In a dark abandoned alleyway, what people seemed to pass by normally as they passed their melancholic days by one by one like so, existed what looked like a bend in space; a distortion of sorts. For us to know exactly what this is all about, we would have to go back in time and barge into the life of an underwhelming college student living an underwhelming college life.
The clock hit 12:15 and out came a file of people from each and every room on a certain floor of the massive well-known college of Stars. Amongst those people was Aves Glotterman, and it was evident from his panda eyes and gloomy demeanor that he wasn't enjoying his life at the moment.
He was a fairly short person compared to the average male, with black eyes and a head full of black, untamed hair. But behind the curtains that pertained what looked like an ordinary student, lay a deep but sorry truth. That truth slowly kept him from making friends like a leash on a dog.
Aves sighed as he looked everywhere but ahead of himself.
"I wonder when this is all going to end. Well, it's not like I can do anything about it anyway. I didn't manage to write much down during that lecture because of them, either."
Right as those words left his mouth, a small group of boys, maybe four or five of them, came storming out of the lecture room and, as if to let their presence known to Aves, bumped into him, sending his feeble body and bag flying across the hallway.
The four of them sniggered as they continued to run out of sight.
"Ugh, it hurts!" Aves cried out as he started gathering himself and his bag after a moment of reprieve.
"What does?" rang out a low but perky voice from somewhere.
"Everything does..." He replied almost automatically without even realizing.
"Huh?" Aves' head jerked subtly as he stopped whatever he was doing and slowly looked up.
A girl with sharp brown eyes and long black hair, with a playful but curious demeanor, was standing there with her arms crossed and her head bent downward a little.
Aves recognized her almost immediately. Her name was Isabelle, also known as one of the top four rising beauties of Stars College. She was really popular with girls her age and even girls in the year above theirs, which spoke volumes about her personality.
'W-Why is she here and w-why now of all times?!' Aves thought to himself loudly with his mouth wide open and his face as red as a beetroot.
'This is so embarrassing!!' He covered his face as if to protect himself from utter humiliation.
"What are you doing?" She finally asked with a hint of tease in her voice, as faint as it was.
"N-nothing!!" Aves replied as he resumed what he was doing, only five times faster this time.
"Do you need help?"
"No, it's fine haha."
"Suit yourself."
"Umm, my name is Aves by the way," He finally started after getting back up.
He stuck out his hand awkwardly in the hopes of trying to brush over what she saw a moment ago.
"I knew that already." Isabelle intoned, her expression unreadable.
"You did? W-well I know your name too haha." Aves scratched the back of his head awkwardly.
She seemed to be staring at him now even more deeply than before.
"You-"
"Isabelle!"
Just as she started to say something else, one of her friends down the hallway called out to her.
"Isabelle!! We are going to leave you behind if you don't hurry up!"
"I'm coming, I'm coming."
She turned around as quickly as she had appeared and re-joined her group as if nothing had happened.
"What were you doing?"
"Nothing..." Isabelle looked subtly over her shoulders at Aves' direction before resuming her chat with her friends.
"She is gone..." Aves muttered to himself absentmindedly.
Their voices slowly but surely faded away from the hallways as all Aves was left with was what remained of their echo's. He was left in a daze for a second until a very urgent thought snapped him out of it.
'You did? W-well I know your name too haha...' Flashbacks of their conversation suddenly popped up in his head.
"Why the hell did I say that? She's definitely going to think I'm some weirdo, you idiot!"
He continued in a panicking tone, "What do I do? Do I go after her and apologize to her? But then she will think I'm an even bigger creep!"
Aves then paused to contemplate his next course of action. It was a shame that his overthinking led to nothing in the end. "Forget it…"
'Her popping up out of nowhere and starting a conversation with someone like me was the last thing I expected to happen today...'
'I've never been that close to any girl in my life, let alone Isabelle…'
'But still, she indeed really was… dazzling…' He sighed inwardly.
'Where do I have to go now?' He finally looked up and asked himself after re-organizing his thoughts.
It was almost a routine for Aves to ask himself this question whenever one of his lectures was over and another one was about to start.
'I think its C-12, that is- '
Plop.
'What?'
Aves looked down on the floor to see what he had stumbled on. It turned out to be one of his comic books that he had borrowed from the convenience store owner down the street from the college.
It was very obvious from the title in the center of the front cover that it was a superhero comic book that was probably released 20 years ago. That was probably the reason why a 50-year-old shop owner even had it in the first place.
