"Did you grab your lunch?" Anna asked me as the door to the apartment clicked, the lock setting in.
"Yes, thanks again. Also, I might return late today so keep the keys."
The two of us set out of the complex after checking our items one last time. Only three days had passed since we started living under the same roof, but we adjusted fairly well.
Taking the public transport bus from near my place, we reached the school in fifteen minutes. It was still a short walk from the bus stop, and we ran into a lot of other students on our way.
I looked around the streets. The blossoming flowers were starting to turn green and vibrant. Summer was slowly etching closer after spring, the start of school season.
"ANNA! Morning~!"
A voice tore through from behind us. In no time, a blonde haired girl ran up and hugged Anna from behind. I quickly side-stepped. The girl who seemed chipper yet careful like a cat was one of Anna's friends. From behind them, another girl walked up. She gracefully held her bag in front of her with both hands and had a soft smile.
"Morning Anna," she said too.
"Emily, Lia, morning!" Anna answered, hugging Emily back. From behind the three girls, two boys found their way as well.
"Oh, everyone is late today!? Let's go."
"We are on time, dolt. You are on time too."
The 'dolt,' a refreshing youth with brown hair, was named Sebastian if memory served right. And the one who had tapped his head with a fist was Eric. Anna's childhood friend, and the person who had rejected her.
This was probably the most popular group amongst the high school freshmen, and also the core group in the story of the book, 'Heaven Waits, Hell Grabs.' Some more members frequently went in and out of their clique, but these five always stuck together.
I quickly moved aside from Anna. She seemed to be looking at me, but I had already mentioned how I was not interested in being involved with her friend group. It was alright to say hi to everyone, but there was no need to make friends here. I was quite busy.
I stepped through the gate before the others and walked inside. The PE teacher who always stood on guard at the gate, ready to close the door, looked at me.
"Abel," said he. "I recently hit a new PR."
"Congratulations," I said. "Next time I'll spot for you."
"Right. Now run in, your homeroom is about to begin."
Yeah. He was a friend from the gym. I stepped inside the main campus, the highschool building.
"Hey hey, did you do your homework?"
"I want to get crepes after class."
"Dude. I should have never joined the football club. They make you workout so much."
"Look look, I got a new match on Hinge. Wait, isn't this girl in our school!?"
"Ew, I matched on Hinge with YOU!?"
The din of a school campus. It had become a pleasing background noise.
As I walked up the stairs, I noticed the first floor and stopped for a second. This floor's classrooms were usually used as clubrooms for the high school students.
To be honest, while Anna's clique was very important to the story, she was still someone who appeared periodically, unlike her friends. Calling any of them 'main characters' would be wrong. The story had a different central character.
A club president. The Helping Hand Club, it was called.
My gaze went to the other side of the floor, on the stairs leading up from the second entrance. There stood a tall young man, dressed impeccably even in the same school uniform. He stood out, pleasant to the eyes to anyone.
An air of extreme calm surrounded him; for some reason, just seeing him was enough to make someone at ease. He traced his palm on the door of one of the classrooms.
A main character, and an Extra C. It was hard to acknowledge I had 'reincarnated'; the world barely felt different after all.
If anything, this was where my life was. The only real world that mattered, I barely remembered much from 'an old life' which I had felt from childhood, and the story of the book was also rather sporadic in my memory.
Everything here was all I was.
I ignored the man and stepped up the stairs again. My eyes went to the different bulletin boards placed around.
[Fairfax Academy's 45th Student Council Election!]
[A vote for us is a vote for you!]
"This is also coming up…" I mumbled under my breath. School events were fun in their own right. Since I was here anyway, it would be best to enjoy them all—elections, sports, or whatever.
***
I thought today would be another day that ended without much talk. Just a simple day passing us by.
But perhaps, karma does exist. One wrong that you commit usually comes back to bite you in the ass.
I wasn't talking about stabbing a bitch in the eye or throwing a bastard out of the window, but something worse. Karma, or people, had a way to take revenge.
In the third lecture of the day, an English lecture, the teacher of which was also our class in-charge, came up to the podium.
She looked like a predator eyeing a buffet of prey, as if we were all in the palm of her hands. I could swear she even licked her lips.
For the crime of having gone through her documents and stealing Anna's address, karma had come back to punish me and bite me in the ass.
"Next week's classes will be turned into a group project for English. Your assignment is going to be to write a story based on a real incident from your lives."
"Aww."
"Man, an assignment?"
"What are we, grade schoolers?"
A few students groaned. I was still unperturbed. It was childish to whine at such things—
"Please divide yourselves into groups of six for this assignment."
—Alright. Fuck you too, ma'am.
[author] I was supposed to publish this story on RoyalRoad in these break hours, and instead of hitting publish, I clicked delete. ._. [/author]