Chapter 16: The Twin Stars of Seven Lights
The transporter departs every two hours. When Cillin walked in there, not even a third of the cabin was filled. When checking the time, there was yet an hour until the next departure.
There were a few girls at the front talking to each other quietly. From time to time, they would look towards the people inside the cabin.
Aiflon had handpicked Cillin’s outfit for him. Put together with his own incredibly deceptive face, anyone would know that he was the young master of some great family at first glance. Therefore, the girl’s discussion became louder when Cillin had come in, and their stares on him were so obvious that it was hard to ignore. But it only lasted a few minutes before they switched their attention onto another newcomer.
Naturally, more than half of the people in this transport had powerful backgrounds. Cillin recalled the story which Beaver and the gang had flaunted back at the ship. They talked about the class of a certain Sector’s military academy where twenty nine out of thirty people were all a ‘general’s offspring’; that was to say their fathers were all Sector level generals. The one person in the class who wasn’t a ‘general’s offspring’ had a colonel father, so they were scorned greatly by the twenty nine other people in class at the beginning. But two days later, hah, these people were all as silent as the dead. You wanna know why? That’s because said ‘colonel’ was actually a Galactic Alliance colonel! Their ranking system was different from a Sector’s. Ten generals may not necessarily match up to a single galactic colonel.
Dias had even ridiculed him saying that Cillin was lucky he wasn’t sent to a military academy at Sector C, or anyone he meets would be the offspring of a galactic military personnel.
Cillin smiled silently then. He picked up the ‘Seven Lights Handbook’ that the inspection personnel had passed him when he came in and swiftly flipped through the booklet. There were many things that he had learned prior to this and he had an exceptional reading ability and memory, so it took him less than two minutes to read through the whole thing. Cillin lamented as he touched the leaf pattern on his thumb. Not even the famous Seven Lights could detect this ring. Just what kind of an existence is the Gen Family?
He pressed a button on the seat handle, and an optical display popped out in front of him. Cillin looked forward to his next life as he watched the colorful planet backdropped with a deep colored space on the screen.
“Hey, bro, can I sit here?”
A young man grinning a bright smile pointed at the seat beside Cillin and asked. Judging from the way he dressed, his family seemed to be faring quite well.
“Of course.” Cillin smiled back. He could see that he was the overly familiar type.
“I am Allen Chev.” The young man introduced himself in a friendly manner.
“Cillin.”
The young man named Allen gave a brief chuckle and stretched his neck to look at the girls in front of him.
“Yep, it looks like the quality of our term’s babes are pretty good, although it seems like the pretty babes in Seven Lights are plentiful in the first place, hee hee. How nice.” Allen scratched his head and turned back around after seeing that the girls had ignored him completely. All the entertainment related stuff inside the passenger cabin had been put inside the luggage compartment, and it was boring to just wait and do nothing, so Allen automatically looked for a topic to chat up to Cillin. As a Hunter, Cillin had a certain level of involvement in all kinds of things, so he was able to converse a little in every topic Allen had brought up.
After retelling his epic tale of merry times and once leisurely life in great delight, Allen frowned again, “Ugh, I heard that Seven Lights is not an easy place to screw around. I hadn’t wanted to come to Sector B to receive my higher education; the competition’s way too fierce after all. But after I started clubbing and skipped the night, my dad flipped out, dropped some cash and dumped me into this place to fend for myself. Aaah, my colorful life! ~ When will you come back to me once more?”
It was true that those whose admission results weren’t ideal had to pay a huge sum of money to enter Seven Lights. That being said, Cillin also knew that Seven Lights would not admit a student if their result was too bad, regardless of the sum of money involved. That Allen could enter Seven Lights meant that his result wasn’t too bad.
Before Cillin could make a comment on Allen’s words, he heard a low hmph coming from behind.
While Cillin and Allen were chatting about random stuff, the traffic into the cabin had not stopped. At a glance, about four fifths of the passenger cabin had been filled, and the young man sitting behind Cillin and Allen also arrived around this time.
