I'll expand this draft to approximately 1,500 words while staying true to its original content and tone. Here's the expanded version:
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The bell chimed overhead, its metallic ring cutting through the murmur of students and signaling the end of another long day. The sound acted as a starting gun, unleashing a flurry of motion throughout the classroom. Some students bolted from their seats with practiced urgency, desperate to escape the confines of the school walls. Others lingered, gathering in small clusters near the doorway, laughing and making plans for the evening. A few simply shuffled toward the exit, their minds already elsewhere, already free.
But one student remained perfectly still.
He rested his head against the cool surface of his desk, his arms folded beneath him like a makeshift pillow. From this position, he could hear the chaos of departure—the scraping of chairs, the rustling of bags, the overlapping voices bidding farewell—but he didn't move. He couldn't. Not yet. Not while the memory of what had happened still burned fresh in his mind.
"Why do I even try sometimes?" he muttered into the crook of his elbow, his voice barely audible even to himself. "Now here I am, resting my head on the table, trying to hide myself from the shame of getting rejected five times in a row."
Five times. The number echoed in his head like a cruel refrain. Five different applications, five different opportunities, five different reasons to hope—and five identical responses, each one polite, professional, and utterly devastating. He hadn't even made it to the interview stage for any of them. His carefully crafted resumes, his painstakingly written cover letters, his genuine enthusiasm—all of it had been filtered out by algorithms or glanced over by tired eyes before being discarded without a second thought.
He lifted his head just enough to watch his classmates leave through half-lidded eyes. They moved with such ease, such confidence. Some of them would go home to families who supported them, to opportunities waiting just around the corner, to futures that seemed bright and inevitable. He envied them not out of malice, but out of a desperate, aching longing for even a fraction of their apparent fortune.
"I hate how cruel reality is," he whispered, finally sitting up straight. His gaze drifted to the empty seat near the window, the one that had been occupied just an hour before. "She's gone now. I can leave now."
The words tasted bitter on his tongue. There had been someone, once—a classmate who had smiled at him, who had asked about his day, who had made the long hours of lectures and assignments feel less oppressive. But she had transferred to another school last week, and he had never worked up the courage to ask for her contact information, never found the words to express what her simple kindness had meant to him. Now she was gone, like everything else good in his life, and he was left with nothing but the familiar weight of regret.
With mechanical precision, he gathered his scattered notebooks and slid them into his worn backpack. The zipper caught twice before finally closing, a small annoyance that felt almost personal in his current mood. When he stood, his black eyes—so dark they seemed to absorb the afternoon light rather than reflect it—scanned the now-empty classroom one final time. Then he slung his bag over his shoulder and stepped into the hallway.
"Praying doesn't help with that," he thought as he walked, his footsteps echoing in the nearly deserted corridor. "I tried. God, I tried." The words repeated themselves in his mind, a mantra of disappointment that silenced the world around him. He passed other students without seeing them, navigated staircases without registering the descent, moved through the main entrance without feeling the change in temperature. His body operated on autopilot while his mind churned through familiar grievances.
"I'm thinking of the wrong things," he forced himself to acknowledge as he emerged onto the street. The sky beamed down upon the city, a brilliant blue canvas that seemed to mock his mood with its cheerfulness. "There's an exam tomorrow, and I honestly know nothing."
The realization should have spurred him to action, should have ignited some desperate burst of productivity. Instead, it settled over him like a heavy blanket, another item on an endless list of things he was failing at. He walked ahead anyway, following the familiar route home, the hum of cars and distant chatter filling his ears from all directions. Maybe, if he pushed himself, he could squeeze in a few hours of studying before sleep claimed him. Maybe, if he was lucky, some of the information would stick.
He passed by the small coffee shop on the corner, the one with the warm lighting and the comfortable chairs that always seemed to be occupied by people more successful than him. For a moment, he fought the urge to enter, knowing he couldn't afford the overpriced drinks, knowing it would only waste time he didn't have. But the aroma of roasted beans pulled at him, and before he could stop himself, he pushed through the door.
