Freshly showered and clothed, Tira made her way out to the bedroom once more, walking to a view of a demigod sleeping like a log as the first thing that greeted her this morning.
It had been two days since he had locked himself in, and she had given him as much space as she could without sacrificing her guarding duty. Not too hard of a task to do, if she could be honest, considering he did not get out of the magic room at all during his self-imposed lockdown.
There was no noise being produced from the other side of the door, and frankly, she was on the verge of feeling worried. Were it not for their supernatural contract telling her that the man was still alive on the other side of the door, she'd have done something by now.
Since he didn't need to eat in the first place but she did, Tira had to ask for her meals to be delivered at appropriate times; three separate hours of the day and continued guarding the entrance to his room, along with keeping an eye on the meeting being held in the living room in the meantime.
Dias took all the time he needed to sort out his issue, which turned out to be merely forty hours long, before he unlocked the door in the middle of the night, waking her up with the noise, she caught him looking at her in a different way.
A bit distant, somehow, but he still tried to awkwardly talk to her as their eyes met that night; telling her that she could use the room again before ducking away to presumably sleep away the rest of the night.
Seeing that he was indeed asleep right then, looking almost the same even after that little stunt gave her a little sense of calm. Weird, unexplainable, but relieving nonetheless.
Tira took the time to dry her hair this time and after making sure her breakfast order was correct, went back out to guard the door.
It was a very static day, to say the least. No fighting, no scheduled combat training, no improvised use of powers and other shenanigans afoot.
It almost felt like a day off.
Which meant that something was about to go wrong very fast, very soon.
"Good morning." Dias greeted, looking noticeably more exhausted than usual. "I’ll get dressed, then we can get breakfast…" The man yawned mid-speech but continued once he had exhaled a long deep breath, "Your breakfast. What's on the menu today?"
"I’ve got it covered." She took the chance to inform him of her ongoing situation with the kitchen. "Food is getting delivered here. You can ask what you want from the person delivering the food."
Dias’ face fell, for some reason, his eyes turning a bit distressed as his smile turned awkward. "Ah, I…"
He did not continue.
She waited.
Minutes later, after a bit of grimacing and a fast shake of his head, perhaps finally making up his mind, Dias finally looked at her properly with a small frown. "I’m sorry for inconveniencing you."
"It wasn’t much, I got used to things quickly." She shrugged back in response, attempting to sound as light-hearted as possible, "Just going down the hallway to the toilets won’t kill me, and it’s not like humans need to bathe that often."
The joke obviously did not land. Dias’ expression lines turned sadder instead.
She gave him the least threatening smile she could muster, one made she managed to settle on after lots of practice by the end of the hall mirror, in the hope of convincing the man out of his newly found slump once he got out of his room. "You were upset and needed space and time off to deal with it. That is not an inconvenience. It’s just a thing."
"...A thing."
"Yes, a thing, a very important thing." Tira reiterated. Curse her mouth and her limited vocabulary. She might have to go and find a dictionary to eat after this. "Even if it was for a reason that I cannot understand, which I don’t really need to, all I need to know is that you are dealing with something important and it mattered enough to you that you had to deal with it in the first place. That’s all there is."
Dias scrunched his brows. She could sense a little bit of hope in his voice, but also, a dash of careful fear in his eyes as he asked again. "So you were… not mad at me for throwing a tantrum by myself?"
"Mad? No. Worried, perhaps."
Why would she be mad at him? That didn’t make any sense. Dias hasn’t done anything to warrant getting angry over this week, and she hoped to make that clear. "What would I be mad at you for also being mad? That’s unproductive."
"Oh. Oh! Ha...Hahaha!"
As if he just realized it, the gasps turned into laughter, softer than what she would have expected to come out of a guy like him, but somehow, the soft exhale of breaths felt oddly fitting on his gentle face. "I see. I suppose I was overthinking it, huh?"
