It was later arranged that the students would come to class once a week so the teachers could monitor their progress. The next time they were scheduled to return to the academy was the following day, but little did they know what awaited them.
The news spread through the academy faster than any of them expected.
By the next morning, many students in Class One were already whispering about it.
"Did you hear?"
"They actually took the red ball from Tongen."
"No way."
"I heard it was Jelo who grabbed it."
The whispers traveled from hallway to hallway, from the dormitory corridors down into the lower training wings. By the time the morning bell rang and students filtered into their classrooms, the story had already grown — stretched and reshaped with each retelling until some versions had Jelo catching the ball bare-handed while standing on one leg, and others had him doing it blindfolded. None of it was accurate, but none of it mattered. The name was what stuck.
Jelo.
