Disclaimer: I am using the Cal State LA campus for this chapter's 'generic college campus', however, all characters and names were made up by me off-the-cuff, so any relations between any facalty or students living or dead are purely coincidental.

.~.~.~.

"Ugh! Why do I have to do this on my day off?" I moaned as I opened the door to my dorm room and walked into the halfway.

I was half-dressed, wearing a comfy light blue nylon T-shirt and a pair of matching blue pajama pants with a plaid pattern. I rolled my shoulders and stretched as I reached the bathroom, inspecting myself in the mirror. Despite my pasty pale skin and greasy black hair, I wasn't exactly an 'ugly' guy, though I was no adonis either. A solid 6/10 and when I actually dressed up and made myself look nice, I could probably pass for a 7.

"And yet THAT guy got the girl." I moaned as I turned on the water to the shower and hopped in. I quickly washed my face and hair before lathering up in soap to wash my body, all the while thinking about how my roommate, the most average of average-looking Indian guys, was somehow dating the most beautiful girl on campus. A 10/10 mega hottie with her own Million Plus fan Instagram account that everyone had their eyes on. I felt the jealousy swell up within me and had to crush it back down via sheer willpower.

'Don't get me wrong, Aarav is a great guy, super nice too, but a HUGE weeb… man I'm so jelly!'. I thought to myself as I finished my shower and dried myself off. I quickly brushed my teeth and put on the pair of spare underwear I'd brought with me before throwing my PJs back on and making my way to the living room.

"Ah! Christian, my friend! How are you today?" Aarav greeted me with his friendly-as-ever smile.

"I'm fine, Aarav. How about you? Are you and Serena going anywhere today?" I asked.

Aarav shook his head. "Unfortunately, Serena is participating in the protests, so for today, no."

I nodded my head and sighed exasperatedly. A few days ago, a police officer on the other side of the country got caught on camera shooting a black guy in the back which killed him. So of course, being that we lived on a college campus in the United States, there were going to be protests against systemic racism in the police force. Now as the whitish brown guy you'll ever know, these protests didn't mean much to me personally other than a 50/50 chance that classes would be canceled as the teachers would be walking with the students. I had personally never experienced any racism from the police, however, I knew that it still happened, though with cops in my family, the whole situation was... complicated.

I looked over to Aarav as he came to the table with two plates of food. "Serena coming over for breakfast?" I asked as he lay the plates down in front of two chairs.

"She was going to, but canceled a few minutes ago." He said as he laid the plate in front of me.

"So naturally I have to eat her share huh?" I asked with an amused smirk as I sat down.

Aarav smiled. "Christian, my friend, we shouldn't waste food!" He said with a smile.

I looked down at the plate he brought out. "Is this a crepe?" I asked, slightly confused.

"No, it's Dosa, a traditional Indian breakfast" Aarav stated as he began tearing his portion apart with his bare hands, sweeping the edge of the bread across some spilled sauce and putting the combination in his mouth. The way he ate and reacted with a small moan made it look like the most delicious thing in the world or something. 

'I almost forgot he comes from a place in South India where they mainly eat finger food.' I thought to myself before tearing off a piece of the Dosa with potato and spices. Aarav didn't provide any forks or knives, so I followed his lead, eating with my hands and noting I'd need to wash them again before leaving. My tongue tasted herbs, potato, and some kind of meat for a moment, but I wasn't sure what it was. Aarav wasn't Hindu, so it wasn't like he had an aversion to eating beef or anything, though it wouldn't surprise me if it was lamb. I simply shrugged and took another bite.

'HOT!' I yelled in my mind as I immediately stood up and raced to the kitchen. It had taken a moment for my brain to register just how hot the food he made was. I already had a low spice tolerance, so even at this 'medium' spice level, I was left reeling. Furthermore, it didn't help that Indian 'medium', is like 'extra spicy' for Americans.

I found what I was looking for in the refrigerator, uncapping the gallon jug of milk and taking a few merciful gulps to soothe my distressed tongue, all while Aarav laughed behind me at my extreme reaction. As the cool milk cleared my pallet of the capsaicin that had violated me, I turned glaring at Aarav who, seeing this calmed down a bit, though still clearly amused by my plight. "Too spicy?"

"You know I hate spicy food," I complained, a hint of bitterness in my tone.

Aarav smugly smiled back. "Then why did you eat it?"

I rolled my eyes. "I figured since you made it for Serena, you'd have cooled it down," I mentioned as I walked over.