"...Should I be privy to the reasoning that led you to that outcome?" She asked, now having shifted her 'perhaps' to 'kinda worried' about the fact that they had just had a big enough misunderstanding without her realizing it was happening in the first place.
"No, no, it’s not you! My bad." He wiped the corner of his eyes, even though they were tearless as a new blush of red on his cheeks made him appear healthier.
"I’m… sorry for locking the room when I got pissed off yesterday, despite the promise you can use it anytime you want..."
"Apology accepted." She gave the man a nod when the knocking came just in time and headed to the door to fetch what should be the arriving breakfast. "Now let's—"
Unexpectedly, the ones who stood on the other side of the door were Devy and Hannah, their hands empty, without a single plate of food. But their faces shone with a thin layer of sheen.
And both looked pale with panic.
"Um, sorry!" Devy apologized immediately. She had let the surprise leak out and, realizing it sooner this time, had turned her face to neutral again before continuing. "There’s been an emergency."
Knew it. The day was too peaceful to be true. "What is it?"
"Can you come with– Actually, can you both please come? The situation at Uni A was kind of intense a-and–" Devy had looked even more panicked as time passed and Hannah was out of breath from running...
No time for an explanation then.
"Dias?"
The man had somehow, in that short span of time, changed into his suits and all prepped up. His expression steeled into a look of stern urgency that shocked her more to the point that she didn't have the time to question the quick-change ability he just displayed.
"Let’s go."
They rushed out of the room, the two of them took to the edge of the corridor for two separate reasons. Sprinting up to the ledge, Dias offered his hand as they ran, right before they both jumped off.
"It’s faster if I fly us there!"
Since they were in a hurry, she took his hands and felt her body lighten, reminiscent of the first time she launched herself from the fifth floor, and immediately calmed herself down as her feet took off from the ground.
The ground was blurring at the speed they were going, much faster than her running did, as they were truly beelining straight to A University without having to take any turns.
"Remind me to ask for your full set of skills once we’re done with this!" Tira roared over the extremely pressing wind.
Hearing the man laugh, Tira knew that the chance he would remind her would be reduced to 50%, but it was nice to hear him laugh unreservedly again before they had to go to a presumed battle.
Only about a minute passed. That was all the time it took before they had arrived at the university, still maintaining altitude to see exactly what the emergency was about—clarifying the situation as best as they could from the bird's eye view.
Hundreds of students were holding some kind of protest, with boards and signs and the like were upraised with various demands. There were yells, a cacophony of noise that, if she were to enhance her hearing at the moment, would potentially give her a headache from the sheer volume.
The mob, made up of about a hundred or more people, were marching in line. A big, tangled mass of force that had gathered around a small, huddled group, like a horde of ants circling their food.
Leading from the front was, of course, Purnama.
On the other hand, being the prey, were the other half of the students, a few faculty members and the rest of the generals, standing up front to fend off the mobs from the cowering and visibly upset staff members under their command.
"I didn't expect to see students protesting." She commented dryly. She truly was not expecting to see a semblance of protest being pulled literally at the end of the world. "Though I can't say I'm entirely surprised."
Dias pulled them over to the rooftop, following the shadow of a passing cloud as to not alert the observant people below and remarked just as they landed with an amused smirk on his lips. "It could be worse; he could have rallied the masses to do a midnight assassination attempt?"
"-AND WE WILL NOT SETTLE FOR LESS UNTIL—"
"I don't think he would." Tira was assured enough of that fact that she was confident in saying it out loud. Taking a seat by the ledge and listening to the demands being shouted by the speakerphone, she continued her hypothesis. "If he was careful enough to start a smear campaign when there were finally enough cases against us, he probably wouldn't want his public image to get tainted. It seems to be the most important thing to him so far, though I couldn't understand why."
"Enough cases..." Dias muttered and then gave her a worried glance, "Did you do this on purpose?"
"No. It wasn’t my plan, exactly, but.."
