Including Ava, there were only nine children living at the school, Father told her. He also gave her a number: Number Eight, and that’s how he was going to call her. At that time, every kid was allowed to use their real name to each other, but they must remember their number since that’s the only way he’d call the children.

In the beginning, Father was nice to them. For the most part, life felt like it was back to the first days of living with Auntie. The children would play together, then Father would teach them arts later in the day, then they’d eat, sleep, wake up, repeat. 

Then, Father brought more, and more, and more children. By the time there were about forty of them, Father had a sudden change of behaviour.

In the beginning, his teaching focused on alchemy, an art that can be learnt and done by everyone. But at that point, he taught more magic, and to kids who did not possess any magi like Ava, he became stricter, meaner, and dismissive.

Sana was the best student Father had. He was quick to learn and obedient, Ava is sure he’d be treated nicer if he had not spent so much time with her. Sana, the ever protective older brother, never could be separated from his sister for longer than a couple of hours. He’d make up excuses, telling Father that he would be doing something else when what he would end up doing was checking up on Ava. He’d appear, ask Ava how she is and if she’s having fun, then return for more lessons.

Ava had always known that Father never really liked her. Perhaps it was because he saw her as a distraction for his best student, but perhaps it was also because she was without magic; she would never know. 

He would sneer at her during art class and he would always ask her to perform tasks that he had not taught yet in front of everyone. She could never forget how embarrassed she was the first time everyone laughed at her for failing, but over time, she learnt to dissociate herself from reality whenever such a thing happened. After all, it got old after a while.

Ava had no friend other than her brother in the school. Other kids would talk about her behind her back, and she would pretend that she couldn’t hear them. Her mind would wander off elsewhere, while her ears captured hurtful words. She was fine, she convinced herself, she still had Sana, she said.

The school is huge, and she needed a few days to completely tour around every single hallway and room in the building, but it was unbothered since the huge building was charmed with a unique spell that Father invented, making it unseen and undetected by outsiders.

Some of the rooms in the school were locked, but Ava knew what all of those rooms were: Father’s bedroom, Father’s study, the laboratory, the apothecary, and time-out rooms; but there was one room at the end of the first floor’s hallway facing the creek that was locked and unknown to her. The window of the room had been tinted with magic, making it impossible for anyone to see what’s inside the room.

Rumour spread about the room, an observant boy had noticed that although Father told them that, at that time, there were seventy-eight kids living in that school, the latest kid to join them had the number seventy-seven. He theorised that the room is the room where the other kid lived. Kid number zero. Some suggested that Number Zero was not even a person, but a ghost who was summoned and trapped in that room by Father, they claimed to know that fact from peeking into Father’s diary. Some others swore they had heard the sound of a beast growling from inside the room, and that Number Zero was a case of failed animal transformation magic.

Unlike them, Ava knew better than to believe in the rumours. Because she knew that although someone could summon a ghost permanently, no magic nor alchemy transmutation can trap a ghost in a room. Secondly, she may not have a drop of magic inside her blood, but she would read books about magic when she wasn’t wandering around in her free time, and she knew that there is no such a thing of failed transformation magic turning people into a beast; when people failed to do a magic spell, they just failed; nothing would have happened.

So, while the other kids were terrified just to stand in front of the door, Ava had always tried her best to look into the magic-tinted window outside of the room. She didn’t know why she was determined to look past the magic to see if Number Zero really existed, but she thought about how lonely they would be, living alone in that room by themselves and never getting out. Alas, Father’s magic was too strong for her magicless self, and she never managed to look through the window.

After two years of living in the school and the number of children turned to ninety, Father forbade the use of their real name. Now, everyone must call each other by their number.

The kids whined and complained, but they shut up after one look from Father. Ava didn’t mind, though, the only number she needed to remember was her own and Sana’s; number eight and four, easy enough.

“I’m still going to call you Ava when we’re alone, okay, sis?” Sana whispered to her the night Father made the rule.

Ava shook her head. “Don’t, you’ll get in trouble if he knows.”  

“That’s why I’m going to do it when we’re alone. He wouldn’t know, I promise we’ll be fine.” He smiled and pinched her cheeks.

But they were not fine. Father caught them playing chess after dinner one night, and they were having a little banter over how the other cheated using their own name.

“Number Four, you really have disappointed me. Was it so hard to follow one rule? You could follow my complicated spellwork, but you couldn’t obey one simple rule? This is enough proof that you are testing my patience. First, getting out of lessons to see Number Eight, and now this?!” Father yelled, pacing in front of the two of them with his discipline ruler in hand.

“All right. Are you trying to test my patience? Then I’ll test yours back.”

Ava was the only one to get punished that night. Though, from all of the pleadings and crying, others might think it was Sana who was punished.

Father had cast an immobilising spell on Sana and beaten Ava mercilessly with his ruler in front of the boy. He struck his ruler on Ava over and over again, even after the little girl was down on the floor, curling her body in a fetal position. Ava doesn’t remember much of that night, but she remembers the horror in her brother’s voice as he repeatedly tells Father to stop, begging him to punish him instead. 

What she remembers most is the morning after, when she realised that Father had locked her in one of the time-out rooms by herself. 

To this day, she doesn’t remember how long she was in there. For the night and day made no difference in that room; for neither sun nor moonlight could enter the room; for she was not given meals nor drinks. All the time she was inside that room, all she thought was how she had been left to die in that lonely, dark prison for the crime of calling her brother with his name.

But the door was opened eventually, and her brother rushed in to give her a tight embrace and an endless, tearful chant of apologies. Ava was too hungry, too thirsty, too tired, and too weary to tell him that she was okay and that she was sorry he had to witness all that.

From that point on, no one dared to call neither others nor themselves by their given name. Soon, some of them had forgotten about them altogether.