Tira did not sleep that night. The energy that Dias had channelled into healing her wounds had also invigorated her mind, causing her grasp of any kind of dreamland to slip away into the ether. She spent her time going back to the library to fetch her shoes and continued packing the rest of the books for the remaining hours of the night.
Sariya never returned to the library that night.
In the morning, she went back to the classroom where she had left her belongings last. The stains on her uniform had dried; if she could catch Felicia, Tira could try to borrow some detergent.
Even though, as futile of an effort it would be, to try to beat out a red stain out of a white shirt, she still had to try.
Opening the door, Tira was greeted with the sight of an empty classroom, her bag torn to pieces, and all of its contents spilled on the floor.
'Whore!' was written on the blackboard in big, bold letters.
Possibly with marker pen, maybe paint. Meant to be unwashable probably.
It was a familiar handwriting, the curving on the letter 'h' was a dead giveaway.
The door automatically closed behind her, leaving only silence as company and separating her from the noises that were outside, giving her the time to think alone.
Briefly, Tira wondered if she should bother collecting anything littered on the ground.
With no classes to attend or homework to do, there was no longer a need for most of the textbooks. Some of their clothes were torn, so they were no longer useful as well.
"...At least the pens are fine." She crouched over to where the pen case lay against the wall, its contents undamaged despite the meticulous care to ensure as much chaos and damage was done as possible to the rest of her stuff. Perhaps forgotten once it was flung so far away, out of sight from the rest of its school supply brethren by the perpetrator-
No. Perpetrators would be the correct term.
Outside, footsteps started to become clearer, heading to her, behind the closed door. She considered what to do, if she should just give in to anger once again and reflect the taste of spite on their bones. An easy way out.
Their footfalls stopped.
Voices echoed from outside, surprisingly clear even though they were separated by a thick concrete wall behind the closed door. An argument soon broke out, one that barely managed to escalate to an even louder screeching contest before Rina opened the door despite the girls’ insistence to hold her back, she was followed by a shoulder poking out of the doorframe; presumably Armand, seeing that the student's sleeves were rolled up as well as barest hint of blonde hair floating just above Rina's shoulder.
She waived addressing Tira in any way. Her eyes merely roamed the room, on her, to the floor, and then, at last— to the board.
It did not take more than a second before the truth dawned; Rina turned and whirled a fast backhand at Chia. "SO IT WAS YOU?!!"
"Rina!"
"Fuck off Arl! These bitches-!!" Rina struggled while being held back at arm's length by the gang boss.
Donny took that moment to peer inside, scanning the situation a bit faster than Rina, giving Tira a polite nod when their eyes met, then ducked back out of the doorframe.
Outside, the screaming match resumed.
She approached the door as the girls were yelling back at their seniors, watching the scene with as much care as she had when she had pounded the guy's face to the ground last night.
Donny, despite his athletic build, was having a hard time holding back the petite medical captain. Even with both hands restrained under her armpits, he appeared to be struggling hard to keep Rina away from the juniors.
Armand was doing the same to the four, though with much more ease and success. Considering his muscles and his infamous reputation, he alone was enough of a deterrent to stop anyone from even taking a step over the threshold. Let alone four girls.
Though his head-sized palm might have stopped them physically, Armand had no control over their four from protesting with their voices.
The big fuss that these girls began to draw attention from students passing by and as the seconds grew they had slowly gathered into a crowd of blinking eyes and whispering mouths, painfully inquisitive.
That only motivated the lot of girls to screech louder; seeking validation from the masses, thriving under the assumption that the eyes of others would soon understand their side of justice.
The amount of attention was enough to overwhelm anyone into going with their side of the story to avoid an even bigger fight.
"Chia."
Her call was calm, without any venom behind it, as if she was merely calling out her friend’s name. Tira made sure that each and every one of their selfish eyes were focused on her. She could not be allowed to look away from this.
Chia, her tormentor, made the mistake of answering that call with her attention. Rage, hateful eyes, glaring back at her with a self-assured smile of victory.
Tira smiled at the poor girl.
"Chia, did your family make it?"
In an instant, a fist made its way through the air, aiming at her face.
She dodged left, then right, walking back as she let Chia's arms whizz past her face, just barely out of range.
