That day, I spent the entire day running away from everyone. Even my own shadow. Shahid Jay Zaviel was after my soul, and the whole school could pounce on me at any moment and hand me over to him as a gift without warning. He could just throw me into the clouds afterward, and I'd be dead, unseen and unknown. And I doubt anyone in this damn school would care.
Speaking of shit, hadn't I already cleaned these toilets? So why do they smell so shitty? Oh right, because people put shit in them. But still… I don't want to die like this.
I was locked in one of the boys' toilets, thinking about my impending and unfortunately inevitable death in just a few moments. Even though I had been locked up here for half an hour, I wasn't deluding myself. It would only take one word or a simple little spell from that old bastard to see me plunge headfirst into the sublime clouds rolling beneath our feet.
I would be dead in an instant. So why am I still alive?
At that question, I lowered my head for a moment to dive into the depths of my thoughts.
I don't know anyone here, and no one knows me. No one loves me or cares enough about me—or even my ass—to save my skin.
And the image of Paradox flashed through my mind.
The young woman exhaled another misty breath into the void before stretching that wide, radiant smile again to stare me straight in the eyes… it's probably one of the most beautiful images I'll keep in my head for a thousand more years. Hoping that a less eloquent soul won't come along to ruin it.
"Well, after all, we've only known each other for a few days. I don't know anything about her, or her story."
And that was the truth. I only knew her name, if that was even really her name, and the context of her arrival at the school. I didn't know anything else about her, and we weren't even dating. She was just the girl who had been too kind to me, a little virgin toilet cleaner lost in a world he knows nothing about, who risks being executed at any moment.
A guy with no dreams, no life.
From the start, I knew that a girl as beautiful and sexy as her could never be interested in a guy as poor and powerless as me, yet… it still hurt like hell.
Immediately, my tears started flowing in torrents in the toilet. I was the first one surprised, actually. Why would I cry over a girl I'd only known for a week? Why did my heart feel like it was shattering like ice when there was no reason for it? Why… why did Paradox do this? Why? Why am I so… pathetic?
As my tears showed no signs of stopping, I curled up on myself, wrapping my head with my arms, letting myself fully succumb once and for all to the sobs and tears. Oh, even I felt pathetic. And yet, deep down, I felt that something inside me had finally cracked, and I could never contain the waves she unleashed through my eyes.
"Stop!" I ordered myself in a trembling voice. "Damn… why am I even here? I didn't ask for this, so why would anyone want to kill me?"
CLAP — the sound of a door.
I knew at that moment that someone had entered the toilets. They sounded rushed from the pace of their steps, so I tightened the door to prevent it from being opened by force. However, the sound quickly moved to pummel the neighboring toilet in an annoying racket.
At least it pulled me out of that flood of sadness that was consuming my heart, and I wiped my eyes quickly, regaining a bit of composure. And that's when…
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQAAAAAAAAAASHABADABOUDOUWANNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGOULIIIIIISHOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!
Screamed my neighbor, almost giving me a heart attack just to release his load. The scream was followed by a titanic battle whose waves and crashes shook the toilets and threatened to break the walls. For a moment, I thought my neighbor was shitting a demon. I would have sworn I even heard, for an instant, the clash of swords and spears mixed with machine guns grazing the toilet before the final deluge.
SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII — the battle continued to clean the demon's blood released in puberty.
"Haaaaaaaaaaa!" I heard before the toilet door slammed again.
The footsteps resumed, but this time slower and calmer.
"Good God… I have to leave this crazy world," I thought before getting up to adjust my underwear when a gurgling water sound appeared again, but this time in my own toilet. Damn…
I stepped back before lunging at the door, which refused to open to let me escape. I quickly glanced at the toilet to see the water swelling abnormally before throwing myself at the handle with all my strength and my will to live.
"Damn it, open. Open. Opennnnnnnnn!"
And at that very moment, a huge white shark made entirely of water shot out of the toilet, rolled through the air, swallowed me whole, and then returned to where it came from.
One day, I'll tell this story, and no one will believe me. After all, I didn't even believe the story of the guy who was swallowed and spat out alive by a fish several days later. And yet, that's exactly what happened to me. And after my… abduction by the fish, the water inside the toilet returned to normal as if nothing had happened.
