"You should really learn to fight back, Olive." JaNyx sighed, opening the lunchbox that her maid had prepared. "What would've happened to you if I didn't come looking for you because you missed the first period?"
"And I will always be grateful to you, Nyx." Olivia chuckled, taking a bite out of the sausage that was no longer warm.
JaNyx tucked her blue hair behind her ear. Surprisingly, the administrators of Huxley allowed her to have a 'loud' hair color, which was explicitly stated to be unacceptable in the freshmen orientation and the school handbook.
However, Olivia had an inkling feeling that JaNyx's parents bribed the admins into allowing her.
"Why are you still laughing?!" JaNyx asked exasperatedly. "Also, it's JaNyx." She corrected.
"Ah, yes," Olivia said with a tone as if she was humoring her but didn't necessarily agree with her. "Your IGN, whatever that means."
"In-game name!" She completed the acronym. "Gosh, I introduced myself to everyone as JaNyx on the first day of class, yet people still call me 'Nyx'!"
"Maybe because people prefer calling you by your real name instead of the name you present in video games?" Olivia suggested. "You know, this might be the reason why people accuse you of having middle school syndrome."
"Let them think me all they want!" JaNyx huffed. "As long as you understand me, that's what matters."
Using her free hand, Olivia patted JaNyx's head like she was a puppy. "There, there."
JaNyx pouted but didn't slap her hand away. In fact, Olivia suspected that JaNyx liked it when she treated her like this.
"Anyway," JaNyx abruptly stood up from the bench they were sitting on. "I think I left my water flask inside the classroom. BRB."
Olivia merely nodded as she continued eating.
Now, she was sitting alone on one of the benches in the Huxley Garden with other students who were having a picnic there, giving her a mean look. She paid them no mind, as she usually did.
It has been three years since she started studying in this overly expensive school. She was currently a junior, and honestly, she didn't expect that she'd last this long in this place.
They were right, though, that her "poor a**" couldn't afford to study here. If it weren't for her scholarship, being a Huxley would be just a mere daydream.
However, it's been more of a nightmare for the past three years.
"Oh, look at you!" A voice sneered.
Olivia felt the blood disappear from her face upon hearing the familiar voice.
She tried to close her lunch box as quickly as possible, for she already knew what was going to happen next, but Badd was quicker. She grabbed Olivia's ponytail and dragged her literally across the garden. The insides of Olivia's lunchbox fell helpless on the grassy ground.
"Help!" Olivia pleaded at the bystanders who were watching them with tears streaming down her cheeks. "Someone, please!"
But they were nothing more than that, mere bystanders.
Olivia's scalp was burning, and she felt like the strands of her hair were being plucked out of its follicles. Her uniform was completely dirtied as she was dragged and paraded around the school. She struggled to free herself from Badd's grip, but the more she did, the tighter Badd's grasp became on Olivia's hair.
The stinging sensation stopped but only to be replaced by something else when Olivia's head collided with the rough, bricked surface of a wall. Olivia felt warm liquid oozing down her face, and she didn't need to touch it to guess what it was.
She turned her head to the side dizzily, only to realize where her head collided and where they were now.
It was the dirty, bricked surface of the abandoned well in the empty lot of the Huxley. This lot was supposed to be another garden of some sort, but the construction was stopped when a student fell inside the well.
His body was never found.
It seemed like Olivia was next.
"You're an eyesore," Badd sneered, her minions cackling behind her. "You stand out like a rotten apple in Huxley."
"Please stop," Olivia cried. "What have I ever done to you to deserve this?"
"I don't know," Badd hummed, checking her nails. "Maybe you deserve this for simply being alive?"
Before Olivia could even respond, Badd's minion grabbed her by the limbs.
"What are you doing?!" She screamed, tussling at their strong grip but to no avail. "Let go!"
"Oh, we will let go." One of her cronies, Amanda or something along the lines, threatened as they forced her to stand up.
"Maybe you'll be better off dead!"
This was the last thing Olivia heard, accompanied by wicked laughter, as her bullies pushed her inside the well.
Or maybe not. This was too much, even by Huxley's bullying standards.
Olivia fell.
Fell.
Fell.
Fell.
She waited for her body to land at the end of the well, but she didn't. Instead, she felt like she was pushed up instead, defying gravity itself.
You know, how that video game character was pushed out of the well in the same way?
JaNyx would've been beamed if she had heard Olivia make that video game reference.
Just as she was about to 'fall back' again (whatever the hell that means), she grabbed the edge of something. It was probably the well.
With her remaining strength, Olivia pulled herself up and planned to give Badd the scare of her life when she heard a different voice of horror instead.
"What the hell?"
Olivia looked up from the source of the voice as she climbed up, her clothes wet with dirty, stagnant water.
How odd. She didn't even land on the end of the well to be wet in the first place.
But that was something that was just a minor inconvenience now.
Beside her was a boy with thick-framed glasses, held at the edge of the well as if he was about to get thrown in as she did. Holding the boy was… a man who looked like her but the polar opposite of her features at the same time.
No, this wasn't a normal day.
In fact, it was worse than usual.