"IT WAS YOUR FAULT!!!" The girl screamed, almost manic in her screaming. Hate dripped and drowned her voice with each failed attempt to land a hit until the girl gnashed her teeth and lunged forward. "IT’S YOUR FAULT, IT’S YOUR FAULT ITS–"
Her back hit the wall. Chia, seeing her opponent cornered, frantically rushed forward. Tira did not move, not in the slightest. The hands that reached out to her were wide open like claws ready to dig into her skin.
Tira did not step away. She grasped them with her own hands.
"Chia, look at me,"
Tira whispered as softly as she could. She thought her voice lacked the prowess to sound warm, but it managed to as she spoke, "where is your family?"
Glossy brown eyes looked up. All of their light and fire absent now.
"You killed them..."
Chia whispered, her voice broken from the strain of her yelling. It cracked and wavered, containing a well of emotions that Tira knew she was barely seeing the surface of, she was merely grazing the ripples that rose from a thrown stone shaped by hate.
Tira kept her eyes even. She did not move. She did not answer or deny. There was only the same smile she maintained on her face, a mask.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
She showed in silence how much she did not care for another's plight.
The only reflection that was capable of hurting was your own.
"You killed them– you.. YE- AAARRGGHHH!!!"
Chia collapsed on the floor, clutching her head and sobbing, backing away from the wall as if burned by how close Tira stood from her. Tears flowed from her eyes while shr screamed at the top of her lungs, raw and helpless.
"AAAAARRGHHHHHH!!!"
Her friends did not move to support her. The number one girl was now finally, and truly, alone.
Seeing the inconsolable state the girl was in and noticing that the attention had fully shifted from her, Tira slipped away from the crowd and went over to the seniors’ side, who had watched in various states of shock, pity, and indifference on their faces. "Were you looking for me?"
"...Yeah." Rina visibly forced herself to look away from Chia's lament, worry still apparent in her eyes as the senior checked over her junior visually. "Are you okay?"
She shrugged. "I’m good."
"The universities’ representatives passed by again, just to pass on a message," Donny supplied, neutral and unbothered as he let out a soft sigh, "-they said the meeting will take place in two days, in the morning, here. We’re going to have our own meeting to discuss that after dinner."
He paused a bit, inhaled deeply, before the student council president finally faced her properly, head bowed to compensate for their difference in eye level. "Will you and Dias attend?"
"You should ask Dias yourself." Tira reminded him, at the same time reprimanding the way he addressed her. She was his bodyguard, not his nanny. "I’ll be there, though. Thank you for asking."
Donny nodded his head. His brows were still knitted in focus, though she noticed he no longer appeared as stressed as before. "Thank you as well. Let’s go have lunch! It'll be my treat."
Armand ribbed the guy with his elbow, chuckling when the boy grunted in pain. "With what money, mister?"
"With his face, more likely." Rina jumped in to continue the joke with practiced ease. Her steps fell in tandem with the other two without any awkwardness. "The cooking club loves his face so much that we might even get seconds if he asked for it."
Not for the first time, she wondered if these three were close friends, simply because she had never seen them all together in one space at the same time before, never had a chance to see how they interacted before the apocalypse since her club rarely had to deal with the council members outside of fundraising activities.
"Over here!"
She kept those thoughts to herself. Hannah was waving at her, having saved a space on the table along with a plate already prepared, with Elvin by her side digging into his meal in silence and exhaustion.
Lunch this time consisted of rice and stir-fried vegetables that had been cooked hours ago, yet oddly enough, it felt warm to her.
----------------------------------------
Tira found herself sitting in a classroom instead of the teacher’s office, along with the others, this time.
It made sense, the bigger the meeting; the more space was needed and a classroom would accommodate to that more than the constraints of an office ever could. It wasn't entirely crowded yet but there were faces she already knew the names of, the rest remained nameless in her mind.
She was the first to take note of an unfamiliar face that showed up at the front door. Frantically searching, reading and watching them.
So many unknowns. Why had she agreed to attend a meeting again? out of all the other tasks that needed handling and finishing?
Before she could drown in self-regret, a kid on her left bumped their shoulders into her by accident. "Ah, sorry!"
"No worries." She replied then grasped the moment to start a conversation, "I’m Tira. Nice to meet you."
"K-Kayla." The child tried her hardest not to look terrified as she introduced herself, but failed miserably. "A-And this is Bimo."
The boy by her side gave an acknowledging bow. "Bimo here. Nice to meet you, sister."
