Donovan drove Arthur home, but before he left, he told Arthur that he'd be around to pick him up in the morning for school.
"Thank you, I'll see you tomorrow then," Arthur said farewell before making his way inside the house.
Arthur went through his usual routine of watering his plants, working out, playing games with friends and eating with his family, but this time with the addition of packing his school bag for the next day.
"I might as well bring all my textbooks on the first day, get my locker organised and not have to deal with it again," Arthur mumbled to himself. He had been sent his schedule for the first term already but left packing his school bag to the last second.
He spent a few minutes trying to force several books into the bag, which was an unsurprisingly tedious task. Once he was done, he finished off his nightly routine before going to bed.
He woke up rather early the next day, and after doing his morning routine and getting breakfast, he quickly organised himself for school. He made sure to pack himself some lunch that Anna had prepared for him the night before.
He had only just realised he didn't put his uniform out while he was packing his bags, he eventually found it hidden away at the back of his wardrobe.
Arthur double-checked that he had everything, before throwing his backpack on and making his way downstairs. He received a text message from Donovan telling him that he had arrived, so Arthur left the house, making sure to lock up behind him.
The two exchanged pleasantries while getting into the car, and not long after they had arrived in front of the school building.
"Back to school, huh?" Arthur sighed out loud as he exited the vehicle, lifting the heavy backpack that had been hurting his thighs for most of the drive and throwing it onto his back.
"When you get to my age, you're going to be missing school." Donovan teased, "I'll be here to pick you up. Have fun, and don't get into any fights."
"No promises." Arthur jokingly remarked as he waved goodbye and started making his way inside the building. "I'm off, take care."
Due to experiencing the school last year and having the time to focus on remembering the past, Arthur found himself more familiar with the school's layout.
He walked through the doorway, only to find large groups of students hovering around the main area, talking with each other and clearly fighting the other groups in a contest for which group could talk the loudest.
Arthur wasn't fond of large groups, especially not large groups consisting of obnoxiously loud teenagers, this remained true for his entire life and applied in this instance as well.
Classes hadn't started yet, so unfortunately all the students who arrived early were forced to entertain themselves as they waited for the bell to ring.
While walking through the groups, Arthur began overhearing several conversations, and quite a few of them related to New Genesis, and specifically his stream.
Surprisingly, there were a couple of people who held the opinion that New Genesis was actually rather boring. He found out through snippets of conversation that those people had only caught the end of Arthur's first stream, the extremely long road trip.
"So you didn't watch yesterday's stream?"
"No, I unfollowed the channel."
"You missed the boss fight, it was intense."
"I could watch the VOD later, is it worth my time?"
Several people intruded on the conversation to shout "yes" at the student, to which he responded by saying that he would watch it once he got home.
Another interesting thing he noticed, and something that seemed to be rather common was that several students seemed to believe that Callisto was another player, only to be surprised when informed by people who watched the first stream that she was in fact an NPC.
"Don't you think that Merlin guy kind of looks like..."
Arthur barely heard another piece of a conversation, and he was curious to know if anybody had recognised him or not. He didn't bother changing his appearance that much in-game, so it still had a fair bit of resemblance to him.
He continued towards his usual hangout spot, the library. He found both his friends sitting around a table in the library, they seemed to be talking about something, and Holly had a bright smile on her face.
Before approaching his friends, Arthur greeted Denise, the librarian. The two briefly exchanged pleasantries before they ended their conversation and Arthur started to approach his friends.
"Hey, there's Arth-- God damn." Quinn was the first to notice Arthur approach, but instead of a greeting, he received a surprised remark instead. "Someone has been working out."
Holly turned around to greet Arthur, but she remained giddy and unable to hide her excitement.
"Something has got you really happy, what's up?" Arthur asked Holly after returning the greeting, although he had a feeling he already knew what it was.
"Oh, yeah yeah, so." Holly began stuttering with excitement, which confirmed what it was, because for as long as Arthur knew her, Holly only ever gave this sort of adorable reaction to very specific things. "You remember that museum that is opening a few days after my birthday?"
"The one you really wanted to go to but couldn't get tickets?" Arthur asked with a curious tone. "What about it?"
"Well, Maria texted me this morning while I was getting ready for school," Holly explained, "And it turns out that she managed to get tickets to the opening night and asked if I wanted to go with her."
'Woah, that was fast... She only just asked me about it last week.' Arthur thought to himself, 'I guess nothing can stand in the way of a princess when she really wants something, or in this case, someone.'
"Woah, that's amazing!" Arthur exclaimed. "How's that for a birthday miracle. Maria is pretty great, huh?"
"Yeah! Maria is the best." Holly nodded at Arthur's words, and her radiant smile somehow managed to grow even larger.
Quinn sat on the sidelines, not bothering to join in the conversation. It seemed as though he had heard plenty of Holly's praises towards Maria up until Arthur arrived.
'Yup, that's a cute couple in the making.' Arthur thought to himself.
Eventually, the topic shifted over to New Genesis, and Quinn rejoined the conversation.
"Did you know there have been plenty of channels making videos about your stream?" Quinn asked. "Some even uploaded clips from it."
"Wait, really?" Arthur remarked.
"More than six," Quinn said, before making a joking remark. "You could run around copyright striking channels to take all that ad revenue."
"What kind of jerk would do that?" Arthur laughed, "I'm sure most of it would fall under fair use anyway."
"There have been quite a few people who just straight up reuploaded the VOD," Quinn said.
"Oh, well those could go. But it's probably not worth the time or effort. All I'd get out of it is a few dollars and a bad reputation." Arthur shrugged.
"Fair point," Quinn nodded, "Oh, you should be pretty close to partner status now, right?"
"Yeah, I checked it last night. I've hit the requirements to apply for it." Arthur said. "I'll probably apply next week."
"You spent all those years streaming Ancient Defense and not coming anywhere close to getting partnered, and all it took was two streams of you riding around for hours in a virtual world to hit all of the requirements," Quinn said while shaking his head.
"It's kind of sad if you say it that way." Arthur sighed.
Eventually, the bell rang, and the trio made their way to their homeroom, as labelled on their schedule sheets. Which happened to be the same as last year, the year before that, and so on.
They had their first introductory class, and their homeroom teacher welcomed them back for their final year before leading them to a group of lockers that would be theirs for the year.
Everyone was forced to choose a locker, and Arthur quickly stuffed his school bag that had been weighing down on his back this whole time into the locker. He decided to come back to it when he had time, as people were waiting to access the lockers above and below him.
Unlike American schools which stereotypically had full-length lockers, Australian schools or perhaps just this one in particular, had a collection of large lockable boxes that all contained a single shelf. This allowed you to store your bag underneath the shelf while your books remained stacked neatly on top.
He placed his padlock on the locker before escaping the horde of students who were all fighting for the remaining middle lockers.
Arthur caught a glimpse of Ruslan, who was putting his school bag away in a high locker. Their eyes met, but Ruslan turned away and wandered off. There didn't seem to be any glares this time around, rather his eyes seemed somewhat sad.
"Damn, you two got middle lockers?" Quinn groaned, "Lucky, I'm going to have sore knees all year."
The class eventually all finished up with their lockers, and the homeroom teacher led them all towards the gym that had been filled with plastic chairs and temporarily repurposed as a place to hold the yearly tradition of a first-day assembly that will without a doubt extend well into the first break.
'At least they let us put our bags away first this time..' Arthur groaned internally as he made his way into the gym that for some reason was several degrees hotter than anywhere else in the school and uncomfortably humid.