As I took a step towards my previous seat, I'd failed to notice the wrinkle in the rug between the table and myself that I created when I fled the table. Naturally, since my day already wasn't going my way, I slipped and began to fall backward. Time began to slow as I glanced back at the table as I fell. I was at the perfect angle that if I landed like I was falling now, I might have snapped my neck.

'Am I going to die here!?! Slipping on a rug!?!' The thought flashed across my mind in an instant before…

"Oof! Be careful, friend Christian." Aarav told me as he caught my arm, allowing me to recover from my fall before I hit anything.

Still a little shaken, it took me a moment longer than usual to register what he said. "Y-yeah, thanks for that," I said as I stood up straight again.

It took me a few moments to calm down but eventually, I did. Between the spiciness of the food and the near-death experience, I was no longer hungry for breakfast, so I returned to the kitchen and began to prepare a sandwich for lunch. This wasn't for me, of course, it was for my Aunt Catherine.

She was a member of the Campus Police Forces for the school and, due to the protests, she wouldn't be able to leave the area for lunch and would have to eat there. Interestingly enough, it was due to her that I was able to get into this school in the first place. She was dating someone on the board and when it came time for me to go to college, I 'just so happened' to get the scholarship for this one. Sure it wasn't the best school out there, but it was basically free, so it's where I went.

I chuckled to myself thinking about it. 'We Americans love to clown on third-world countries for their corruption problems, but we are just as bad in some areas,' I thought amused to myself. No way was my GPA good enough to get into this school with a full-ride scholarship without this. I'd barely get in as a regular student, however, since I did get the honor of this privilege thanks to my Aunt, I had decided to repay her by doing little things like this whenever she needed it.

I walked to the door, threw on some flip-flops (sandals), and waved goodbye to Aarav as I swung open the door and headed out. As I made my way down the stairs and through the courtyard, I could already hear the echos of some kind of chant in the not-to-distant horizon at the top of the large hill where the campus was located. Due to the angle and distance, I couldn't make out their exact words but it didn't take a genuis to put together it was some kind of call for justice. 

"Today is gonna suck," I said to myself and shook my head. 

I already knew it would suck from the fact that I am a college student about to help out a 'cop' during an anti-police protest. It didn't matter that my aunt was only a campus police officer who wasn't involved in the shooting and hadn't fired her gun at anyone in her life, or the fact she was half-black herself, no. These guys were tribalistic and hateful of anything and anyone associated with wearing a badge. Sure, some amount of anger is justified against a system that continues to perpetuate injustices and has little to no interest in reform, however, the harassment of people only tangentially involved with police was the wrong way of going about change.

I found this out personally when I was helping my aunt clean up some vandalism of the campus police box a while back and was harassed for it by multiple passing students.

I shook my head and prepared to cross the street. It was a crosswalk with flashing lights to show the other drivers that I was moving, and in addition to that, the road was in a residential area with a clearly showing speed limit of 15mph, so I didn't even bother registering the Tesla that was racing towards the intersection. I stepped off with one foot, only for my instincts to scream at me and my body to instinctively jump backward a few steps, nearly tripping in the process as I heard a horn and the Tesla zoomed past me, going far faster than the 15mph this street was rated at. The asshole even had the audacity to flip me off despite the fact I had the right-of-way and he was legally supposed to yield to ME, not the other way around.

"Jackass," I muttered to myself as I looked both ways and crossed the street with a light jog. Thankfully, as I rounded the corner, I saw the Tesla pulled over by three police cars with a very stern-looking old white man reading the driver the riot act. I smirked at the instant karma and thought about posting it on Reddit but decided against it. Instead looking to the side of the large hill which stood imposing over me.

"My mortal enemy… stairs." A voice came from behind me.

I turned to look and saw it was my Aunt Cath who'd just pulled up next to me in her campus cruiser. I think she was part of that Tesla stop earlier and saw me because of the original three cars there, now there were two. She turned off the ignition and hopped out so that she could walk and talk with me.

I smiled lightly as the two of us greeted each other. Turning back to my mortal foe, I silently resigned myself to the climb that was to come and with a light nudge, Aunt Cath and I began climbing the daunting staircase in front of us. We probably had to climb 5 or 6 stories worth of stairs to get to the main campus from the dorms, which was a pain.

"Why'd they have to put our dorms at the bottom of this hill? It's just mean that we have to climb it every day for class?" I complained while making small talk.

"Maybe they thought it was good exercise?" She answered as we rounded the first flight of steps.

"Is that why they call this Cardiac Hill?" I returned amusedly.

"According to Jason, it was called Heartbreak Hill in the 70s" Catherine responded.

"It's gonna be 'heart attack' hill if they don't install an escalator or something" I moaned as we rounded our fourth flight.