A few seconds later, the fish reappeared in a dark room filled with tables and papers from floor to ceiling, with many others pinned all over the walls. It hovered in the room for a moment before vomiting me out onto the floor with a loud PSHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
A ball of water poured onto the brick floor, leaving me lying on my back, stomach filled to the brim. It took me a moment to recover before rising to my knees to vomit the astronomical amount of water swelling in my belly.
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH HAAAAA HAAAAA HAAAA
Slowly catching my breath, I saw the giant water shark flying across the room to shatter into a thousand pieces behind Shahid Zaviel, sitting at his desk. Seeing his black gaze illuminated by the candlelight, I quickly stood up when, with a wave of his wand, he lifted me into the air and pressed me against what at first appeared to be a web made of invisible filament.
I was spread and stuck in the air like the next victim of a serial killer when Shahid stood from his chair and approached me.
"W-wait, why are you doing this? I haven't done anything wrong. I'm innocent. Please, don't kill me. Please. Please. Please."
That's what would probably have come out of my mouth in such circumstances if I kept thinking like my everyday self. But the moment I appeared in that room, I realized one thing: I still had a chance to get out. Otherwise, I don't see why I hadn't been devoured by the giant fish. So, I changed my way of thinking. Instead of begging like in my head, I adopted a calmer, almost too calm expression.
"You took your time," I said instead.
"Oh," he said in surprise.
"Turns out, I was waiting for you."
"Is that so? And for what reason?"
"Come on, why dwell on what's already happened? It's better to establish our agreement quickly to save time, right?" I said, forcing a small smile while nearly shitting myself.
"Our agreement?" he repeated, tilting his head in an even more terrifying way.
At that moment, I almost pissed myself. But I knew panicking or trying to run, or even begging, wouldn't save me this time. I also had to remember that the enemy in front of me wasn't an unreasonable being like Hell-Head. He was a fully conscious human aware of what he could do and what he could lose. And I was also aware of what he could lose. So, I had a form of psychological advantage over him despite our blatant difference in strength.
I had to keep in mind that he could kill me whenever he wanted, at any moment.
"Yes, an agreement, that's what I propose. It's up to you. If you accept my enrollment request at the school, I'll stay silent about what I saw the other night and promise never to speak of it again, even if it costs me my life," I said, carefully observing his face for the slightest change in expression. The good thing is that there's no loser in this agreement because I'd finally have a chance to seize the shitty destiny reserved for me by fate, while you would have the guarantee that your secret will never be revealed. And of course, I'm also willing to sign a magical contract if necessary, so take your time to make the right decision. After all, a teacher having sex with students to accept them secretly without permission in a wizarding school… oh, the perfect scandal. I can imagine newspapers worldwide: The great Shahid Jay Zaviel accused of fornication with students under threat of expulsion…
"Enough. Shut your mouth, little shit-puppy who has no idea what enemy he's making," Shahid cut me off.
At that moment, more than his expression of muted, strangely senseless rage like the Titanic leaving the harbor, it was the expression of the professor's language that chilled my blood. I had never heard him speak with so much anger and desire for massacre. Surely, I had touched a forbidden weak spot: honor and prestige.
In the end, they're all the same.
"Do you really think you're in a position to negotiate? Do you have any idea who stands in front of you? Do you know why they call me Zaviel the Oneiromancer? No, of course, you have no idea, little shit," he said. "Killing you is child's play for me, and I could have done it at any moment, but I thought even for you, it would be too cruel. That's why I had decided to drop you somewhere in the next town. But you just gave me a reason to kill you. When you're on the other side, tell them it was your stupidity that got you killed so young."
Shahid raised his wand, sparkling with a diamond-like color containing a rainbow as if he had captured it to lock it inside. The kind of wand a low-level wizard could never possess. If I weren't such an idiot, I would have seen and considered it before opening my big mouth and rushing my own end. But still, there was no way I would let myself die here so easily, never achieving anything. What would I tell my uncle who sacrificed his life for me in that accident so I could survive, otherwise?
"Wait. If I die, then no one will be able to stop him," I shouted, catching Shahid's attention, who furrowed his brows and replied, "Stop who?"
"He will do it," I replied with a smile somewhere between euphoria and madness. "He will do it, and if… if I don't stop him as quickly as possible… then… disaster will strike this world."