"Come on, just a couple more minutes!" The doctor kept trying to use encouraging words to push me, but my legs were at their limits.
After the first round of medical checkups, it was time to test how strong I was and how much stamina I had, so I had to jump up and down on a small stool. After a couple of minutes I was already spent.
"Tch, we can just write here… below average… And here I thought… Good luck; now let's test your grip strength. Squeeze this thing as hard as you can." He then handed me a strange device with a display on top measuring the amount of strength I had.
Well, I feel like I can ace this one.
"Below average." He wrote it off once I was done.
Are you kidding me? I had, like, at least 30 kg, almost 32. How is that below average? What kind of monsters are you raising over here?
The more tests we did, the more the doctor looked at me with disappointment in his eyes. I could tell, in his eyes I was a lazy sack of potatoes just barely trying.
I swear I train for at least three hours a day, almost every day. I'm not lazy in the slightest. Don't look at me like that.
The bastard then made me run in circles around a basketball field. What was even more embarrassing was that he ran alongside me, and he, with his fat belly, was able to run faster than me. Not only that, he was barely dropping a single drop of sweat.
After ten lapses I was starting to have trouble breathing, but that man… he was still as energetic as always.
"Below average." That phrase was starting to haunt me.
Okay! Watch me; I'm going to ace this test!
We tested my reaction time on a blank screen, pressing the button as soon as it turned red.
"Below average."
Pull-ups.
N-no way, right? What kind of child can do pull-ups?
Then I saw Elena effortlessly do them.
Ah, fuck it!
"Let's just mark this as… It's even worse than I thought." Those words felt like a stab in the gut.
"Jumping jacks!" He shouted, urging me to start moving again.
Dude, I'm barely breathing out here; can we take a break? I feel like I'm about to throw up!
I was soaked in sweat, I was dying of thirst, and I could feel that my body had reached its limits. After running around and jumping like a maniac, I could hardly move my body anymore. I was dragging my body to follow that doctor, hoping for him to finally send me back home.
"This is the last exercise you've got to complete before this is over." He said to me as he guided me outside to a remote part of the school, where on the side of the walls there were odd-shaped colored climbable rocks installed.
"You have half an hour to reach the top." The medic says.
What?
I looked around, searching for a camera. I pinched myself, hoping to wake up, but none of that happened; it was indeed real. I was supposed to climb at least fifty meters of wall, exhausted with no safety, in thirty minutes.
"You're kidding, right?" I asked the man.
"I can do it quite easily." He answered me.
"I don't give a damn if you can or can't do it! This is crazy! Why would you ever need to know whether I can climb this wall or not? It's not like I'm ever going down from this place." I shouted back at him. I was exhausted; I could barely keep my own thoughts to myself.
"Even this… below average… way below average. Well, if you're too exhausted to do this, we can write a 0 in this section and be done for the day, marking the rest of the section as 0. Is that what you want to show your mother?" The man wearing the doctor's uniform said to me while showing me the list of exercises I had left.
I didn't care to read it; I was too infuriated to bother with it. I saw three empty sections, and then I heard him mentioning my mother.
Who cares! Why should I care what she thinks? It's not like she cares what I think. At this point Elena is her child; I'm just… something that lives in her house.
Without saying another word, I turned around and headed back towards the maids that were accompanying us. I could barely feel my legs anymore, I had trouble breathing, and I felt incredibly spent. I heard Elena grunting behind me as she was trying her best to climb up the wall behind me.
Mph!
I kept dragging myself forward until I bumped my body into my personal guard, who was the only person I felt I could trust at that moment, and collapsed in her arms.
"Oh, careful, you almost hurt yourself." She said as she caught my body before it could fall on the ground, her voice seemed worried about me.
"Wow, you're drenched in sweat?" She initially seemed a bit taken off by my smell, but her demeanor changed as soon as she put her hand on my forehead. "You're scalding hot! How were you able to… ah, right. Don't worry, young master, once we get you back in the mansion, we'll get you fixed up in no time." She then put me over her back and carried me away.
Some of the maids stayed behind to support Elena. Some others followed me.
"I heard you're going to take special classes to get on par with your classmate next year? Are you excited to go to school tomorrow?" The maid asked me a while, gently putting me down in the car we used to come here.
The thing I immediately noticed was that my mother wasn't there; she stayed behind to keep an eye on Elena.
"Huh?" I was about to fall asleep. I didn't hear any of what the maid had just said; I was too busy looking for my mother. She wasn't there.
"Don't worry, I can always repeat that later. Rest now, young master; we're going to have a busy evening today." She said while giving a nod to the driver.
When I woke up, I was back in our old house, lying on a large couch in the dining room. My head was resting on the bodyguard's lap as she was fixing my hair using a brush. They had already changed my clothes, washed my body, and fixed any bruises.
"What time is it?" I asked as I began to stretch myself.
The maid simply shook her head, grabbed me by the ear, and put my head back over her lap.
"Tomorrow you're going to school; whatever happens, don't accept any invite to the houses of the nobles; you have the whole evening booked." The maid said to me.
"What if I accept?" I asked her.
"Well, you might get punished afterwards." She replied to me.
I couldn't care less; it's not like they could've forced me to do anything at that point. There was nothing left to confiscate, so I smiled in anticipation.
Try me.
The maid then flicked my forehead with her right hand.
"That was for thinking something cheeky! You should listen to your parents in this case; if you remain behind, you might get mocked for it." She punished me and then proceeded to gently massage the hurt area.
"Hmm, the fact you barely felt that is troubling." The maid commented shortly after.
"Why is that?" I asked in return.
"Well, because pain is… necessary, it helps keep you safe from dangerous things like a burning stove; without it, you're always at risk of injuring yourself." She explained to me in her usual jovial tone that her tail was slowly undulating from left to right and vice versa.
"Is my tail that interesting?" She then asked me.
"Yep!" I answered.
"By the way… Do I have anything else to do today, or am I free to go to my uncle's house?" I asked her while trying to stand up, only to be stopped by her.
"So I can't, huh?" I said as I gave up struggling against her.
"You must understand, young master. Your parents are still deeply shocked regarding your unfortunate kidnapping, and yesterday's incident further solidified their belief; that's why they ordered us to—"
"Who told them that? It wasn't anything too serious; my cousin had probably done something to deserve being punished like that. Why am I suddenly imprisoned here? What about Elena? Is she also— Why do I even bother asking?" The answer was obvious; she was most likely exempt from that new rule.
Why am I the one getting punished here?
"Anything else?" I asked the maid.
She looked at me puzzled; one of her ears flicked twice as she looked at me with a puzzled expression on her face.
It was then that I noticed her eyes were so dark I could hardly see her pupils at that moment. It was something strange and unfamiliar.
There was nothing I could've done, so I gave up. I stopped resisting and began studying for the rest of the day.