"THE TRUTH MUST COME OUT! I REPEAT–" Purnama gathered another round of breath into his lungs before he shouted all of said air unnecessarily into the megaphone. "WE WILL NOT STOP OR REST UNTIL THOSE TYRANTS BEHIND YOU EXPLAIN THEMSELVES ABOUT WHAT IS HAPPENING!!!"
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Tira focused her power into her eyes, to watch the scene below as the blurry images turned clear, holding back her impulse to smile as she crouched behind the edge.
"Let's just watch the show."
Henry strode forward from the barricade that had kept the line so far and spoke in a loud but even tone, matching his opponent's voice with only the power of his lungs. "We have told you the truth about what happened to Professor Jaya. He passed away from exhaustion and lack of sleep. What more are you asking for?"
Purnama put down his megaphone as he lowered his hands to signal for the other students to be quiet. It took about a minute for the noise to cease, which he took with a great amount of patience, before starting his argument. "Exhaustion and lack of sleep that you caused, you mean? I know that you had asked him to not sleep, looking over those three boys until he himself landed on the bed?!"
"Those patients were afflicted with weird symptoms, Purnama." Henry kept his calm and countered the debate with half-truth reasoning, "We're barely getting by as it is already, not to mention the lack of medical personnel and supplies—we cannot risk a plague or outbreak happening right now!"
Purnama didn't back down and instead doubled down on Henry's lacking answer. "That didn't give you the right to hide the situation from us! What would we do if one of us caught this so-called mysterious illness and thought, ‘Oh, maybe this is just the flu! I’ll sleep it off, it's fine!’ and then it turns out not to be for the rest of us.
"How are you going to justify blocking important information about a potential outbreak when we’re already, as you said, not doing so well, hm?"
"We didn't want to inflict a mass panic until it was confirmed to not be a flu variant." Henry calmly retorted as he took another breath, his glare locked onto Purnama with conviction coming out of his voice. "There's already enough on our plates. Between the mysterious creatures, the mass murders and then, food shortages. There wasn't enough time for the rest of us to catch a break, exactly, was there?"
"Of course we’re not getting any breaks. How many of you are actually deciding the schedule for the mass to follow, huh? Working our prestigious and respected teachers to the bone?", Purnama prodded the conversation in another direction, still looking for gaps through which he could attack his opponent.
Henry didn't take the bait and pushed out a reasonable factor for his question. "The staff are the ones deciding our schedule and what work is available that day since it is their job. Even before this entire thing happened, they were the ones to make the calls on what to do at what time because that is what they were good at, Purnama, that was what they studied and worked for years… And while there are a few students in the ranks, they’re volunteering out of necessity due to a lack of helping hands and were chosen based on capabilities first and foremost."
"And before you ask, no, we are not going to allow the bodies of those recently deceased to be open for public mourning as the families of the bereaved have requested us to handle that matter privately. After all, today was supposed to be the day we held the memorial service. And you,"
Henry put the emphasis on Purnama's self as thick as he could when he got the chance, dripping with unmistakable venom, "-were the ones who have pushed that back with this show of protest, and for what? To satisfy your own conspiratorial, inquiring mind about the recent happenings?"
A little grin made its way onto Purnama’s face, as his fiery demeanor seemed to cool down a bit in their debate. "Alright, I'll agree, that's an acceptable reason. But let me ask you about another issue we have that hasn't been addressed this entire time."
"I know that you had told everyone that the world was ending, that a man parading around claiming himself a demigod had made the barrier and said that he would keep us safe. We accepted that reasoning at the time, filled with grief and confusion, barely able to question it because of the tragedy that had befallen us all leading to that. But now that the majority of us have recovered, let me ask you...
"How are you so sure?"
Henry did not answer back immediately this time, giving his opponent's side the chance to reason, to see if there would be more chinks in the argument he could strike back with. She noted that he didn't look pleased at all with having to observe them in silence, if the slight twitching of his brows was evidence enough.
