No Time

When I first saw these group of friends, they just seemed like a group that popular kids would be in. They all had nice clothes, an outgoing attitude, and all looked handsome, pretty, or at least above average.

They were of different origins; Chinese(3), Korean(2), French(2), White American(2), African American, Canadian, German, Egyptian. They're a huge crowd, consisting of 14 kids.

They were apparently widely known in the school as they caused lots of headaches for teachers. Even other groups bigger than them didn't cause troubles as much.

They were my age but weren't anything like me...

I had heard news about pranks and them talking back to teachers, causing trouble in class, but I had thought they were exaggerations.

Mr.Saini, a teacher who unfortunately had all of them at the same time, had gotten so fed up that he had told them to leave the classroom if they weren't serious about learning.

And so they left.

'He was furious but couldn't do anything!' was a passed around statement after the incident happened.

The group of fourteen 11th graders wandered around the halls, peeking into classrooms and going around the whole school.

Soon arrived lunchtime, and they could hear their stomachs roar in indignant want of a source of vital energy, FOOD.

Suddenly, a fragrance drifted by and they all caught wind of a warm scent of a delicious home-made meal.

Finding their way to it, they arrived at an inconspicuous sliding door.

Above it, a sign that said,

One of them slowly slid the door open, millimeter by millimeter.

A light began to shine through the sliding door as they could finally see the glorious scene of the office.

A large glass food container that had steaming braised meat shining in the spotlight...

A huge pile of rice heaped upon the porcelain bowl.

A bowl of soup that had a drool-worthy smell whiffing out.

An assortment of glistening side dishes that were of all colors.

And next to the meal, a hill of fruit and snacks.

And in the sitting near the table, a handsome pretty boy holding chopsticks and chewing silently while looking at his phone.

The handsome pretty boy sensed their hungry gazes and turned to look at them with a curious look in his eyes.

"Why aren't you guys in the cafeteria? It's lunchtime."

But the fourteen hungry teenagers wouldn't leave.

They stayed around shamelessly and begged for the delicious meal. The Asian kids and some other students wanted the braised meat while others were aiming for the fruit and junk food.

...And that was the beginning.

I didn't know they were the famed troublemakers. I had never bothered to find out about them, thinking that I wouldn't have any need of meeting them.

After feeding them several times... well, more like them shamelessly mooching off, Mr.Saini and the other faculty members found out that the group took a liking to me.

From then on, whenever they couldn't seem to handle this group of teenagers, they sent them to me, giving me their share of headaches.

Sigh, at least today was a class training day. A day in the week where they got training for their powers.

I only needed to help with watching out for stray abilities and maybe teach some struggling students.

And this time, the group would be back with their classes and do their thing there, not near me.

Anyway, back to the present, all of us had finished eating, so I opened the door to the practice stadium.

I made them go down the stairs first as they had tried to escape multiple times before.

Then I closed the door with a heavy thump.

Other classes were trailing in from other doors and the instructors for the class training were already ordering them around to stand in uniform lines for each class.

The group that had mooched off of me my precious snacks ran to their classmates in a happy manner and started jabbering right away.

The whole stadium was loud with whispers traveling everywhere. The instructors took 3 minutes to calm the students, but there wasn't complete silence.

All the students, 11th graders, were then divided into sections.

Animal ability training wasn't done at school. They would have to be practiced by everyone separately or they would have to get training from someone else.

Only elemental abilities were trained at school.

Earth, plant, and water were the basics. There were a few air ability users but they were rare. After all, air was an element that could've harmed somebody during the zombie reagent trial.

There weren't any fire ability users in this grade. There were some mutant ability users though. Ice and sand to name a few.

The plant ability was the hardest to train, so there were many instructors for this section of students. Each person had their own plant, be it dandelions or cauliflowers or maple trees, and the plants all had different properties although they were all leafy things.

Students with multiple elemental abilities, quite a lot of them, were assigned to rotate each section.

I stayed in the center with the school nurse to monitor and help if needed.

Most of the people here didn't know my identity. They might have seen me before, but could not remember my face.

So, some of the students who were learning the basics gossiped with their buddies about me.

'Is he some genius or something?'

'No, he has connections.'

'Well, also, I heard that he's really powerful.'

'Eh, what are you guys talking about? Let me join in!'

...I couldn't keep up with their fast-paced conversations that quickly switched topics every second.

Yu Ge's secretary, Mr. Jiang, had once advised me, "You should spend more time with people around your age. I see Chief every day doing things he shouldn't be burdened with at his age. And he has no choice. But you and your younger sister still have options to be a kid. Kids your age should be unruly and active, not serious and calm. Those are good qualities, but kids should be kids and get to enjoy a normal life a little longer. It's an adults job to provide an environment of care to kids, kids don't do that themselves."

He went on and on about how kids should act like kids while they still had time left.

It left a deep impression on me because Secretary Jiang didn't speak to me often and he even told me not to be like my brother, who I deeply admired.

Indeed, my brother was pitiful for such huge burdens, but I was proud of him.

After Secretary Jiang's advice became stuck in my head, I thought back to the past before Yu Ge had tried to take charge of caring for us.

We had a short happy time. And then our family fell apart.

Did our family have any chance of not falling apart?

Could we have lived normal lives?

No.

The zombie apocalypse would still have happened and who knows what we could've done if we were all together without any experience.

We would all die some way or another.

At least in this life, we were living comfortably.

But what would it have been like?

To live a normal life.

...Psh, better not think about it.

If the world was normal, I wouldn't be able to see baby angel Sherry Shui Bao!

I was smiling foolishly thinking about the little angel, letting my guard down.

A dull thunk sounded.

...Huh?

Red liquid.

Dripping down my head.

Feeling dizzy.

Darkness.