Chapter 396: A hard to make phonecall
Kellen managed to squeeze in a phone call to his Aunt Dina while he was waiting for his students to arrive at the cafeteria. He had given them the same message that he had for his first class, only this time it was more of a dinner invite because of his afternoon classes and other obligations.
He had grabbed a tea, something soothing with herbal notes as he took a deep breath, typed in her phone number from memory, and held the phone up to his ear as he waited.
His Aunt Dina was a very powerful Fire Esper. An A Class, but as Kellen had said before, just barely. His Mom, more than once, had lamented that if she would just go in and get ’fucking retested’ she would be classified as an S Class.
His Aunt Dina had laughed, stuck her tongue out and told his Mom to go kick rocks. She wasn’t going near a Center ever again, and even more so after she learned about Kellen’s treatment in them. Kellen felt his heart ache as he remembered her solidarity with him. How she had also offered to come over, do a big publicity stunt, and then burn it to the fucking ground before leaving.
She certainly had the personality to match her powers, if anyone had any questions about what her powers were.
She also had fiery red hair to match her temperament. His Dad had told him that her hair colour had changed from black to red after she awakened, and no matter what kind of dye, earth based or otherwise, would change it back. She had grown to accept it, and she was pretty famous in her own right.
Most of her partners, her Guides, had been women. It was something that Kellen hadn’t told her that they had in common, the same sex attraction, but it was one of the reasons he made sure to message her on holidays and birthdays or when he heard about something big happening with her Guild. The time difference really made things worse, or harder to reach out, but he had a feeling she wasn’t getting much sleep right now.
His fears were proven correct when the phone clicked after 2 rings.
"Hello?" It was pretty early in the morning for her, but her voice didn’t have the tinge of sleep that he hoped it had.
"Hey Auntie. It’s me, Kellen." There was a pause on the other line as Kellen sat at his table, watching other Espers and Guides go through the dinner line. Then, a sigh sounded, along with some rustling.
"They made it home safe, huh?" She said in response, her tone a little bitter.