Allen did not react in anger towards the disdainful humph. In fact, he even clung to the back of his chair and looked at the person who had let out the humph curiously.
The person ignored Cillin and Allen’s gazes and simply stared at the display before him. His attire was different from the people around him; although he wasn’t dressed poorly, it definitely looked more simple and plain as compared to the others.
But of course, one must not look down on this person simply because of his attire. How many of these people who could sit here and had the qualifications for Seven Lights were actually ordinary?
“Eh?!” Allen’s eyes turned starry, “Kang Man! I can’t believe I’m actually sitting on the same transport as the genius Kang Man!”
Only then Kang Man, who had scoffed after hearing the words ‘dropped some cash’ and ‘leisurely life’ finally turned away from his monitor to look at Allen, “You know me?”
It might be phrased as a question, but there was no surprise behind his words. Cillin could see the arrogance in his eyes and the air of obstinance around him.
“Of course! The genius Kang Man; our term’s specially recruited student. At just the age of fourteen, you have published research findings that are over fifty contribution points; it’s all published in some academic electronic magazines, isn’t it? I have zero understanding about that electronic cryptography thingy you’ve researched though.” Allen grew more and more excited as he spoke without the slightest embarrassment for having ‘zero understanding’ about said subject, “I couldn’t count the number of times my dad had pulled my ears and said that the only two youngest fifteen years old geniuses in our term are also known as the Twin Stars of Seven Lights. One of them is you, Kang Man, and the other would be Pride Zweig…”
Suddenly Allen stopped talking as he opened his mouth wide and stared at the cabin entrance.
“Pride Zweig…”
After staring blankly for a moment Allen grabbed Cillin’s sleeves and began pulling excitedly, “Cillin, it’s Pride Zweig, it’s really Pride Zweig! Oh my god I’m actually sitting on the same transport as this term’s Twin Stars of Seven Lights! What do I do; I feel like squealing!”
What the hell does your squealing have to do with me! Cillin stared at the thread that was about to come loose from his sleeves and itched to smack him in the head. He’s not a pretty girl so what the fuck is with your reaction?! Plus you didn’t react nearly as much when you see Kang Man just now.
Pride Zweig was exactly that person Cillin had seen at the bridge who was stopped in his tracks because he had too many escorts.
Pride Zweig’s face was one that could cause every woman around him to overflow with maternal feelings. His expression was impatient when he first walked into the cabin, and after he frowned and swept his gaze once around the cabin his eyes were attracted by a certain someone’s waving arms.
It wasn’t a choice. It was difficult even to ignore it. Allen was the only one in the entire cabin gleefully waving his arms, shaking back and forth in his seat in excitement with one finger pointed at the empty seat beside Kang Man and his mouth contorted into many exaggerated shapes, “Sit here! Sit here!”
If it wasn’t for the fact that no one was allowed to make loud noises and roam freely inside the cabin, Cillin believed that the dude would have hollered at the top of his lungs, ran to Pride Zweig’s side and dragged him over.
For a time, everyone’s gazes inside the cabin was focused onto Allen. It was as if everyone had just realized that there was a monkey hiding inside the crowd…
Cillin lowered his head and read his Seven Lights Handbook ‘seriously’, while Kang Man never took his eyes off the display as if he didn’t know Allen.
And man did that baby face of Pride’s turned from red to green and from green to red. He felt as if he had turned into a monkey himself. Pride thundered from the bottom of his heart: WHO THE FUCK IS THAT GUY!
It was at this moment a staff member had walked in from outside, and after seeing Pride still standing at the entrance he urged, “Find a seat quickly. The ship is about to fly.” Glancing about, he pointed at the waving Allen, “How about over there? That seat looks nice.”
Pride gritted his teeth and walked to the seat beside Kang Man with a black face. Bloody hell, the hell is going on today!