SPECTATOR
By MargaritaDaemonelix
Chapter 4
Running into a Hamel Navy Officer was not how you planned to start your day. Then again, life in Ruben is hardly ever predictable.
Your wakeup call today is not Elsword. One of the chickens somehow got inside, and is standing on your chest you when you open your eyes, causing you to scream and roll off the bed.
Chicken feathers are all over your covers and floating through the air when Elsword comes to see what happened. The chicken is still running around in frantic circles, screaming bloody murder as it hops across your work and on the bed.
Elsword looks like he's trying not to laugh. "I'm not a chicken whisperer, but I'm fairly certain that "squawk-a-doodle-doo" means the chicken is scared," he chuckles, picking up the chicken as it runs by and cradling it like a baby. "Did the mean old lady scare you?"
"Me? Scare a chicken?" You scoff as you climb back onto the bed. "Nonsense. Besides, since when was I an old lady?"
He sticks his tongue out at you. "I'm still five months younger than you, old lady," he says playfully, leaving with the now pacified chicken still in his arms. As the door opens, the scent of instant coffee and warm bread floats into the bedroom.
Elsword's mom makes the best bread in the world, you decide as you comb through your tangled hair with your fingers and tie it off in in two scraggly bunches. You'll comb it properly later, but now, all you really have the mental ability to do is to toss on a purple turtleneck sweater and slip into a gray skirt.
As you mindless repeat the actions of every Wednesday morning, Elsword reads out the morning paper. "So apparently they've traced down the guy who did the thing on TV the other day," he says. "Someone from Velder?"
"It can't be, it's only been three days," you argue. "Remember the scandal with the newspaper last April? They said they caught the people who did it, but it took them like two months just to find the server where the article had been altered."
Your roommate nods. "If I had to place my bets…" He thinks for a moment. "Untraceable server or already destroyed computer. Altera knows they can't solve this one, so they're lying about it. Covering things up."
"If they'd actually caught the guy, Velder probably wouldn't exist right now," you add.
The two of you sit in silence, eating your respective shares of the last of Anne's bread. Even though it's a little stale, it's still delicious and smells like the bread from the bakeries in your hometown. When you dip it into your instant coffee, you can see the little oil flowers it leaves on the surface of your beverage.
While Elsword cleans up the dishes from breakfast, you look through the papers you've marked. You have nineteen students in your class, and impressive number in comparison to Bethma, where you had four students at your peak. More students does mean more work, though. You often stay up marking late into the night, but you always return on weekdays to teach them the best you can.
Out of your nineteen students, the oldest is ten and the youngest is four. The younger ones are still struggling to write simple words, but the older ones are beginning to read some of your favourite novels. Thankfully, math comes a little easier to them all, and each of your students is filled with the curiosity and will to learn. All of them are such angels, and none of them have ever given you grief.
You go through each of the test papers, ensuring that all of them are marked and the marks recorded on a separate sheet. One of the eight-year old girls, who normally scores in the high nineties or gets full marks, has the equivalent of a fifty-three percent on this test. You'll have to ask her about it later.
Gently, you put the stack into your cloth bag, leaving it by the door. You head to the kitchen and open the fridge, where you take out a cheese sandwich you made last night and stuck in a plastic baggie. You toss the sandwich at your bag. It hits the wall and bounces onto the floor.
This is what happens when you're overworked and just tired. You lose control of yourself in every sense of the word. You know you have no sense of aim, and yet you threw the sandwich anyways.
Mother would be disappointed, you think as you walk over and bend down to retrieve your fallen lunch. Your mother was a strict woman, but her teaching shaped you into who you are today.
Without her influence these past few years, though, you're losing control over yourself. Sometimes, you think you're letting your fatigue take control of you, despite all your efforts to contain it.
As much as you hate to admit it, you're fighting a losing battle.
Just once, you want to be able to sleep comfortably in a soft bed, wrapped in the warmth of someone's love.
Love isn't important, Aisha. You're too young to know what love is.
You shake your mother's voice out of your head. She's gone, and you've left Bethma behind you. You're a grown woman.