The conversation ended right after that. If Kayla could have hidden behind the A5-sized notebook that she had brought with her, the girl might have done that already. But alas, now they had to endure the awkwardness instead.
At least she had given comforting them a good try.
"Oh, I guess I’m not late after all!" Dias stated as he entered the room with Donny trailing behind. Which was surprising yet good to see that he had finally gotten over his conundrum and asked the demigod to come by himself.
"Mind if I sit here?" Dias asked, already staring at the chair beside her, claiming it. The chair just so happened to be next to the junior high school students she had just talked to as well.
She gave a brief nod and he sat down immediately. It wouldn't have made any difference if she had disagreed anyway.
"Now that most of the permanent staff and students are here, let’s start the meeting."
Donny was leading the welcome speech of the principal. Interesting.
"I'll get straight to the point; I'm sure by now, you all know there's been a significant amount of problems we need to solve before we can even begin thinking of cooperating with other universities. The issues we're having—most of which have not been covered in the rulebook and protocols."
He took a whiteboard marker and wrote the number one on it. "Today's purpose is to list all our problems down and see which ones we can handle in the short term, on our own, and which ones would require us to get assistance from the other unis."
"Ha! What’re a bunch of kids going to do?" Mr. Peter scoffed in displeasure, folding his arms noisily against the fabric of his shirt. "Why don’t you kids just leave this to the adults, and focus on keeping your friends in line, hm? That hysterical girl made quite a spectacle of herself earlier."
For a split second, Tira saw the vein pop on the neck of their young president. He did not show his annoyance any more than that though, he gave the teacher a gentle smile to cover the minute slip.
Armand and his cronies however, were seething in their seats, fidgeting and ready to pounce if the teacher was about to act any less civil. Even a few teachers seemed to visibly cringe at Peter's thoughtless response.
Considering how he had behaved in the face of danger, Tira wasn’t surprised to see how sleazy he was outside of class too.
It was, however, a surprise to see how hated Peter was by the other people. The amount of hostility had come out of nowhere like an ambush.
"Sir, I thought this meeting was for permanent staff only. Why are you here?" Tira asked out of curiosity, bait to test the waters with him. How low past the bottom line he would cross?
Oblivious he took the bait, his face contorted in anger. "Are you talking back to me?! You—"
She kept herself silent, wanting to hear what absurd excuse he was going to use to dismiss her now that she was no longer staying silent. Her eyes were even, waiting, not pushing further– patience would bear a beautiful fruit.
Yet, instead of the awaited rebuke, his face blanched with fear.
"Tira." Donny called out.
"Yes?"
"Your hair is floating."
Ahh. That explained things. She willed her hair to go down, calmed her emotions as she took a deep, steady breath. Her hair became lax once again, no longer defying gravity.
Dias was hiding his mouth behind his hands, though from the curve of his eyes, he was definitely laughing at her.
She rolled her eyes at him, then returned her focus to the room. "I apologize for the interruption. Please continue."
"Al..right…" Donny went along with her and cleared his throat, returning his attention to the task at hand. "Now, the first issue I noticed is–"
The meeting went on a lot more smoothly after that. One by one, issues were brought up and listed. Most things were small, like the lack of daily necessities outside of food and water. Some other issues were more important, like food stock itself, the dwindling supply of water from the tap, and lastly, the crisis of the refugees camping by the school grounds.
Which gave the student council's president the entryway he needed to discuss yesterday's happenings.
"Now, I’m going to recount the accident that happened last night." Donny put away the handbook he had been holding throughout the meeting to meet everyone's eyes in the silence that had promptly fallen, he continued with a warning.
"And please do not interrupt me before I'm finished talking."
When Donny started to retell and summarized the event that happened last night, many teachers' faces paled or reddened in anger in contrast to the pure terror that mired the juniors' eyes.
Sir Saputra had his hands clenched the entire time Donny spoke, showing quite an admirable amount of self-discipline and unmasked anger. He waited patiently until Donny finished talking before the old teacher speak through his gritted teeth, "Where is that fucker right now?"
"He has been dealt with," Donny replied without missing a beat. "The problem right now is that, despite the short time since the apocalypse began, everyone outside seems to be falling back into a sort of… anarchy. Even those with their houses intact and family surviving are moving into the school in search of protection. Protection that..."
His eyes glanced in her direction for a moment, perhaps looking at her or Dias, she couldn’t quite tell.
