to have lost five since yesterday. I had expected to lose more than that, so congratulations. You have done well to come today."

Fortin then motioned to the several courses that had been set up in the center of the gym. The tables and chairs that had filled the gym the day before had been replaced with an obstacle course, a sprint lane, and a climbing column. "You will have three tests to portray your strengths and areas of work to the scouts. The results will be documented and sent to your assigned PHAs as well as several specialized academies."

"As you may have noticed yesterday," Fortin continued as he turned to gesture to the scouts sitting along the west side of the gym, "specialized academies have already begun to scout you. This evaluation is to allow for fair scouting since whichever PHA you were assigned to may not seem fair to you."

"Is that why the ambassador asked us which preparatory high academy we wanted to go to during our meeting? I didn't know we were assigned to our PHA," Jess whispered as she leaned in toward Wen. "I thought we would apply for them. Wasn't that what the scouts are for?"

Lissa, who had heard Jess' comment, quietly replied, "No, the scouts are for getting into a specialized academy which is after we finish the PHA. Think of it like finishing high school at a predatory high and then going on to university, which is a specialized academy."