The warmth enveloped him immediately, a welcome contrast to the autumn chill outside. He stood in line for three minutes, mentally calculating whether he could spare the few dollars for a small coffee, before finally reaching the counter and ordering the cheapest option available. The cup felt good in his hands, the heat seeping into his cold fingers, as he stepped back onto the sidewalk.
Then his phone buzzed.
He fumbled for it, his grip loosening, and watched in slow motion as the cup slipped from his fingers. The lid popped off on impact, sending lukewarm coffee across the pavement in an irregular pattern that seemed almost artistic in its destruction. He stood frozen for a moment, staring at the spreading brown stain, at the wasted money, at yet another small tragedy in a day full of them.
"Unlucky, I guess," he said aloud, his voice flat. "I don't have money. Oh well, my shifty luck wins again."
He bent down to retrieve the empty cup, his joints protesting the movement, and walked the few steps to the nearest trash bin. The disposal felt ceremonial, like he was throwing away more than just cardboard and plastic. He stood there for a moment longer, watching the traffic pass, before forcing his feet to carry him the remaining distance home.
The house was modest, a small two-story building that had seen better decades, but it was familiar and safe. He pushed through the front door and called out immediately: "Mom, I'm home! Going to study—no interruption, thanks. Love you!"
The words came out automatically, a routine established through years of repetition. He didn't wait for a response, didn't pause to see if she was even there. He simply climbed the stairs, taking them two at a time in his haste to reach his sanctuary.
"Hey, I didn't fall this time!" he shouted as he entered his room, a small joke directed at no one in particular. The space was dimly lit, the curtains drawn against the afternoon sun, filled with the accumulated clutter of a life spent mostly indoors. Posters of bands he no longer listened to covered one wall. A desk buried under textbooks and empty snack wrappers occupied the corner. The bed, unmade and inviting, dominated the center of the room.
He didn't bother with the lights. He simply kicked off his shoes, dropped his bag, and threw himself onto the mattress with the enthusiasm of someone diving into deep water. The springs protested beneath him, but he ignored them, already pulling his blanket up to his chin.
"Twenty-minute nap, and I'm awake to study," he promised himself, though they were words he had spoken countless times before. He closed his eyes, just for a moment, just to rest his exhausted mind.
He didn't wake up until 3 AM.
"Oh, shit," he gasped, sitting up so quickly that his head spun. "I overslept... just my stupid luck."
The room was pitch black now, the house silent around him. He stared at the ceiling for a good minute, his mind struggling to process the lost hours, the missed study time, the exam that now loomed only five hours away. His chest felt tight with panic, but beneath that was a familiar resignation, the sense that of course this had happened. Of course his body had betrayed him. Of course his intentions had come to nothing.
"I always pray that my luck improves," he whispered to the darkness. "I always hope that tomorrow will be different. But it never is."
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and walked to his study desk on autopilot. His hand found the lamp switch with practiced ease, and warm light flooded the corner, illuminating the textbook he had left open what felt like moments ago. The pages seemed to mock him, filled with information he hadn't absorbed, concepts he didn't understand, questions he couldn't answer.
"I'm always told luck doesn't exist," he continued, speaking to the empty room as if it might offer some response. "I try to believe it. But the people around me get the good outcomes, and I get the bad luck. Every single time."
His voice cracked on the last word, and he paused to collect himself. This wasn't productive. This wasn't helping. He needed to focus, to squeeze whatever knowledge he could into his exhausted brain before morning arrived.
"Yet again, I think God just dumped the misfortune on me," he said, opening his textbook to a random page. "If He won't help, the Devil probably would. I do need a little devil's luck too."
The phrase felt strange in his mouth, almost like a prayer, almost like an invitation. He shook off the sensation and tried to read, his eyes scanning paragraphs about economic theory that might as well have been written in another language. The words blurred together, his fatigue making concentration impossible.
He only finished one chapter before his eyes demanded closure. The next thing he knew, sunlight was streaming through his curtains, and his alarm was screaming that he had twenty minutes to get to school.
The exam passed in a haze of anxiety and guesswork. He sat in the testing center, surrounded by students who seemed to write with confidence, their pens moving steadily across the page while his remained frozen in his hand. He wanted to pass—desperately, painfully wanted to pass—but knew with a certainty that felt like stone in his stomach that it was impossible. The questions might as well have been about quantum physics for all the sense they made to him.
