The words disappear into the air just as quickly as they came. Aaron’s eyes grow wild as he searches through the crowd in front of him. “Did he just call me red? As in my color in the dream? It was almost a whisper; did it even come from Suijin? But how would he…”
Aaron takes a moment, realizing that he won’t find Suijin by just standing around. He lets out a breath and tries to push logic to the front of his mind. Maybe he just heard it wrong. Suijin seemed not to know his name anyway. It’s just a dream.
A small echo in the back of Aaron’s mind chastises him for his dismissal, like an instinct letting him know that he’s on the wrong track. At the very least, he’s experienced enough unreality today to know he definitely heard someone call him “red.” Or, at the very least, someone called him that. But why?
“You okay? You seem pretty rattled.” A worried Elias asks as he steps into Aaron’s view. “Where’s your new friend?”
“I’m good,” Aaron lies before following Elias’s scan of the crowd. “I’m not sure, but I don’t think I’ve ever even seen him before. He might be a freshman like you.”
Aaron looks to his brother and is surprised he hasn’t immediately taken off. Instead, his hand slips onto his brother’s shoulder. “Stay safe today,” Elias says in a serious tone. Aaron simply nods before his brother begins walking away. A shiver runs up his spine in response.
“It doesn’t matter how I respond; I collapsed freakishly after a sudden burning pain and went on a really weird trip. Probably not the most scientific name for it, but I’m feeling a little defeated here. Weird medieval battle dream for the past eight months? I can handle that when it’s at night, but having random visions while I’m just walking about? Yeah, I’m going to need those to stop immediately.” Terrible nightmares and… daymares aside, today is the first day of school, and Aaron forges onward to try and forget that he’s losing his mind.
Aaron looks back out to the school, immediately overwhelmed by the sea of high schoolers pushing their way through the crowded courtyard. It’s the first week of school, which means that the student clubs get to advertise for the entire first period. Aaron ducks his head, recognizing one of the booths up ahead while walking away from the immediate courtyard.
“Aaron! Hey!” A voice calls out from behind him. Aaron turns with a smile on his face to see William Crusher, or just Will, waving to him from behind one of the parked buses. The man, standing a half-head taller than Aaron, wearing his janitorial uniform, returns the smile. He quickly waves Aaron down to him as he sprays the back of the bus with a large hose. Aaron closes the gap, and Will begins, “Happy first day back, kid! Looking to get back on the team?”
Aaron winces.
“Sorry, I guess that’s a bit of a loaded ask, huh?” Will awkwardly chuckles.
“No, it’s alright! I really enjoyed working with you last year, but I just haven’t given it much thought yet.” That was a lie. Aaron had given it a lot of thought. In fact, it occupied his mind almost every day leading up to today. After the accident, he had worked with Will as a part-time janitor to gain some extra cash and keep his hands busy. He hadn’t expected to enjoy Will’s company as much as he had.
Will gives a half-hearted nod to his comment. “Well, it sounds like we’ll have a bit of a competition on who can get you this year. I heard Sarah was riding around trying to find you.” That name alone causes a small whirlwind of emotions within Aaron. Sure enough, he had just ducked the booth a few minutes ago.
“The Captain of the Kendo club…” Aaron lets the thought marinate in his mind a bit. He and Sarah had been close before the accident. There had been something there on his end that he wanted to explore, but with how last year ended, it never felt like the right time. It’s probably not a good thing he hasn’t spoken to her in eight months after unceremoniously but understandably leaving the club. Aaron tries his best to push that out of his mind for the moment before looking back to his friend. “Don’t fight over me too hard!”
“I promise! Besides, between you and me, she kinda scares me.” Will smiles brightly, and Aaron can’t help but chuckle. It’s true, she has a terribly intense face. “But really, if you’re not ready to jump back into everything, you know you’re always welcome back with me.”
“Thank you. Really.” Aaron expresses. “I’m going to wander around a bit. Maybe get hunted by Lady Intensity. Who knows? I’ll see you!”
“Stay out of trouble,” Will laughs before going back to spraying the bus down.
“I’d like nothing more than to avoid trouble and keep my head down this year, but there’s something… something that just makes me feel like that isn’t an option for me.” Aaron thinks to himself while re-entering the courtyard now that it’s calmed down a bit. Despite having little interest, he does take note of the vast amount of clubs this year. From just a glance, it seems as though the number of clubs has doubled from the previous year. This is more likely due to the Principal making it a last-minute requirement for everyone to be in one last year.