Grow up, Aisha…
When Elsword finally comes out of the shower, you're sprawled out across the bed, reciting lesson plans and snippets from Tolkien's books. "Your turn, Grape," he says, shaking the water out of his hair and spraying it everywhere. The only time it ever stays down is when there's water in it, and even then, you can hardly ever get it to stay put.
You swing your foot at him. He dashes off into the living room, towel still on his head.
As you walk into the bathroom, locking the door behind you, you finally get to see just how sleep deprived you look. Not that you aren't sleep deprived-you have an average of two hours of sleep a night. Your hair is a lot more tangled than you thought it was, so you grab the nearest comb and sprinkle some water on it before running it through your hair.
Elsword must have just used it, because once you're done, there are telltale strands of his red hair trapped in your purple hair. As you brush your teeth, you pull the loose hairs out of your pigtails and retie them, making sure they're smooth and you look presentable.
You're running out of soap. You add buy soap to your mental to-do list as you pick up the little slice that's left and rub it between your hands, scrubbing the few suds on your face.
You clean up the water all over the counter and wipe down the mirror before leaving the bathroom. Elsword has already left for the farm, so you're the only one left in the house. You open your rickety closet and retrieve a pair of dark socks. As you sit down and pull the socks onto your feet, your eyes goes wide at the time.
Seven thirty. Class starts at eight.
You scramble to grab the keys and your bag, and toss on a light jacket. One of your socks is only half pulled up, but at this point you're running to get to class. Since you don't have a car, you can only walk or run to the school, which can take forty-five minutes on a bad day. Thankfully, the skies only look gloomy, not particularly stormy, and you're pretty sure you can get to the school in time to greet your class.
It takes you about a minute to lock the door alone, because Elsword's parents insisted on installing five different locks when the two of you moved in. There's an ID card lock too, but you can't lock it because your actual ID card is busted. You're listed as "Missing, presumed dead" in the official engine, because the police back in Bethma never found you after the mess of your moveout. Your forged ID card has you as "Speka Cerise", which was the name of your estranged aunt.
Your mother's younger sister was eccentric, to say the least. Your aunt wasn't a bad person, she was just… Imaginative. She was clinically bipolar and it drove your mother mad. Eventually, she immersed herself way too far into her own thoughts, and in a move that tore your family apart, she jumped off the roof, taking her own life when you were twelve.
She wasn't a bad woman. While your mother gave you knowledge, Speka taught you freedom. As you tear through the streets of Ruben, trying not to destroy your black shoes, you remember how she taught you to slip through throngs of people virtually unnoticed.
You're still stuck in a crowd near the old town hall, though. There's some sort of a free handout there today. Even though you don't necessarily want or need it, the town hall is still on the way to your schoolhouse. There's a wild stampede of desperate hands rushing to grab whatever the officers have to hand out.
You can't go through the crowd, so you need to find another path. Leaving the crowd behind, you turn behind the old building, clutching your bag tightly to make sure you don't lose it in the mess. You scramble into the alleyway, struggling to keep your balance and not crash into walls.
As you turn the corner, your sight of vision suddenly disappears into a field of white and gold. You feel the impact after you find yourself sitting on the ground, your bag miraculously still on you.
There's someone standing above you, laughing gently. "What do we have here?" He says, helping you to your feet. "On the go, are we, miss?"
There's a badge on his shoulder. You instantly recognise the flowing crest of the Hamel Navy. There's an assortment of badges pinned to his lapel, a splash of colour against his white uniform. A plaque on his chest reads TAYLOR. What a Hamel Navy officer is doing in Ruben, you have no clue, but you really can't be bothered with him.
"If you'd excuse me, sir, I really need to get to work," you mutter, ducking away and past him. Of all the things to happen, though, your bag hooks onto something as you pass by him.
"What's your name, miss?" He asks, and you realise that he's holding onto your bag. You try to tug it out of his grasp, but he doesn't let go. "C'mon, tell me."
"My name's Speka Cerise," you lie, though the name comes naturally to you. "I'm a black mage. If you keep holding onto my bag like that, I'm going to hex you."
