‘Thank you for expressing your personal opinion. We will pray for you to reach an understanding between your expression of free opinion and respect for the gods. This event has been recorded and will be viewed by the school priests afterwards. If you would please wait for me afterwards I would appreciate it. Thank you again for your efforts in demonstrating a brilliant example of free will that is truly treasured by our society.’

Then he turned his keen attention toward the rest of the class. The expressions on their faces gave him the impression that he had an either made a mistake or caused emotional or psychological offence. The school priests would simply review the material and pass their own judgement.

He hadn't acted emotionally or out of order, simply followed protocol according to strict educational guidelines. Not that a student had ever behaved as strange as the girl Mia had during his entire time in the school.

Time to wrap this up, make sure I'm covered and only a few short weeks until my full retirement. I didn't need this. What's wrong with her today?

Out of all of the students inside his class she was usually the balanced adjusted one who worked well enough with others and kept fairly quiet at the back. There was no way he was going to discuss the events of today with her parents though. He'd let the priests deal with the fallout and next actions to take.

‘Now that our class stoning has ended, please make sure to put the Hereticker rocks back into the supplied container boxes by the entrance once you leave. They will be checked and cleaned by the school.’

The bell then rang signalling the end of class and the opportunity to finish lessons for the day.

‘The school day has finished, remember that our society welcomes expression of opinion and free speech according to the will of the gods. Feel free to pray to the selected god of your choice at your household shrine. The regional demi-god competition events will be happening next month as well. Remember to finish your assigned work, have a nice weekend and I’ll see you all back in school on Monday morning’.

The class made a great deal of noise as they began to chat, grab their bags and head out of the class. Thirty-odd teenagers were looking forward to the weekend or attending their after-school activities.

As he was walking out Trevor made a deliberate point to bump into Mia before dropping his altered rock by her feet rather than in the designated box by the door. She still didn’t think that he was a bad person, but she still disliked him regardless of his thoughtless action. He wasn’t worth her time getting annoyed at, that would be an effective way to be further noticed by the rest of the class and she wasn’t an attention seeker.

Mia kept standing at the front of the class waiting for everyone else to leave and for this minor punishment to be finished. This was the first time that expressing her personal opinion had her facing a class stoning.

I’m finally getting what maturity is meant to mean. Mum would be pleased I’m becoming a young adult.

At fifteen years old she had felt that you gradually faced less leeway because her opinion and actions were meant to have more of an effect on society. After this it would be the priests contacting my parents and having to sit down and review the footage again, it shouldn’t be such a big deal though as I had been a good student and just taken it.

Just take it. Like a model student.

‘…hello? Did you hear me?’ It turned out that Mr Rictor had been standing in front of her in a now-empty classroom.

‘Yes, Mr Rictor. I apologize for my behaviour in front of the class and renounce my claim of atheism. I do not want to be known as a heretic. Punishment will fall upon me from the gods if I do not consider my actions upon my household and my community.’

Her class teacher looked a little shocked for a moment at her carefully considered response. A trace of emotion flashed through his eyes too fast for Mia to catch.

‘I was asking if you wanted your wound treated by the school apothecary before we have a chat. Does it not hurt?’

Looking down at her arm Mia realized that it was still bleeding slightly. The blood had dropped onto the floor of the classroom but given that the front of classes was often covered in absorbent sand-type material that wasn’t such an issue. The smell of religious incense would cover the smell of any blood that stayed.

‘No, it’s fine.’

Mia bent down to pick up the sharpened mock rock that had fallen by her feet.

‘This one seems to have been damaged, could be a malfunctioning product. I’m sure that it wasn’t deliberate. Don’t worry about it. Would you like to check it to make sure Mr Rictor?’.

She held out the rock that still had a small part of blood on it to her teacher. If he was willing to watch one of his students get hurt in his classroom, then surely, he deserved to have a little blood on his hands. All of this was being recorded anyway and a designated school priest would be reviewing the entire situation afterwards for response and adhering to current school protocols.

Will he or won’t he take it?

It was one thing to be a teacher in front of a classroom of eager students when he was in a position of authority but another to accept that an actual person under your charge had been hurt and you failed to take an appropriate response towards it.

Will he accept a stone with blood on it when he’s being recorded?

In the end, his hesitation won out against his principles. The teacher put his hands behind his back and straightened up as though he has just remembered that he was in a respected profession and a position of authority. Not a person who had just induced an act of mock violence on a young student under his charge. At the least, Mia thought that he would be feeling some sense of shame from his actions. It wasn’t something that she planned to discuss with her parents.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

‘You can place that damaged item on the top of the stack in the box by the door, please. I apologize that you were injured by a faulty item and as your class teacher, I will be taking full responsibility for your injury. Trevor will be reporting to the school office regarding this event.’

Huh. Nothing much then.

She wasn’t planning to make a big issue out of it either and stood there listening to him with one hand on her arm and the hurt arm holding the manufactured rock.

‘You may notify your parents and the priests that I think you did a fantastic job in expressing your personal opinion in front of the entire classroom. That was a very brave act indeed. You should feel proud of your actions.’

I’ll be prouder if my parents don’t need to be involved.

In the end, he turned out to be a reasonable teacher. Every classroom always ended up with some students being more favoured than others, she did think that he had appreciated that she didn’t make a great deal about her injury, and nor did make any accusations towards Trevor or Sharle.

