Tristan Miah Dorincourt was one of my favourite people. He had big brown eyes, cute curly hair and gentle ways. He was also my favourite partner in FIST, and the one with the most distinction in the subject.
We had a FIST wushu, which was a FIST school, in Guildford, which we had been attending since we arrived. William had been attending with us, Hogan having secured a pass for him from the council, and had been doing well.
I had tried to obtain one for Scarlett, but Hogan vetoed it. He was scared that she would get hurt. Now that I knew why, I was definitely going to ask Scarlett if she was interested in FIST. Unlike Hogan, I did not believe that she was a frail creature that needed to be sheltered.
Although Tristan was a great fighter, I did not need his fighting skills, I needed his knowledge. Tristan was the only Yan I knew that could hack a Masani computer. The rest of us were not that good when it came to Masani technology.
We finally came to the decision that Tristan and I would sneak into the office while Pam guarded the door, and Scarlett was to be the lookout from the corridor. Hogan and William had to be benched because they made such a big deal about Scarlett’s and my safety that I lied to them and told them that the operation had been cancelled.
The reason we had to have access to the student files from the academics’ offices was because we had tried hacking into it from our rooms, but we had realised that for some reason the server used by the headmaster and the deputy headmaster was separate from the rest, which meant that we would have to break in to the office and copy the files.
I ordered some lock-picking tools on Amazon, which amazingly came without the school staff confiscating them, and thanks to YouTube, we had trained for a week and were finally ready to break in to the office.
When we arrived, we realised that we had brought a lightsabre to a knife fight. We thought Masani computers were ancient, but this one had been built when Jesus was still alive. It was even equipped for floppy disks and not memory sticks.
We would have cracked the password and taken pictures of the files we wanted, but the office was also locked, and we did not have time to pick two doors successively before being called away by Pam because the caretaker was approaching.
That first failure was a wake-up call for us; life was a lot harder than on TV, and we needed to be better prepared for the unexpected. We realised that if we were caught, it could mean suspension for all of us, and we risked being grounded for ever by our parents. Caution had to be our middle name; this operation would be tried one more time and no more, for our own sakes.
All boarders pretty much knew that Arnold the caretaker was always drunk and passed out by ten p.m.. All we needed to do the following night was to meet near his room, wait till we could hear him snore and make our way to the headmaster’s office. I could see on their faces that the others weren’t very happy with the plan, but after I challenged all of them to come up with a better one, they agreed to try mine.
This time everything almost worked like a charm. We met at ten in the corridor. It was funny how being up and running during a time of day when we were very likely to bump into draugr, a Yan zombie, could feel so normal in a very old construction like our school. In those days, the buildings were constructed with very high ceilings and large corridors, so even though there were a few of us, it still gave us the chills.
Crossing the main court with Scarlett and Pam was invigorating. It was so cheeky to have been able to do it twice behind William and Hogan’s backs that I was like a child in a sweet shop. It was a bit chilly outside – but filled with excitement, we could barely feel anything.
When we opened the door, our hearts started beating again. Somehow the mood was different from the previous night. We were holding each other, looking around as if we expected someone to come out of the dark corners. And dark corners they were that night. Scarlett kept looking behind us as if she was expecting something to come out of one of them.
Despite the dismal aspect of the corridors, I couldn’t help admiring their beauty as well. The beige corridors looked more carroty, and the portraits inside the paintings seemed to follow us with their eyes. I was starting to have thrills.
We heard a very loud noise. It was like the hissing of a snake followed by a loud sound, almost like a lion’s roar if the lion had a sore throat.
Our hearts stopped. That was it for us, I thought. After watching a large number of horror movies, I had become an expert on the walking dead, and here I was, about to face my worst nightmare, when suddenly Pam just started giggling and said, “By Freya, for a second I thought we would have to face Zhong Kui.”
“What do you mean, for a second? Looks to me as if he is still coming!” I said in an angry voice.
She laughed and said, “No, you silly. It’s Arnold snoring.”
I was about to answer her in a sceptical tone of voice when I realised that she was right; it was Arnold snoring. I dropped Scarlett’s hand, and she burst out laughing, then had to stop when we realised that we could have woken him up.
We finally met with Tristan, who rolled his eyes when we told him of our almost encounter with Zhong Kui, but unfortunately, unlike most Yans, he did not care much about folk tales. Tristan and I got into the office ,retrieved all the files we needed and we all went back to our rooms.
The next day, we decided that since we were all going home at the end of the week, it would be better to work on the files in the privacy of our own homes.
Scarlett being from Hereford, we told her that we would update her as soon as school resumed. For the rest of us, it was easy; we all lived in duchy quarters in west London, so being able to meet and share our findings wouldn’t be a problem.
I knew William was from Cardiff, but as much as I wanted to invite him to join us in London, I didn’t have the courage to do so. My only hope was for him to be invited by Hogan to spend the autumn half-term with us, but that did not happen.
It turned out it was pure revenge on Hogan’s part. He had been hoping that I would invite Scarlett, but I hadn’t, therefore denying him the pleasure of knowing her better, so he had done the same to me.