For Silva, this day was not a good day. Not only did her morning start with her oversleeping, but after rushing to school, she discovered that her first css had been cancelled.

  Today was not a good day because she had stepped into a puddle while rushing to the school.

  Today was not a good day because she had a person standing in front of her seat for the first time this school year.

  The girl had come into her css right at the start of recess. She had rushed to her table before Silva could habitually slip away.

  Silva was unsure what the girl wanted. But she was clear on her wishes and was already eyeing a chance to get away. Unfortunately, the chance did not arrive before the girl addressed her.

  “Hey, long time no see… I wanted to ask you something. I saw you a couple of days ago in town.”

  The girl was apparently familiar with her, but Silva could not recall ever meeting her. Silva carefully eyed the girl, trying to guess what she was getting at.

  “And I saw you in that whacky teahouse with a guy, and I wanted to ask who he is to yo-”

  Silva was already in bolting mode before the girl could finish the question.

  “You must be mistaken. It was not me,” Silva retorted. She had not been in a good mood at all, and now this girl tried to wreck her peaceful school life. She had already gathered all of her stuff. Now, the only thing she was cking was the chance.

  The girl seemed to be unsure of how to proceed and uncomfortable as most of the css was now looking at them. After a pause, she made up her mind and moved to stop Silva from leaving.

  “No! That must have been you!” The girl’s voice was full of confidence, which Silva did not share with her.

  Silva’s stress levels skyrocketed upon being suddenly blocked from escaping. She felt more and more attention gather on them as the rest of the css became quieter.

  No matter how Silva looked at the situation, the girl had no good intentions. There also was no point in waiting for any help. She had no friends within this building. The cssmates were acquaintances at best.

  Then it hit Silva. This girl was in the same css as she was some time ago. Even back then, she had been the quiet girl in the background.

  There were only vague recollections of this girl. She had tried to stay away from everyone. No wonder Silva was recognised. But a reunion was not what she was looking for.

  It was at this point that someone entered the cssroom and greeted everyone. The greeting took some of the intruder’s attention away from Silva as she gnced back to see who it was.

  So did most of the onlookers, and Silva used the chance to slip past the annoyance. She tripped one of the passing cssmates, silently apologising to him. His fall gathered the rest of the room’s attention. For Silva, this was the chance to use her ability. The girl still tried to catch her, but when the annoyance turned back, she found no one.

  As Silva exited the css, she still could see the confused girl looking around, trying to find her, but she would have no luck.

  If Silva wanted to hide, no one could find her. Her vanishing act did cause a little stir, but not as much as Silva had feared it would. She guessed that her cssmates had somewhat used to her being so elusive.

  Silva wagered that the worst that would happen would be some new rumours floating around, but she could deal with those as she had done in the past. The fact that she had fallen back to her ability so easily was irksome and, in the long term, could turn out to be dangerous.

  “Still… It is probably not the best idea to return to the css today. Might as well ditch the rest of the day. It has been a while since I did…” Silva was not a repeated truant, and the school tended to ignore people like her as long as their grades did not fall under the red mark.

  With nothing better to do, she decided to message her friends and see if they were free after school. After getting a positive answer, she shortly weighed her options. In the end, she decided on the usual aimless wandering around.

  While walking away from the school, she took out her phone to check for news reted to anything that could be linked to a supernatural cause. To her chagrin, there was more news of the strange wolf. Only three days had gone by, but the creature had already become one of the local legends.

  Some people even started to tell the tales of their ancestors seeing the same wolf back in their days and whatnot else.

  It was a hot topic, and there was news of a bounty that was put on the wolf’s head. The search parties were quickly formed, with even amateurs trying out their luck. Some hunters cimed that they had found the beast, but it had gotten away, leaving them only with a tailwind.

  There was also passing news of a metal fish that had ruined the livelihood of many fishermen in Southeast Asia. The locals saw it as a divine punishment - the news story cimed.

  Nothing else attention-worthy caught her eyes, but she kept scrolling through the news feed.

