“Tick tock—”
The classroom was mostly silent, sans the whispers of the kids who decided it would be a good idea to ignore the teachers warning to be quiet and wait for the daily announcements.
“Tick tock—”
The clock was the only thing in the room seemingly louder than the students, it was a symbol of both freedom and slavery for most of my classmates as it was the last day of the week while also being the first day of school.
“Tick tock—”
I couldn’t stop myself from looking around the room. It was the first day so I had to relearn my classmates 3/20th I already knew, which was higher than normal.
“Tick tock—”
The clock wrung again and with it came the buzz of the speakers. “Good afternoon everyone.” The voice of the principle overpowered the clock, and the rest of the class for that matter. “I hope you all enjoyed the first day of school, what you’ve experienced today was only a slither of things to come…”
He went on, talking about the plans for the coming week. I looked around the class once more, only half of the people in the room were paying attention, I wasn’t one of them. I looked out the window to see the late summer sky, and the somewhat busy streets. The scenery screamed “Small urban town,” when it was anything but that.
“— and for further updates on that, be sure to check the online portal.” The principle seemed to be finishing up. with the speaker’s silence came the sound of my classmate’s whispers, as well as the omnipresent clock’s ticking.
“Tick tock—”
The clock read 1:57, we’d be free after just three more minutes. Of course… that never happened, no soon as the clock ticked once more, a chipper and feminine voice suddenly appeared in my mind:
“WELCOME: PART ONE!
Hello everyone! The world as you know it is about to end, so to be nice, we’ve decided to give you all some last couple hours of peace…
Oh wait what? Give them 3 minutes?
Ok, we start the countdown…now!
2:59…
2:58…”
Most of my class was freaking out, and, I could even hear the skeptical babble of some of my close classmates, like a boy with messy hair next to me:
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
“T-there’s no way this is actually happening, this, this is like that Manga series I read!” he stopped for a second to face palm, sending his voice into his mouth making him hard to hear. “B-but I’m not generic enough to be a main… what if I die right away!?”
“2:45…”
He noticed that I was staring at him and freaked out a little. “You didn’t, hear that, did you?” I shook my head “No” to not make the situation more useless. “A-anyway, do you have idea what to do?” I looked at him blankly and simply shook my head again. But he was right, I needed a short term game-plan until I could properly gauge the situation, so I put my head down and tried to think.
“2:30…”
“2:29…” I started counting down with the disembodied voice, to get my mind in a Rhythm. “2:28…” but the more I thought about it, the less this situation made sense. “2:27…” so instead of actually thinking up anything, I decided to discretely gather up my stuff.
My classmates were still freaking out, even more so as the girl counted down. Although, in the sea of panic, there was one guy, in the center of the room, seemingly ignoring the voices around and inside him and saying things like: “HAH, nah, this ain’t really happening, after all this is the real world, right Mana?” the girl he was talking to give him a blank stare and responded to him after a second .
“Nick sometimes I think you’re both blind, deaf and an idiot all at the same time.”
“2:13…”
The guy, Nick, continued to argue his point: “be quiet mana, if this was a real issue don’t you think the principle would have said something?”
The girl, ‘Mana’, looked irritated now. “Yeah sure, ignore the voice in EVERYBODY’S heads.”
“2:05…”
I stopped paying attention to my classmates at this point, looking around the room for any sort of weapon, just in case it came to that. I found nothing. However, I did find something else important, next to the door, was an old closet that would be hard to notice, because of the fact that the door to the closet in question was the same color of the wall. I walked in.
“1:25…”
I hid in the small room for about ten seconds before realizing that someone else was in the room with me. And that person was Anna, one of the few people I knew from last year, and a friend. “Why are—” she cut me off while looking towards me and wiping her eyes.
“Everyone’s…being loud…a-and there’s a voice in my head!”
“1:15…”
“L-like that!” she was loud, which was something she never normally did. I put my finger up to my mouth, intending to calm her down.
“I have a plan” I lied.
“Really?”
“yep.” Not really.
“What is it?” this girl was pulling at me.
“uhhh so.” I grasped at the closest thing to my mind. “We’re going to stay in here, and wait for something to happen, and either run for our lives, or counter attack if need be.”
She was about to comment on my ingenious plan but got cut off by the voice.
30 seconds remaining… hope you have you lives together!
I don’t know where 45 of those seconds went but it seems as if times about up. “Our lives together’?!” Anna was worried. “What’s going to happen to us?!” I gave her a blank stare. I honestly had no idea what was about to happen to us, but I already put on the brave facade so it would be dumb to turn back now.
“0:00… times up!
Ok, everyone it’ll take about 30 seconds for our meddling to finalize!
Until then, please enjoy the extremely painful migraines we’ve prepared for you!”