It was a total coincidence that Aves had found out that the shop owner liked reading comics in his own free time. Of course, the reason why Aves ended up with a free comic was because he also liked reading superhero comics and made sure to share his lonely passion with the one person who could understand him for it.
'I'm glad I didn't forget to pick this up since I want to start reading it later…'
On his way to class, which he was already 2 minutes late to, he started flicking through the comic to satisfy his ever-growing curiosity of what a late 1900/early 2000s superhero comic would look like.
'Meh.'
'Judging by the few pages I have seen, it looks like one of those tacky old hero comics, where the hero comes in at the right time to save the day and gets girls on the side while doing so…'
Sigh…
'Cliché as this story maybe, I'm pretty sure anyone would want to have this sort of life, I know I would…'
Before he could go through a couple more pages, he noticed that he had already missed his classroom…
***
"Oh my gosh, is that actually true?!"
"Yeah, you should've seen it, I was there!"
"What happened next?"
"She rejected him in front of everyone obviously…"
"Really? Wow…"
As Aves entered the lecture room, it was evident from his awkward expression that he thought he was going to be late, but the barrage of words being exchanged between students all over the room made it obvious to him that the lecture hadn't even started.
He walked across one side of the room unimpressively to avoid everyone's stares at him but… there was none.
It was merely his imagination that led him to think people actually cared if he was in class or not, but he tried hiding himself from plain sight as much as possible, by making himself seem 'smaller', nonetheless.
He finally sat down in his seat that was at the far corner of the classroom, and the first thing he did was to look over to his right as if to look out for something before letting out a sigh of relief. He then continued to take his class materials out.
'I mean I'm glad the teacher wasn't here when I came in but what's taking him so long?'
'I just want to get this lesson out the way without them being here…'
He looked over his right shoulder again as he kept on thinking to himself.
A sudden slam snapped him out of his reverie as the classroom double doors suddenly swung open and hit the wall blocking its course on the side. It should have startled everyone, but did not, since they were quite used to it already.
"Did you see the look on his stupid face?"
"I know right?!!"
"But man, I didn't expect things to turn out that way."
The group of four that came strutting into the room as if their parents owned the place caused the whole class to shift their attention onto them.
Three of the four scattered from the pack as they reached the middle of the room and walked off to their seats around the classroom, but not before they all gave each other one final look. They all nodded at the one person that seemed to be their 'main' guy, who was seemingly walking in Aves' direction.
Aves kept his head down to avoid trouble while that person came closer and closer.
'Jason Odilleson…'
'This guy has been annoying me everywhere I go and it's not like I've ever done anything to him. It's been like this ever since high school.'
'Doesn't he have anything better to do?'
Aves gritted his teeth and clicked his tongue silently in frustration as Jason walked up to his seat.
"Oi, Aves! There you are! I was looking all over for you!" Jason yelled in an obnoxiously loud manner.
"….."
"I just wanted to talk to you, why are you ignoring me, huh?"
Aves flinched at the last word he said as it rang all throughout the now-silent room. Everyone was watching the situation unfold without even the slightest hitch, as if it were a normal scene to them.
Without even a single sign of warning, Jason violently swung his right hand in the air and…
Pens, paper and everything else on Aves' desk was sent flying through the air. This prompted Aves to look up almost immediately, but the expression on his face wasn't one of concern or fear… It was one of pure anger.
He immediately got off of his seat, making the chair fly backwards. Aves wanted to beat him up more than anything but knew he couldn't, so all he ended up doing was stare at him loathly.
"Hoho…. And what are you going to do about it, Aves?" Jason taunted.
Both of Aves' arms were clenched to either side of his desk with extreme intensity, so much so that it felt like pieces of wood were going to get chipped off if he had persisted any further.
As Aves looked to the right-hand side of the class, all he could see were faces of his dear classmates that were full of nothing but pity and empathy. That utterly disgusted him.
'How is it that people… no, parasites like Jason can do this kind of thing in the midst of society and not get punished for it? Why is it that I, a person who only minds his own business, am getting punished instead? Why is it that they're only watching and not helping? Is it because it's not their problem? They're the same people who'd ask for help when put in a situation like this. Filthy hypocrites…'
All these questions went through his head as he panned the room in a few short glances.
'If you're not going to do anything, stop watching and do something else!'
The class was so silent, you could hear a pin drop.
It was then that Aves realized something.
