Cement, brick, and stagnant water flood Noe's eyes. Loosely gripping Noe's limp left hand, Vivian's fingers tremble. The sun is behind them.
SYMPATHY BOARDING SCHOOL FOR THE MISGUIDED
Cursive letters, an edge for every blade that pierces Vivian's heart at leaving Noe upon this wasteland. Rejected from every school in Westville, Allery's parents ensured that no educational facility in the country would permit them through its gates.
Sympathy is notorious for its discipline; breaking the hardest of monsters, shattering pride, and destroying delinquents' hopes and dreams. It was no mistake that Sympathy opened its arms to welcome Noe - surely his hand in life was to be punished.
"Over there are the doors. I can't be here any longer," Vivian faces Noe as the wind pulls at the knots in her hair. "It's for your own good that I go no further."
Noe does not face her. Instead, his eyes are trained on the intimidating double doors one hundred metres away from him. Strangely, a force caresses his senses, entrancing him to walk towards them.
Letting his hand fall out of Vivian's feather-light grasp, he strides towards the metallic knobs bolted cold and calculatingly into the red-wood. He does not turn back.
Reaching the black rods, he draws the doors open and flings himself into his new school. Again, that force shoves him forward, a peculiar longing he has experienced but not quite known.
"Goodbye, Noe."
As Vivian watches the doors tightly slam so that not a soul could escape them, she breathes in a breath for the first time in fourteen years. It smells like freedom. At what cost will this forced redemption come? Only time will tell.
She descends down the hill they trekked.
In a flurry of movement and faces barely noticed, Noe soon finds himself thrown into a chair in the middle of a deadly silent classroom. A single window along the far right wall permeates skull-breaking brick.
One boy wearing glasses, the typical nerd, chalks down standard deviation.
The unyielding teacher, whose name Noe failed nor wished to recall, sternly observes his markings with a scrunched nose. He resembles an angry dodo bird Noe saw in a display at an archaeology museum.
The force of attraction Noe is experiencing for the first time, donned 'Veren' for the all-encompassing physical, mental, and emotional hold it has on him - as if directing him in every sense - tells him he is in the wrong place. Alas, there is nothing he can do but wait for his next chance to escape. He knows that he will be put back into his unrightful place as many times as he retaliates.
Suddenly, a whipping rod slicing across flesh resonates from the front of the classroom. Adjusting his focus, Noe shockingly realises the nerd ahead of the room has fallen to the ground while the stern teacher proudly adjusts his glasses.
Simultaneously, all the other eleven boys sitting back straight against their cold chairs clamber towards the front of the class. Lining up shoulder to shoulder, their backs face the teacher.
"You," the teacher's glaring eyes turn to Noe. Unaware of what to do, Noe remains seated; a deer caught in headlights. "Come here," he points his whip a step ahead of him.
Noe's chair screeches against the glazed, brown tiles. Blue lights above him cast bottomless shadows in front of his every step. His black soles tap tap tap away whilst the teacher clenches him within an iron stare.
Closing in, the deep crevices marking his educator's skin appear almost fake under the limelight.
"Bend over and put your hands on the blackboard."
Obeying his every command for fear of endangering his other classmates, Noe awaits further orders.
Before he can render what has happened, a ravenous pain bites across his back. Tearing away his flesh, it digs into his stomach and sets a hornet's nest alive within it. Another whip line arrives to dull out the intensity of the first with its fresh fire.
A third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh attack is fired rapidly.
Noe does not let out a single sound. An emptiness encroaches where morsels of humanity used to reside. He remembers his mother who told him this was what was best for him. Was this what she meant?
No blood leaks through his wounds but internal wounds are scattered within him. His blazer and shirt must surely be in tatters. The spared students shut their eyes. One black-eyed boy keenly watches his back be broken in two.
When the teacher unceasingly continues his barrage on Noe's body, Noe shuts his eyes too.
The Veren flowing through him begins to rush and tumble through his veins.
Just as he is beginning to slip into a lightless abyss, a soft knock sets him alight, tingling his toes, assuaging his pain.
"Sir Renner?"
Noe's knees buckle and he finally keels onto the floor in exhaustion. The nerd helps soften the landing with his body.
"I hope you have a moment. The thesis papers the boys wrote for me last week are simply brilliant and I thought you might want to congratulate them!"
Without prompt, the voice's owner gently opens the door. Stepping into the room, Noe is struck by the man's presence. His nerves stand on edge, reaching towards the unidentified man. He will not be satisfied until he has assured himself that he truly exists.
"It seems I've come at a bad time."
Sir Renner's response contradicts the stranger but it is heard through a smokescreen erected in Noe's mind. Trying to wrench his eyes open but unable to, Noe violently pinches himself to stay awake.
Two hundred tonne weights are placed over his eyelids.
His will to discover his source of immense comfort and heartache intensifies tenfold.
At last, he cracks them open.
A silhouette, so alluring in shape and pure in intentions captivates Noe.
Sometimes, you find what you most long for in the least likely of places.
"Welcome to Sympathy," the voice says earnestly.
Noe gives in to the abyss.
--
Veren (DC Definition):
An internal force of attraction that Noe first discovers at Sympathy Boarding School for the Misguided. This attraction directs him in ways physical, mental, and emotional.