Marianne and Tanya talked about almost anything and everything. Even while Tanya had gotten in the bath to get dressed before they left for dinner, they still conversed while she showered.
"Hey, Tanya!" Mari called out from the room.
"What's up?" Tanya replied while still in the bathroom.
"Have you heard the rumors?"
"Which one?" Tanya questioned back and Marianne smiled a wry smile and soon chuckled silently in amusement.
Their school may have had a motto that told of excellence being the pinnacle of their priority, but they lacked morals and excelled in many dirty deeds.
Those who came to the school for the first time were deceived by the fanciful façade of the school, but when they stayed long enough, reality differed greatly from their dreams.
The dark reality of the school was way beyond sex, drugs, and shootings. Even occultism was a minor issue in the school.
The school was like a little city. There was so much darkness that light was easily swallowed up when it shone.
"You're crazy…" She said with an amused grin. "I'm talking about the rumors of you and Master."
"Alvise and I…? Yeah, what about it?" Tanya asked. She remembered Justina and her tantrums for a moment. Something flashed in her eyes for a moment before it cooled. It was fine. She had taken care of the loose ends.
Soon, she heard Marianne's voice again in the dark bathroom, under the shower that didn't run since she had turned it off, "They're saying that you might be sleeping with him in exchange for being the top student."
A dark chuckle echoed from the bathroom and into the bedroom. The sound was so chilling that Marianne shuddered as her heart clenched.
Marianne continued, "The proofs they gave and their theories were so valid that if I didn't know any better, I might have thought it to be true."
"Has there been any statement from the higher-ups?"
"None. They wouldn't dare speak when Master has already prompted their silence." Tanya was a bit stunned by the answer. It had only been three days since the ball… Did he know… that something like this would happen?
"Silenced them?" She asked. Did he…
Marianne answered before her mind could wander further, "He had their dirt dug up and used it to keep them from taking disciplinary action against you." Marianne chuckled and Tanya could feel that a thought had crossed her mind to prompt that laughter, "Those old men are dirty. More so than you could ever imagine."
Tanya's heart softened as she turned on the shower to rinse off. She really needed to be more appreciative of her boss. When did he get the time to do all of these without her knowledge? Was that why he didn't come at night for the past three nights?
Tanya felt a dull ache as her thoughts bombarded her. The water was cold but she didn't feel it until her body involuntarily shuddered from the cold. The northern winds were here and Tanya wasn't invested in falling sick before her final exams. It's not fun being sick while trying to read. These were words from experience.
She came out with a towel wrapped around her body and a smaller one that was just lazily placed upon her head. Marianne stared blankly, and Tanya raised a questioning brow at her behavior.
"Tanya, do you like women?" Tanya's eyes widened in surprise at the question but soon calmed down, "What is this question all of a sudden? Why do you ask?"
"I think I like you," Marianne said with a flush on her blank face. Tanya blinked a couple of times before she broke out into a chuckling fit.
Tanya rolled her eyes and playfully threw the towel around her body at her best friend, "What then happened to your love for Darion and all the other fictional 2D guys you fawn over?"
Marianne removed the towel and stared at Tanya and her small but plump figure, "They're first, you're second." Tanya smiled and shook her head as she threw her second towel at her delusional friend who spoke without hesitation.
"Are you wearing that to dinner, or are you going to change?" Tanya asked with a smile and a slightly deeper voice. Little did Tanya know that the sight of her in her birthday suit, slightly dripping hair, and a deep voice made her friend's heart palpitate and her nether regions damp with heat.
To Marianne, the woman in front of her was no less than a goddess…
Everyone trooped into the large reading hall, slowly but steadily filling up the large multipurpose hall to an extent. A bell went off in the distance and soon, teachers came out of thin air, in different corners of the halls.
Boys and girls were divided during prep times, but not because of the fear of any indecent and vulgar activities when these opposites meet. Many times, when both males and females were put together, it resulted in utter chaos. It was a chaotic mess.
Tanya sat at a table to supervise the junior students and her mates in her assigned corner. The same was said about some others as well. They assigned three or more senior students who were prefects, members of the student body council, to various tables. The male prefects to the male designated tables and the female prefects to the female designated tables.
In the middle of the hall sat a matron. A non-academic staff member to oversee to ensure that no girls crossed over to the boys' side and vice versa.