As he makes his way through the courtyard, Aaron does take note that there are a few that interest him, like astronomy club, history club, or the previously mentioned kendo club. Despite his interest being piqued, he decides to march on and enter the school. He cringes almost immediately upon entering. Lining the walls are massive banners promoting the 50th Founders Day for Mellgreen at the first football game this year. The cringe? His best friend’s face was plastered on almost every poster with an awkward expression, looking like he was sucking on sour candy.
“Marveling at my image? I don’t blame you, I’m pretty great.” A friend’s voice suddenly booms before a stiff hand lands on Aaron’s shoulders. He rolls his eyes and looks up at Dante de Santis, star receiver for the Mellgreen Warriors and Aaron’s best friend since they were both in diapers.
“You’re sucking a lemon,” Aaron snorts. Dante pauses, looks back at the poster, and a distraught look overtakes his pride.
Despite his face betraying his true thoughts, Dante rallies together his cool act.
“You’re just jealous,” Dante says through pursed lips. Aaron’s eyes roll again, but he doesn’t pull away from his friend. The familiarity was grounding him. This was real, not whatever he experienced before. The smell of cheap plastic, school-issued air conditioning, and way too much deodorant keeps him in the moment. “You feeling alright, though? You seem spaced out.”
Aaron hesitated. He could lie, say something quick and easy to fool someone. But Dante wasn’t just anyone.
“Not really. Summer was too long… and I’ve been spacing out a lot today with weird dreams.” Aaron admits, with Dante nodding along.
“What’s her name?” Aaron shoots him a look, and Dante throws up his hands in defense. “Anyways, welcome back to Liberty, where the weird is a feature, not a bug. You’ll fit right back in, Mr. Jay.” He gave Aaron a gentle nudge with his elbow. “Are you inspired by the posters enough to come to the Founders Day game next month?”
Aaron shook his head. “I don’t know. I might skip it.”
“You’re skipping the Founders Day game? That’s practically illegal,” Dante said, feigning offense. “There are fireworks. Inflatable mascots. People pretend to like each other. And of course, I’ll be killing it on the field.”
“Uh-huh,”
“Seriously!” Dante smiles, but grows serious for a second. “I know things have been rough for you and Elias, but I just think it’s great you’re still here. Kriss, Carmen, and I were really worried you were gonna end up moving out of town.”
“There’s still a part of me that thinks it may have been better if we had,” Aaron replies grimly.
“Nonsense,” Dante growls. The second period bell rings and cuts the conversation short between the two old friends. “I gotta get going. I’m in Mrs. Strazki’s science class.”
“Yuck, I’ll say something at your funeral.” Aaron replies quickly, with both letting out a half-hearted laugh.
“See you around!” Dante waves before running off to class.
Aaron isn’t far behind him, but despite trying to mentally prepare to learn, a thought echoes in his mind: “When will things feel normal again?”
The first day is always the hardest. At least, that’s what Elias has heard his whole life. That’s never quite felt right to him. Is there not an excitement that bellows in the heart of everyone doing something for the first time? Does nobody else like to feel that rush of the unknown? Doing something for the last time has always felt worse to him. No matter what it is, a hobby or relationship, it’s gone before you can even think to thank it for being there in the first place. His theory was confirmed in the hardest day of his life, eight months ago. All of this? The banners, the cliques, the homework, the expectations? It was so much easier than going through another “last” like that.
But a final day like that is inevitable. So, what could he do to keep every day the same level of awful? In the small town of Mellgreen, his choices are slim but clear. He already made up his mind a few days prior and knew that there’d only be one “unofficial” organization that would even bother with him. Thankfully, they would be experts in making his day worse.
Enter the Trash Fighters: Liberty High’s premier fight club. Aaron has always been proficient with the sword, but Elias? His fists have often been better at solving his problems than talking it out. Their parents forced them both to have some sort of physical extracurricular activity, and he found that boxing spoke to him better than the elegant back-and-forth of sword fighting that Aaron enjoyed.
The club is not organized in any official sense, but the rules are clear enough. You don’t snitch, you don’t bring weapons, and most importantly, if you see something, you’re in. The only way to leave the club after being indoctrinated into it is to graduate or win.
And Elias fully intends to lose.
He waits behind the vocational building, a center for the school’s trades programs like welding and auto mechanics. Elias finds himself surrounded by mechanical scrap and loud noises, rethinking his own plan over and over as the minutes tick by. Maybe the Trash Fighters wouldn’t come. Maybe he’d walk away before someone saw him. These thoughts don’t stick around for long as he spots a kid making his way toward him from around the corner of the building.
