Two weeks back at school, two weeks of having to settle back into the routine of early wake-ups and class assignments was all it took for Arian to start to forget what it was like to be on holiday.

Apparently, with this being his penultimate year in high school, this was the year that he was supposed to start thinking seriously about the future. Arian had a good idea of what his cousin thought he should be doing, given that the dark-haired teen had stumbled across application forms for both Sovereign Heights and Horizon Institute on the breakfast bar a few days ago. Arian wasn’t so sure that was what he really wanted to do though.

He’d kind of switched off on Horizon Institute when he realised that one of the things it specialised in was Maths. Maths was his weakest subject at school so there was no way that he particularly wanted to go somewhere where he’d most likely be expected to actually be good at the subject. On the other hand Arian wasn’t too sure Sovereign Heights was really for him either, especially given that he’d have to pull up his marks across the board if he wanted to be in with a chance of a scholarship. With his nocturnal senshi adventures taking up time, his grades had taken a hit, dipping to around mostly C grades across the board – well apart from Maths – where he was hovering at around a D minus.

He sighed, Maths was currently a sore point for him, given the fact that his teacher had seen fit to schedule a test for next week, which was why he was spending his evenings trying his best to get his head around the algebra topics that there were currently working on in class, instead of trying to come up with an entry to a jewellery-crafting completion that he’d seen advertised over at the Garden. After all despite the fact that coming up with an entry for the completion would be infinitely more interesting, Arian really couldn’t afford to fail Maths given that he’d have to put up with his cousin’s pretty much endless disappointment. Actually he’d probably be expected to tell his father about it too, although it was hard to tell if his father would even notice given that the letters he received from his father – on the few occasions that his father actually wrote to him – didn’t really say much.

Absently sucking on the end of a biro, the dark-haired teen grabbed some concentration aids (aka a small plate with a few of the sugar encrusted molasses spice cookies that Saffy had baked last night) and a small glass of milk, ignoring the two leaflets advertising karate classes pinned to the fridge door. The leaflets were the latest in a long line of leaflets that had started appearing since the night where he’d ended up having to get stitches after chaos had gate-crashed a meeting that his senshi alter-ego had gone to.

Still sucking on the biro and concentration aids and milk to hand, Arian made his way back to the living room and the school books. His evening tonight was going to be a pretty dull one consisting of study, study and yet more study.

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