Catherine elbowed me lightly. "That just means you need more exercise." She stated smugly as we finally reached to top of the hill, only mildly winded. 

"Sure but… why did they put the gym at the top of the hill? Talk about working out before you work out." I joked which got a small smile and roll of the eyes from Aunt Cath.

We looked down the avenue in front of us to see a large crowd of students all holding handmade signs sitting in the courtyard and chanting "Something something-reform!" I glanced over to my Aunt Cath, seeing her sigh as she looked at a small group of student protestors already coming our way. I don't know if they saw a student and a 'cop' together and thought I was in trouble and they needed to come to support me, or if they wanted to harass me for being with her, or if they wanted to confront Aunt Cath since she wasn't with the other cops in the lineup. Whichever one it was, I could already feel the migraine coming on as Cath took the lunch bag from me.

"If you want to escape, now's the time." She said.

I shook my head. "Too late" I moaned as the first of them came up to us, surrounding us, and began to scream at Aunt Cath.

I didn't pay too much attention to these people anymore. While I agree that the police in our country can get away with basically murdering someone if they even have the flimsiest excuse to use force, I didn't like the way these kinds of protestors went about it. Yelling at a lone cop who had nothing to do with what you were angry about wasn't going to solve that issue and, if anything, was a good way for the cop to become defensive and radicalize them against reform even if they were willing beforehand. It was just human nature to become defensive when cornered and accused of something they didn't do.

"Pay attention!" One of the girls in front of me who had discovered that I'd tuned out the leader of this little clique screamed as she shoved me.

I took a step back to catch myself, only to realize we hadn't moved away from 'Heart Attack Hill' in time before being surrounded since we'd stopped to catch our breath, so my 'step back' was a step off the edge of the staircase which sent me tumbling down.

"Wha~!" I yelled as I began to tumble downwards and roll once before hitting my head hard on the metal railing. Everything went black for a few moments before I blinked my eyes open feeling much more hazily. I heard shouting and screaming from Aunt Cath and the 'protestors', even hearing some other authoritative voices shouting and rushing to Cath's side, probably some cops who'd witnessed the confrontation.

'I hope they arrest that girl, damn this hurts.' I thought as I tried to move my body but couldn't. Breathing had become a lot harder, though this might be due to my posture. I'd landed with my entire body lying at a higher elevation above my head and the warm wet fluid that filled my mouth was most definitely blood. My mouth and jaw hurt so might have broken a few teeth as well.

I coughed a few times and tried to move but couldn't feel anything. My only saving grace was the fact that my body still hurt, meaning that even if I couldn't move, I probably wasn't paralyzed since I still had some sensations in my body. I saw Aunt Cath rushing down the stairs towards me, through my rapidly clouding vision.

"You're gonna be alright, Christian. You're gonna be fine!" She said, though my ears seemed to be ringing and she sounded like she was talking at me from under water.

I glanced past her and noticed several dozens of students lining the railing above with their phones out, recording my plight.

'Damn it, someone call an ambulance, don't record me dying here!' I yelled out in my mind. 'I swear to the lord, I'm going to come back as a spirit and haunt you!' I thought.

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My vision was rapidly fading and now as blood began to fill my lungs and throat. Even the sounds of my Aunt Cath trying to keep me awake were beginning to fade. 'Am I gonna die here? To some random bitch? Fine then, I'll haunt you first! I can't wait to see you imprisoned… though does that mean I'll also get imprisoned?' I wondered to myself.

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'What the hell are they saying now?' I thought. 'Are they still talking about 'Alternative Measures' even while I'm dying over here? Fuck these Rioters, man! If I'm reborn, I'm going to riot against you fuckers! Let's see if rioting and destroying things will get me the results that 'I' want!' I complained and cried out with all my soul in anguish.

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'What's all this about 'Rioter' and success chances? Are they talking about the chance of them getting off scot-free or something?' I cursed to myself as everything went dark.

…

I felt like I was floating in a relaxing darkness for a long time, in a peaceful slumber deeper than any I'd been in before. This made sense, since I was most likely dead if the amount of blood I'd lost and lack of sensations were anything to go by. Suddenly I felt like my mind and body jerked hard, almost like that feeling of falling you sometimes get when falling asleep that wakes you right back up, but this was far more intense and actually hurt.

My 'eyes' fluttered open that very same second. I say 'eyes' because I'm 100% sure I was dead, as I doubt there are Giant 300ft tall Dragons in hospitals.

"You DARE!?!" It yelled, shaking my entire body to its core.

'You know, today just isn't my day.' I thought.