The kid takes an agonizingly long time to meet Elias at the center of the vocational building. As he does, Elias studies the young boy. He has a scar centered on his right brow, and he seems to favor his left side, leading with that fist at his side.
He looked maybe a year older, but already seasoned like someone who’d been fighting not for fun, but for survival.
“You the only one, fresh meat?” The boy asks in a scattered, flat tone, like he spent the whole walk over to him thinking of what to say.
Elias nods, “As far as I know,”
Scar-Brow doesn’t respond and instead just nods away from Elias. Figures that he hadn’t noticed begin moving out of the brush and scrape at his sides. Three of them. A slender girl with a nose ring and two boys who look like twins who would wake up punching at the air.
The three fighters circle Elias, enclosing around him with their fists ready and a silent glare pointing at his position. Scar-Brow shrugs off a brown jacket that falls to the ground. “You know the rules?”
Elias doesn’t respond. He steps forward and raises his fists. Scar-Brow seems to like that as he dips down and strikes,
Before he even processes the boy dipping down, the first punch catches him clean across the jaw.
He stumbles, barely managing to stay upright as the copper taste of blood hits the back of his throat. The second hit is worse, it lands in his gut, and his breath escapes with a wheeze he can’t quite control. The spectators shift, but no one intervenes. This is part of it. This is what Elias came for.
Pain is a language that doesn’t ask questions. It just is. There is no first day or last day of pain. It’s the only eternal aspect of life.
He swings back, a wide arc that glances off Scar-Brow’s shoulder, not clean, not controlled. The boy returns the favor with a knee to Elias’s ribs that drops him to one knee.
A chorus of “Ooh” echoes lightly around them, but no one laughs.
Elias forces himself up. His lip is split. His ribs are already protesting. And yet, he doesn’t tap. Not yet.
Scar-Brow steps in again, but something in the air shifts.
Ferocity takes over Elias’s mind and delivers a downward blow that causes Scar-Brow to stumble back a couple of steps. He was going to lose. He should lose. He needs to lose. Why is he fighting back?
Shuffling his feet forward to meet each step Scar-Brow takes, Elias delivers a quick two-strike combo to keep him from recovering.
“Stop!” Elias shouts in his mind, suddenly faltering before delivering a kick that would have surely brought Scar-Brow to his knees.
*POP!*
A moment’s hesitation leads Elias to the ground. Scar-Brow stands above him, wiping his mouth and grabbing Elias by the shirt. He closes his eyes and accepts the beating to come.
A shadow falls across them, and a voice cuts the moment in half like a jagged knife.
“That’s enough.”
It’s not loud, but it doesn’t need to be.
Carmen Leoni walks behind Scar-Brow like a shadow casting over him. She held a presence that was immediately noticeable as Scar-Brow stiffens. Her boots crunch softly against the gravel, and the ring of onlookers silently parts for her. She doesn’t even glance at them, her eyes are locked on Elias, who is wiping blood from his mouth and glaring up at her with a mix of confusion and shame.
“What are you doing here?” Elias growls.
Carmen doesn’t answer him. She turns her attention to Scar-Brow. “You think this makes you tough? Picking on someone who clearly doesn’t want to win?”
He scoffs, “Didn’t hear him say stop.”
“Then hear me say it: Stop.” Carmen commands. He doesn’t reply and just begins to step back from Elias. The other Trash Fighters do the same, splitting off in different directions across the school.
She crouches beside Elias and offers her hand. “Come on. You’ve proved your point.”
Elias stares at her hand, then at the blood dripping from his knuckles. “That I can lose?”
“No,” Carmen says, her voice low, her tone serious. “That you’re hurting, and you need help.”
He doesn’t take her hand at first. But eventually, he stands on his own, wobbling slightly. “How’d you know I was going to be here?”
“I didn’t, but what else are big sisters for?” Her serious demeanor turns into a smile. A thought runs loose in Elias’s mind to retort with a clarification that they aren’t actually family, but that felt cruel and unnecessary. “Come on,”
Carmen leads Elias away while Scar-Brow watches from the shadows along with his fellow fighters. Frustration fills their hearts and retaliation lingers on Scar-Brow’s mind for but a moment. It was one thing to beat up some kid who was asking for it, but Carmen Leoni was a whole different problem. A problem that would need a more elegant solution…
Elias continues to follow after Carmen. He looks to the ground and can feel his own disappointment peaking into the recesses of his mind. It was stupid. What was he thinking?
