A Destiny Unfolds

Wong Ha Jung

He hadn't been the Admissions Office in quite a while, not since he had led Ian there weeks ago. To his bemusement, the counselor had found that his conclusions about the office's hiring practices were exactly on the mark. People shifted in and out of the positions there so fast that he didn't even know anymore who worked the reception. Actually, for that matter, he didn't know anybody. The entire place was filled with strangers now. What happened to everybody else? Wong Ha Jung wondered, not for the first time. He thought that he had heard of some people being moved to recruiting and others being moved to teaching but that couldn't possibly have accounted for all of the people he had met. After so much time spent trying to get to know everybody, even he had to admit that it was an utterly lost battle.

Well, in any case, there hadn't been a real reason for him to have come by recently. He was only there now because he had made a promise to William Reed. It was all there on the papers in his hand -his entire, professional opinion for why the boy was not insane. On top of the stack was a filled out form requesting the boy's entire file. Hopefully, Wong Ha Jung would be able to drop it off with Administration by the end of the day. Though he wasn't sure if anybody would actually accept it. Briefly, the counselor wondered what had happened to those days back when he had just started at the Academy. He'd had been so trusting of the system then. But it kept failing and nobody ever seemed to be doing anything.

Don't think about it now. You have things to do. He sighed a little, raking a hand through his sakura colored hair. It was frustrating but he walked into the Admissions Office with a smile on his face anyways because nobody would question it. So much easier this way...

"Ah, excuse me," he said, approaching the woman at the reception desk. There was a girl already there and her presence made him falter. But for once, he didn't shrink back and let her finish; that was how troubled he was about the task at hand. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I would like file for William Reed, please." He held out the filled out form, unconsciously ducking his head down in a sheepish gesture. "I have the form..."

The woman looked up at him, frowning. "Oh," she said, her tone long suffering. "Another one? What has he done this time?"

That assumptive reaction made him jerk a little but he forced himself to stay calm. "Oh, no, it's nothing like that," the counselor said quickly. "It's nothing bad, it's really not. He hasn't done anything wrong." From the look on her face, however, he could tell that she wasn't convinced.

But she took the paper from his hand anyways. "If you say so," she said doubtfully, scanning over it. After a few moments frowning, she got up, heading for the file room. "Give me a minute and I'll find it for you. I'll get to you right after, miss."

So that left Wong Ha Jung with the burgundy haired girl at the desk. He glanced at her quickly before looking away, embarrassed and feeling slightly guilty for having interrupted her. But if it was rude to have cut her off, then it was certainly rude just to ignore her afterwards like he wasn't even there.

"I really am sorry for interrupting," the man told her earnestly, blushing. "I didn't mean to and I don't really have an excuse for it, sorry." He looked at her more closely for a moment, one handedly adjusting his glasses. "Ah, are you a new student?" She didn't look very familiar but as Ian had proved, Wong Ha Jung was very far from recognizing every member of the student body.

Wong Ha Jung

He shook Victoria's hand, bowing slightly as he did. "It's nice to meet you," he said cheerfully, anxiousness temporarily sliding away. But only for the moment. "I'm Wong Ha Jung. Ah, Elijah Wong to some. I'm the only school counselor active right now so if you need help with anything, please don't hesitate to ask me."

Even though he wasn't really sure anymore what he could do for anybody. It seemed like the more people who came in, the more problems he was finding with Administration. This latest situation with William Reed really was marking the point when he had to start doing some serious thinking about whether or not he should change his methods. And for that matter, whether or not he should be challenging Administration, something that he was deeply reluctant to do.

The woman from the reception desk came back then, a folder in her hands. Though Wong Ha Jung had sent it back to the Admissions Office weeks ago to be updated, it didn't look as if it had been. It couldn't possibly have been.

"Ah." He didn't frown, it just wasn't something he did, so he simply adjusted his glasses again as he took the folder. "I sent in a request for this to be update a while ago," the counselor said mildly. "Would you know anything about that?"

"Sorry, I wouldn't," she answered with a shrug. "I've only been here for a week and nobody's said anything about the person who was here before me."

"I-I see." He cleared his throat a little and tried not to think too much about being disappointed. "Is there anybody else I can speak to?"

She laughed. "Sir, I wish." The receptionist said ruefully, "I drew the short stick. Everybody else in the office isn't here right now. Summer hours, you know.

Right, minimal staff. It was the same reason why he was the only counselor at the Academy at the moment. Wong Ha Jung sighed. "Yes, I do. Thank you anyways."

"Sorry," she said again, giving him a sympathetic look before turning back to Victoria. "So how can I help you?"

As the two women talked, Wong Ha Jung moved a little away from them, taking up at the edge of the desk to look over the folder. Just as suspected, there wasn't much change in its contents since the last time he had read through it. The only notable change was that somebody, probably Mr. Dickenson, had included the incident in the fields.

