"It's been reported that a new dungeon has opened in South Korea early yesterday morning that so far appears to be above A-rank in danger and warranted anxiety from all in Seoul-"
"Can you turn that off?" I asked, leaning forward from the back seat to clutch on the side of the driver's seat. "That's been on the news for too long and I'm tired of listening to it."
"This news just came out this morning." Reed was incredulous while glancing up and back in the rearview mirror towards me. "Just let me listen to it for a bit. Put your headphones in or something."
I'd been about to counter his point, but decided to keep my mouth shut. Yeah, for civilians, that news only broke about thirty minutes ago or so. But for me, it'd been hours - because no one clearly had anything better to do from midnight till morning - of getting message after message on the message board of the company, people pinging each other back and forth about what South Korea would do if it really was above A-rank. They only had A-ranks in their country, so it was likely that they were going to call on hunters from other countries to help them.
That was the overall consensus that some people came to, at least.
It makes sense, I thought, digging around in the backpack at my feet and grabbing for my headphones case, fumbling around. Grabbing what felt like it, pulling it out, then shoving it right back in while glancing through my hair to see if Drake had seen. But my cousin, for once, wasn't playing games or watching videos on his phone, instead passed the heck out against the window with his mouth open. But they're better off either reevaluating all of their current hunters to see if any of them became S-rank or if they have more A-ranks since the new year, or playing a numbers game with what A-ranks they do have and seeing how they'd fare without assistance first.
Reed pulled up to a stoplight as I finally did grab my wireless head phone case while making sure my buzzer stayed deep in my bag. No, no one would've recognized it, seeing how I was just a low-rank nobody in the company that only did patrols during the night when curfew took up quite a bit of the time, but still. Paranoia had kept me alive through every adversity that'd threatened my life, and kept it together when it was threatened.
"-a statement from the chairman whose guild members were responsible for the discovery of this dungeon, the Frozen Land guild-"
My headphones connected and began to play. I wasn't too worried about what was going to be said next or missing it. It was just the watered-down version of what I'd already heard anyway.
So I closed my eyes and leaned against the window, turning off my passive listening skill and trying to fade out a little myself. My head hurt pretty badly after staying up too late doing econ. But well, at least my A would stand strong in that class.
And today, after school, I'll go to club. And afterwards, straight to the company, so I can get this weekly check-in crap over with and then hit the hay.
It'd not been the roughest week I'd ever seen, but sleep was precious to me. Four hours was not optimal. Friday night would not exist for me, and Saturday morning would not see me until it was the afternoon.
But even I knew what that feeling was when Reed finally pulled to a stop that wasn't a stoplight, and killed the engine. I had to push up my glasses to rub my eyes and get the sleep out of them that had tried to pull some welcome, last-minute wool down, before popping the headphones out and putting them away. Sadly, I was not about to win myself points with Mr. Landon if I tried to go through the gate breaking school policy, and I very much aimed to be on everyone's good side by the time I graduated. No one was allowed to have anything bad to say about me even when the teachers gossiped in their lounge or in classrooms at lunch when they thought closed doors and a floor between us could stop me from hearing.
So I worked a little hard to massage feeling back into my face, pulling my grayish bag on my back, smoothing out the skirt I'd chosen that day so it was just above my knees, and combing my hair where it'd been smashed against the window. I'd taken the braids out so the short waves could drift just above my shoulders and keep me from looking too much like a preschooler with my dark brown bangs just above my glasses. Drake startled awake when his sister knocked rapidly on his window, having slid out of the passenger seat up front and mercilessly rapped her knuckles on it. Reed locked the car behind us while slipping through the parking lot, cars moving a bit too fast and desperate to make sure their kid made it on time.
"Morning, Mr. Landon," I said, bothering to give him a bit of a smile while walking inside.
"Good morning, Miss Bell," he returned with a loud and gruff voice, hands folded over each other like a body guard while standing between the two open gates. He towered over the awkward thirteen and fourteen-year-olds that looked down at their phones or cackled together while walking through, and I looked past to my first class of the day while wondering if we had enough time for breakfast.
