The You in Me: 2 - A New World.

 

C H A P T E R   O N E

“Seraphina! Wake up or you will be late! If you’re late, you’ll never get a good education. If education eludes you, you’ll never get a job! Joblessness will make you ugly and take you off the marriage mart! If you’re jobless and a maiden—well, then, that is a nutshell for ruination! And ruination is neither beautiful nor sustainable in the long run! So, WAKE UP. RIGHT THIS INSTANT.”

Wake up, Seraphina did; rising like a corpse from a grave, clawing its way out of the dirt it was buried in. She threw away her blankets and stood up on her two feet like the independent teenager she was. Her arms stretched out and a yawn escaped her lips before she could call out, “I’m up, mother, all awake and avoiding ruination!”

With a doozy sight, she swayed left and right as she wobbled her way into the bathroom and felt up the blue marbled walls for the toothbrush stand. Her fingers met the familiar grooves of her toothbrush and her half-opened eyes could see a red blob in her hand, through the mirror in front, as she directed the thing under the tap. The stream of water broke into a million droplets upon meeting her coarse toothbrush bristles. She applied the toothpaste on it and shoved it into her mouth.

Birds chirped outside her bathroom window, probably communicating their daily schedule to the morning sun. The wind seemed to add a few inputs of her own as it made the tree leaves rustle in communication.

A lazy smile smeared itself on her mouth as a green trail of toothpaste foam ran down the side of her lips and onto her chin.

Mornings were supposed to be silent and beautiful like this. Easy and hopeful.

She forced her eyes open to rinse off her mouth only to spot a person in the mirror, standing right behind her. Masked, clothed in academy armour, weapon at the ready.

He swung his sword before Seraphina could even fathom a thought and it impaled her back. Swiftly. Mercilessly. Her body jerked forward and toothpaste burst out of her mouth along with blood. The mint-blood concoction smeared itself on the mirror as she witnessed her white tee-shirt grow a red blob stain, spreading by the second.

Seraphina, impaled like a kebab, groaned.

“Mother is gonna be so mad about this,” she whispered, rather hoarsely to the man in the mirror. Her hands wrapped around the sharp blade in an attempt to push the sword out through her back. She succeeded in a jiffy.

“You seemed to have dropped this, I believe,” she held the sword in her bloody hands and turned to face the man.

His teeth chattered in the confines of his clenched jaw, betraying the otherwise stoicism of his stance.

“You wound me, quite literally,” Seraphina spat, shoving the sword in the young hero’s chest. He hadn’t bothered to keep his identity a secret so his white and gold academy uniform betrayed the anonymity. The golden badge on his breast pocket gleamed under the window’s sunlight, reading: CLASS 1.

“Tsk.” As the bloody sword hit his chest, his wits returned to him. The boy swung a punch to her right. Seraphina’s scarlet eyes tinged gold for a second, as she predicted his move, and swung a knife-hand-strike to his right. The blow pierced through his golden cuff and struck right against his bone.

CRACK.

“That’s gotta need a Class B healer, poor soul,” Seraphina feigned concern as she coughed out more blood.

“Or I’ll just consume you,” the boy rasped and swung his sword-wielding left hand with the aim of slicing her neck off. Azure aether circles enveloped the blade of his sword, offering him a power-up.

Seraphina’s eyes twinkled.

Her toothbrush encircled with a black whirlwind of its size met the sword’s blade before her neck. The boy ground his teeth and forced the blade forward but the toothbrush sliced through it with ease; as the horror of his hard-earned sword being bested by a mere toothbrush settled into his heart, Seraphina threw a jab under his chin.

He fell to the tiled floor along with his sword blades thumping beside each other in a pool of her blood.

“I’d leave you alive,” Seraphina smiled, “But if I don’t do a few bad things in a day… I’ll perish.” She stabbed her fingers through his armour and the black aether circle around them allowed them to pierce through his flesh and bones. They met the softness of his heart and felt it beating erratically as her fingers wrapped around it. Five layers of aether circles appeared around her arm; his chest glowed in a faint golden light which when spiraled around her arm, turned darker with every aether circle they hit.

The darkest being right over her own heart as she consumed his aether and left the once youthful boy as a corpse of his ill made decisions.

A memory erupted in her head; it was of the boy when he was young, blonde hair swaying like the golden wheat he was surrounded with. His blue eyes dazzled with ambition under the scorching sun as he swung his sword, over and over, at the scarecrow.

“Come eat lunch, sweetie!” a woman’s voice called him.

“Right after I’m done! When I’m in the academy, you’ll have to eat all the meals by yourself,” the boy replied with a shout. A smile brandished his face.

“Of course, my son, of course. You’ll be a great hero one day but not unless you eat your meals!”

The boy gasped in realisation and dropped his sword, his footsteps raced away as the memory did from Seraphina’s head. She detached her hand from his slowly dissolving body and the aether circles disappeared.

“Ach,” she spat the mint-blood concoction again and stood up. She pulled up her tee-shirt to check the bloody gash on her torso. It seemed to be closing up at a good enough pace. Satisfied, Seraphina passed the dead guy one last glance before turning her back to him. “Making me feel bad for nothing so early in the morning, you are,” she whispered as she washed her bloody hand in the sink.