"How are you so sure that he just appeared one day and is supposed to be our savior? Has there never been a single doubt that what we’re experiencing is exclusive to this part of the city alone?"
Purnama covered a bit of his mouth to hide a… smirk? A smile? Though it didn't matter even if he covered it; his mocking tone has been doing the heavy lifting now. "You can’t honestly believe that the entire world ended and we somehow were the only ones surviving in this country, right? What if the military and the rest were fine out there, trying to get in and could not, because of the line of creatures that were ready to torment them to shreds and stopped them had camped by the barrier?"
"There was no guarantee that those who had run in could go back out safely, is there?"
Purnama pushed one last time with a look of arrogance painted on his face, though only for a moment, when his lips were close to Henry's ears, so his voice was made very hard to hear. "Or are you going to prove the danger once again by kicking other dissenters out by voting within your little council, once more?"
A cold chuckle came from behind Henry, catching the attention of the bickering two and the hundred sets of eyes on the source. Donny, the source of said laughter, smiled gracefully by the side of Gunawan and Armand, who had protected Lydia and Rina, by the looks of things. "I mean, you’re welcome to try it yourself, senior. I’d accompany you if you want, just so we can both be sure. "
"And let myself be killed with a stab in the back?"
Purnama shifted his attention to Donny, looking down on the taller high schooler with a metaphorical sense of superiority, one that she could sense all the way here from the rooftop. "You all can kill people with just a vote session. Why do I even have to trust you at all, to begin with? Your people withheld food from the masses; medicine from the sick; and as if that was not even enough, you hoarded electricity from the rest of us without telling the world."
In response to the symphony of shocked gasps that ran behind him, Purnama spread his arms in a gesture of openness. "That’s right! You all thought that we are having it bad? No, that was only the beginning. These people were so desperate to maintain their power over every available resource; that they even sacrificed one of their own students to the bed of this theoretical savior of ours! Just so they can sleep with their AC on!!"
"Excuse me?"
"What?!"
"A student...?! Poor girl!"
Tira had an urge to shake her head from this farce of a show, then remembered that their hands were still interlinked as she felt the other person clench back hard enough for her to notice. Dias was not glaring, nor were his lips frowning. He looked no different from his usual face if one couldn't sense the silent anger rolling out of his eyes alone.
She squeezed the gloved hand in sympathy.
Dias was holding himself back well. And when he finally realized the thing he was gripping was not just his own hands, that anger dissipated and, in a mix of pain and surprise, he let go of his grip with a guilt-filled apology. "Sorry…"
"It’s fine, I’ll live." She massaged her right hand, flexing it so the blood flowed back to each digit. "Let’s go down. I don’t think your bed was worth that much hype, honestly."
That, for some reason, had sent Dias into a panicked sputter. "Aph-buh- heha wha– Huh?!"
Tira did not wait for him to say anything more. She had already made her way down via a simple step off the edge. Transformed into her full battle gear during the descent and, as suspected, felt her speed reduce significantly from a body mass to that of a feather fall.
Silently, her bare feet touched the earth. Warm, blazing hot asphalt, though it did not truly burn her skin, aside from being a general reminder of temperature that she could ignore at the moment.
Her entrance had spooked the majority of the people who were about to rally in anger after hearing that baseless provocation. In this form, with the veil thrown over her head and face, surprise was not going to be enough to get the situation under much-needed control.
Throwing the veil over to the back of her head so she could see the world a little clearer as her face was now only covered with her hair alone, Tira walked to where the crowd mostly gathered and did not react as they opened the path, showing the two pillars at the center of this rather mindless, useless confrontation.
She ignored the second tap on the ground behind her back, using her diaphragm and her cupped hands as a makeshift amplifier, Tira confidently projected the worst insult she could think of-
"Just because I eat pussies better than you doesn’t mean you get to be salty about it, Purnama!"
Nobody. Moved. Not a single noise or rustle was produced. All sound became still. The wind stopped blowing as dried leaves flew through the air on their momentum as if the world had forgotten to breathe.