"Brooke, do you think you could come out even five minutes earlier next time so we could hope to get breakfast one of these days?" I asked, looking up from my watch and sacrificing any thoughts to go to the mess hall. Obviously, if I didn't care who was looking, I could walk out with a few muffins. But there were too many people, too many cameras, and it was daytime. Heck no I wasn't abusing my skills just to fill my stomach, however tempting it would be when starving through APUSH and chemistry in the morning.
"Sorry," my other cousin sighed, fixing her blonde and walking past me without much acknowledgement. "Drake didn't want to get up this morning. Blame him, not me."
So I could sigh as Drake trudged on after having broken off with us to go be with some of his friends, heading to first period together. Reed didn't even look at me while staring down at his phone and walking past, so I smacked his arm.
"Ow!" He turned on me, glancing up and down to see who dared to distract him from running into a pole. "What the heck, Cade?"
"Stop walking and looking down at your phone." Then I pointed to the pole, which he glanced at and sidestepped, shaking his head at me but putting it away. "You're welcome!"
"Goody two shoes!"
I didn't say anything back while slipping into first period. They had three minutes till class started, so I didn't know what they were dragging their feet for. "Good morning, Mr. Benson."
"Good morning, Miss," the old teacher glanced up over his glasses to see me strolling in, then back towards his computer as he kept taking attendance. "Happy Friday, everyone."
"Happy Friday!" Mike yelled out in the first row, clapping hands with people around. "Get me out of here."
"Don't be that way, Mike. The school year's barely three weeks in," I shrugged while slipping stuff out of my bag and putting it down on the desk, then slipping my bag along the back of the chair to sit down next to him. I wasn't in the best of moods because of my four hours of sleep, but it wasn't the worst. "If you keep talking like we're close to the end, I might just cry."
Three weeks in and I already felt like I'd been grinding for five months. The idea that econ was only just getting started and I was struggling so badly already...
Yeah, I might just cry.
Mike looked back at me, saw me settle in, then turned back to his friends and kept talking with them. It appeared the statement I made wasn't relatable enough to include me in the fun.
I opened my notebook and reviewed the notes I'd managed to take in the library before club started, looking down the pink vocab words and the pencil definitions beside.
"Hey, do you think I could take a picture of that? I was really busy this week, and I'm really suffering in this class...I just want to study it really quick before the quiz."
Someone leaned forward behind me to ask such a nauseating question to my back. I ignored it for a few seconds, pretending to be the deeply invested goody two shoes that I was, finger trailing down the page. Glancing down at my watch discreetly to see how much time was left.
Good, I felt my mouth twitch a little, but with a bowl cut, it was harder for people to look past the curtain and see my expressions sometimes.
"Hey, Cade-"
The person behind me nudged my shoulder again. Annoyed but trying my best not to show it, I turned around long enough to say, "Could you leave me be? I'm trying to study. Thanks."
But before I could turn around, she caught me. "I know, and I was wondering if I could just take a picture of your notes so I could study a little too."
"There's no point-" There's no way in hell you're copying my notes no matter how busy you are. Do it yourself. "-since the quiz is literally in thirty seconds."
"But he administers it at the end of class-"
I flipped my notebook closed after one last glance, sliding it off and dropping it at my feet. "That's for chapter quizzes. This is a unit quiz. It's at the beginning of class. He told us about how the class works at the beginning of the semester. Don't you remember?"
"No," my classmate swallowed, sitting back in her chair after having been leaned forward. "I didn't. But there was no need for you to be so rude about it."
"I wasn't rude, I was trying to study myself. They're my notes," I shrugged like it really was just her fault - because it was - and turned around in my chair. "And it's not like you're going to memorize everything for a fifty point quiz in three minutes."
"Okay, my gosh, sorry," she sat back as Mr. Landon closed the door and the bell finally rang. It irked me that she took such a tone like I was such a horrible person. My stomach let me know how displeased it was with my quick dinner the night prior and I knew it wasn't about to be a good first period at all. "I was just asking."