“First day of high school and you’re already picking fights with the Trash Fighters. Great job, Elias.” He mumbles it under his breath, still tasting iron and shame. His ribs throb with each step, and the bruise forming above his eyebrow feels like it’s pulsing with his heartbeat. Carmen glances back, slowing her pace slightly so she walks beside him instead of ahead.
“You don’t have to beat yourself up more than they already did,” She says gently.
“I don’t want Aaron to know.”
The comment was sudden. Carmen doesn’t respond at first. She just walks.
“Seriously,” Elias insists. “He’s already on edge. You’ve seen how spaced-out he’s looked since the accident. The last thing he needs is one more reason to worry about me.”
“I know,” She finally replies. “I wasn’t planning on telling him.”
Elias exhales in relief, but Carmen’s next words stop that comfort short.
“But you should,”
Elias scoffs, instantly regretting the movement as pain shoots up the side of his face. “He’s got enough going on,”
Carmen stops and turns to him, the casual warmth in her earlier smile now cooled into something quieter. “You’re right. He’s got a lot going on. You both do. But bottling it up like this? Picking fights just to feel something? That’s not strength, Elias. That’s… damage control. And you can’t do it alone.”
“I’m not,” He replies, voice tight. “I have you, don’t I?
Carmen blinks, caught slightly off guard, but then she smiles, and it’s real this time. “Damn right you do,”
Before either of them can say more, they hear hurried footsteps from just beyond the courtyard.
“Carmen?” A soft, uncertain, and full of barely-contained nerves voice calls out.
Around the corner appears Krystal Kinsley, affectionately known as Kriss, clutching a sketchbook to her chest like it’s a lifeline. Her long black braid swings over one shoulder, and her eyes are wide, dark, and always scanning. They lock onto Carmen first, then widen in panic when she sees Elias.
“Elias! Are you okay? Did something happen?”
Kriss stammers her way through the question, already halfway to Elias’s side before he can even process her presence. She’s wearing an oversized denim jacket with patches that look hand-sewn, each one meticulously placed like armor. Her fingers tremble against the binding of her sketchbook, and her voice is soft but frantic.
“I’m fine,” Elias says, trying to wave her off.
“You’re bleeding,” she counters, her brows knitting together. “Your eye is swelling, and you’re… wobbling. Should you sit down?”
“I’ve seen him worse,” Carmen quips, earning a sharp side-eye from Elias.
Kriss takes a shaky breath, then kneels to open her backpack. “I-I’ve got some stuff in here, just in case. I carry a first aid kit. I mean, not like a huge one. It’s not weird or anything, but here!” She pulls out a travel-sized pouch with impressive speed and immediately starts dabbing at Elias’s brow with antiseptic.
He flinches at the sting, but stays still.
“You’re not weird,” he murmurs.
Kriss’s hands pause for a moment, and she meets his eyes. The nervous buzz in her movements stills, but only for a second. Then she looks away, cheeks reddening beneath her freckles. “T-thanks.”
Carmen watches them, arms crossed, an amused smile tugging at her lips. “You two want a minute or…?”
Kriss instantly panics. “No! No no, I was just… he looked hurt, and Carmen, you said to always be prepared for emergencies, so I figured-”
“Relax,” Carmen says, chuckling. “You did great. EMT-level speed.”
Kriss exhales, but the tension doesn’t fully leave her shoulders.
Elias had watched her hands work away at his wound in those moments. She looked to be always scanning for the next sign of trouble, like the world was on her shoulders. Despite this, she was pressuring on and doing what she could to help. And for some reason, that gets to him more than any punch he took today.
He mumbles, “Thanks, Kriss. Really.”
She glances at him again, like her eyes might betray something hidden away in her thoughts, and offers a small smile. “Of course.”
“So,” Carmen begins with theatrical innocence, “I’m going to walk both you idiots to class before anything else crazy happens. Unless you two think you can find your way together?”
Elias grunts, “Don’t say it like that,” Carmen raises her eyebrows at him with a teasing laugh to follow.
“Then let’s get going before we’re all late,” She stretches her arms out and begins walking alongside Elias into the hallways. Kriss falls into step beside them, still clutching her sketchbook.
As they walk, Kriss risks one more look at Elias. She has to. After all, today is supposed to be her last day of peace.
At least, that’s what the voice in her head keeps saying…
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