*Sigh*

''That was exhausting!''

Melissa was done with her training for today, it was a really long one. She had a stressful day so she had to vent out. Thankfully, she is allowed to use the pool at the school whenever she wants since she wins every competition they sign her into.

Today she had a Math test which went well, but the History quiz was a catastrophe. Writing a cheat sheet for a whole night totally didn't pay off. She will definitely have to repeat it. The English test didn't go so well either. At least Biology and Chemistry should have gone well, but she wasn't able to concentrate.

That morning, right in front of school she got into a fight with her boyfriend. Well; ex-boyfriend from now on. Luckily, she was late for school as usual, so they didn’t have an audience. She never liked that kind of attention and doesn't want to be one of the school's gossips.

At least it's not like they had a good relationship. They were together for a month, but haven't spent any time alone. They only hanged out during lunch time, it's no wonder they split up so soon. That was one of the reasons why he broke up with her. The other was because she didn't put any effort into  their relationship or even tried to find some time for them. At least that's how it looked like from his point of view.

Well, maybe she wasn't that passionate about them... but it's not like she doesn't have emotions and feelings! It's just that she doesn't express them that well… She was so happy that someone actually confessed to her. She even planned their dates in her mind, but she never suggested them to him. Melissa never had any friends, and her boyfriend… ex-boyfriend was the first person who approached her. She still doesn't understand why, though.

Melissa was used to sitting alone during breaks and being just by herself for most of the time. It's not like she is some kind of depressed lone wolf; she is able to establish a good relationship with everybody, but only skin-deep. She never had deeper connections with anyone.

The cause probably lies in all of her time being taken up by training. Her school has a class-changing-system. You start going to school when you turn seven years old and change your classes and classmates every year. Everyone would get together at the beginning of the semester at the time Melissa had preparations for competitions and didn't have any time for making friends. And every year the same thing would happen again and again.

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Now, when she's 17 and doesn't have to train that much, especially because of her unbeatable speed, she has more free time. But by  now everyone has already made friends  and isn't interested in making new ones. Even in the swimming club no one pays any attention to her. Members of the club believe she is conceited because of her success so they ignore her most of the time. Although, it's not like she bothered to change their opinion. Being able to swim was enough for her.

Being in water and swimming always set her mind free. It doesn't matter if she's happy, angry, sad… it is her very own relaxing treatment. And since she had a horrible day today, she stayed until midnight.

Bad decision. Walking home late at night isn't safe these days. There was a report on the news about people disappearing and then reappearing a few days later dead. It was happening all around the world, probably the making of some new crazy sect. She heard it on the TV last night, but didn't pay much attention to it since she had to work on her useless cheat sheet. 

Unfortunately, she remembered only just now. Melissa started to walk faster, ready to run at any second. On her way, she decides to go trough the park. Normal people would probably stick to the main, lighted road and avoid such dark places, but she had a feeling she should take this route. Ever since she was small, she was very intuitive and called this kind of feeling 'listening to her inner self' so she listened to her 'inner self' this time as well.

Everything around her was quiet and she couldn't sense any other presences. She reached the center of the park which has a pavilion. Instead of going forward, something made her go into it.

That was when she saw them.