His boisterous laughter echoes through the alleyway. "Well, that's a shame," he says, "because I'd have to bring you in for questioning." His grip on your bag gets tighter, he steps closer to you, and your hand instinctively goes to your pocket. "What do you say, miss Speka?"
"No," you tell him as firmly as you can muster. "I'm going to actually hex you. Last warning. Get. The. Fuck. Off. Me."
"Missy, do you really have the power to say that?" He asks, reaching out to touch your face. "Come with me. I'll pay you better than whatever job you have."
Aisha, men in this world are going to try and take advantage of you. Don't let them get near you.
If there's one good thing your mother taught you, it's that men are pigs. Your aunt Speka always had a weapon on her at all times, and though Ruben is a lot safer than Bethma, you still carry the little canister she gave you on your person.
Officer Taylor only looks mildly surprised when you feebly attempt to kick him in the gut. "Feisty, aren't you," he purrs, drawing his hand away. "We'll have to take care of you somehow."
In the moment it takes for him to speak, you flick the cap off the aerosol can in your pocket. Screwing your eyes shut, you estimate where his face is and spray.
It's not pepper spray, but getting dry shampoo in your eyes is just as painful. As the officer lets go of your bag, clutching his eyes and stumbling into the walls in agony, you run. You can't look back, your feet are on fire, and you have no clue where you're going, but you run.
You're maybe a hundred feet away from the schoolhouse when you hear the bell ring. Great. Just what I needed to top off this morning's excitement.
As you stumble into the classroom, your students look at you in awe. You're not normally late, so they're pretty surprised. "Miss Cerise, what's with the holdup?" Asks one of the older boys.
The question is genuine, though. There's none of the hooting from the boys in the back today. The classroom is dead silent. "Good morning, class," you say, as professionally as you possibly can. "I was held up by the crowd outside the old town hall this morning. I hope all of you are present and ready to learn, because I have some new books that I've brought in."
A ripple of light laughter cascades through the class. Everyone's so excited for new books, and it instantly lifts all of your spirits. As you read the attendance, you hand out the results of the last test.
"Brian," you call out, eyes trained on your attendance sheet as you hold the marked test out in front of you.
"Present, miss," replies Brian, his tiny hand shooting up to take the test. An eighty-six is a huge achievement for him, so you hope he's happy with it.
"Phoebe."
"Present." The quiet girl stands up to take her test. Again, she aced it. She solemnly nods at the test paper before sitting down.
You wince a little. "Alexandra?"
She comes up slowly, dragging her feet behind her. You know that she knows perfectly well what her mark is, but you don't question it as you keep your pokerface and let her take the test paper.
As you stare at your attendance, you can't help but notice her attempt to smile at Kaitlyn on her way back to her seat.
Something is bothering this girl, and you need to find out what.
You set up the class in their activities. The younger ones begin their day with math, while the older ones start with classic literature. Brendan is ecstatic when you retrieve your personal copy of Time Trouble from your bag.
"I've read this so many times," he gushes, jumping up and down as he cradles the book in his arms. "This is my favourite book ever."
"Great," you tell him, wincing at the grammar. "Then I'm sure you'll do fine giving a quick book talk about it for the rest of the class, let's say, tomorrow?"
His face falls, but he picks it back up and grins at you. "Of course, miss Cerise!"
As he cracks open the book, his expression turns to one of awe. "Oh, miss Cerise, did someone give you this book?" He asks.
Ah, yes. Your mother gave it to you when you turned thirteen. In Bethma, the two of you weren't stable financially, so books were the only thing she could give you. They were also the only thing she would give you, because in her words, knowledge is the foundation of everything. Her little notes on the inside covers of your books kept you awake many a night, wondering about your own existence.
"Yes," you say, trying to smile. "My mother wrote this. You can read it if you want."
Brendan smiles. "Dearest Aisha…" His voice falls. "I'm assuming that was your nickname." When you nod in confirmation, he keeps reading. "I hope you enjoy this novel as I have. It was released when I was your age. I remember buying it the day it was released in our local bookstore…"
You can't stay and listen to the words you've repeated to yourself a hundred million times. Instead, you turn your focus back to the younger kids, who are hard at work crunching numbers.
