Submerged: The Earth's Remains

Chapter I

"Sachiko, why have you been sleeping?" The colourless man looks down on her with his empty eyes. "What have you
been doing which caused you to lack proper sleep?"
Sachiko squints her eyes to adjust to the bright white light in the room, realizing where she is after a moment of
paramnesia. All the memories start to rush back in as she snaps back to reality; the metallic floors and walls of the school, the freezing desks, and lastly, the empty stares from her classmates in the room. "There wasn't much, sir." Sachiko replied, putting her hands under her thighs to avoid fiddling with them which would in return cause her to look suspicious.
"You don't have 'extracurricular' events, do you?" His voice intimidates her, causing her eyes to flail away from him
slightly.
"No sir, I simply slept late as my parents were helping me cook." She replies, moving her black bangs to the side,
away from her eyes.
"You learn how to cook at school though. Don't tell me, are you falling behind in class?" He continues to interrogate
her, shooting out questions for each response.
"No. I just wanted to perfect it." He goes silent for a second due to her response.
"This is your first strike." He turns around, readying to return to the podium in front of the class.
"Wai-" In an instant, Sachiko raises her hand before he quickly turns around and stops her.
"No exceptions." With an empty voice, the teacher says, returning to his lesson. Sachiko fixes her posture, sitting up
and placing her pale hands onto the desk. Everyone said that this was a perfect world—that there wouldn't be any issues, any differences, everything and everyone would be the same.
It's always been that way, and it is just.
Her lifeless eyes glance at the gray clock. She waits for the bell. Her professor then speaks up again.
"The outside world is not as good as ours." Sachiko looks up, intrigued by his statement.
"It's evident that none of you will make any mistakes. Perfection is just—and to avoid mistakes, there aren't any differences."
Sachiko looks around, as the students nod their head in unison.
Differences... the abnormal.
She looks out of the window to see the same view that she saw yesterday, and the day before. The grey concrete and metallic walls of the city.
What does it truly mean?

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Am I a failure? I've received my first strike... what happens if I get another, then another. What would happen on the
third?
Thoughts start running wild in her head as she thinks about all the possibilities. Her hands becoming a bit cold from
fear and nervousness. Suddenly, she stops in the middle of the hallway, her attention grabbed by a vending machine. Essence Water, the water to calm you down. Sachiko stares at the water machine, tempted to buy it until she remembers that she had her own water.
She turns around and a hard entity bumps into her, causing her heart race to sky rocket to dangerous levels. He furrowed his eyebrows out of confusion. For some reason, he and his dark hair seemed similar to her, causing a
feeling of déjà vu inside of her body to tear at her. Then she suddenly realized, this was her second strike. The feeling of sudden fear drowned her as her every move was being watched, cameras so small placed everywhere and almost impossible to notice with naked eyes. She didn't know what would happen to her on her third strike, but all she knew was that it would be an irreversible mistake. The people she knew who reached their third strike... she never saw them again. Her inner turmoil started to increase, her fears and anxiety slowly caving in.
Quickly, she picks up her stuff, praying to any entity that the administration of the school didn't notice her mistake, that
they would let her off. This was already her last year of highschool and she managed to be free of flaws. But for some reason after that vision or whatever it was she had during her sleep, caused her to be a mess.
Twelve o'clock, she checked on her watch, in time to arrive at her alphabetically assigned seat; being tardy is a mistake,
and mistakes are a sign of imperfection. As she tries catching her breath from the chaotic day she experienced, she notices the same man from the hallway, sitting across from her in an elegant and poised manner. He's beautiful, Sachiko thought. But the ability to express his beauty outloud is forbidden, thinking of it in the first place is taboo. After the person beside her is called to grab cafeteria lunch in an orderly manner, Sachiko is called up next, following behind to obtain the usual food; rice, bread, meat and vegetables.
The monotonous tone of the world, the feeling of dread is common for Sachiko, but she didn't know what it was.
Brown hair, brown hair, black hair, black hair. Brown eyes, brown eyes, brown eyes.
She muttered to herself unknowingly, noticing the parallel features of all the students. There weren't any interesting
colours. Then again, she didn't really know what 'interesting' truly meant. She only assumed that interesting meant
abnormal, something that was ostracized. Quickly trying to collect her thoughts, she passes by the Essence Water machine. Then she remembered her father told her to stop drinking it as they processed their own water source since he was the manager of a water company. She didn't know why they banned her all of a sudden to drink the Essence Water, but then again she wasn't allowed to object. The duty of a perfect child was to obey their parents.

_____

She looked at the black sky, lit up by the stars about her, noticing its beauty. She tries calming down, trying to collect
her wavering thoughts due to the fear of her mistakes. She didn't want her parents to worry, another word they used often.
She opened the door to her house with the passcode, under the dim light and noticed both of her parents already at
home, sitting in the dining room talking with an abnormally serious aura surrounded them.
Is there something happening? They're usually more talkative, expressive in an odd way even.
"Good evening, Mom, Dad." She said a bit hesitant but still managing to grab their attention.
"Sachiko, come here before you shower. We need to talk with you." Her mother says, encouraging her to sit down.
Sachiko places her school bag beside her chair and sits down, the serious aura surrounding them.
"In a world, there are unexplainable abnormalities that exist. Colors that are more beautiful and expressive." Looking
in the room around him, Sachiko' s father begins the conversation.
"Do you mean shades of black?" Sachiko tilts her head out of confusion.
"No. Something more." Sachiko's mother interrupts. "What's the opposite of white?"
"Black."
"What's the opposite of grey?" Her mother continues.
"Nothing. It's just a mix of those two." Sachiko replies, but she didn't get where her mother was getting at. The weird
way she talked, the abnormal ways she would explain things, the weird expressions she would make.
"Well, what is brown?" Her mother asks, smiling a pretty smile.
"It's just brown, like black and white...?" Hesitantly, Sachiko answers.
"Everything is made from something, but absence of something is also something which is why white exists." Her
father returns back into the conversation, fiddling with a pen between his fingers. Sachiko went silent, trying to figure out why he said that. It did make sense, but there wasn't a reason to word it in that specific manner.
"Good gracious. It's a mix of every color." Sachiko's mother blurts out. Sachiko pauses, a huge wave of confusion
surging through her mind.
"But there are only four."
"Only for now." Her mother smiles a cheeky smile, her eyes also wrinkling. Sachiko begins to lose herself in her
thoughts, staring at the table blankly.

Should I have told them about the things I saw last night?
Sachiko stares outside the large window near her bed, watching the cars below her pass by into the night like flashing
lights. Everything was the opposite of what her parents told her; the buildings, a metallic grey, the white humongous electronic billboards with black letters on top, the dark brown hair of the people passing by under the street lights. Her eyes wander to one of the most prominent billboards, we're always watching, with The Eden's logo. An ominous moving camera with it looking side to side, it is a warning made by the administration to keep people in check.
Suddenly, the camera faces her direction, causing her to wake up with sweat on her forehead.

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