Numbered

Chapter 2: Amber Tia Hulman

If you asked Amber, she'd say that life was fine. Of course there were some things she wished someone would change in society like treating lower ranked people better or letting people marry whoever they'd like regardless of their rank or not- she stopped.

The Royals knew what they were doing. After all, they were the ones running the world and had to navigate everything for the betterment of humankind, it wasn't an easy task after all, who was she to judge their methods. They knew what was best for everyone, she just thought it was strange but she shouldn't dwell on that.

She was dimly aware of her history teacher droning on about the Blank Period, but she already knew everything there was to know on that subject. There was a time period when people judged others for silly little qualms such as money, age, race, religion, sex/gender, or sexuality which was mind-blowing to her how very quiet rude in her opinion their ancestors could be. What was even more surprising to her was that these ancestors lived such short lives, only around a century at most and didn't even have any abilities (she sort of felt bad for them, what sad lives they must have lived, but then again, they never knew what they were missing so they probably weren't that miserable).

Some time an unnamed virus spread causing a global pandemic, infecting everyone on the planet and killing 90% of those who caught it and destroying most of society. Those who'd survived gained abilities (for the most part) and gained semi-immortality. They then had to come together and rebuild society from scratch and the Rank system was put into place. The time period of a couple centuries where humankind was alone and little got written down before they came together and rebuilt society was known as the Blank Period.

It was hard not to know about the Blank Period seeing as everyone regardless of rank had to learn about it (0s learned about it by word of mouth) just like how everyone regardless of rank had to go through at least the first 8 levels of school (except for 0s).

The levels of schooling were from as young as 1st years, who were 11 years old to as old as 15th years who were 25 years old. 1s did the mandatory first 8 years but dropped out afterwards due to money related issues or rank restrictions, 2s usually lasted longer, managing to graduate from the 9th level before dropping out for the same reasons.

3s usually lasted long enough to graduate from 10th year, 4s graduated from their 13th year and 5s and 7s were required to go through the whole schooling system. That was another thing she would change if she could, the school system. But it was not her place to do so.

She heard the little beep noise that signalled that History was over, which was good considering History was Amber's last class of the day and she shuffled with the rest of the 5s in her class out of the room.

Amber wandered around the school as students filtered out until she got to the 1s section of the school. The building was built for 1st through 8th years and was separated in accordance to a person's rank.

The history room she was one of the rooms used for 5s in their 5th year. She had to walk all the way to the other end of the building to get to the 1s section which really hurt her heels seeing as she was wearing heals. However it was necessary.

The reason why she was in the 1s section, which, if you had asked Amber, looked like it had seen much better days in contrast to the pearly clean newness of the 5s section that she was so used to, comfortable with, was because her favorite maid happened to be a 6th year and a 1 which was wasn't surprising. It was a fairly common job for 1s, along with cooks (not head chief), labor and any other jobs that the other ranks didn't want. 1s tended to get the last servings in quite literally everything. The only thing that was worse that Amber could think of was a 0. She shuddered.

Her favorite maid, Josie Loaise D'lear, was a 1 and a 6th year. Which meant she would be found somewhere in the 6th year subdivision of the 1s section. And true to Amber's theory, she was found exiting one of the rooms. Josie straightened up once she saw her and went full business mode.