"As you have chosen, you die."

Limbs broken, organs bleeding, body getting colder and colder, vision bloodied, lungs Failing, heart; no longer there.

—Why?... If at that moment… I would have done things differently… I could have___—

It was Raining. In an unknown surrounding; a dream-like, hazy, dark, isolated place, which his mind could only process as despair, his mind made its last memory. 

Only the numbness remained. Nothing felt real as if it was a nightmare.

—A Nightmare! Nightmare! Nightmare! Nightmare! Nightmare! Nightmare! Nightmare!

No thought other than that remained, filled with immense dread his mind repeated the reality it wanted so desperately.

Everything turned Black, only the thought of the dread remained. 

"Ghaaah!" 

His body was panting and could still remember the glimpse of what he felt. He looked at his surroundings, it was recognizable. Then, to his body beneath the blankets, he was sweating. But; his limbs were there, he wasn't bleeding nor were his organs and lungs failing. As his senses grasped the reality, he sighed, "It was a dream…"

He got out of his bed and turned the lights ON The dread downed with the lights ON; as his body could now clearly differentiate between reality and dream— which felt terrifyingly real. 

Coming to senses, he could feel the intense thirst in his mouth left by the restless panting and dread moments ago. A bottle full of water. It was usual for him to keep a water bottle on his table, to his left of bed and below the switch board.

He drank all the water he could as if his thirst was an endless void, and not filling it would kill him. 

A moment had passed since that dream, putting the bottle down he breathed deeply.  He looked at the watch on his table, it was 3:47. 

"Now that's a bad time to have a nightmare, haha~" he laughed sighingly. 

A bad dream, horrifying, was surely going to make his sleep insufficient for the next day.

He washed his face and went outside to take a breather, from all this. It was freezing outside; cold breeze flowing, no humans awake, truly a sight everyone should experience. Well if everyone began to experience it then it would ruin it.

—Now that I think about it, it's been a while since I had come to the roof. Guess, the work has gotten into me too much. Gotta keep it calm.

After spending a minute or two outside, he went inside. By that time he had forgotten most about the dream. The dream which felt so real moments ago now seemed like something secondary, as if it was detached from him. 

—Man, I don't wanna keep my head outside the blankets.

With his head now cleared he shut the lights off , layed on the bed, put the blankets on, and slowly fell asleep.

***

"Alarm* "

"Umm, damn it… this school should just…", with a will of 'Not to wake up' he woke up. He was again ready to have the same foul mood he always has in any social surrounding. 

During his free time, there are very few things he can do while having breakfast; Social media or Friends, and if exceptionally motivated, read any novel, but that is next to impossible.

***

—I think it's about time. It is getting late.

It was a few minute's ride from his house to the school. Some of the few rare alone times he would get outside before reaching the school. But honestly, most of the journey was completed while he was in his own world of thoughts, such as, have I Packed the project properly? Did I lock the house? Which would easily shift to another thought or situation he would imagine himself to be in, too comical to make sense in real life. And in all this mental mess he reached his school.

Parking his bike in the parking lot, He entered the school and went straight to the class.  

"Yo! Shin." immediately at crossing his class's entrance door he was greeted by that annoying yet familiar voice.

"Hey. weren't you supposed to be on leave?" Shin replied.

"Well…  you know how my mom is… hehe."The boy excused himself, suddenly shifting the question onto Shin.

"Why are you so early today, though? You are the last person I know who would come early. What's up?"

Shin had a habit or even call it on instinctual intention, that was, to always come at perfect time nor too early nor too late. And as a person who liked to avoid unnecessary social interaction and loved his time alone, he always did things that would suit his preferences. Though he was not bad at socialising, it was just that, he himself wasn't sure what term to use, to define himself, 'ambivert' came close but he didn't like it. All in all he was averagely good or even great at socialising depending upon the situation and person.

"While you were Away at taking leaves I was the one who had to handle your share of work, that is, taking care of registrations." He replied in monotone, because he had known the boy— Bobby for a very long time and didn't really bother to adjust his way of talking and went with whatever tone his body default was at the moment.

"Ouu, not again with that tone, have a good sleep at least." Bobby nitpicked his tone, teasing his lack of sleep, still evident in his eyes. Ignoring Bobby's words, Shin put his bag on the chair. Today he was sitting on the last bench of the left first row with a large window to his left. 

"So what's the plan today? Got way too much time today." Shin asked, shifting his tone to normal.

To which Bobby replied" Nothing. Could go outside". 

Shin, conforming to the Idea proposed, " Okay, But before that I gotta submit this." 

Taking the project file out of his bag, he and Bobby headed to the staff room.