Wong Ha Jung

Griping his pen tightly in annoyance, Wong Ha Jung casually crossed out another three sentences of incorrect information on William's file. The counselor had gotten through two and a half pages of perplexing material, leaving few sentences wholly untouched by corrections. Even though he felt like it might not have really been right to do this -is this overstepping my bounds? Will this ever get done if I don't?- the sheer amount of errors on everything left him so incredulous that he couldn't help but try and correct them. He hadn't known William for that long but it still clear which parts were obviously fabricated.

"Reported to have goaded a small child with somewhat unstable magic into causing an explosion in the courtyard." What? Wong Ha Jung nodded absently a few times at that line, because it made absolutely no sense to him. He tried to find a date on that incident but only found the month. Isn't that the around the time when Anh Sang did that? But everybody knew that she had done it by accident, with another student who was surely not William because William could not turn into a dragon. That was a fact. Nobody could possibly argue that point in earnest.

He crossed the sentence out furiously, the incorrectness of it was so severe that the entire thing was almost offensive to him. For a moment, Wong Ha Jung perfectly empathized with Itou and how the teacher always was brooding over some piece of paperwork. It was kind of awful, actually, and he put down closed his eyes for a moment in frustration. Irritated was definitely not an emotion that sat well with him.

"Hm?" At the sound of part of his name, the man opened his eyes to see Victoria turned to him. "Oh, it's Wong, actually," he corrected with a smile. Quickly, he put the folder back into order and put it under his arm. "Wong, Ha Jung, or Elijah. Any of the three is fine. Most people settle for the first."

"Would you like any help with those?" He indicted towards the girl's bags with a tilt of the head. It didn't look like much but asking was the polite thing to do. "I could show you around a little, too, if you'd like." Admittedly, the man was offering that out of selfishness as well as genuine desire to be helpful. Even though he had quite a bit of work to do, a walk would help clear his head. It just wasn't a good feeling to be so wound up something so important like the William situation.

Wong Ha Jung

"Ah, don't worry about it. It's quite all right," he reassured her, feeling a little embarrassed himself because Victoria was embarrassed. The apology did get across, though it also took him a moment to make sure he had actually heard it. "It's not an uncommon mistake."

"If you don't mind, I'll show you where the cafeteria is first, and then the infirmary after," Wong Ha Jung said as he led her from the office. It was perfectly logical but Ah, it actually sounds a little bad when I say it out loud like that. Or maybe it was just him. He hoped it was just him.

"Is there anywhere in particular that you'd like to see? Library, computer lab, where you'll have your classes..." Since the cafeteria and the infirmary weren't really in the same part of the school, he was kind of counting on Victoria having a specific place in mind. If she didn't, the man supposed that he'd just show her all of the first floor and point out the stairwells for places of interest on the higher ones.

"Sorry, did you say earlier which grade you're in? I've been a bit distracted lately. If you have an idea of what you're studying, too, I might know the teachers that you'll end up with."

Wong Ha Jung

"Ah, the library and the infirmary, then. If it's fine with you, I can just point out the part where the cafeteria is." It didn't seem like she was that interested in going there anyways, so Wong Ha Jung didn't see why they shouldn't just cut that out. The infirmary, though, that was important. Maybe it was just him being paranoid but after everything that had been going on recently, it was really better safe than sorry.

"The library here is very nice," he said as they walked down the hallway, "but I haven't been able to spend as much time there as I'd like. I hear that it has an excellent collection of ancient historical records, if you're into that." Although, now that he had given it a little thought, he was becoming troubled over how little it seemed that he had done since arriving.

Counseling, colleagues, friends, family, general populace, self. Sometimes it felt like he was juggling too much but that couldn't have possibly been right. It all seemed perfectly reasonable to him; it wasn't like anybody was asking anything too outrageous. The problem was probably only on himself. He just hoped that he'd be able to figure out a solution soon. He couldn't afford to be useless.

"Oh? It's not often that we get graduates around here." In fact, the counselor didn't think that he had spoken to a single graduate school student on the island yet. "The power classes are optional for most people who attend the Academy. Of course, if a person has a particularly dangerous power, they no longer have a choice in that matter. I don't believe that I've ever seen anybody take only the power classes before but then again, I suppose that my interactions with the student body are rather limited."

He smiled at Victoria, trying to be reassuring. "I don't think you should have any problems in getting into a powers class," he told her earnestly. "The other students might a be little younger than you but I can't imagine that they'd turn you down. It's why you're here, after all. We have several powers teachers around but I've only met one of them so far. He goes by Leeroy, and happens to be one of the more popular teachers. There's a good chance you'll end up with him, I think."

"If you don't mind me asking, what is your power anyways?"