The Reaper King

Chapter 4: The Orphanage pt. 4

Damien walked around the campus in a daze.

For many days he hadn't slept well, and had barely eaten. When he wasn't staring into the sky, quietly weeping, he would be curled in a ball, looking at pictures of Anna, him, Jessica and Sister Hua, and the pain would resurge, fresh and raw. Needless to say, all thoughts of training had been hushed. Damien would attempt to wander into the kitchen's at night to do his usual dish duty, desperate for any sense of normalcy but he was always turned away by the somber kitchen staff, who would give the ailing boy extra snacks and hugs. It was all they could do to try and ease his pain. Though they definitely needed the help that the boy's ability to tirelessly wash dishes brought, they all refused to let him work while he grieved. Ma LaCroix nor the other two orphanage directors, wouldn't even entertain the thought for a second.

Damien had barely noticed it, but many of the orphanage bullies had largely suspended their terrorism since the past few days. In fact, the entire orphanage seemed to also grieve for the loss of Sister Hua and now one of its most beloved students, Jessica. But nothing could compare to the level of sorrow and sympathy they felt for Damien. He had never been one to gloat his incredible powers or champion how strong he was. His strength had isolated him, and most had ridiculed him for it, reinforcing his isolation. That fact, hanging over the heads of the entire orphanage, made the depressed husk of a child he was now, all the more hurtful to watch. Many approached him offering their condolences. The younger children would also sneak him extra food to try and cheer him out of his depressive states. Other times, the younger kids would drag Damien from his isolation in his dorm, leading the zombie-like, dark skinned boy through the halls of the orphanage in hopes of getting him some kind of daily exercise. As they would wander about hopefully, dragging the sad boy, others would look on solemnly, hearts aching for him and those that he grieved for.

A couple days later, Damien was strolling silently through one foggy morning. He wore his simple tattered raincoat over his equally tattered, and not recently well washed, spring orphanage uniform. He had not bothered to button it up all the way, leaving it messy and half untucked. He could be seen with his 10 tungsten training balls trailing simply around him, but never touching him. Damien had at some point gotten it into himself to take them out again. They felt... nice. The slight strain on his aura it took now to keep the training spheres hovering, kept him grounded when his mind threatened to drown him in a deep lake of depression and despair. They reminded him of a time where he was less constantly confused, less constantly sad and depressed, less miserable, when he was happy. The boy felt nothing inside him anymore. He was sure he had cried out any feeling he had left. All there was now was a conviction he had made to both Jessica and Sister Hua. To his surrogate mother and to his girlfriend. Though, he still had no idea of how he was supposed to actually achieve any of that.

Sister Hua definitely had to be a goddess, and now Jessica had a straight shot path to becoming one herself. Damien felt a massive chasm appear in his mind between the ideas of the two women he loved the most in the world and himself. A deep gong of pain rang out in his chest and he almost stumbled along his path, almost hitting one of his levitating balls, almost. But he caught himself in time, muscles flexing with instinctual but deeply conditioned practice, aura flaring out exactly as powerful as he needed it to be to refrain from touching any of them.

'Strong,' the depressed boy repeated to himself simply, robotically, 'I will become strong.' He brushed himself off and continued trudging along, readjusting himself to not fall to emotional pain slightly better.

'It's not as if that's my only problem,' he grumbled to himself as he came upon a simple bench. The same bench he and Jessica had sat on that night, all those months ago. A single tear fell from his left eye.

'Fuck,' he thought to himself, 'guess I was wrong about crying out all the tears, but I'm pretty sure that was the last one.'

Giving a simple huff, deciding that he would never again touch that bench until the next time he sat on it with Jessica, Damien shuffled on to another bench, plopping himself upon it. The tungsten balls weighed upon his aura and mind even as he had reached such a high level of mastery with them that they barely registered to him. Nevertheless, they forced him out of spiraling into another depressive episode, and into maintaining his thoughts.