Time and space had stopped out of sheer shock.
Purnama, who had been looking as if he was in control this entire time, and his lips twitched. "Wha—?"
"Look, I get it. You think I cuckolded your relationship with your bestie because I just somehow came out of nowhere at the corner of Ten-Eleven while she was waiting for you and asked her out on a date. MAYBE I was at fault because I did not know you were planning to confess that day."
She kept walking forward with even steps, not once pausing the tirade so that nobody could jump in on the flimsy rail she just built. Channelling the inner bully emulated from months of careful observation with as much swagger and confidence that she could muster, she made sure that all the attention of the masses, no matter how prickly and painful it felt, would focus on her.
Sorry, and most of all, thank you, Chia, for the example. "But guess what? She was not into you! All I had to do was ask her after she got eaten out for the first time and she spilled the beans on how creepy you were being about it. Not cool!"
"I DON’T HAVE A GIRL FRIEND!!" Purnama yelled back, red-faced in both anger and shame. "I DON’T EVEN KNOW YOU?!!"
"Oh, really?" She asked, putting her hand over her gasping mouth, tuning her voice to sound confused and shocked. "Then why am I always seeing you around all the time I was outside the school? I was kind of assuming you were going to take revenge or something, with all the weird looks you’re giving me."
Purnama laughed bitterly as he combed his hair back, sweat wetting his temples and glistening on his skin. His voice nearly cracked as he yelled, "This is slander! What proof do you have?!"
"That you don’t have a girlfriend?" She raised her pitch, as if puzzled as to why that was the question that he had chosen to ask.
"THAT I AM STALKING YOU!"
Tilting her head to the side, Tira made her tone sound even more bamboozled, as if his reaction was something she hadn't expected to receive. "I didn’t say you were stalking me—oh god, was it you all along?!!"
Purnama was unable to defend himself because his supporters had been shaken by the disastrous dramatic display of a girl accusing him of what should have been a justice-seeking protest leader as heartbroken, a minor stalker, and a pathetic guy.
The man was good enough to not go into an immediate panic, despite his eyes shaking a couple of times before he settled it down in seconds, though she could sense the rage building up under his tone as Purnama nearly growled. "You’re putting words in my mouth. Don’t think I don’t know—
"Actually, she didn’t."
Donny had acquired a spare megaphone and spoke into it, once again commanding the attention of the masses as they wanted to hear what he had to say.
"As I was trying to say previously, while we appeared to be holding electricity, it was because most of it was directed to important facilities such as the newly taken-over supermarket to preserve the food and also, the emergency field hospital building. We are not going to lie and say that everyone will get electricity equally, because our resources are limited in that regard, but you all are free to use those two facilities as they are open for public use."
"One of those public uses includes, of course, the charging of electronic devices and security cameras." Pulling out the notebook he had been carrying around for days, Donny opened the false cover and showed off to the masses facing him a set of printed photos. "Tell me this is not you, because unless you have a twin, this is clearly your face, Purnama."
The photos were small, about A6 size, but it was enough for those standing at the front to see as the images were sharp and in color. Photos of Purnama, stalking Tira on the way to the bathroom. Purnama, having kept a close distance observing Tira in the park, hid from the view of other people as he chewed his nails.
The last picture was not related to the case of Purnama's stalking, but it was an image of him, on the second floor window of the campus at night. With low lighting that would suggest it being tastefully composed, the picture looked like a photo shoot of an advertisement.
Faster than one could blink, Donny pulled those photos back from the hands that were about to take them, putting them closer to his chest, away from the accused who had attempted to snatch them with panic painted on his face. "Ah, sorry, this was evidence of him murdering another student, why did this got mixed up…?" Not looking sorry whatsoever.