As you walk through your classroom, you look over each student's shoulder to see how they're doing. As expected, Phoebe is already done the first page and is working on the second. Nicholas is on the sixth question, Brian is racing with him at the fifth.
Only Alexandra's page remains blank. She stares down into the workpage, her eyes a million miles away. She's deep in thought.
You know Alexandra's imaginative, but you need to see what's bothering her.
"Alexandra," you say softly, laying your hand on her shoulder, "do you want to have a chat with me? We can talk about your test."
She turns her bright green eyes to look at you. "Yes, please," she says.
The entire class has gone silent again. Brendan has stopped reading. The group of teens gathered around him have all turned their gaze to you. Yet you lead Alexandra by the hand into the hallway, where the two of you sit with your backs against the wall.
"How did I get a fifty-three?" She whispers, hands folded delicately in her lap.
"Alexandra, you're a very smart girl," you remind her. "You're not going to fail because of this."
"Yes I am!" Her lip trembles, and you're afraid she's going to cry. "When I go home, my mom's going to be mad at me for having such a horrible mark, and then she's going to yell at me, and throw the photo album again, and then she's going to cry-"
"Hold on, back up," you tell her, holding her by the shoulders and gently shushing her. "Tell me why your mom is going to be mad."
Alexandra's mother is a kind woman who'd never treat her daughter like this. There was once when she brought home a failing grade for not completing an entire page of the test and she didn't even bat an eye. There's no reason for her to be yelling at her talented daughter.
She gulps. "My mom has to work," she says, tears beginning to roll down her face, "and I can't give her more trouble than I already have."
"Can't your dad work?" You ask. "Your dad is a nice guy. I've met him."
She shakes her head. "They took him," she sobs. "The Alterans took him."
It's sudden, but it hits you like a punch to the stomach. "When was this? Why did they take him?" You ask.
"It was two weeks ago," whispers Alexandra. "They had a peaceful protest up in Elder, trying to get lower taxes on things like clothes and food. Then the Alterans came and took everyone away and locked them all up…" She draws her knees up to her chest and buries her face in her arms. "They took my dad away and we don't know where he is…"
The Alterans. You should have known that the death of the head librarian wasn't the end. Alexandra's father and the rest of the protestors are probably gone, if not locked up in the prisons of Lanox. You wonder if Alexandra will ever be the same.
"I'll try to look into the systems for your father," you promise. "And I'll have a talk with your mother when I can. Right now, I need you to do your best, okay? Your father's going to come home to see your marks soar through the roof."
She wipes her tears and smiles weakly. "Yeah."
When the two of you return to the class, it's still dead silent. Brendan has dropped the book. Paulina, Cicero and Puris are sitting on their desks. Phoebe is chewing the eraser on the end of her pencil.
"Get back to work," you snap as Alexandra returns to her seat. "Pick up the book, if you just drop it like that you're going to destroy its spine."
Class goes on like usual. At recess, you review the test with Alexandra, and you give her an improvised mark of seventy after you test her again. It still brings her average down, but at least this time it's not down in the low eighties.
After recess, you bandage up Jordan's knee as Cicero apologizes profusely(apparently they were playing tag and Cicero was it) and bring your class together for a history lesson. As you tell stories of ancient Elrios, Kaitlyn brings up fairy tales of her childhood, of the warrior party that saved Elrios from a demon invasion. You're pretty sure you've seen that one somewhere, but Kaitlyn's retelling is beautiful and has a lot more smacking than it probably should have.
You've just dismissed your class for recess after lunch when someone knocks on the door. "Come in," you say, wrapping your sandwich back up and putting it back into your bag. Maybe it's one of your students, here for some review.
"Miss Cerise, I didn't know you were a teacher."
Instantly, you bare your teeth and growl at your visitor. "I told you I'm not interested!"
Officer Taylor smirks. "You assaulted a Hamelian," he drawls. "I could have you arrested right here, and send you off to Lanox. Does a high-security prison sound more appealing than this?"
When he gestures to himself, you feel like throwing up. "For the last time," you hiss, "I will have you removed from my classroom. This is a learning environment, and I will not tolerate your intrusion."
