The enst day was a Saturday. Alden woke up at 5:00am only to see Derrick already awake and getting ready for the day. He slowly got of his mattress and began rummaging through his things until he finally found where his mom had kept his sponge and towel then quickly went to the public shower, due to how early it was, the place was filled with only a handful of students, some finishing up and others now arriving such as himself.
After a quick shower, he went back to the room, he somewhat knew the drill so he went rummaging through his things again until he found his white top and black shorts, he'd have to tolerate the shorts since it was what his mom had packed. After changing, he sat on his bed waiting for anything to happen, something that would make it easier to get used to his new situation, maybe some training routines, maybe a quick in base mission, anything but Alden had no such luck.
He sat in the same position looking at those around him as they socialized with themselves. Alden realized all too well that he was late therefore he didn't know anyone here and because of that he remained rooted to his bed finding no point in going around to speak to strangers.
Then he saw it, a senior entered the room. He prepared to get up but didn't get up, just got ready for anything that was to come but instead of the senior calling for attention or giving any announcements, he just casually walked to Derrick's bed and begun discussing something with him. Alden looked around the room but it seemed like the others didn't care, they were already used to it.
He remained on his bed all the way till afternoon. Breakfast was 9:20am and after it most of the students didn't return. Alden had heard from eavesdropping that Breakfast wasn't compulsory and as such he remained on his bed. Somewhere around 12:00, the barracks was filled again with students, they hadn't returned all at once just a few at a time until eventually everyone was back.
As he sat on his bed, he watched as the students around him drew closer to each other through continued interactions but still, he remained seated on his bed, he couldn't get his body to relax enough to lay down neither could he build up the courage to get up and approach anyone and for whatever reason, when he built a sliver of courage to talk to someone he'd at least spoken to once, Derrick was nowhere to be found.
"Hi there, you're the new guy right. The name's Felix, what's yours?" There was no physical reaction but mentally, Alden had almost jumped after being blindsided like that.
"Am Alden, nice to meet you." He stated.
"The guys told me to tell you that your mattress is in the way, don't worry, I'll help you pack it with the others." Felix said.
That's when Alden made a new discovery, he was the only one who's mattress still layed on the ground, every other person who slept on the ground had packed theirs neatly at the back. For someone who'd been studying everything around him he'd been missing a lot around him.
Standing up, he wasn't given much of a choice in terms of packing technique because Felix just brute forced his mattress to the top of the neat pile-up effortlessly. With nothing else to do and nowhere to go, he returned to sitting on Derrick's bed looking at the masses.
"If you didn't know, am kind of like the boss of this place." Felix said with a small chuckle as he squatted beside Alden.
After his heart settled at the fact that this same person had blindsided him twice, he took a deeper look at Felix. He was tall, muscular and had this wild presence like that of a mad beast but he seemed friendly enough.
"If you're having trouble getting used to this place, let me help you buy introducing everyone who's a junior in this room, don't mind my description and I can't really remember everyone correctly unless am looking directly at them since we're all new and all so I can only introduce those currently in the room." Felix explained
Alden nodded slightly as Felix began the introduction.
"Firstly, you already know me, the boss of this place. From me we have Ephraim, he's the resident playboy but really you can just think of him as the boy toy." Felix said pointing at another person Alden had missed, turns out he'd been sleeping at the bottom bed directly adjacent to Derrick's bed since yesterday.
"Moving on." Felix said before his thoughts could spiral any deeper.
"Next we have the muscle twins, Wilson and Henry, they are not twins but people mistake them to be each other enough to warrant the nickname." Felix gestured to two absolute tanks who Alden had not noticed until now.
Now Alden was really starting to worry about his own awareness level. The two looked like the same person if you looked at them from behind, both very tall, both incredibly muscular but from his little observation Alden realized that Wilson had a particular charm to his character while Henry was more of the guardian type. He also noticed a very unique trait, both boys had crimson eyes.
"What's with all that red, are they vampires or something." Alden said under his breath after remembering Derrick also had crimson eyes.
"You'd think so but nope, their eyes changed colors after speaking to Derrick, that's why the boys have been keeping their distance from him. It seems to only happen when you're within arms reach of him, there's been nothing wrong with them other than the eye color thing, now the boys are beginning to think it's a fluke because your eyes are still the same after yesterday." Felix explained.
"Next we have our dorm father, Bismarck. He's made quite the impression since he came." Felix gestured to a boy sitting on his bed close to the door.
"Oh, I know you, come here new guy."