And the answer will always be no.
First period started off on an awkward foot like that. It was quickly quiet though when Mr. Landon slapped down the quizzes in the back row and they were quickly passed to the front. "Put your name and date down, first thing. I'm not going to shift through a hundred and fifty quizzes just to see whose is whose, and you don't want to get a zero on your first unit quiz, I guarantee you."
The quiz came sliding from Mike and I stopped it before it almost went over the edge of the desk. I slid a little frown over at him, but he was already scribbling away and taking advantage of the time to show how little he'd studied, staring at a blank page. He put his left elbow down on the desk and casually stared at his right hand with the pencil in it, towards my quiz not that far away.
Are you kidding me?
I sighed while looking up at the presidents over the white board in front of me. It was too early in the morning for nonsense.
[Activating Title [[Child of Darkness]]]
"Huh?" Mike sat up a little, confused as to why it was suddenly so hard for him to notice me there while putting my left arm along the page and starting to scribble down answers. He rubbed his eyes and blinked over at me before blinking down at his page, thinking he was just seeing things. You'd better.
"Alright, time's up. Start passing them down the rows and back. Stop writing, Sylvia."
Sylvia was still scratching away at the quiz behind me as I canceled my passive spell and passed my quiz back through her hands. She glanced at all of the answers on the front page and groan before sending it and hers back to the guy behind her.
I sighed, crossing my arms and dropping my pencil to stare back up at the presidents. Andrew Jackson was looking particularly scornful that day, and I hoped it was down at Sylvia instead of me for once. He looked the way I felt, at least.
And I felt that way till first break, popping out of the other side of AP chemistry at ten in the morning and wondering why such a class existed, sliding into the sunlight and then booking it for the cafeteria. Only after having secured a muffin - blueberry, which wasn't bad, but I could've done better - and walked over to my friends standing around our usual wooden bench did I start to exist a little happier than before.
"-send Alexander Cross, obviously. He's S-rank."
My eyes went up to the sky while just trying to enjoy my muffin. "Savannah. It's too early in the morning for this."
Savannah turned on me while wiping her mouth. "No it's not, it's ten already. And why do you hate talking about stuff with dungeons so much again? I know you keep up with the news, because you always have a lot more to say about it than me."
My side glance to her looked a little too dead for a little too long. Her brows went up, challenging me. So I looked away and pulled out my phone instead, turning to the side of the bench so she'd pay attention to Nita instead and they could go at it. It'd be my first time checking my notifications too, and I was on the lookout for acknowledgement that my report was received.
What?
I frowned at the email's headline, watching it trail off in a way I didn't want it to. Suspiciously not the way it usually did. I swallowed my muffin a bit dryly, looking through the other notifications and making sure none of them were fairly significant before sliding them away.
"But obviously neither of them can go. Cross is dealing with an A-rank dungeon in England right now, and Deion Evans has to stay in the states. He's also just barely an S-rank as of the last eval in July, and I don't think his guild would send him over just to die. America's out of the helping game when it comes to S-ranks, and Korea's got plenty of A-ranks. What's the point in us sending ours?"
"But there's probably a lot of economic stuff at play too, besides politics. We're really good partners with Korea on stuff, right? Wouldn't we help them out to maintain good relations? It's not like the US has a lot of allies these days."
"And what do you know about the economy, to say we'd hop in and kill a new national treasure for a small country with nothing but problems?"
"Nothing. I'm seventeen years old."
"Exactly."
I finally had to roll my eyes and turn back to look at the both of them, only to find them both staring at me. "What?"
"What do you mean, what? We're looking at you."
"Yeah, I know, and for what? I'm not interested in this topic."
They exchanged a look. I knew it was better than an eyeroll, but still. I clicked my phone off and decided to check the email at lunch when I had more time and less expectations for my attention. Nita and Savannah would end up dragging me into it one way or another, and all I had to do was last seven minutes until the bell rang.
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