  At least while doing so, she would not have to think about the earlier encounter. After making sure that there was no more odd news, Sikva finally put her phone away and returned her attention to the road.

  The sky was clear, and the air was still. People rushed past her as she followed their flow. There was still plenty of time until her friends were free. She started to think of a spot where she could spend it without the constant fear of stumbling into someone, or what was more likely, someone stumbling upon her.

  At least their meeting spot was not the accursed teahouse, but that did not leave many quiet spots she knew around it. But there still was some.

  Finally, she decided on an abandoned pyground she knew would be empty. It was eerie, but that suited her current mood.

  It would take a bit of time until she got there. With nothing else to do, Silva went through the news again.

  It had been only ten-something minutes since she had st done it. At that time, a new video had appeared and was rapidly gaining popurity.

  Only instead of an animal, it was a video of a person. A man in his 30s with dirty bck hair and a raw-boned face. He was talking to the camera excitedly in nguage Silva did not recognise, and then...

  Silva could not believe it. The man’s arm caught fire. But not only did he not scream or feel any discomfort, but he also started ughing.

  When the camera panned sideways, it turned out that he was standing in a room with several other people. They all cheered and shouted what seemed to be encouragement until the man’s other hand also started to burn.

  There was no protective gear, but his skin remained unblemished even when his shirt burned away in the increasing bze.

  After a moment, he did tear the shirt off, revealing his upper body fully. The fmes slowly died down as the man ughed. The video ended with uproarious appuse from the onlookers.

  Silva’s immediate reaction was that it was fake and that it was all just one giant joke. The other possibility seemed to be too absurd to be true. Would someone like her really just reveal himself in such a public way? It was hard to say. Silva decided to forward the link to her friends and let them judge the content themselves.

  Next, she checked what the comments were saying. For the most part, they were full of disbelief and praises for special effects as well as jokes. No one saw it as real. Nothing was unusual there.

  But what if it was real? What if the man was like them? How many people like her were out there? She had already met Steven and Mika. There was also the glowing bead she had seen and the mysterious wolf.

  It was all too much of a coincidence, but she did not know what to make out of it.

  And why now? Just when she thought that she had found a pce for her in the world, it started to rapidly change. What was the cause?

  The more she thought about it, the more lost she was. For now, she hoped that people like her would not become public knowledge.

  There was a possibility that it could cause a worldwide witch-hunt. People do not like people who are different. She had seen plenty of that at school and in the city.

  Silva hurried to her destination to sit quietly and calm down. Unfortunately, when she arrived, the pyground was already occupied.

  The pce had not changed from the st time she had been there. Old swings, slides and merry-go-rounds were scattered around the pce, with most of them being so rusted that it was a small wonder they were still holding together.

  No one came here anymore besides her. And even Silva came here only when she was in a particurly sour mood.

  Well, no one did until now. For the first time, Silva found someone else hanging around here.

  The man was standing next to the swings, where Silva tended to sit. He was tapping his feet, clearly waiting for someone. He was chubby, looked to be in his twenties and had greyish, semi-long hair. The Chubby checked his watch, then let his eyes wander around.

  It did not seem like the man would leave on short notice, and Silva already resigned herself to leave. But just before turning away, she noticed the man making a call. He looked annoyed, and when the receiver answered. In addition, he sounded desperate. The surroundings were silent, making it easy to overhear.

  “Hey, sorry I called you, but… Cou-could you please slow down? Yes! But… Are you sure that person will arrive?” The man’s frustration leaked into his voice. “Yes! Yes… I know… Can’t you at least give me a description? I know you said… No. What does that even mean? Okay, so I have to wait? Could you check again … What do you mean? There is no one here!”

  The more he spoke, the louder he got, but then he suddenly quieted down and started to pay attention to his surroundings. He listened to the speaker for a bit more before hanging up. He scrutinised his surroundings once more before speaking out.

  "Is anyone here?"

  This question startled Silva, who was in the process of walking away.

