"Breathe in," Albert said. "Now breathe out."

  Constantine and I were both trying to do what he said. But it was hard to simply breathe and not think about anything for hours. I had no idea how this meditation thing was going to help us any.

  But I was ready to do as Albert said.

  "Good. Continue. How do you feel?"

  I smiled, thinking that the lesson was over.

  "Great," I told him as I opened my eyes. "And you?"

  Albert shook his head. "Why do you think the lesson is over?" he asked me.

  "And isn't it?"

  Albert shook his head again.

  "No, it's not over. When you can finally be at peace and calm, you will create a steady mana flow. Then you can create the mana pool. And when you manage to create the mana pool, you will be set to do great things."

  I had no idea what a steady mana flow was.

  In the academy, we had only one lesson when it came to Mana: how to put it in weapons to make them better—a sort of prerequisite for enchanting.

  But I honestly couldn't enchant a thing. You had to have mana stones to be able to attempt it, and I didn't have the money for that.

  "You’re not out of time," Albert said, patting me on the head. He was at least five years my senior, and I knew not to snark back at him. "You have to be moderate, like Constantine. Look at him."

  I looked at my partner only to see that he was deeply in thought. He had something like a breeze going in and out of his hair, making his curly locks wave in every which direction, but gently—as if it were the first winds of April.

  "How does he do it?" I asked, genuinely interested.

  "He has to come to terms with himself. With his learning journey. With what he can do today and what he can do tomorrow and what he can do in five days, even."

  Was that really what was supposed to happen when someone embarked on such a journey?

  That we needed to map everything and know where we were going? I was always a leaf in the wind, but now, as I saw how Constantine was enveloped by that wind, I thought to myself that I needed a new approach.

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  "I will give you a little easy trick," Albert told me as he gave me a notepad and a pencil. "Write down everything you don't want to be, and then we will speak."

  That was against the teachings of the academy. We were taught to persevere, to always be the ones who got the job done.

  But now that I thought about it, if that was really the case, then maybe we were failing because of that.

  None of us knew our strengths and weaknesses!

  There were no grades in the academy, just "passed" and "not passed."

  Constantine had aced everything in the academy, and yet he had not gotten placed with a mentor. He had just gotten a "pass," and that was about it.

  "Okay, then I'll write everything down," I told Albert, trusting him. I had no idea that he was testing me at the time, but I had a job to do, a task he gave me, and I was not going to fail.

  The first thing I wrote down was that I didn't want to become homeless. My second concern was that I didn't want to starve. And my third and final concern was that I didn't want to get Constantine killed.

  As I looked at those three points, I asked myself, "Okay, so I know now what I don’t want, right?” I was going to fight against it. “How am I going to make sure that my life didn't end like this?"

  I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do. So, I simply looked at Albert and gave him my list.

  "Okay. These are three valid points," he said after reading them. "Let's start with the first one. Why do you think you'll end up homeless?"

  I scratched the back of my head. Constantine was still in a deep, meditative state, so I felt surer of myself, hoping he was too out of it to catch wind of my concerns.

  "I think I will be homeless because I finished the academy with the rank of F. I never did any research. And I am a bit round around the middle," I admitted reluctantly.

  "Why do you think you'll end up starving to death?" Albert asked.

  I paused. Wasn't it obvious?

  But Albert had an unexpected response: "You can use the community farm to get yourself some vegetable patches. Don't you know that? And there are lessons in the community garden about how to grow plants with mana so you can get a single harvest in under one day."

  He continued, "Don't you think that if you focus on your mana flow, you can actually not only feed yourself but also stock the market?"

  My eyes became as wide as saucers. Could I truly do that? Could I truly stock the market with something done using mana?

  "And the last one," Albert said, looking at Constantine. I followed his gaze. Amazed at the mana field around my partner. "Please do not insult him by thinking that you can get him killed. He trusts you, and he is not a pushover."

  Albert made a sign for me to close my eyes.

  "You have to work towards what you want."

  I had no idea that Albert was going to rise through the ranks. No idea that his kind words were going to be my guiding light for the rest of my life.

  But what I knew was that if I didn't get the mana pool, then I was never going to manage to produce any plants at the community farm. And seeing as I was only ranked F, I had only one-fourth of a plot to my name, something that, had I not been an adventurer, wouldn't have been within my rights at all.

  I tried to think like Constantine. I tried to copy his calm demeanor.

  And yet, as much as I tried, I couldn't. My mana was still cold, still like a raging heartbeat, like a caged bird who just wanted to fly.

  I hoped. I tried to think about what I was going to grow.

  Cucumbers, maybe? Or squash?

  I love baked squash. The more I imagined the things I could do with squash, the calmer I became, until a very pretty piano piece played.

  My heart calmed down, and I felt my breathing. My hair swayed finally.

  I could finally stand on my own two feet! My mana pool bubbling beneath my skin!