*** 

On reaching the staffroom they could see a new face, not a student, but an outsider who gave an aura of a teacher at sight. Not to cause any embarrassment he went past them without any greetings. Bobby, having the same mind process, did as Shin did and entered the staff room and followed him to their class teacher's desk.

"Good morning sir, here's the project you had asked for. I didn't have much practice with this kind of project so it's kinda Messy, but it should work out." 

Shin submitted the project to his class teacher, who was sitting at his desk, playing with his words. 

After a brief silence their teacher replied, ''I will see to it, but I think you will be getting a new class teacher this week or so. You need to be regular this week. Got it? Especially you Bobby, don't you dare drop your attendance."  

He was an old and well respected teacher, maybe in his 40's. By nature this old man– Mr Markow was an ideal teacher figure in their school- his teaching methods were old school but he still was open to the idea of new times, and had years of experience teaching physics. 

Hearing this Shin asked, "What about your subject, will we be getting a replacement?" To that, before the teacher could respond, Bobby jokingly retorted, "No physics classes now, phwuuu~ ".  Intense blood lust! The look Mr Marcow gave him sent shivers down Bobby, he shut up as if he hadn't said anything just now. "No, there won't be any changes in your subject teacher for the most part, it's just that an extra subject has been added in your syllabus and they require special education and experience to teach. Anyways we will let you know more about it later, now you should go, I have work to get done." The teacher informed them of it and left other details for later. 

Shin, having lost his lack of excitement—which was still low, got out of the staff room with Bobby. He noticed that the person he saw while entering the staffroom was gone. Now being aware of the fact that there was going to be a big change in his school life made him more attentive to any new thing he could detect in his surroundings.

—He might have been one of the few new teachers. Well, we'll see.

"So you heard him, right?  No more leaves for you this week." Shin mocked Bobby as revenge for all the mess he usually caused Shin. 

"Damn it, now I regret coming to school."

"It wasn't your choice anyway. Let's go." He started walking and Bobby followed his lead.

"Anyways, what do you think about the new subject?" Bobby asked Shin, seeing his lack of words for it. 

"Not much, we will know it before long, no point pondering over small data when you can look for the answer itself." Shin said, elaborating it for Bobby. It was just like him. From the limited information he had and in the context it was given to him it was evident that many students knew the news. And if that was the case then obviously there would be people who would have a lot more information on the subject then he possessed currently. And with this energy conservative mind process he didn't waste his time coming up with pointess assumptions. The place he was headed to was 2 rooms away from his class. Upon reaching his destination, he could see a boy standing in the back of class talking to a group of girls. He without saying any word went behind the boy and smacked him on his back while hanging his own arm around the boy's neck. 

"Wenic… How is it going my friend!?" It was Shin who said it. His calm energyless attitude shifted in a second to which Wenic gave a polite yet warm smile. Wenic was yet not much used to Shin's sudden shifts in his attitude, especially, after he started noticing it as he became close with him with time. "Just like you, haha." Wenic replied, usually Shin didn't approach him whenever he was surrounded by people. 

So, assuming Shin had something to talk about, "excuse me girls, I should be going now." He excused himself from the girls and went with Shin to the front of class, near the window left to the teacher's desk.

"You wanted to talk?" 

"Yeah kind of, I heard there's going to be a new subject added to our system or something like that. You know something?"

Shin didn't break his character, as he was still surrounded by people, but his tone was more calm and mono than before. 

"Yeah, well even I don't know much about it other than it's gonna be more of an experimental subject which is now being implemented in the whole Island. Though, they are referring to it as a subject, it is not actually a subject. Information is so little that I guess we won't be clear on it until who knows when."

"So, even, you are blank on it… didn't you ask someone who knows?"

"Yeah I asked, but they said 'it's hard to explain' even then, from what they could explain, it is going to be some kind of individual focussed thing consisting of different things that will develop and test different parts of humans or something like that."

"So it's being implemented in the whole Ruean, huh?"

"From what I can tell, it was in the experimental phase in sector 1, 2, and 3. But I am not sure it might just be a rumor, who knows?"

"Well, even I have heard of that."

"Oh, it looks like others have come. We will talk about it later, let's go have some chill for now."

"Yeh, Bobby, let's go."

Bobby, who had started talking to a girl when Shin was busy talking to Winic, replied " You go, I have to go with Sia."

The girl Bobby was talking to–Sia was his sister, Shin hadn't talked to her much or could never even have a proper conversation, he had no idea about her personality. Understanding Bobby's urgency, Shin excused himself.

"Okay see you in Class then."

 ––He followed the path he had come with and went to his class.