Chapter 45: Movie night
Zephyr stepped out of the mall, a fresh bandage wrapped neatly around his body, he had changed the dressing back in the booth.
The soft orange hue of the evening sun poured across his face, and he blinked up at the sky in mild surprise. Unknowingly, it had already become evening.
"What a day," he muttered, dragging his feet slightly as he took the first steps down the mall’s stone path. The memories of the day flickered through his mind like fragments of a broken mirror— the clash with Lunethra, the apathetic school nurse, the unforgiving, credit-hungry academy. He couldn’t believe so much had happened in just one day.
"Life here sure isn’t boring," he sighed.
The bandage’s cooling sensation was fading, leaving behind a dull throb. He rubbed his arm lightly, then shook his head. "I guess I’ll skip dinner." His weapons wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow, and he only had a little over 9,000 credits left—an amount he was growing increasingly reluctant to part with.
The walk back to the dormitory was quiet, apart from the barrage of insult he directed at the academy’s unfair systems. The reddish glow of the setting sun bathed the buildings in a solemn light. The air was cooler now, brushing against his skin like the trailing fingers of dusk.
Eventually, he reached his dorm and stood before the door, hand resting on the knob. Earlier, anger had carried him—he hadn’t cared what might happen when he walked back in. But now, standing there with the cool metal under his palm, he hesitated.
Being hated was... suffocating.
It wasn’t about words or fights. It was in the eyes, the silence, the way people leaned away as if his very existence contaminated the air.
It was in the shift he felt the moment he considered Cealsen a comrade—only to have that flicker of kinship vanish the next second, replaced with icy disdain. The emotional whiplash left a dull ache in his chest.
With a breath that burned slightly on the way out, he turned the knob and stepped inside.