'Those faces…'
Their faces, that had looked at him as if he were some sort of pitiful rat up until now, were slowly turning and transforming into a hideous, contorted shape that would only be seen in horror movies when a villain had finally trapped his target.
Aves took an involuntary step back from their sudden change of expressions, almost causing him to trip over the chair that was on the floor behind him. But he managed to balance himself in the nick of time as his right foot, which was free of entanglement, arced around the other end of the chair to act as a support.
The moment that he had looked away for, to keep himself from falling over like an idiot, seemed to have caused an even further change in their expressions, because when Aves re-focused his attention onto them, the first thing he noticed was their devilish smiles.
Their lips seemed to have arched so far up their faces, so much so that he could swear one of the boys' lips were touching his eye lashes. That was especially the case for Jason who was only a few feet away from him…
The scene in front of him was petrifying…
'What happened? Why did everyone change all of a sudden?'
"Wha…?"
His lips quivered pathetically in an attempt to voice out his questions, but it was as if all his energy had been sucked out of him, for not even a movement from a single muscle could be brought forth without excruciating effort.
Nothing but visible air could be seen or heard coming out of his gapingly open mouth…
'Huh? Wait a sec… I can see my own breath?'
It was nowhere near cold enough in the lecture room. No. It was nowhere near cold enough in the entire country, as the weather was just shifting over from a boiling hot summer to a breezy autumn…
'What in the world?' He wondered silently.
His curiosity was quickly interrupted by the looming shadow that he noticed out of the corner of his eye, making him automatically jerk his head over in that direction. His neck movement was painfully slow, so it took him longer to perform that action.
One of the girls, who was sitting at the opposite corner of the room to Aves, looked as if she had gotten a few centimeters closer to him when he wasn't looking, but stopped right as he had her within his field of vision. He couldn't quite make out her expression, since she was some distance away.
He immediately understood what that movement indicated though… and he didn't like it, not one bit. What was unfolding in front of him was one of his deepest phobias that he didn't know even existed within him.
He felt so afraid that he just wanted to run out of the classroom, disregarding his class materials, for they could have it for all he cared.
'I need to get out of here!'
He slowly angled his body forward in an act to sprint out of the class through an opening he noticed while panning the room earlier. He certainly wasn't the fastest man in the world but that didn't mean he would allow himself to get gobbled up by those 'monsters'…
Everything was set and now the only thing he needed to do was prompt his legs to…
"….?"
It was then, after looking down at where his knees were, that he noticed, all the while quivering non-stop…...
'M-my legs, they.... I-I can't move them!'
During the time he had looked down to try and forcefully wedge his legs out of what felt like an imaginary swamp, the students crept closer and closer, a floor's tile's worth of distance at a time.
Now, not being able to decide whether to try and keep them all within his field of vision (which was nearly impossible) or try to move his legs hoping that he still had the chance to escape from this nightmare of a situation, he fell into a state of frenzy.
There had been many cases of people that, having been put in life threatening situations, fell into a state of 'do or die', in which even the smallest details of their surroundings could be picked up. Some would say that their senses were 'amplified' due to dormant human survival instincts rising up at the last second, while other scientists linked it to the 'fight or flight' response.
It didn't matter which one was the correct explanation because only one thing stood true right now and that was the fact that it was real.
It might have been because he was sweating profusely while trying hard not to fall into a panic attack but whatever it was that he was feeling, it was certainly real to Aves. It was as real as it could get!
Unfortunately, whatever it was that he was feeling, it didn't help him one bit as the figures of his classmates out of the corner of his eyes kept on getting closer and closer. Out of ideas on how to free himself, his heart fell to his stomach.
And as if to let the unknown assailants around him know that he had no way out, all of his muscles that were tensed up until a moment ago returned back to their relaxed states as his entire being seemed to realise that any further resistance was futile.
'Haha, I guess… this really is how I go out, huh?' Aves chuckled joylessly to himself.
Trickle.
Him being a few breaths away from imminent death didn't stop him from sweating like a maniac, he noted.
'Oh yeah… what'll happen when they actually reach me?'
'Guess we'll find out.'
Jason, who was literally a few centimeters away from him now, started raising his hands laterally in the air in a shuddersome manner. With every movement of his muscle, a crack of a bone could be heard. The horrifying spectacle sent shivers down Aves' spine and forced him to shut his eyes.
'I wasn't even able to say goodbye to them…' The infamous final words never left his mouth.
Drip.
Sweat. No. Tears, that captured the entire scene of their owner's departure, finally hit the ground and…
SLAM!!