And then, as he sat there drowning in despair, a little girl passed near him.
She couldn't have been more than eight years old, far too young to be a student at the high school. Her hair was the color of fresh snow, her dress an old-fashioned style that seemed out of place in the modern hallway. She walked with peculiar lightness, almost as if her feet weren't quite touching the ground, and something about her made him turn his head to watch her pass.
She stopped. She turned back. Her eyes—red, he realized with a start, a deep crimson that seemed to glow with inner light—fixed on his with an intensity that made him want to look away.
"My name is Lucy," she said, her voice high and sweet like a music box. "Looks like your wish rolled a six."
She extended her hand, and he took it without thinking, without questioning why a child would be offering him a handshake or what she meant about wishes and dice. Her skin was cold, impossibly cold, yet soft as silk, and the contact sent a shiver through his body that lasted for exactly one second before vanishing completely.
Then Lucy hopped away—actually hopped, like a rabbit or a sprite from a storybook—and disappeared from sight around the corner.
"Odd," he said aloud, looking down at his hand as if it might hold some explanation. "Either that's a very small person or a child in our school. What would she be doing here?" He paused, replaying her words. "Looks like I rolled a six. What does that mean?"
He tried to dismiss it, to focus on the exam still waiting on his desk, but the encounter lingered in his mind like a half-remembered dream. With a shake of his head, he returned to his test. "Test. Right. Wish I knew what I was doing."
Then, in the distance, he heard it: the bounce of a die against a hard surface, the rattling roll that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. The sound lasted only a moment before being replaced by the ordinary noise of people talking, of chairs scraping, of the testing center continuing its business.
And then the people disappeared.
One moment the room was full of students, the next it was empty, the silence so complete it felt like a physical pressure against his eardrums. He stood up in alarm, looking around at the deserted desks, the abandoned tests, the impossible emptiness.
"Another six," a voice whispered, and it sounded like Lucy, though he couldn't see her anywhere. "Lucky, I guess."
The words were drowned out by the sudden return of sound, students reappearing as if they had never left, the testing center resuming its normal operations. He blinked, wondering if he had hallucinated the entire episode, if stress and sleep deprivation had finally broken something in his mind.
But as the corridors emptied and he made his way to his locker, something had changed. He felt different—lighter, somehow, as if a weight he hadn't known he was carrying had been lifted. When he reached for his combination lock, the numbers came to him without thought. When he opened his locker door, the answers to the exam questions suddenly arranged themselves in his mind with perfect clarity.
In thirty minutes of the allotted three hours, he was done.
He left the testing center in a daze, his completed exam feeling heavy and significant in his hands. He walked to his locker to gather his things, his movements automatic, his mind racing to understand what had happened. The hallway seemed brighter than before, the colors more vivid, the future suddenly less certain but somehow more open.
He opened his locker, and something fell.
First came a paper, drifting down like a leaf to land at his feet. Then, following it with a clatter that seemed too loud in the empty hallway, came two dice.
He bent to pick them up with trembling hands. The dice were unlike any he had seen before—perfectly balanced, perfectly weighted, their surfaces smooth as glass. One seemed to glow with a faint golden light, warm to the touch. The other was cold and dark, absorbing the light around it. They felt significant in his palms, heavy with meaning he couldn't quite grasp.
Then he read the note.
> The dice of fate are a tool that I use to determine fate. That's two dice: one in heaven, one in hell. Every end outcome of a person's actions is decided by them, but these are yours.
> Roll your own fate.
> Beware: rolling a number less than 3, including 3, results in bad luck. And 1 is worse.
> Roll a one 3 times and your soul is mine.
> Luc.
> Lucifer
He read it three times, then a fourth, the words refusing to arrange themselves into sense. Lucifer. The Devil. A child named Lucy with red eyes and a cold handshake. Dice that determined fate, that offered control where he had always felt helpless.
His hands closed around the dice, feeling their weight, their potential. For the first time in as long as he could remember, something had gone right. For the first time, luck seemed to be within his grasp, not as a force that happened to him, but as a tool he could wield.
The question was: would he dare to roll?