That scream almost made the sleep-deprived Cail lose it.
"Can't they just quiet down!" he said in frustration.
Iven was also quite startled by the noise. "That was a celebrity-level scream," he remarked.
Cail's eyes were blurry but not blind. He could see the students crowding the hallway. In the center was a group of handsome men.
Cail had goosebumps. It felt straight out of a soap opera where they started fighting for the one girl.
Jexar was it? Cail had no deep impression of him.
"Jexar, Jexar, Jexar. I remember a short guy named Jexar...." Was he mistaken?
"Really, very Mary Sue," Iven couldn't help but say.
Whatever was bugging Cail was nothing compared to the noise.
It was utterly annoying. "What's Jael doing wiping the board there?! There isn't anything written on it! Call him and let him sit. And where's Oris? Did he die somewhere? Why haven't I seen him?"
Iven was very calm about Cail's outburst. After being friends with him for so many years, he already knew what type of temper Cail had. It was a mix of willful and rational. Iven stood up and called Jael to sit.
Cail's eyes were blurry, and Iven didn't really pay attention at first. But the moment Jael sat beside them, both Cail and Iven were startled.
Even with Cail's -6 myopia, he could see that Jael was visibly in bad shape.
"Being in a relationship makes you that thin?! Damn, I should try being in one," Iven commented, clearly astounded by Jael's appearance.
Cail kicked Iven's foot hard. He frowned as he looked at Jael. "What happened to you? Do you know how pathetic you look right now? The last famine was hundreds of years ago. Why do you look like a refugee?"
One more slimming, and Jael will look like that twig Cail ran over.
"I'm fine." Jael tried to smile, but it just made his jawbone more prominent. "Maybe because I skipped meals a bit. But not eating once in a while is okay."
This time, even Iven was speechless.
Cail looked visibly pissed. "Are you hearing what you're saying? You sound like a moron now."
"Hey, hey, hey, Cail, don't say that." Iven felt that Cail was a bit harsh this time.
Then Jael suddenly cried. It was so sudden, with no warning. It was like a broken dam suddenly bursting open.
Iven was genuinely shocked this time. He stood up and hugged Joel. "Bro, what's going on?" If he was crying because of Cail's harsh words, he wouldn't have been the Joel the they knew. Clearly, something more was going on.
"Irisa broke up with me!" He sobbed. "I did everything for her, but why?"
Cail wasn't surprised. He became uninterested after hearing that useless monologue.
He let Iven console Jael as he looked outside. His seat was near the window, so he could see the pocket forest.
He looked down when he saw a trail of smoke floating. He saw one of the Rich 6, crouching against the wall, smoking a cigarette.
Cail frowned; he hated the smell of smoke and beer. He grew up being surrounded by that smell to the point where it was utterly repulsive to him. He squinted his eyes, his vision blurry. He really had no other intention but just to see clearly.
...
Auren was smoking. He was very stressed about the mission. Not because of how hard it was, but because of how busy his schedule had become.
He was a void user, Eclipse class. He had been undercover for four years. He was a student at Void Academy in Tenebris.
Because of this mission, his schedule had been halved. By day, he was an ordinary student from a regular school, and by night, he was a Void Academy student. He felt like he was getting squeezed to death by the workload.
Although he could have flunked his 'normal' school, Auren's face-saving personality wouldn't let him. So now, this was the situation.
Suddenly, he felt an intense gaze on him. He looked up and saw a boy with sunglasses just staring at him.
Auren tried to smile, but the boy didn't react. He just continued staring at Auren. (Cail couldn't see well.)
After a few unsettling seconds, Auren had a guess.
"Was he bothered by the smoke?" Auren thought. He put out his cigarette, and when he looked back up, the boy wasn't looking at him anymore.
"What was his name again? Kali? Ali?" Auren could not remember his name, but he had been familiar with that boy.
Although they were not from the same class, he was a bit familiar with them because of how ordinary or sometimes eye-catching their group was.
Their group consisted of four members. The chubby one, the lanky one, the smug one, and the gloomy one. Despite looking like pushovers, they were never really bullied at school.
Auren knew the chubby one, Iven. He was a cheerful guy with a lot of friends, a true social butterfly. Auren had a good impression of him, but that couldn't be said of the other guy.
The smug one. Auren was uncomfortable about that guy's aura. His name was Oris?
That guy had a show-off personality. Like, he'd be decked out in branded clothes, going to school like a walking billboard. There had been gossip that his family was nouveau riche.
While Auren disliked that guy's arrogance, there was no need to look down on new-rich families because, no matter what, they were rich.
The lanky one, Jael... was a bit timid based on Auren's observation. A people-pleaser who couldn't say no to anyone's request. Fortunately, most students in this school had a conscience. Although they would take advantage of the lanky one, they never pushed too far.
As for the gloomy guy, "I think his name is Cail?" Auren finally remembered. The gloomy one was either very unnoticeable, or once you noticed him, you didn't want to mess with him. The gloomy aura around him was intense.
He's always sleeping in class. Whenever Auren sees him, either he is about to sleep, going to sleep, or is sleeping.
Auren shook his head. He should go back now.
"Missing artifacts case. Are they sure that it was inside the school?" He sacrificed four years, but he found nothing. What happened to those artifacts, and how did they end up here?
...
Cail had no idea about what the guy was thinking below or that void artifacts had already invaded their school.
"Ughh. I'm so sleepy..." He muttered. He felt like dying. "Maybe I should've not come to class. This is useless."
"One more to go, and I'll be in college..." Then he remembered that he seemed to have new problems besides college.
"If I'm still alive by then."