Everyone else in the class just decided to go with the flow and just follow their moral grounding which was to disagree with my opinion by holding up a manufactured rock in a threatening manner.

She didn’t see any reason to argue with him anyway or cause an issue. One thing that she had learned from her parents was that shouting and getting angry didn’t often solve a situation. She might not be mature enough for her teachers but keeping calm and collected was the best way to avoid any further action or interest being taken against me by either my home room teacher, classmates, or the school priests.

‘Thank you, Mr Rictor. I appreciated the chance to express my personal opinion about the gods. Can I go now? I’d like to go home.’

He hesitated for a moment before responding with a smile.

‘You can. Please remember that the local priests will be viewing a recording of the message and may be in contact with you later if they have any further questions about your strong personal opinion. You can skip your assignment on the nature of the demi-gods in sports competitions. I’ll just mark you down as having passed as given your experience you’ve certainly given the rest of the class a great deal to pray on. The best thing is to go back home and get some rest, eh? Have a great weekend and I’ll see you back in class on Monday.’

Mia dropped the slight blood-covered fake rock into the container by the classroom door. She then walked to her desk and grabbed her backpack below it containing her things. Before leaving the room, she turned her head and stared into the camera that had been fixed on the front entrance of each classroom.

Giving it a blank look, she left realising that there was no point in further drawing attention to herself, but it was worth it to make sure that the school priest realized at least that Mia knew that her actions had been recorded and would be checked.

Once she was outside of the classroom Mia quickly grabbed her arm, finally letting herself feel the pain and releasing a heavily suppressed groan. Her hand came back with a small streak of blood on it, and she realized that the cut still hadn’t stopped bleeding yet. It hurt, but not so badly that she couldn’t move it.

Taking a closer look, it didn’t look deep but the fact that the cut hasn’t stopped bleeding yet meant that what had cut her had a sharper edge than originally felt. The adrenaline rush had stopped her from feeling the pain initially. The wound felt odd somehow, a small injury shouldn’t have kept on bothering her for so long, but this did.

Mia felt that she should be thankful that the idiot didn’t hit her face. Non-existent gods knew where he sourced the rock or arranged for it to be placed there. It was more likely that he had used his parent’s money and influence to make it happen, it had been enough that he would be reported to the school office, but she didn’t consider that anything would come out of it.

A minor warning and a probationary period before he had to make offerings to the school gods was all that would happen. She didn’t think that Trevor had a genuine problem with her, she wasn’t unlikeable in school and tried to get on with others and be friendly enough while keeping to herself.

It was more likely he saw an opportunity for him and Sharle to gain some brownie points with the school priest and further reinforce his religious position and gain a good impression from his rich father. It turned out to be hard for her but a good opportunity for him, hopefully now that the incident was over, she wouldn’t have to deal with any further interaction with him.

Mia considered Trevor to be an opportunist more than a troublemaker. He had simply seen her as a chance to declare a strong opinion and make his parents happy with her actions. She had seen it before several times when students who diverged from normal values were chosen as targets, sometimes it was teenagers who had a minor interest in foreign gods.

Any student who could build up a pious reputation and a harsh attitude towards any would-be heretics would be given points for the fast-track program to become a Seeker. The priests who hunted down and discovered any traces of heresy in all its forms, not that it existed much these days. On the news, there were sometimes reports or rumours through social media of gatherings that had been broken up or some arch-heretic who had been found and punished but she didn’t believe in it.

Given that these days most news and information focused on what happened inside a country it was hard to tell what was going on in the wider world. Regional and local events took priority except where the main gods were involved. Not that Mia believed in the gods, not really. At least not in the sense that they existed as divine beings.

As a kid in primary school, she remembered seeing a picture of a person hanging from a building looking up to the sky like they were expecting to be rescued or something. The words underneath it had stuck in her mind.

‘Don’t pray for a flying person to come down from the heavens and save you. You won’t like the result.’

Mia liked the style image and it kind of stuck with her as she grew older and started to think more about the nature of the gods and how many people had expectations of them. Like, how people were meant to live their whole life praying to these beings which could exist but most of their work was protecting us from the influences of foreign gods.

It did strike her as strange that she remembered that thought at this particular time. Her arm ached again as if to remind her of the importance of that particular memory. Still, it had been entirely her opinion that had created the whole situation anyway. Her thoughts remained her own.

She could accept the fact that there were beings who had power and influence over my society, even over the whole planet. That was the same principle for any leader of a civilization, elected or otherwise. It was all the religious beliefs around it that Mia didn’t agree with, humans were meant to deal with other humans.

The idea that gods were watching over her country’s society to protect them from other foreign gods from different regions of the world felt ridiculous. That might have been what got her into trouble in the first place, but she lived in a country that promoted and allowed for freedom of thought and expression.

She felt a sense of wrongness about the whole thing as though humans weren’t meant to have gods living over them in the first place. This kind of thinking was what created the situation in school. Thankfully, this was only the first time that it had happened though. Mia didn’t want to think about the next set of consequences of her actions.

This main issue was what was going to get her into trouble at school and in her personal, and home life. Mia’s parents although slightly supportive didn’t clearly understand the ramifications of her actions. That was why when she finally got home later that day, she didn’t expect what would be happening next, an old uncle turning up who her parents argued with. The first step would be leaving the school without being overly noticed though.