damsel in distress

Epilogue

It's as if the heavens decided to take a piss. School's already shitty, and the rains make it harder to function like a normal student under the fucking open assembly halls. Everyone is drenched by the time the morning assembly gets done. Whoever designed this hall should must be a fucking sadist. And the blazers are made of thick wool, that get drenched easily but getting water out of them is motherfucking hard.

It's my fourth and last blazer. Fucktards with six blazers for all six days must be so lucky. I hate monsoons.

“Dickheads,” I grumble, eyeing the handsome looking motherfuckers in the first row. They are all dry, with their gelled hair in place and their clothes not assaulted by the rains. It wasn't their turn for the assembly. Lucky bastards. 

“Stop sulking,” says my seatmate Adam. He's not as drenched as me, because his blazer has fibres of microplastic woven into the acrylic and wool while mine is an old fashioned coat of cashmere wool. The newer blazers dry easily, and for some reason are still very irksome to my old fashioned parents. I don't particularly like him, but he is a nice guy who keeps his mouth shut about ninety percent of the time. Speaks only when absolutely necessary, so I guess I am being a nuisance.

“What now?” I turn to him. His wet, mousy brown hair is plastered over his head and for some reason, he is quite tranquil about it. Sometimes I wonder if the dude has undergone lobotomy or some shit. It isn't humanly possible to be that calm. “Don't you feel cold?”

Adam gives me a straight faced look that could mean everything and nothing all at once. And then he looks ahead at the professor, refusing to explain a word about what goes inside his head. Frustrated, I turn to the professor as well. He's droning on about some stupid fairytale about winters and stars and how our great houses came into existence. I've read it all beforehand. This story doesn't start for a good six months from now, when the segregation ceremony would be held.

I look at Adam beside me, wondering if he would be a potential love interest. He has the markings of it; he is tall, brooding, mysterious, and comes from a family of new money senators. He has blue eyes to boot. A lot of boys in my class are similar, and I wonder if I'll get to be something other than a friend of a friend of a friend this time. It isn't hard to guess that I'll be put in the House Nous, with the other scholars and academics while the hero and the heroine would be in Tharros. Learning about battles and warfare.

This stupid society separates its scholars from warriors, and hence those who fight are fools and those who think are cowards. Seriously, how is it possible that I can think more logically than the author themself?

“Do you know we exist in a storybook, Adam Bancroft?” I turn to my seatmate when the lecture ends. He is packing up his bag. The guy doesn't even acknowledge me with a glance. I follow him down the stairs and out in the corridor and into the lecture hall. We meet a few guys and stop for some brainless chit-chat, talking about the game last night. I bet two pennies no one has the slightest clue about what exact game we are talking about. Then we begin to talk about the new microplastic shoes that mimic leather, and I realise there are so many characters whose names I don't even remember. Talks of holidaying in the Sapphire Isles, whose father gifted whom a new octadrone, the latest news of revolt from the borderland districts. The last one perks me up.

“The lumberjacks, you say?” I ask.

“They destroyed the ice dams up north,” says a tall boy with tousled black hair. He is Sorin Ayaz, the bastard of Anatoly Ayaz, Minister of Mines and Metallurgy.

“Aren't you from the north?” I ask.

“Yes, but unrelated to the lumberjacks.” Sorin Ayaz shrugs in a nonchalant fashion. His careless swag makes me put him on a list for potential love interests too. “You're Dr. Morganstein's son, if I may be correct?”