I ride my bicycle up to the racks in front of my school.

"Hey Nick! where were you yesterday?" my friend Luca says, sitting at a bench a few meters away.

"I was studying for the chemistry test"

"It was for, tomorrow right?"

"...."

"Oh shit" he says with a slight panic in his voice knowing exactly what my silence meant.

"What are the key points for the test?!?" he asked as he was grabbing his book from his back.

The bell rings signaling that we had five minutes to get to our next class, chemistry

"Welp you're fucked" I say as I start walking to the class while my friend is desperately trying to learn the few bits, he can in the five minutes he has

After walking through the corridors packed with students, we arrive in our chemistry class the teacher has a pile of papers on his desk and the both of us take our standard seats at the front of the class

"Okay that's 22, we're all complete, today we're going to have a diagnostic test in preparation for the test tomorrow, then there will be time to ask any questions you might have regarding the test tomorrow" the teacher says

My friend looks at me and says "you fucker" while breathing a sigh of relief

"Thank you" I replied while putting on my evilest smile

"Well to be fair you would be able to get a good note even if this was the real test" I continued

I could see that my friend wanted to say something after that but he was cut off by the teacher saying "okay class please be silent for the test"

I looked at the paper in front of me and... I didn't understand anything of it. Really it is amazing how hard the teachers can make the tests if you compare them to the exercises in our book.

After somehow answering every question, some with more bs in it than others I was done and when I looked to my side my friend was idly playing with his pen having finished the test before me.

After the test was finished, I asked my friend: "And how did you do?"

"Eh I think I did fine, I managed to answer each question at least" he replied

Of course, what neither me nor him knew was that he got an 8 and I got a 6, life is unfair

Seeing that neither of us wanted to go through the line of students towards teacher to ask a question that would most likely already be answered by then we started to talk about our latest D&D campaign, well I call it D&D but with how much I changed it you can't really call it D&D anymore. What you should know about my friends (and also the people they invited) was that except for one, they were all murderhobos.

Luca was a glass cannon with 1 hp because he sold all his max hp to eldritch gods for custom spells and then you have Joseph the most reliable member of the party and also the person to save Luca from 'The netherrealm' which is a place where I sent people when they find exploits in my rules and Luca was great at that.

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So anyways the conversation ended in Luca informing me that he had found yet another exploit.

We hear the bell ring and both of us go to the cafeteria to see Joseph there waiting for us.

He is wearing an anime t-shirt and is sitting in one of the quieter corners of the cafeteria

"Hey" he says to us

Both of us say hello to him and I grab a nearby chair from one of the tables.

"so anything fun happened yesterday when I wasn't around?" I asked both of my friends

"yea we played a round of four souls seeing that you weren't around" Joseph said

"you should have called me, then I could've beaten you again" I say with a smile

for context my streak in for souls in around 6 and the closest person to beating mine is Luca with a streak of 3 due to him finding an exploit that allowed him to grab whatever cards he wanted at any time as long as it was in the discard pile.

"Well you blocked us" Joseph responded

"It was a joke and, it's not really surprising that I block you guys if you spam me with over 100 messages, in under 10 seconds"

After that we talked for a while and eventually, we all just did stuff on our phones because there was nothing interesting to talk about

My game was interrupted by the obnoxiously loud bell. I switched to the schedule app on my phone and after checking where our next lesson would be, I walked towards the English class.

We walked towards the center desk on the first row because it had 3 tabled next to each other, Joseph claimed the middle desk like he always did.

"Okay class I’ll do the roll call please say your name if you're here. Jeffery-"

but that was as far as she got, we started hearing the familiar air raid siren that is tested at the first Monday of each month.

yet... it was Wednesday.

I was a bit confused to say the least. I seriously thought that I was Monday for a good few seconds then I thought that it must have been someone that was imitating the sound someway and seeing that the class just continued I wasn't the only one that thought that.

Well that was until the janitor came running to the class and told the teacher that this was a full-blown air raid and that she had to turn on the news and follow the instructions there. It took me a good few second to process what that meant and then everything turned into a daze. The chaos in the school, The constant fear, the walking towards shelters, Joseph telling me and Luca that "everything will be fine" while looking no better than us, the giant white flash and then the pain... the mind numbing excruciating pain all over my body

Here I am, lying on the ground. I feel like I’m dying, like just dropping dead is better than suffering in this pain, but I don't want to die, I refuse to die, I try to stand up, but when I look at my leg, the only thing that I see is a bloody stump. I scream out in the hope of getting help, but nobody came, I look around bearing with the constant pain, I see a ruined city, charred and mangled corpses lying all across the streets, the few that can walk look more like corpses than humans. Then, I start crying, because there is nothing I can do, 'I’m dead', 'this can't be real', 'I don't want to die' I kept telling myself while my tears are burning on my skin, I cried how unfair the world is, why I had to die, I cursed god, why do I have to die, I don't want to die...-

I feel a tiredness washing over me. I tried to stay awake, because I knew that I would die. but in the end, everything turned dark