"You stupid moron!"
The girl swung the baseball bat at Cyrus with all her strength, skating down the hallway at incredible speed. If she actually hit him, she might have seriously injured him—or worse. Well, if Cyrus were a normal human, that is.
But without breaking a sweat, Cyrus dodged her attack, letting her momentum carry her straight into the school's outside door, which was closed. A loud crash echoed through the hallway.
"What the hell are you doing Viora? Didn't i tell you to leave me alone?"
"I could ask you the same thing! Where have you been these past few days, huh? Wait, what do you mean by 'leave you alone'? Aren't we partners?"
The girl who crashed through the hallway was named Viora. Like Cyrus, she has the ability to perceive spirits. While she can't see them as clearly as she sees living beings, she can make out their silhouettes or blurry images in the air, making her more spiritually aware than the average person. She isn't a close friend of Cyrus, nor someone he knows deeply—she's more like a mosquito that lingers near you on a hot summer night.
The reason Viora knew about the boy's secret was that she had witnessed him in action. A corrupted spirit had been about to attack someone in the school hallway when she saw the boy destroy it with a single swing of his sword. Since then, she had been following him during his hunts for corrupted spirits. Eventually, Cyrus noticed her, and she begged him to become her "partner." Despite Cyrus refusing her countless times, she continued to follow him anyway. Their situation has been like this for at least a month now.
"I never agreed to us being partners, remember? And maybe choose your words more carefully—people might take it the wrong way. Besides, what I do with my time is none of your business."
"Like you're one to judge my choice of words, Miravine! You're the one who can't even remember basic words!"
"And I didn't ask for you to judge my lack of word comprehension. Why aren't you in class anyway?"
"Silly, silly Miravine. While you were skipping class like a bad student, I was scouting the school for any signs of an evil spirit. You can never be too careful these days!" she said, struggling to get back on her feet.
"Oh, so you're skipping school too… Well, see you never," Cyrus muttered, turning to walk away down the hallway toward his class.
"Wait! Your legs are too long, I can't keep up with you even on my roller skates! And I wasn't skipping class—I had totally valid reasons for not going back, unlike you!"
"My legs are not 'too long'! It's not my fault you're a midget."
"How dare you!?"
To be fair, Viora was quite short for a teenage girl her age. She wasn't a midget, but at approximately four feet nine inches, she was still notably shorter than Cyrus, who stood at five feet eleven. This height difference made it challenging for her to keep up with him during their hunts. Cyrus didn't slow down to let her catch up; he genuinely wanted nothing to do with her. Yet somehow, she managed to keep pace with his inhuman speed. Despite her shorter stature, she was also inhumanly strong for someone her age—though not to the same extent as Cyrus, of course.
"I am not a midget! My size is perfect for my age as a young woman!"
Before Cyrus could respond, they heard shouting from the corridor.
"Hey, you two! Stop making so much noise and get to class—you're already late!"
The shout came from one of the security guards who were always on the lookout for troublesome teenagers skipping class.
As they both walked toward the classroom door, the guard stopped Viora.
"Where do you think you're going with those on your feet? That goes against school protocols!" he said, pointing at the roller skates she was wearing.
"Silly, silly security guards! Do you know that if I don't have these lightning skates on, my speed is limited? I might perish against the creatures of darkness crawling around the city! And if I do… the city is doomed!"
The security guard looked at her with annoyance, while Cyrus's expression showed he was embarrassed for her.
"Yeah, that's still against school protocol, so you either take those skates off, or I'll take you to the principal—"
Before he could finish his sentence, Viora interrupted, "I'll take the skates off!"
While Viora skated down the hallway to her locker to switch to her regular shoes, Cyrus was already in the classroom, standing in front of the closed door with everyone looking at him.
"Oh, Cyrus, it's you. You have a lot of nerve showing up in my class after being missing for days. And not only that, there are only ten minutes left in the class, so I don't know why they still let you come in."
The woman in front of Cyrus was his math teacher, who proudly claimed to be the most severe teacher in the school's history, as she often stated herself.
Laughter echoed in the classroom until the teacher made it stop.
"Well, you can leave my class, young man. And when you see Viora, tell her she can't come in as well."
Before Cyrus could fully close the door, she added, "Oh, and our class has a field trip to the famous—or infamous, depending on how you look at it—Hell Ride Amusement Park. Be sure to tell Viora about it when you see her."
Cyrus nodded and closed the door, his expression somber.
The look on Cyrus's face was due to the fact that Hell Ride Amusement Park was the same place he had heard referred to as "the park where people drop dead." It was the same park where he was almost one hundred percent sure a corrupted spirit was behind the killing spree. If he did nothing about it, the park would eventually close its doors to the public.
The reason he didn't just deal with it today was that fighting a corrupted spirit with thousands of people around was far from ideal. The thought of his entire class potentially having their souls devoured left a bitter taste in his mouth. All he could manage to say at that moment was, "You gotta be kidding me."
Chapter three end
.