"Get up!"
A pillow hit me dead on the face, completely ruining my dream. I groaned, burying my face deeper into the pillow I was cuddling with.
"Later…"
Now curled on the bed, my sister Ana chuckled darkly, feeling her foot pressing against the mattress as she leaned closer.
"Are you really sure later?"
I sighed exasperatedly, too sleepy to even respond to her.
"Hmmm... maybe you should check your clock. Your girlfriend was waiting downstairs for ten minutes, by the way. I had to tell her you were still drooling."
"... She's not my—wait, Luna's downstairs?!" I turned my head to look at Ana, my brain trying to process the information.
"Why didn't she just come up and yell at me?" I slowly sat up, yawning as i rubbed my eyes.
"Because she actually has manners." Ana giggled, her fingers poking my cheek.
"Stop that." I swatted her hand away and glanced at the wall-mounted clock.
10:00 a.m.
My first class had started at 7:00.
"... What...?" I stared silently at the clock.
"...WAIT WHAT?!WHY DIDN'T YOU WAKE ME UP?!"
My heart started racing as reality crashed down on me hard. Ana laughed so hard she nearly rolled off the bed.
"That's what you get for staying up all-night playing games again!"
I scrambled across the sheets, hunting for my phone. When I flipped it over, the screen confirmed my dread—seventeen missed alarms, All slept straight through. My heart stopped for a second.
Great. Perfect. Just perfect.
With zero time to process the disaster, I lunged toward the desk chair, grabbed my uniform, and yanked it on in a frantic blur. I threw my backpack over my shoulder and bolted out the door, taking the stairs two at a time.
I sprinted down the street, my tie flying over my shoulder and my backpack slamming violently against my back with every stride. My lungs were already burning, but I didn't slow down. All those grueling hours of track practice were the only reason my legs hadn't given out yet.
If I could just make the 10:15 train, I'd only be — okay, hours late. But marginally less hours late.
I bounded up the station stairs three at a time, shoved my transit card against the turnstile gate with a harsh beep, and vaulted onto the platform.
"The doors are now closing. Please step away from the train."
"Wait, wait, wait!" I gasped, pushing past a couple of businessmen.
I dashed forward, arm outstretched, betting everything on those last few feet—
The heavy metal doors slid shut right in-front of my face.
THUD.
My entire face pretty much met the doors at full sprinting speed. The impact rang through my skull and rattled down my spine, and the force sent me reeling backward. My foot caught on nothing at all, and the next thing I knew, the platform ceiling was rushing into view as I landed flat on my back with my backpack cushioning absolutely none of the fall.
The train then smoothly glided away into the tunnel as if nothing had happened.
I lay there for a solid two seconds, staring up at the fluorescent lights, just reconsidering if getting up was worth it anymore.
Then, with a groan, I rolled onto my side and pushed myself up, one hand pressed to the back of my head, the other braced against the cold platform tile. A few bystanders stared at me with mild pity but most just looked back down at their phones.
I let out a long, deep breath, finally accepting my fate. I mean, there was no point in running anymore.
I adjusted my twisted backpack strap, walked over to a nearby bench, and slumped onto it with a heavy sigh. I was going to be brutally late, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it but wait for the next ride.
By the time I finally rushed outside my classroom door, half the morning was already long gone. I took three deep, shaky breaths, tried to smooth down my ridiculously messy bedhead, and slid the door open as quietly as possible...
Creak.
The heavy wooden door shrieked at the quiet class. Every single head in the room instantly snapped toward me in unison. At the front of the room, near the board stood Mrs. Janet, chalk poised mid-air, looking at me dead in the eye.
"Look who it is." Mrs. Janet said with sarcasm, her voice cold enough to freeze the sun.
"We were just discussing the strict deadline for the midterm project. The one that was due twenty minutes ago."
My stomach dropped. In my panic, I hadn't just forgotten the time—I had also forgotten my entire binder on my desk at home. Ana's mocking laugh echoed in my head. I was officially doomed.
"Well?" Mrs. Janet stepped away from the chalkboard, her heels clicking sharply against the floor. She crossed her arms, her eyes narrowing through her glasses. "Do you have the binder, or are we wasting everyone's time?"
I didn't say a word. I couldn't.
I stared nervously and silently at Mrs. Janet. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Kell —a classmate whose face is just too tempting to release my worst impulses against— covering a smirk with his hand, while others just stared silently, their faces unreadable.
The seconds stretched into an agonizing eternity. The ticking of the classroom wall clock becomes louder each tick.
Tick.
...
Tick.
...
Tick.
"Unbelievable," Mrs. Janet finally breathed, shaking her head. She turned back to the chalkboard, dismissed me with a wave of her hand, and picked up her piece of chalk. "Go sit down. You're getting a zero for the midterm, and we will be discussing your morning tardiness after class."
A few quiet snickers rippled through the rows of desks.
