The moment I stepped into the office, I froze. Mr. Blonde looked up from his desk and saw me standing there.

  I knew what I needed to tell him, but how would I do that when I can’t use words? How do I succinctly convey the idea of a missing key?

  I heard him say some words as I stood in front of his doorway. I couldn’t afford to waste his time, so I settled on the best idea I could think of at the moment.

  Comics.

  As long as I avoid using language, I can portray the events leading up to my hospitalization using a comic book. Or would it be a comic panel if it’s too short to be called a book? Whatever, I can’t afford to be picky.

  I looked at the lone circular table decorated with a wooden bowl containing 4 balls stacked in a triangular pyramid formation. I pointed to its edge, asking if I could take a seat near it, before hearing words I couldn’t understand. I took one of the guest chairs placed in front of his desk, and worked on my comic.

  Let’s see. First, after being given the map, and the classes I’ve been assigned to attend, my first priority was memorizing an optimal route that would get me to all of those classes as soon as possible. The campus is really large, so I felt that I could easily get lost if I didn’t do this.

  I assigned thought bubbles to the schedule, map, and gave my comic avatar expressions at different locations I saw, hoping they’d portray awe, confusion, and frustration.

  Then, after seeing the library the school offered, I realized I had lost my dorm key. The only option I had was to retrace my steps in hopes of finding where I had dropped my key, before finalizing the route I had planned.

  I took out my map and recreated it to a less detailed extent in the comic, drawing symbols and words to show that I was annotating the map Mr. Blonde had given me.

  Then, along the way, I encountered that annoying student who I saw bullying my summoner and that old man teacher. He seemed suspicious of me and wanted me to follow him. Since he was depicted in the hierarchy Mr. Blonde had drawn, so I decided to follow him, believing it was a school-related matter.

  When we were in his office, I tried portraying the concept of missing or misplaced using smoke. In hindsight, it was a terrible idea to conjure smoke in a simple one-sided conversation, but to end up hospitalized for a miscommunication feels unfair.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  I conjured speech bubbles between me and the old man, filling the both of them with different styles of scribbling to convey our language barrier. As for the smoke, I made a simple graphic showing the dorm key was visible at the first step, covering it in smoke in the next step, showing the key as a silhouette, and a blank outline of the key in the last step, signified as a dotted outline.

  After quickly reviewing it to ensure there wasn’t any ambiguous interpretation, I handed the short comic to Mr. Blonde. I needed to explain my perspective so that me losing the key wouldn’t be attributed to incompetence.

  He took a moment to review the comic I created on the fly.

  All I could do was silently stand there as his eyes moved from one spot to another, and his expressions shifted subtly.

  Suddenly, I felt nervous. I felt like I was showing off a piece of written work to a friend to ask for their opinion on, and thoughts of self-doubt spiraled through my head. Too much of this? Too little of that?

  All of those thoughts halted when I heard him put the comic down and bend down to open a drawer at his desk. A second later, he produced the key to room 61 that I had been agonizing over.

  I moved to pick up the key, but small golden orbs appeared and moved the key away from my grasp.

  He took out a blank sheet of paper, and started drawing on it with his quill and inkwell.

  Each stroke was precise and quick. Lines on paper that first appeared random slowly formed a picture. A moment later, a simple sketch had been made. It depicted someone in a uniform happily returning the key to Mr. Blonde. They had a rather happy expression.

  Is Mr. Blonde telling me I should thank them?

  He uttered a syllable and made a gesture of holding his hand out, and made the golden orbs jiggle the key. I quickly understood what he meant and held my hand out in front of him. The tiny golden orbs moved above my hand and disappeared, and the key dropped safety into my hands.

  “Thank you.”

  Even though he wouldn’t understand my words, I hoped he’d at least understand my gratitude.

  Not wanting to lose it again, I decided it’d be better attached to a chain. This rope looks really flimsy, and the only purpose it served was keeping his numbered plate attached to the key. Of course, there might be some clause in the school’s rules that would treat damaging the rope as destruction of school property, so I decided to hold off on doing that. Instead, I decided to loop a simple beaded chain along with the rope, using metal wire in place of string. The hole in the key was big enough to accommodate both the rope and beaded chain, adding an extra measure of security and durability to the rope, holding everything together.

  After that, I conjured a belt and a linked chain, and made sure one of the links was secured around the robe and beaded chain, and attached the linked chain to a belt loop on my pants.

  When I heard how much noise the linked chain made, I dissipated it, not wanting to draw more attention to simply walking around.

  I heard Mr. Blonde clear his throat and point towards the door, telling me my presence is no longer welcome.

  With the issue of the key resolved, I took my belongings and headed toward my dorm.