Episode 53

Episode 53 is the fifty-third episode of Hooky by Míriam Bonastre Tur. This episode starts Nico’s backstory arc.

## Summary

Nico is around 4-5 years old, playing football with a slightly older Mark. Mark kicks the ball towards Nico, the ball ends up hitting him in the face causing Nico to cry.

On the sidelines, Mr Evans and Pendragon are having a chat about Pendragon adopting Nico. Pendragon feels like he is indebted to Nico’s mother who died in order to protect him therefore he should protect the child in return.

Mark then approaches his father, telling him that Nico is hurt and he is bleeding from his nose. Mr Evans then responds saying that there’s a first aid kit over there. The two boys then go off. Meanwhile, going back to the young men’s conversation, Mr Evans offers to take care of Nico instead since Pendragon would most likely be busy most of the time. Pendragon says it’s fine though he’s never been a parent before so he doesn’t know what to do.

Apparently, (according to Pendragon) Nico was dying in his mother’s arms so she went to the clairvoyant to see if he could try and heal him. The man healed him but then the towns people unfortunately found out and accused the mother for being a witch, placing an execution date on her. Grateful for healing her son, she chose not to rat him out, taking his should-be execution in his place. She died from the execution the next day. From that point on, Pendragon wanted to protect the boy but knew that he couldn’t get to close to him otherwise he might get hurt because, anyone that gets close to him wounds up being hurt.

Going over to the boys, Mark places a plaster on Nico’s nose, saying that it’s proof that it’s a wound of courage. From that moment on, Nico wanted to prove to everyone, specifically Pendragon that he was good enough. He also wanted Mark to notice that he was good enough as well since Mark’s bulky strength and height protected him from bullies. However it always seemed to never be enough for Pendragon because he didn't want him harmed by magic. Nico then set a new goal in mind: he was determined to learn magic.

Nico began studying spells and so forth whilst helping Mark with homework (Mark was awful at studies). His master refused to teach him but he kept on going, doing self studying rather than giving up. His attempts were futile though because they never produced anything worthwhile. He spent days on end, trying to produce something, however to no avail since he always ended up with the same result: nothing. Due to him not being able to do magic, Pendragon wasn‘t impressed and Nico felt awful.

One day at school Nico noticed something, Mark was gaining more and more attention from other students from his looks whilst Nico was getting teased even more for his. Now he lost his one and only friend due to overshadowing the other. The same thing at home; Pendragon overshadowed Nico causing him to feel incredibly lonely. In the end, Nico knew that he had to live his life as a human; without magic which meant forgetting everything he had learnt over the years. He knew he couldn’t always depend on Mark and Mark couldn’t always help Nico so he kept his distance from him.

One day, Nico saw his master observing from a crystal ball and Pendragon asked him to look. The both of them saw the twins Dani and Dorian using magic to clean up the library: Nico thought it was impressive that Dorian only had to look at the spell once to be able to do it. Pendragon decided that he would adopt the two as his new pupils with Nico being dismayed at this proposal. Nico thought that he didn‘t want any pupils to which Pendragon said that this was an exception. Nico knew on thing from then on: he had been replaced.

Afterwards, Nico travelled to Mark’s place, saying from that moment he had started to screw everything up.

## Characters in order of appearance

* Nico
* Mark Evans
* Mr. Evans
* Pendragon
* Nico’s classmates (2)
* Students (5)
* Students (5)
* Students (6)
* Nico’s friends
* Townspeople (2)
* Dorian Wytte
* Daniela Wytte

(\*Note: **Bold** + *Italicised*  = ***First Appearance***)