Tanya looked at her side of the table to where Marianne sat. She looked so serious studying her book on human anatomy that she had unintentionally garnered respectful gazes from a patrolling teacher and a few other envious gazes from those at the table.
Tanya saw this and bit down on the urge to laugh when she noticed the envious and admirable gazes that her friend was earning by studying a tertiary-level textbook with such zeal and passion. But Tanya knew this was all a farce. Her friend was more impassioned by the book hidden by the anatomy textbook.
"You are no worse than the devil, Marianne," Tanya spoke out audibly without tearing her gaze from the book fully. The corner of her eyes held the deceptive image of her studious friend, who was so engrossed in her reading that she had tuned the world out completely.
"Don't suddenly start a conversation with me by calling me a devil. I might think that I had killed someone you knew before I arrived here." The people listening in on the conversation giggled, and Tanya glared at them lightly, using her eyes to motion to their book, to which they complied without any further argument.
"Did you though…?" Tanya asked in playful skepticism as she raised a brow to her friend who finally tore her eyes off her read to meet her gaze with a confused tilt.
"'Did I' what?" Marianne asked. Tanya said nothing with her lips but her eyes told her suggestion. Marianne, who had read her friend's eyes easily, closed her book, with a finger in the middle for marking, and whacked her with it.
Tanya smiled and turned her gaze back to her book as she continued, "Why are you reading that when we have an exam upcoming? Does it bore you that much to read?"
Marianne rolled her eyes and sighed. Still fixated on the book, she continued, "You brought the distraction and now you say that?"
"Well, when you say it like that, I do sound like the bad guy instead," Marianne said, nothing but pouting and scoffing while pouting. Tanya swallowed a giggle as she observed from the corner of her eye.
The hall grew a bit too rowdy with everyone whispering, mumblings or even downright talking out loud. Tanya quietened her table with a glare though they weren't really making noise in the first place. The people who had in mind to speak swallowed their words and faced their books.
The teachers put the situation under control, and the hall was quiet again, but there were still a few mumblings here and there. Tanya guessed that they didn't mind. It was better than a rowdy hall anyway.
"Tanya," Marianne called out, "have you heard the safety awareness campaign put in place by the state government?"
There was a brief pause before she answered as she tried to shake off this foreboding feeling that crawled into her throat, "I don't think I have. The last I heard was of the school's fire safety drill that eventually fell through."
"They say it's a two-way program." She began, and Tanya took her eyes and attention off the book and to her friend, "It's meant to help newly recruited officers with real-life on-site training and also encourage the parents who are worried due to the happenings of school shootings."
"Officers?" Tanya asked with a little shake in her voice but Marianne was too into the conversation and her read to detect it.
"Rookies actually. It's a three-month to one-year program. Apparently, there had been a massive appeal to the government to send government armed forces to protect the schools after the shootout in a high school in the mainland…"
"Bless their souls," Tanya said with her hands together in a prayer-like manner. She hated hearing about death. Especially when it was of young kids.
Subconsciously, Tanya's hand went down to her stomach before she realized what she had done and quickly removed it. Thankfully, no one was paying attention to her and was too busy being fixated on looking forward to avoid corporal punishment.
Marianne, who had no idea of what was going on, continued without paying mind at all, "The government paid heed and setup this awareness campaign where he'd send rookies of various response teams and armed forces to different schools to educate the students while giving the rookies a chance to experience and explore the grounds for a crime to occur in real time."
"Well, it will help when they want experience points, I guess?" Tanya said with a shrug.
"You know a lot about this. Is that why your family also participated in this campaign?"
"My family?"
"Yeah?"
"Marianne, my family members are all in the army. We're not in the police." Tanya said, feeling the urge to clarify.
"I know, but doesn't your family have someone in the police? The genius of the decade or something, is what they called him. Adam Conner, was it?"
Tanya didn't respond, so Marianne was forced to look up at Tanya with a displeased pout on her lips, but when she saw her friend, her mock displeasure turned into confusion, then to shock, and from shock to panic.
Tanya's face had been stripped of all colors, leaving her with a pasty ashen gray complexion. Her body was stiff and her eyes were dead. But what was even more concerning was the look on her face and her heartbeat.
Tanya's eyes were open wide and her lips slightly open. Her heart… Her heartbeat was so weak it could have been mistaken for not even beating but yet still she didn't go on to move.
The shock was so great that she forgot to breathe… no.
She couldn't breathe.
The fear and shock had robbed her of her ability to do so.