"Protection that, quite honestly, we do not actually have."
Unease spread through the room faster than the lightbulb could flicker. Now she was sure that he was looking at Dias, as his next words, once the whispers had increased in volume, were addressed to the demigod. "Sir Dias, would you mind if I asked for your insight on this matter?"
Dias gave a light nod. "I do have something in mind."
The room fell silent once more.
"Before that, I would have to inform everyone here about the rules of the war. On how the game works, in short."
Dias stood up from his seat in slow, deliberate motion, and Tira couldn't fathom how the bastard still appeared graceful doing it. "Firstly, one that I’m sure everyone is aware of, there are beasts that roam the streets. They’re here to hinder, mostly, although annihilation would be a welcome outcome for them.
"Secondly," He plucked a marker from beside the whiteboard and uncapped it while speaking. "These beasts can be kept out via a barrier generated by the touchstone. I’m sure you’ve all seen the thing out in the courtyard. It's one of the many that were scattered across the country."
On the board he drew seven squares, all of which were surprisingly in different colors, despite the marker’s barrel indicating it only contained black ink. From the top, the order of the colors was black, purple, pink, blue, green, yellow, and red.
"These touchstones are in order of the radius that they protect. The strongest one covers one kilometer, while the least capable can only shield a measly one hundred meters." Dias wrote down numbers beside each colored square, indicating how much each touchstone was worth based on the distance it covered.
He added another drawing on the side, a square in the middle of a line, "These barriers aren’t domes, they’re tube-like with a dome cover at the end, covering both the sky and the ground at the same height." The line became the radius, enclosed in a circle.
"Wait you said-" Sir Triya and another female teacher jerked forward. "Elliptical then? Does the same height underground and above mean... "
"It’s five hundred meters each from the center of the stone," the female teacher continued, she squinted at the drawn example in front of the room, tracing the shape in the air with her fingers as she squinted at the diagram, "Why do you need protection from the underground and air?"
"There are killer drones that can fly and also burrow underground." Dias answered as he capped off the marker.
"Drones?" The multimedia teacher looked like she was about to have an aneurysm. "You’re telling me that those bloodthirsty bastards are drones???"
The demigod nodded with a bitter smile, playing with the marker in between his thumbs as he answered. "Drone is the aptest description we have of them. The ones you have are made of metals, and these just so happen to be made of flesh and blood."
Tira found the logic in that explanation a little… wonky, and couldn’t help but tilt her head. He noticed, of course he did and raised an eyebrow in invitation to join the questioning session.
She sighed. No question asked meant no answer told. "Drones? Not golems?"
Dias grinned. She felt like stepping on a minefield as she couldn't tell if he was grinning because she asked or because she found the crux in his explanation or both.
"Describing them as golems wouldn’t be the best because they don’t behave like one would. They act more like swarms. Copy upon copy of one original source, capable of problem-solving according to their order, rather than unique individuals; with consciousness barely reaching that of a dog, at most."
"They do have cores though…" She pointed out. Not exactly a pleasant thing to remember from her rampaging moment. But she still remembered every sickening crack that followed her blades and fist once she managed to penetrate through the outer and inner skeletons of their heads.
"Yes, but again, they have hive-mind behavior," Dias said, shaking his head disapprovingly as he twirled the marker in his other hand. "They don’t carry individual names."
Now it was her turn to raise her eyebrows. He had to be talking about the Jewish type of golems then. "You’re implying that there’s a named boss monster somewhere out there that’s controlling all these… mobs."
"I’m not implying."
Dias scrunched his eyes shut, catching the marker in mid-air without looking at it and kept them shut for a few seconds before he opened them again to wink at her.
The fucking-
Tira suppressed another impolite urge to groan and instead, let her head hang by the seat’s edge, held by her own limp neck. All of that extra energy she had gathered from lunch had evaporated in one go. In a listless voice, she mused aloud.
"Please tell me that the boss won’t respawn after a set time."
"They won’t."
Hearing that answer made her raise her head again, just to study Dias's expression as he continued, "But the mobs would remain. At least until we gain control of enough touchstones for it to matter."
Tira dropped her head back again, this time into her arms, then she curled into her knees. Donny had taken back the speaker's position once more, asked about what they were talking about, sounding confused and almost frustrated before Dias' voice floated around then as he began to explain. The sounds of chatter and confusion slowly drowned away as she tuned them out to think.