His darkened skeleton laid cold and brazen by her feet as Seraphina whined, “And what am I supposed to do with this mess?! Mum will have my life!” she grimaced at the mirror in front of her and the blood underneath her feet. She splashed water on the soiled mirror and used her bare hands to wipe it down and clean it up.

“Such an inconvenience,” she tsked. Seraphina bent over to pick the skeleton by its head and winced. Her blood trailed down its bones, dripping back onto the floor, which made her stomp twice in annoyance.

“Sera! Are you ready yet? The breakfast is getting cold! If you eat cold breakfast, you’ll end up not liking it! If you do not like breakfast, you’ll start skipping it! Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and if you skip it, you will grow weaker! If you grow weak on the inside, you’ll be prone to diseases and get sick a lot! Which would mean big chunks of medicines until the day you die!”

Her mother’s voice came closer with every syllable she uttered and Seraphina’s heart thundered faster with every footstep drawing closer.

She shoved the skeleton in her bathtub and drew the curtain. She stripped off her bloodied clothes and threw them onto the floor to absorb some blood or maybe use them as a mop to wipe the floor clean.

A chill ran down her spine as she splashed water on the bloodstains around her stomach and legs, clad only in her underwear. It didn’t seem to work.

“I am coming, mum, my- uh, my drain is clogged! Um, just a second!”

She twisted her shower knob and stood underneath it with an open mouth, gargling and showering at the same time.

“You’re still showering?! Girl, I-, oh my, did you not even iron your uniform? Seraphina! An un-ironed uniform means you’re disrespecting yourself and the authorities! I raised you better than this! Oh, my goodness, she’s eighteen and I’m still doing everything for her!”

Wet and relatively cleaner, Seraphina poked her wet head out of the bathroom door and grinned. “That’s why you’re the best mum and I love you,” she winked as her mother rolled her eyes in exasperation.

“Not a braincell in sight around here!” her short mother scoffed, swung the uniform over her shoulder and stomped out of her daughter’s room.

Seraphina heaved a sigh of relief.

The running water had helped the blood drain faster and the gash over her stomach seemed to have healed itself.

“Almost traumatised my mother today, I did,” Seraphina whispered as she picked up the broken sword and stashed it along with the skeleton.

After a quick shower and lazy mirror wipe, she paraded into her room and dressed into her well-ironed, curtsy mother, black and gold academy uniform. The fabric felt soft to touch but when clad, it doubled up as a basic need armour.

Seraphina’s mother had no idea of who she was or what her academy truly entailed of and she would like to keep it that way. To her mother, Seraphina was an ordinary eighteen-year-old trying to graduate from a private academy with good grades in order to have sustainable future options which was professional for motherlingo: good marriage, stable income and a good number of babies to help with increasing the human population.

Seraphina walked up to the full-length mirror beside her wardrobe and adjusted the black ribbon around her neck for it happened to be covering the golden badge on her breast-pocket, which read: Aetherunes, CLASS S.

The Aetherunes Academy was a secluded dream for common folk and a hellscape for the gifted. Every normal human wanted to be part of the world’s most elite circle but every soul with aether running through their bloodstream knew that it was not a place capable enough to sustain. Though forced by their own circumstances, humanity constantly strived to be better in secrecy.

“Ah, you look so neat!” Lisbeth, commented as her daughter walked down the stairs. Her slender fingers tapped against each other in a show of excitement, “Come along, have your breakfast. Where’s your bag? I do not see a bag! Seraphina, do you not know what happens to kids who do not bring their books and notebooks! Education eludes them! you cannot be that person, now, can you? Only if you want to end up jobless, ugly and a maiden! No one wants that, do they now? So, BRING YOUR BAG RIGHT THIS INSTANT!”

“Geez, I haven’t been issued the new term syllabus, mum, they’ll give it to me today. I don’t need a bag to go empty handed, right?” Seraphina explained as she took a seat in front of a table laden with food. Her stomach grumbled and the insatiable appetite of a demon resurfaced.

Only for it to be hindered by her mother’s whack on her head.

“Ouch! That hurt!” cried the girl (who was stabbed minutes prior and did not bat an eye lash) almost teary eyed as the boiled egg slipped out of her grip and onto the table.

“Did you wash your hands? Of course you did not! You know what happens to dirty kids, don’t you? Sickness. Medicines. Death! And where do you plan on keeping your lunchbox?! Nu-uh, no, don’t you make that face! Of course you are taking a lunchbox! Do you want to perish without lunch? Don’t you know what happens to kids who do not eat? Sickness. Medicines. Death!”

Her enunciation of, ‘Sickness, medicines and death,’ was as dramatic as fifth graders acting out the mutual death scene of Romeo and Juliet.

“Of course not, I wanna live with mum for a long, long, time,” Seraphina smiled and wrapped her hands around her mother’s waist. It felt squishy and comfortable as she rubbed her cheek against her mother’s belly.

“You’re eighteen and you act like a toddler, tsk, find your bag and keep a lunchbox! Make haste!”

“Yes, mum!” Seraphina saluted and ran back upstairs. Hopefully, she wouldn’t be bullied on her first day.