Outsider : Classroom Of The Elite

Fragment #4 (1/2) - Whatever It Takes

"These are the modern times where humans no longer live in the darkness. Instead, we now live in a world full of cheerful, bright, and white despair."

.....

When I came to, I found myself lying on the hard concrete floor.

The first thing I felt was the sharp pain in the back of my head. My clothes were wet and cold, the winter making it even worse. My vision was still hazy for some reason. I blinked a few times to get myself adjusted. When I tried to get up and sit down..

"Huh-?" I fell back on the ground.

For some reason, I couldn't move. No matter how much I struggled, my hands wouldn't be free. Something stopped my hands when I tried to move them. A foreign texture on my wrists; nylon rope, I think?

Someone had me tied up. It was a no-brainer.

I propped my head up in order to get familiar with the surroundings. A bonfire was burning beside me. Though the flames lit up some of the area, the majority remained dark and ambiguous. From what little I could manage to make out, there was something like a cross in front of me, broken. It seemed damp from where I lay. Moss had been growing on it, as well as the nearby walls. The discolored Rosewindow (or at least what was left of it) could barely be recognized from the layers of dust on it.

It was an old church, probably had been decades since it was abandoned.

I knew where this was.

The abandoned church on the Najima Hill. During WWII, when the Allied forces anchored near this archipelago, they built one to practice their religious beliefs. Now, it's just part of an area that was yet to be occupied by civilization.

"You're up." a deep chilled voice spoke out from outside my field of vision.

It felt strange. Not because I was confused by the turn of events; but that voice.. it sounded.. oddly familiar.

With what little strength I could muster, I pushed my chest against the ground and sat down. In a swift motion, I twisted my neck toward the direction of the voice. There he was, sitting comfortably on one of the benches that'd managed to survive the cruelty of time. He was playing around with a knife and a rope in his hands.

He looked at me with cold sharp eyes, "I was starting to think that you might've croaked from just a slap in the head. That would've been pathetic, to be honest." He said.

I could clearly see the bloodied mask that was hiding the nose I broke after punching repeatedly. The clothes over the spot where he got pierced were torn. No doubt about it, it was the gray hooded figure who I'd been chasing earlier.

I've heard of that voice before. A number of faces came to my mind. But the most likely one..

"You... Who the hell are you?" I asked in a glacial tone.

"Still haven't realized it yet? Tch, that's no good, I expected better from you, Levent... or should I say-"

With the knife in his hand, he cut the mask off his face, revealing his features in the dim orange light. But that was enough to confirm his identity. My eyes widened after the revelation.

Honestly, I had my suspicions from the moment his name got involved. I was unintentionally praying for it to be a miscalculation.. But after seeing it with my own eyes, there was no denying how cruel reality can be..

After all, it was someone I knew really well.

"Good evening, offspring of the Headhunter."

He said, with his trademark smile that actually met his eyes for the first time.