Boarding School - SBI

Chapter Ten

Matthieu, George, Sapnap and Techno spent their whole break playing football together, and Techno really enjoyed it. He didn't usually enjoy playing football, but this time he found it enjoyable. He could see himself being friends with Matthieu. They were almost able to get in a full game before needing to go to their next class.

In the end, Techno concluded that Mattheiu wasn't bluffing when he said he was the best. He was really good at football, and Techno could see him being the best here. But whether or not he was the best, Sapnap had definitely made a good choice in joining his team, because Mattheiu was way better than George and Techno. Sapnap and Mattheiu, mainly Mathieu, won by a landslide of twenty-one to one.

However, that football was really well used, and during their game, it proved to the boys that it really needed to be replaced when one of the last hexagons fell off for no reason.

And after the ball was kicked really hard into the net, in the only goal that Techno and George made, another piece of it fell off. They didn't play for long enough for another piece to fall off the ball since they did need to go to their maths class.

"Good game!" Mattheiu said before they entered the maths class. They all sat together, planning to talk about their game during class. However, that was promptly ruined when the teacher handed out a pop quiz. Luckily though, after the quiz, which sucked by the way, they had lunch.

By the end of the seemingly short lunch, due to the intense football game that the boys played, they went off to archery. It was Techno's favourite class. The teacher was really nice, he was good at archery and the training courses, and everytime Techno got to see Tommy over by the stable doing his riding lessons, which always made his day.

The archery class was in a clearing in the woods past the stable. You get to it by walking out the back door, and following the sandy path past the willow tree with a picnic table under it. When you get to the stable, you walk past all of the happy ponies, and down another path past the ring and into the forest.

There's the archery and training courses, that was next to a little cottage-like building that had all of the equipment.

That day in archery, like most of their classes, they were doing assault courses, not archery, not arrow crafting. Although Techno guessed that this was going to be the case, he was still disappointed as he greatly enjoyed it when they did archery.

The whole endeavour was fun to him. The gear, the maintenance, all of the different bows and arrows that they made and got to use. But most of all, he liked to fire the bow.

Shooting at a target from a standstill, or walking from location to location. Or running.

He loved it all.

So when the teacher started giving instructions for another assault course, he was very disappointed, but Sapnap on the other hand, was relieved. He hated archery.

He didn't like that class nor the teacher much in general, but really hated the archery part. He preferred to be off riding one of the horses.

Sapnap tended to do extra stupid shit in that class too. Like once he tried to set the forest on fire using a flaming arrow. To his credit though, he almost single handedly started a forest fire.

"We are doing another assault course today!" Mr. Arrowsmith said, and part of the class cheered, while the other glared. "The cover ups are where they always are, so go put them on. Like always, I suggest taking off sweaters, you'll get hot."

Techno glared at the ground and followed the class into the small building that had the cover ups. He grabbed one, it was kind of like the pennies that you have in gyms. You're required to wear it, and it smells. Bad.

Before stepping into it Techno checked his pockets. The cover up fully covered his cargo shorts and his T-shirt. Archery was the only class that they didn't have to follow uniform, mostly because they were always wearing something over their clothes and Mr. Arrowsmith didn't want them to stain something and be held responsible.

Techno took full advantage of that privilege of not having to wear a uniform, and he had as many pockets as he could possibly have. He thought that it's useful to have pockets, as he can carry so many things in them.

He could hide flashlights and keys, small pocket knives and multi tools. Granted, he had no clue what he was going to do with any of it, he just liked having it on him. He justified it by saying that he might find a secret door or treasure chest or something like that, that was never going to happen.

Walking back outside, Techno saw that only Mr. Arrowsmith was out there, as none of his classmates had come out of the cottage yet, trying to waste as much time as possible and get out of exercise. He was fiddling with an old looking pocket watch.

"What's that?" Techno asked. He knew what it was, of course, it was an antique Elgin pocket watch. Techno guessed that it was from around 1940-50, judging on its general repair status, but he wanted to see what his professor knew about it.

"It's a pocket watch of one of my relatives. He gave it to me when he died, but it recently stopped working, and I can't figure it out." he put it back in his pocket. "It's really too bad since I like using it to time you guys, to give you your grades and all. I'll just be using my phone today though."

Techno frowned, he had noticed that Mr. Arrowsmith had the watch out from time to time in the past couple of classes. Most of the time it looked like he was checking it subconsciously, not even realizing that he had it out again, but he did seem to take it out for a reason sometimes.

"I think I know someone who could fix it. I could get xyr address if you want. Just to get it fixed." Techno offered, not really thinking about the words coming out of his mouth, more about how happy his friend would be if he got such a beautiful watch to work on.

Zephyr. Zephyr was xyr's name. Xe was a close friend of Phil, and so Phil had driven Techno down whenever he wanted to watch the clockmaker work.

And over the years of watching Zephyr work, Techno had picked up a thing or two about antique clocks. How to make small repairs and clean them up a little, how to take a small clock apart and put it back together, and most importantly, in Techno's opinion, how to wind one up. Not many people knew how to do that anymore, since not many people got hand winding watches.

Techno was pulled back to reality when he had realized that Mr. Arrowsmith had been talking for a minute or so now. "-xyr address as soon as possible? This watch is super important to me. How would I get it to xem? Would I ship it? Is it even safe to send it in the mail or would my watch get damaged more?" Techno had to think a moment before answering, it had been a while since he had visited Zephyr.

"I think that-"

"Oh!" Mr. Arrowsmith interrupted him. "Most of the class seems ready to start. Could you come see me during a free break? Or just write it down on a piece of paper for me. Yes, that would be better." He turned to the class, "Okay! Today we are doing an assault course, as I said earlier..."

Techno walked over to the back of the group, just zoning out as Mr. Arrowsmith talked. He could figure out what he had to do about the watch and Mr. Arrowsmith later. 

Word Count: 1335

A/N: I really like Zephyr. Hopefully we'll 'see' more of xyr

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