  “My name is Aramaleo Banster. I have come to speak with...” he fumbled while searching for something in his pocket while mumbling to himself. He pulled out a wrinkled paper note and read it. “… Yea... It still does not make any sense to me... Hello?”

  Silva’s heart was beating furiously. Once again, something was occurring she couldn’t expin with just a coincidence. This day was getting worse by the hour. “No, I have to calm down. If they knew I would be here, they would also know who I was. They don’t. They don’t know me. They are not here for me.”

  For a moment, Silva watched Aramaleo circling around the pyground while calling out. She used the moment he started to move further from her and hurried away, leaving the man shouting to emptiness.

  There was still a bit of time left until the agreed time for the meeting, but Silva had no mind to look for another quiet pce. For now, she hurried away from this pce and decided to not return to it for the foreseeable future. What she needed now was a moment to try and air her racing thoughts.

  ------

  When Silva arrived at the café, her friends were already waiting for her. After taking a deep breath, she entered the café and headed for their table. The walk before had done much good as she felt much calmer.

  “Hi!” Silva greeted them. Both had their textbooks out and had been studying. “I hope you did not have to wait long for me.”

  Mika’s attention fell on Silva as soon as she entered. She beamed a sunny while tucking an unruly lock of hair behind her ear.

  “Hi, yourself! We arrived just a few minutes ago. We are still waiting for our order.” Mika gesticuted at the counter. “Do you want anything? My treat.”

  “No, I am fine, thank you.” Silva shook her head before looking at Steven, who, uncharacteristically for him, had not yet spoken. He was holding a pen between his nose and upper lip and appeared to be fixedly studying his textbook. Before Silva could commend his diligence, his head dropped heavily, hitting the table.

  “Silva, tell me honestly. Should I give up?” Steven asked.

  "Give up on what?" Silva was perplexed. She sat down at the table and tried to look at the source of his despair. It turned out to be a math textbook.

  “The test, school, exams, life.” Steven counted while pushing his pen over the pages with his nose. “Not necessarily in that order.”

  “Don’t be a drama queen.” Mika chided. “You will do just fine, and I will help if needed.”

  “I am a man. That would make me a drama king.” He straightened himself and returned to the material he was studying before.

  Listening to her friends improved Silva’s mood tremendously. The day had been a disaster, but at least now she could regain her inner peace.

  “Um, guys… There is something I wanted to talk about.”

  "Again," Steven compined, but Silva could tell that both of their attentions were now on her. Steven managed to look somewhat unhappy, pretending he wanted to do his schoolwork.

  “Well, I…” Silva tried to organise what she wanted to talk about. After a moment, she realised that she had been silent for a little bit too long. “Well, I guess I’ll start with the least important. Today at school, I was confronted by a girl in the cssroom. She, well, she saw me and Steven together and wanted to… Well, I am not sure. I kind of ran away…”

  The moment she feared came as Mika’s eyebrows furrowed as she realised the implications of her running away.

  “Ran away how, exactly?” Came the expected question.

  “I made a distraction and disappeared from the css. I may have a problem with how much I rely on my ability to get away.” Silva vaguely stated.

  “Don’t we all?” Steven gnced up to the ceiling while recalling something. It did earn him a disapproving look from Mika, who then addressed Silva.

  “It seems like you understand what you did wrong, so I won’t harp on it, but why did you mention it?”

  “Well, so that you knew. There might be some rumours going around my school about me. So, if you learned about those, they would not come as a surprise. And the girl seemed to be looking for Steven, so…”

  Mika let out a cold snort. “She is not the only one chasing after this guy.” She pointed at Steven, who was still looking at the ceiling, only now his face sported an evil smile. “I am more interested in those rumours.” She ignored Steven’s eccentricity.

  “Nothing special. They just see me as some sort of oddity because I rarely speak.” Silva avoided going into more details. It was better to not give Mika the chance to start nagging her about her past mistakes. There were still other things to speak about, after all.

  Enkiari