I didn't look at anyone. Keeping my eyes glued to the floor, I walked down the aisle to my desk at the back of the room, my burning face the only warm thing in the entire universe. I slid into my chair, slumped down, and stared blankly ahead.
And... My day was completely ruined.
The worst part? The day had only just begun.
I stared at the blank surface of my desk. Not really seeing it and anything particular.
Somewhere far away, Mrs. Janet's voice droned on about coefficients, or derivatives, or whatever mathematical torture was on today's agenda. Everything was really silent, the chalk on the board, pen clicking beside me, and ticking of the clock.
My eyes went glassy, and my brain began to drift. Some distant, sleep-deprived corner of my imagination decided that right now, of all moments, would be a great time to just imagine a fantastic alternate reality.
In another world entirely—
Poke.
"Wh-" I nearly launched myself out of my seat.
"Psst."
My head whipped sideways. In the desk right next to mine, my classmate Luna was hunched low over her notebook, pretending to write while her eyes slid sideways toward me. She looked suspiciously casual for someone clearly up to something.
"You alive?" she whispered, barely moving her lips.
I blinked at her before letting out a sigh of pain. "... Definitely not."
She gave a small, considering nod. Then her expression shifted into something a little more complicated. She clicked her pen once. Then twice.
"Okay so..." she breathed, staring dead ahead at the board.
"Hm? What?"
"... Let's say that..." She clicked the pen a third time. "Someone also... Didn't bring a binder—"
I turned to look at her fully. "You forgot your binder?"
Her pen clicking stopped, she closed her eyes with a deep exhale. "... Yeah."
I stared at her. She stared straight ahead.
"Well i guess the more the merrier." I muttered as I exhaled through my nose, as I finally felt something ease out of my chest.
"I had it on my desk," I told her. "I was going to put it in my bag last night, but, well... I got too focused on playing."
She suddenly poked me with her pen.
"Seriously? So that's why you were still sleeping earlier and also now very late." She pouted.
"Couldn't you have just come up and woke me up?"
"Your sister told me she was going to wake you up so..."
"She's not an honest person." I sighed exasperatedly.
"Well, how did you forget your binder?" I asked as I glanced at the board, there on the board is covered with mathematical symbols that looked more of an ancient ritual that I couldn't even comprehend.
"I wrote a note—"
"Seriously? And you forgot it?" I let out a chuckle.
"As if you didn't even forget yours." She huffed, aggressively stabbing her notebook with her pen as if she was about to stab me again with it.
For the first few minutes, Luna and I just sat in silence. She was probably still mourning her binder, while I zoned right back out, letting my mind drift into nothingness.
"All right, class." Mrs. Janet's voice cut through the room, sharp enough to snap the classroom into quietness. She slapped a thick stack of papers onto her podium. "Since most of you managed to turn your midterms in on time, you have the remaining thirty minutes of the period to work quietly on the chapter review. No talking."
She shot a pointed, freezing glare directly at the back row—specifically at me.
Luna instantly looked away, hunching over her notebook and scribbling furiously to look busy. I did the same, opening my textbook to a random page of formulas that looked entirely like some ancient texts to my fried brain.
For the next half hour, the classroom settled into an agonizing, quiet hum. The only sounds were the scratching of lead on paper, the occasional sniffle, and the relentless ticks of the wall clock.
I didn't even get a single question done. My mind just kept looping through the disaster of my morning, bracing for the bell that would inevitably drag me to my next period—and whatever new disasters the rest of the day had waiting for me.
I guess playing gachas all-night really came back haunting me...
I thought, staring blankly at the page as I started zoning out.
I mean, I did stay up till 3 a.m. just to pull a 0.01% secret sword. Well totally worth it. Obviously.
While I was busy wallowing in my ruined luck, the rest of the room wasn't entirely peaceful either. Mrs. Janet was patrolling, her eyes never missing anything.
"Marcus." her voice barked out suddenly, making most of the class jump.
She stopped right in front of a desk near the windows. Marcus was sitting perfectly upright, eyes wide open, staring directly at the chalkboard—but a thin line of drool was escaping the corner of his mouth.
"How was sleep?" Mrs. Janet asked, her voice dangerously calm.
Marcus blinked, wiping his mouth in utter confusion, before snapping back into reality. He stammered, looking down at his completely blank worksheet.
"Good enough to join us, I hope." Mrs. Janet said as she snatched his paper, making him the first official addition to her stack of shame.
"Perhaps I'll have a little surprise waiting for you later to make up for your lost sleep."
Time had passed, most of it spent zoning out before I finally surfaced just enough to check the time.
Only ten minutes left in the period.
Crap.
Panic flared up again. A zero on the midterm was bad enough, but if I turned in a completely blank chapter review, Mrs. Janet might actually have me expelled. I picked up my pen and lazily began to scratch down some answers. I didn't have time to actually calculate the derivatives, so I resorted to the oldest trick in the book: Guess and Pray.