"Get over here," he growls, lunging at you. As you scramble over your desk and plow into Phoebe's, the older kids outside seem to catch sight of the mess you've gotten yourself into. You hear Paulina scream as Brendan, Puris and Cicero rush in.
Taylor's still trying to catch you. You're not wearing your jacket, though, so you can't just blast him with high-pressured perfume. "Miss Cerise!" Yells Brendan, trying to grab onto Taylor's jacket and missing.
As you pass by your desk again, you grab your bag, opening it to find your final resort. Your father was a low-ranking policeman in Bethma, and after his death, you and your mother kept some of his weapons.
Brendan seems to be faster than Cicero, and snatches Taylor's jacket up. Cicero pins him down, but he thrashes wildly and gets back up. Puris stands by the doorway, her eyes screwed shut.
Then, in an absolutely uncalled movement, she races over to Cicero's side and slams Taylor to the wall. You'd have never thought that such a delicate girl could be so destructive, but their strength is yours for the moment.
"Hands off him," you order the students. The moment they release Taylor, you drive your taser into his chest. The electricity skitters down his outfit as his eyes bug out and his limbs go stiff.
As the four of you step aside, Taylor falls to the ground, limp.
Paulina rushes in to examine him. You're only now aware that the entire class has gathered to watch the events. As she feels his neck and wrists, her face falls. "He has no pulse," she announces.
Holy fuck. You just killed a man.
You put the cap back on your taser and gently tuck it back into your bag. You walk over to the desk, slipping into your jacket. Your class watches you wordlessly.
"Class is dismissed," you manage.
Then, like a coward, you run. Again.
7:45 pm, Ruben
You're legitimately exhausted when you return home. It's not that you're physically tired-you barely did any grunt work today. Ally dropped the box of receipts and records on the staircase, though, and the two of you spent the entire day sifting them out. There's still about fifty pages of receipts that you have even touched.
When Banthus came in to check on the two of you and found the both of you staring blankly at the folders scattered across the desk, he ordered both of you back home. Although it was kind for him to give you a bonus paycheck for your trouble, you have little to no mental strength. The most thanks you could give him was a grunt.
The first thing that strikes you as odd when you return to your apartment is the fact that the door is wide open. It swings eerily, screeching as it opens up for you. Aisha's book bag is wide open on the floor, its contents strewn throughout the living room.
"Aisha?" You call out, scanning the apartment over. The only source of light you can see by is from the hallway. There's no sign of your roommate. "AISHA!"
There's a faint semblance of a mumble from the bedroom. You run in to find her clothes in a heap by the door. She's curled up on the floor, wearing an old dress. Her knees are drawn up to her chest and her hair is flying across her shoulders, but you can't help but notice that her hands are covered in bandages. She's trembling.
On the floor lies the sandwich she packed for lunch, which means it's probably been some time since she got home. She likely hasn't had any water or food since this morning.
You sit down beside her and gather her up into your arms. "Aisha, talk to me," you urge. "What happened to your hands? Did you hurt them?"
She looks down at them, at the bandages she's lazily wrapped up to her elbows. "I burned them," she whispers, her eyes glazed over. "I wasn't looking where I was pouring hot water, and I burned them."
"Aisha…" You grab her hands. Even now, you can feel them burning in yours. "Can your move them?"
She responds by flexing each finger in turn and turning her wrists. "My hands are fine," she says, repeating it like a mantra. "My hands are fine."
You can tell she's lying. You knew she used to have a lot of destructive habits, but after she moved in with you, she'd stopped. Something must have happened, something that shocked her. "Aisha. Aisha, talk to me," you say, shaking her by the shoulders. "What happened? Tell me what happened."
Aisha looks up at you, her eyes full of tears.
"I murdered a man."
A/N: This chapter was not easy for me to write.
There are many times when I tell myself that I can relate to characters on like a spiritual level, but in this chapter, I can especially relate to Aisha and her students. Alexandra's grade is a direct reflection on my own, from a test last year after something happened in my family that impacted all of us.
I hope y'all have a great day, and please look forwards to the next chapter of Spectator.
~MargaritaDaemonelix
