Quantum Potente

10. Sorting into houses?

Music Recommendation: 'Pied Piper' by BTS

Shakti was sitting in her first class, during her first day, staring at the smart board, where the teacher was explaining the basics of Cell Division. The biology teacher, Miss Acheron was explaining the structure of chromosomes, while most of the students occasionally made notes or asked questions regarding the topic.

Miss Acheron explained the structure with a highly schematic diagram displayed on the board, in the meantime, Shakti replayed her introduction in the class, which wasn't an ideal one to her.

"Pay attention, everyone! We have a new student among us who will be your classmate from now. Kindly, introduce yourself", Miss Acheron gave Shakti a small smile of encouragement while Shakti gripped the strap of her bag tightly and turned towards her new classmates. Most of them were whispering among themselves while staring at Shakti with partly intrigued and partly wearied expressions. A sudden sense of self-consciousness gripped her but she tried to shrug it off.

Shakti took a deep breath, calming down her internally panicking self, and came forward. "Hi everyone. My name is Shakti Bose. I hope we will get along very well". She even added a little smile at the end, to dissipate the nervousness threatening to increase due to the class's obvious commotion. The muttering became more prominent that she could distinguish certain words like: 'Ferocious', 'Bold', and 'Psycho'. She didn't know what to make out of the weird compilation of words she heard.

"Silence!", said Miss Acheron, while giving the class a stern look. She turned towards Shakti and said, "Miss Bose, it is nice having you in my class; kindly take a seat, I will be starting with the class."

Shakti quickly scurried to an empty seat and focused on the teacher, rather than returning the curious glances of her classmates.

'What a great start to my university life. Though the start was already ruined by two brats named: Rian and Vanessa, I had some expectations for the official start. A normal welcome with neutral faces perhaps? But no, all I got was rude and blatant stares from my classmates. Not to forget, the obvious mutterings from them as well.', Shakti thought while trying to understand the extremely detailed diagram presented on the board.

Myra had pure science, hence she didn't have biology, while Shakti had taken both mathematics and biology in her courses. The quality of education was genuinely worth its reputation. The staff were quite knowledgeable and co-operative, but, very strict. But the strictness was worth it if she got such detailed and clear explanation of the topic. She was suspicious at the beginning that the school was overrated for its quality of education, but she was happily proven wrong at the very first class.

One girl arrived five minutes late in the class due to stomach ache, as she claimed, but got an earful from the teacher. Shakti couldn't entirely blame the teacher. Who comes late to their first class of the session?

In the mathematics class, she had to go through the same irritating process of introduction. She took a seat beside Myra, who was surrounded by her admirers, male and female alike. But no one dared to sit beside her. She had to say that her new friends were way too beautiful, that sometimes it made her self-conscious.

Yesterday, she joked about how plain she would look in a picture of the three and she was frowned upon so hard at her words that she gulped and hastily added, "I know that I am good-looking as well, just not good as you. I wasn't trying to be mean. I was stating facts."

"Then you need to testify your facts as your facts are wrong.", Jade said in a disapproving tone.

"You have no idea how beautiful you are babe.", Myra said with a solemn look that made Shakti grin sheepishly. The memory brought a smile at her face while she copied down the essential notes dictated by the teacher.