Time: 08:00 AM. Monday. First Week of the Semester.
Location: Main Campus – GSBC Assembly Hall.
The campus bell rings.
A lonely, hollow tone echoes across the institution, like a vault door sealing shut.
A sound usually associated with learning, transition, and youth carries a different weight this morning.
The cadence is slower, more solemn.
There is no cheer, not even a melody. The frost displaces warmth; the charm is absent. Only precision remains.
It does not welcome the day.
It declares that it has begun.
Across Kalin High's vast, city-like campus, the effect is immediate. Movement pauses. Conversations hush. Then digital monitors across the plazas, screen projectors lining the halls, and holograms rising from the courtyards begin to flicker to life.
There is no countdown. No ceremony.
The seal of the General Student Body Council appears: a stark charcoal globe flanked by laurel leaves, beneath it an open book with no title, stamped against a white field. The acronym GSBC, bold and centered, holds the screen in silence, like a sentence awaiting enforcement.
A steady camera focus settles on the podium; the bronze plaque lies dull under the harsh glare, its silence echoing louder than any words.
Behind it stands a figure who may still be a student by age, yet already carries the presence of unshakable resolve. A teenager shaped by duty, bearing the composure of a bureaucrat who has held this institution together through patience and sheer will.
Dagny Hammer – GSBC President.
Her snow-white, gold-trimmed long coat is as unblemished as statute. Her silver-blue hair, faintly streaked with steel, is drawn behind her shoulders with surgical precision. She stands still, not rigid but controlled. Her sharp royal-blue eyes do not seek attention. They expect it.
There are no crowds cheering. No banners flutter.
Only white stone, suspended anticipation, and the glow of a system that operates without pause.
Yet she is not alone.
Behind the President stands a shorter figure. Calm and unassuming, her hands rest gently around a leather folder. Her soft brown curls are pinned back in a style reminiscent of the 1930s. Hazel eyes meet the camera steadily. Where Dagny's gaze conveys authority and resolve, hers carries gentleness and quiet assurance.
Eleonore Moore. Vice President, and the calm behind the command.
The Vice President does not speak. She never does during these broadcasts. Still, her presence lingers like a held breath. A subtle grace that tempers authority into reassurance. Where Dagny resembles an oath carved into stone, Eleonore stands as the lantern beside it.
The feed stabilizes.
The President begins.
"Good morning."
Her voice is not raised, yet it carries with perfect clarity. It is neither loud nor dramatic. It is inevitable.
"To all who walk the grounds of Kalin High today, to the freshmen beginning their search for meaning, and to the seniors standing at the threshold of their final challenges, I offer no illusion."
She pauses, allowing the words to settle.
"Kalin High is an institution that does not slow down. It never apologizes. It does not stop when you fall, and it will not wait for anyone to catch up. It moves forward. It operates like a system, like a city, like a future that does not ask for permission."
Her posture remains composed. Her expression does not waver.
"The Council, the GSBC, exists neither to comfort you nor to shield you from struggle. Our charge is to prevent collapse. We maintain infrastructure, mediate between factions, secure the food supply, oversee transit, and preserve stability across one of the most volatile academic states ever constructed."
Another pause. A measured breath.
"The student body has never voted for us. We are not elected. We are appointed by the system to carry these burdens. And if we fail, the responsibility will fall on us alone."
Her gaze remains steady.
"This semester will test you. Some of you will adapt. Others will stumble. There will be conflict. Ideologies will clash. Alliances will shift. You may question your place. You may question yourself. Such doubt is not failure. It is how growth begins, as it should."
Her voice softens slightly, not from weakness, but from something approaching understanding.
"Even in uncertainty, do not waste your youth."
Her piercing blue eyes hold the camera, clear and enduring.
"You only receive one. Let this shape you. Let it teach you. Let it matter. Not in noise or motion, but in something real. Something you can call your own."
A final pause.
The screen fades to white. Then to black.
Only silence remains, no applause, no fanfare.
Moments later, everything resumes.
Shoes scuff tile. Bags shift against shoulders. Uniform fabric rustles in restrained rhythms. Across the campus, students begin to move again. There is no excitement, only obligation.
Today marks the first day of the semester. A new academic year begins. Spring exists in name alone; the structure remains unchanged.
First-years, some still carrying fragile excitement, are quickly confronted by a harsher truth. The broadcast makes clear that they have entered an oppressive society. Sophomores and seniors, long accustomed to Kalin High's cadence, unbothered by the tone of the message and continue forward without pause.
There are no warm greetings. No celebrations. No welcoming ceremonies. Only sighs, footsteps on asphalt and marble, and the slow drift of cherry blossom petals carried through still air from the Western Courtyards, where spring attempts to bloom beneath the weight of protocol.
Kalin High moves before its students do.
A city of concrete, glass, marble, and steel. A mechanical memory. It does not wait for hearts to catch up or minds to adjust. It simply resumes, indifferent, as those who walk its halls forget they were ever newcomers.
It does not cheer success. It does not mourn failures. It does not retaliate against rebellion. It registers arrivals, processes outcomes, and between those acts offers no guarantees. Only the space to become something, or to be absorbed into the system as another variable it never take into account.
Every term, every semester, new names appear.
Faces. Ideas. Conflicts. Declarations.
But Kalin High remains.
Unmoved.
Always watching.
Among them stands one boy near the courtyard.
Like everyone else, he remains still during the broadcast. His hands rest folded before him. His expression is unreadable. His posture is average. Above him, the GSBC insignia burns across the towering screen like a verdict. The President's voice, calm and absolute, echoes across the plaza with ritual weight.
Then it ends.
Around him, students resume their movement. Bags are lifted back onto shoulders. Murmurs return. Shoes brush tile in practiced rhythm.
But he does not move.
He is not certain what he expected. Perhaps warmth. Perhaps something human.
He finds neither.
Instead, it feels as though the semester has begun without him. As though the school has already decided what he is meant to become, and now waits only to see whether he will accept it.
Eventually, he steps forward.
The motion is quiet. Unremarkable.
And to the system, it is merely another name it will never bother to remember.