A female student on the protester’s side rushed forward, snatching the picture from Donny’s hands, on which he let her go. She trembled whilst looking at them, perhaps noticing the details at a closer look, then, with reddened eyes and a flaring nose, she screamed at Purnama's face with all her might as she tried to maul him.
"YOU LIAR!!"
"Rosa–"
"YOu told me, you told all of us that Olivia’s death was suspicious! You said you were going to find out the truth!!" She tried to lunge at him, but some of her classmates stopped her, not out of concern for Purnama; their eyes showed that it was for her, not him. "My friend– You KILLED MY FRIEND!!!"
"This is sham evidence!" He barked back, now clearly backed into a corner with a murder accusation, those eyes had shaken more than once with clear panic and scream tinted with dread. "With how much power they hold, you think these people can’t fabricate evidence?! Think!"
"Maybe, that is indeed a possibility!" Lydia pipes from the sideline, smiling as she crosses her arms and steps forth. "It is indeed a possible reason, if only the photo was taken by one of us, that is."
"We would have loved to bring the guy who photographed this in the first place to get some backing, but sadly, he’s no longer able to testify. Having passed away just three days ago. But thankfully, there was someone else who saw the picture, someone who can attest to the authenticity of the photographer."
Lydia turned to her back, eyes locking onto someone who had been standing by her side the entire time, calling out a name so sweetly that it sounded sickening to the ears. "Isn't that right, Nina?"
Nina moved past the invisible line; the badge dangling on her neck this time was red, Uni A’s color. She looked upset, angry, and at the same time, afraid. But the girl did not stop her steps or her voice when asked. "You all know who I am, and for my friends, you know that my.. My boyfriend, Eka, was majoring in photography."
Seeing the nods of her friends, she continued with her speech. "A week ago, he came by at night, and my roommates can testify that he asked me to keep his camera safe. I asked him what was going on, but he did not explain, only saying that it would be a surprise and if I could help with it, he would be grateful. I didn’t want to question it, and so I kept the camera with me."
"But then Intan, you said—" looking into the eyes of the girl named Intan with teary eyes, "you said I should look into it, see what he’s hiding. I tried to copy the data to my phone so he wouldn’t get suspicious… And I was so curious...
"I copied the data, but I forgot about it after a night's sleep, and when we came back to our room, the entire place was ransacked." Nina held back a sob as she took deep breaths, "The camera was gone, among other things, but I still have the data! The phone was broken and I thought Eka would be mad if he found out about it, but I didn’t even get to.. I didn’t even get to— hic!"
Surrounded by her roommates in a hug, they formed a protective line between her and Purnama, whom they already regarded as their enemy the moment Nina had to come out of the line. So do the rest of the students, finding their sides no longer so righteous, and slowly but surely, one by one, they put down their signs.
With each signboard going down, the mask of that white, pure moon, slowly cracked; starting from the edges. Perhaps the impact of the photos would not have been so hard on him if only there had been no one else who took responsibility for the photos. If only he could scream that the photos were edited, which only one actually was if only to make its framing better to have them both in a single shot.
It didn't matter that a girl had accused him of stalking out of nowhere, or that he was questioning the authority over the lies--his other crime involving the murder of one of their own students had taken precedence.
"Hahaha! So this is how low you will sink to? Planting false evidence, accusing someone in broad daylight– Did you think we are so stupid to fall into your plan?!"
Pointing to Dias, his face still holding out that last rope of hope, he threw out one last accusation. "You! You who have involved the masses in a war we do not wish to participate in! There was no excuse for you to declare yourself holy for what war you’ve conscripted us to!!!"
Dias, with all the grace of a man who was very pissed off just moments ago, answered with extreme calmness. "I do not force you to fight for me. You are allowed to live in this dome as long as you want. In fact, if you wish to be removed from my banner, I will grant that freedom to you."
"And for those who do not wish to be involved in a bid of blood, I suppose the time where it all becomes clear is around the corner..." He glanced up at the ground, at his own shadow, approaching a dot from the angle of the sun shower right above them all.
"Now."