Banished Divinity: Learning to be Human

We stopped in front of a door. Yuna pushed it open. Beyond it was darkness—the kind of darkness that came from drawn blinds and turned-off lights, the kind of darkness that was waiting for something.

Yuna stepped aside. "After you."

I looked at her. At her perfect hair and her perfect clothes and her perfect face that was arranged in an expression of perfect patience.

I walked into the dark.

The door slammed behind me.

And then—

Yank.

My head snapped back. Pain exploded across my scalp as fingers tangled in my hair, pulled, pulled, sent me crashing to the floor. My knees hit first, then my palms, then my cheek, scraping against something cold and hard and unforgiving.

Thump.

A foot connected with my ribs. Or maybe it was a stick. It was hard to tell, in the dark, with the pain blooming across my body like flowers made of fire. There were more than one of them. I could hear them breathing—harsh, excited breaths, the breaths of people who were enjoying themselves. Their shoes shuffled on the floor. Their shadows moved in the sliver of light from under the door.

Thump.

Another hit. My shoulder this time. I curled around myself, my arms coming up to protect my head, my body folding into the smallest shape it could make.

Thump. Thump.

I did not scream.

I did not cry.

I lay on the cold floor of the art room, curled like a dying insect, and I let them kick me, and I did not make a sound.

Because I was Seraphyne. I was a celestial being. I had faced tribunals and demons and the void between worlds. I would not give these mortals the satisfaction of hearing me cry.

The kicks stopped.

The breathing settled.

A voice spoke from somewhere above me. "Stay away from Jaehyun. He's mine."

Footsteps. The door opening. Light flooding in, blinding after the darkness. And then they were gone, their laughter echoing down the corridor, their footsteps fading into the ordinary sounds of a school day.

I lay on the floor for a long moment.

Then I pushed myself up.

My ribs screamed. My shoulder throbbed. My scalp was tender where they had pulled my hair, and my cheek was wet with something that might have been blood or might have been tears—I couldn't tell, and I didn't care.

I sat there, in the dark art room, surrounded by the smell of paint and dust and fear, and I felt something I had never felt before.

Not pain. I had known pain. Pain was familiar. Pain was a companion I had walked with for centuries.

This was different.

This was smallness.

I had not fought back. I had not raised my hands, had not called upon my power, had not even tried. I had simply... crumpled. Like paper. Like a mortal.

Like the human Sera would have crumpled.

I looked at my hands. They were shaking. My mortal hands, in my mortal body, trembling on my mortal knees. My eyes were useless in the dark. My limbs were weak. My power was gone.

I had not fought back because I couldn't fight back.

The realization settled into my chest like a stone dropped into still water. Rippling. Expanding. Filling every corner of my being with a cold, familiar sensation that I had not felt since I was young, since before I was powerful, since before I was anything at all.

Fear.

I was afraid.

I was Seraphyne, daughter of heaven and hell, and I was afraid.

I sat there for another moment, letting the feeling wash over me, letting it settle into my bones. And then I stood up.

My legs wobbled. I ignored them.

I walked to the door. I opened it. I stepped out into the corridor, blinking against the light, and I walked back to the cafeteria with my head held high and my shoulders straight and my face arranged in an expression that said nothing happened, I am fine, I am a celestial being and celestial beings do not get ambushed in art rooms by girls with expensive bags.

Jiyoung and Haejin were waiting.

They saw me coming from across the cafeteria. I saw their faces change—from relief to horror to something that looked like rage, hot and fast and barely contained.

"Sera—" Jiyoung started.

"Don't," I said.

"Your face—"

"I said don't."

They didn't. They fell into step beside me, one on each side, their arms hovering near mine like they wanted to hold me up but knew better than to try. They walked me out of the cafeteria, down the corridor, past the classrooms, to a door I had never noticed before—a small room with a cot and a sink and a woman in a white coat who looked up from her desk with an expression of professional concern.

“The school nurse.” Both Jiyoung and Haejin said together.

"Oh, dear," she said, rising from her chair. "What happened to you?"

I sat on the cot. The paper crinkled beneath me. My ribs protested. I ignored them.

"What happened?" the nurse asked again, her voice gentle, her hands already reaching for my face to examine the scrape on my cheek.

I looked at her. She was small. Round. Her hair was grey and curly and escaping from its clip. Her eyes were kind in the way that human eyes became kind after years of seeing pain and learning how to respond to it.

She wanted to know who had hurt me.

She wanted to know so she could help.

But I was a celestial being. And celestial beings did not tell their enemies to strangers. They did not run to authority figures with tears in their eyes and names on their lips. They endured. They waited. They remembered.

And when the time came—

"I fell," I said.

The nurse's hands paused on my cheek. Her eyes flicked to Jiyoung, then to Haejin, then back to me.

"You fell?," she repeated.

"Yes."

"Into a door, by the looks of it."

"Yes."

She stared at me for a long moment. Then she sighed—the sigh of a woman who had heard a thousand lies and had learned to recognize the ones that mattered—and she reached for a cotton ball and a bottle of antiseptic.

"This is going to sting," she said.

It did.

I did not flinch.