The teenage girl stood in front of a room of students who watched her in silence. She felt the pressure build in the unpleasant atmosphere.

Her class teacher stood nearby with a slight smile on his face as he learned against his desk.

It felt even worse when all the students had been issued with manufactured colourful stones and the class teacher had given them both permission and the option to throw them at the girl. They had the right to disagree with her opinion as she was free to express hers.

The class teacher gave a smile and made a gesture toward her before he stepped back.

‘You may now take your opportunity to express your…opinion. Please speak your mind in front of the class.’

Mia nodded. She took a single step forward she gestured with open palms to show that she was calm. She knew that any show of violence would lead to greater violence, at least in theory. By clenching her hands into fists it would show clear signs of how stressful she felt right now.

‘I’m calm and prepared.’ She told herself but her heart was racing.

The thought of everyone turning on her almost made her stomach turn.

If possible, she wasn’t going to shed a tear or show any discomfort. This wasn’t a pitiful attempt at attention, not in her eyes. There was no way that she wanted to give that idiot Trev or his friends the satisfaction to watch her get upset in front of the entire form room.

It’d be the sort of thing that he liked. Although she’d managed to stay under the radar and mainly get by through focusing on her studies the last few months had been pretty hard on her.

Keeping her gaze form Mia glanced toward her home room teacher. He nodded briefly giving her permission to speak, not that he could have stopped her. One of the few benefits in expressing an opinion as strong as she wanted to be that he was literally unable to stop her from saying it out loud. The school priests wouldn’t allow it. They were strict that way.

It was finally time for her to express her deep felt opinions and get the whole thing out there. She felt her heartbeat faster deep inside her chest. Mia clenched her teeth inside her mouth as soon as she had muttered the words.

‘I’m an Atheist. Does it matter so much? I have the right to express my opinion under the rule of the gods.’

At this point, the first manufactured stone was thrown at her. She was fifteen years old at the time, in high school after the school daily worship and belief session when she had been called out by the local priests again for not joining in the daily hymn and prayers to chosen gods.

It wasn’t a conscious act that she made and not a reason for trouble but rather a small act of rebellion from a deep part of her mind that did not want to submit to the worship of a higher-level being.

Her actions had been noticed by a school priest who had mentioned the event to her class teacher, the action prescribed was a request freely asking for her opinion with the class listening and a suitable punishment then considered.

Mia was not a girl who accepted a change in her views despite any peer pressure from either her school, family, or friends. Once she had decided her opinion, she stuck to it regardless of the consequences.

The first rock that was thrown at her was meant to be symbolic, an expression of the strong belief that her fellow students had in the gods that formed the basis of their society. It should have been a soft throw that bounced off her body but instead, it cut through her sleeve on her school uniform and caused a small trace of blood on her arm.

Smack

The sound of the rock hitting her arm had been far harder than she had imagined. It should have been symbolic, in the same sense that putting a paper vote into a ballot showed which political party was an expression of your beliefs. This manufactured rock in particular had been illegally altered to provide it with a single sharp edge.

‘That hurt!’ Mia was determined not to show the pain on her face. This was her opinion and others had no right to convince her otherwise.

A small trickle of her dark red blood was beginning to flow from the altered stone that had been thrown at her. The most popular young man in the class had just hurled it with a wide smile on his face. Mia looked at him for a second before fixing her gaze on the back of the room, just above the heads of the students.

The class teacher whose name was Mr Rictor was an older man in his early forties, his close-cut hair streaked with grey. The suit that he wore was in the middle price range, not too expensive but it would still cost a reasonable part of his salary. Around his neck, he wore a religious symbol showing one of the gods that had been worshipped when the school had first been established.

He nodded his head towards the young man who had just thrown the stone at Mia. His face showed little sign of concern that she was hurt, or if he did, he was able to hide it well.

‘Good throw Trevor. You’ve been practising your throwing arm as expected of one of our top sports students. But I’d appreciate it if you didn’t aim to hurt. Your fellow student has been braving enough to express herself, while we have the right to show our disapproval it does not mean that we have the right to stop her freedom of expression. ’

Trevor grinned even more before sitting back down hard in his seat and folding his arms. He leaned sideways and whispered to a red-haired girl next to him before looking back over his shoulder at the rest of the class. His face was stern as though he was checking if anyone disapproved of his action.

Mr Rictor’s eyes moved towards Trevor before briefly scanning over the rest of the classroom and straightening his posture.

‘Does anyone else want to express their personal opinion which differs from Mia's?’ he asked the whole class.

Mia felt thankful that she was able to express herself in her home room rather than during an entire school assembly. This time it was just the kids in her class who were armed with smaller manufactured soft-shaped rocks with the words Hereticker™ printed on them. The mock rocks had been designed by a company according to regulation standards, you would feel a slight impact when they hit you but as long as they were used in the right manner there should have been no risk of injury.

The school had been given them as part of a sponsorship deal By the regional godsfollower department. It had been a corporate deal through one of the parents in the classroom that were currently reacting. One of the male teenagers at the back of the class decided that shouting out would be a promising idea to show their enthusiasm and dislike for her belief.

‘The heretic deserves to have stones thrown!’

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‘I’m not a heretic. It’s called having the right to express my personal opinion.’

She felt a wave of exhaustion hit her then. The absolute draining feeling that is understood when a person has grown up using chopsticks as a kid and someone notices them eating a bowl of noodles and tells you how skilled you are at using them. Humiliating but if you pointed it out to the person you might come across as rude.

Another stone came hurtling towards her, this time it hit her in the stomach, right where her white school shirt was covering. Thankfully, this one hadn’t been altered in any illegal manner, so it only caused a light effect on her body.

Oof.