Question one has to be around 89. I'll write 89. Question two probably involves a chain rule so... 14. Sure. Question three, okay, I have genuinely no idea — I'll write something that looks like it was derived with effort and pray she doesn't check the work too closely.
Somehow, through sheer survival instinct and my expertise of guessing, I managed to fill out the remaining answers just as the final minutes ticked away. Up front, Mrs. Janet was calling a few other students to hand in their work early. It turned out Luna and I weren't the only disasters today; a handful of others were getting intercepted at the podium for incomplete work or distracted behavior.
As the bell finally rang, signaling the sweet release of next period for everyone else, Mrs. Janet stood by the door. "If I called your name, stay in your seats. The rest of you are dismissed."
The classroom emptied in a matter of seconds, leaving a heavy, awkward silence behind. I looked around at our little club of doom. Aside from me and Luna, there was Marcus—who had been caught sleeping with his eyes open for the fifth time this week—and even Kell, whose smug smirk had completely vanished now that he was stuck here too. Karma was fast, apparently.
"Alright," Mrs. Janet said, folding her arms as she looked over our pathetic group. "I hope whatever kept you all from being prepared today was worth it. Let's start with our late arrival..."
She turned her freezing glare directly onto me.
Why is she even targeting me?!
"A dramatic entrance, no binder, and a completely guessed chapter review," Mrs. Janet listed off, ticking the items on her fingers like a grocery list of failure. "You are setting a record today, Art Vance."
"Hey, at least it's a record," Kell chimed in from the front row, not reading the room at all. He smirked, leaning back in his chair. "Some people just aren't built for honors math, Mrs. Janet."
Mrs. Janet's eyes immediately snapped toward him, narrowing to dangerous slits behind her glasses. "What a wonderful comment, Kell. Because according to my notes, you are sitting here because you spent the entire period hiding your phone under your desk to cheat. Do you really want to talk about who is 'built' for this class?"
Kell's smirk evaporated instantly. His face flushed a spectacular shade of crimson, and he suddenly found the grain of the wooden floor completely fascinating.
Mrs. Janet rubbed the bridge of her nose, looking suddenly exhausted just by our mere existence. "I don't have the energy for this today. All of you are receiving a formal warning. I expect a written reflection on my desk by tomorrow morning, or these zeroes will remain permanent. Now pack your things and leave."
The rest of the school day passed in a numb, agonizing blur. By the time the final bell finally rang, freeing us out of this prison, my brain felt completely melted.
"Let's go to the convenience store for something..." Luna muttered, slouching alongside me, her head lying against my shoulders as we walked through the school gates.
"Yeah sure..." I let out a deep sigh of exhaustion.
We made our usual pitstop at the convenience store down the street. The familiar bell chimed as we slid the glass doors open, greeting us with the comforting blast of air conditioning and the scent of fried snacks. While Luna went straight for the drink coolers, I pulled out my phone and pulled up my chat with Ana.
[Arty: Hey, I'm at the store. You want anything?]
[Demonic Sis: Buy me some chips, and ramen also don't forget the drinks!]
Ana immediately replied. Of course—she was the type of girl who wouldn't slack off when it comes to food.
[Arty: I'm not buying you noodles and chips, that's the third time this week now.]
"Hey, grab me one of these too," Luna said, interrupting my typing as she dropped a couple of meat buns and a green tea onto the counter.
"Hey, we're splitting the bill," I countered, looking up from my phone.
"Erm..." Luna suddenly looked away, finding a display of cheap keychains near the register intensely fascinating.
I sighed, rubbing my temples. "Seriously...?"
I ended up paying for the whole thing anyway. We grabbed our plastic bags and stepped back out into the afternoon heat to start the walk home, the cold condensation from the drinks soaking through the plastic.
As we turned the corner onto our usual street, I looked back down at my screen, waiting for Ana's inevitable counter-argument about the ramen.
Nothing.
I blinked, staring at the display. My last text hadn't even gone through; a little spinning loading icon was stuck right next to it. I glanced up at the top corner of the screen.
No signal.
That was weird. Ana had literally just texted me a minute ago inside the store, and we were in the middle of the city where reception was always perfect. I tapped the screen a few times, expecting the bars to jump back up, but the service remained entirely dead.
"Hey Luna, is your phone acting up too?" I asked, turning my head.
The words died in my throat.
The sidewalk next to me was completely empty. Luna wasn't there. She hadn't slowed down, she hadn't stopped to tie her shoe—she was just gone. The plastic bag she had been holding wasn't even dropped on the ground.
A sudden, heavy silence dropped over the street, suffocating the usual neighborhood noises. I spun in a full circle. No cars were driving down the road. No birds were chirping in the trees. The houses, the power lines, the vending machines—everything looked exactly the same, but, everything felt completely empty.