Mia didn’t feel any sense of pain from this throw but couldn’t stop her face from showing a reaction.

Not hard enough to hurt but enough to cause a physical response. A different person had been throwing it this time then. A girl this time, carefully aiming at her with another rock in her delicate hand.

‘Sharon or Share was her name. Can’t remember just yet.

She was a good friend of Trevor. It was their parents who had done the sponsorship deal with the school for the manufactured tools. This meant that they were given slightly more leeway from this class teacher as their parent’s influence would make a substantial difference in further school funding.

Mr Rictor leaned back with a wry smile on his face.

‘Not a bad throw Sharle. Please make sure we don’t hit anyone’s face. This is being recorded by the school priests. This is not punishment but a simple expression of our own chosen god-given personal opinion’.

Mia glared at the teacher but kept his mouth tightly shut. When a teacher mentioned a priest, it wasn’t an innovative idea to challenge them. Even having soft rocks thrown at you by potentially an entire was better than facing a religious person who held power and influence. It would lead to further discussion and questions that she was not willing to get further involved in.

‘I’m not a heretic, just an atheist. That means that I don’t believe in the gods, but I can accept that they exist as these amazing, super beings that guide and support us in our society. They’re great and all. ’

This time a stone came, a hair’s breadth from hitting her cheek.

Ah. So, so close.

‘Oops, that was an accident. I swear it was. Sir.’ came the voice of her classmate Trevor.

The rest of the class was in their seats while Mia stood there in front of them. She had the sudden thought that they had just realized that her arm had blood on it. It was leaking into the rest of Mia white school uniform’s long sleeves and was more noticeable due to the light colour of the fabric. That had driven home the fact that a fellow student had been hurt, one of them had caused this injury.

Some of the teenage students turned towards their class teacher as if in expectation for him to call an end to this and were expectant for a punishment to be dealt out to Trevor. This time the teacher had let him go too far with one of his pranks.

Other students had traces of paleness on their faces as they also saw the blood on their sleeves as if they had gone into a state of minor shock.

Mr Rictor raised his voice firmly, then his eyes narrowed, and he finally took notice that a substantial proportion of his class suddenly showed a physical reaction against hurting one of their fellow students. Although he felt that he had been forced to give some allowances to Trevor and Sharle due to their parents’ influence on the school he decided to put a close to the entire session.

‘This will be counting towards your religious quota this week. The school priest will be checking through a recording of this event to make sure that it was done fairly. The class will be dismissed shortly. Then we can finish for the day. Thank you and please don’t forget your prayers towards the god of your choice today. You can pray in your family shrine. If anyone else would like to throw a stone, then please do so but we need to avoid causing unnecessary injury as Trevor did.’

At the mention of his name, Trevor smirked and nudged Sharle who was sitting next to him before fixing his gaze on the door to the classroom. He appeared impatient to finish his class and talk with his other friends in school about this event.

The class teacher gave them a look that was hard to decipher as though he was thinking about how much leeway was needed. He decided on a firm approach which would provide a medium amount of support. In any case, he would be covered.

Gesturing with one hand vaguely in the direction of the young man he spoke.

‘I’ll need you to report to the school office Trevor about your defective rock Trevor. Thank you.’

The smirk vanished from his face as he turned towards Sharle and nodded his head.

Watching his actions Mia had experienced a few of his minor pranks before and how the school had chosen to turn a blind eye to them. She didn’t expect this time to be any different, even though this had been a more serious event.

She patiently stood there in front of her whole class waiting to see if any final rocks would be thrown in her direction. She refused to avoid responsibility and making a bigger deal of the situation by drawing further attention to herself would be worse than actually taking it head-on.

The local regional factory-produced soft rocks had been assessed and evaluated before being released into the education system, although there were many different gods in the world and various opinions meant that conflict would take place people in her home country still stuck to the main principle of freedom of expression.

Only when a class teacher considered a serious situation that needed to be immediately rectified, that they would be permitted to allow a class mock stoning.

Society had been formed around the worship of different gods and although several countries in the world followed a purely secular society and viewed worship as a purely personal affair only, they were still few and far in between.

Gods existed as far back as human history could remember; it was only the form of worship that had changed over time as education and current ideas created further innovations and concepts that could be applied.

Mia thought that the rock that had cut her must have sharpened either in school or prepared in advance as there was no way that it should have cut her. They were like the idea of rubber bullets but far softer, looks like a rock, and the impact looks hard, but it would be no worse than being hit by a foam ball. All edges despite appearance and texture had been altered to be smooth and yielding.

She tried her best to appear expressionless given that the school priest would be viewing a recording of this event after all. Finally, after a few minutes of waiting there was no one else who had decided to throw anything at her.

Hands were lowered and fake rocks were placed back on tables in front of the students. It could have been the fact that she didn’t show a great deal of emotion or react strongly against it, or simply that her class was full of compassionate and kind people who didn’t want to hurt someone else even if the situation allowed for it.

Mia thought it was more likely to be the latter, they could work out their aggression and frustration during sports or watch the demi-god’s competition events instead. She considered it unlikely that a normal person would take it out on someone in their class who had only decided to express an opinion.

Several students thought were the odd ones out though with slightly more aggressive tendencies.

Mr Rictor looked over the rest of the class and let out a soft sigh.

The classroom alert has just rung which meant that it was finally the end of the academic school day. He finally turned towards his student who had been the centre of the mock stoning. He tried not to release a breath that he didn’t realise that he had been holding.

She had chosen to express herself and the best he could do was follow the school guidelines.

The fact that she was injured by a fellow student would show up in the record.

All events were reviewed afterwards by the local priests. He simply hoped that they didn’t want to intervene.

Not this close to his retirement.