"AHHH!" My voice gradually got lower and lower.

This was a long fall and there was no doubt in my mind that I was about to be flattened. But wasn't the ground taking a bit too long to come up? Wait, it was the other way around.

And then I realized.

'What the hell?' I wasn't actually falling with the same speed I was, even just a few seconds go.

I was three hundred-ish meters high, so I tried ejecting a bit of infrared and that was enough to give me a push.

"I'm flying?"

It was more like floating though. And I was still going down, regardless. Just with less speed this time around.

I was falling to my death nearly a minute ago and even now I was gradually falling, but I was definitely excited.

The ground was near and I was still excited. "Just a little more!" I tried to fly to the best of my abilities. I decreased my density, increased the density around, and even used infrared as propulsion. It was almost working too… until it wasn't, and I fell straight to the ground.

"AW." And I'd probably broke a rib too: I landed on the field, so it wasn't as bad as landing on concrete: at least I didn't land on people. "ARGH!" But I did arrive twenty minutes early for class, so that was something.

It still hurt like hell and I couldn't breathe, let alone scream. I couldn't even move.

"Are you okay" Promptly I got surrounded by students and was carried to the nurse's office? Strangely, the students were treating me a lot better, especially the boys.

"Thank you for not choosing her!"

"Always had a crush on her, if you'd chose her I'd have cried."

"But you chose to be manly and we respect you!"

And so on.

No wonder these morons were acting so nicely.

It felt stupid and cringe at the same time. It didn't feel that bad but the same couldn't be said about the pain.

They dropped me off at the nurse's office and left for their respective classes.

Once there, I saw the nurse use her Holo to call. I was lying on the bed and could hardly breathe.

Talking was a chore too. "If you call her, trust me, I'll give you so many kinds of cancer, you'll regret knowing some of them can't be cured." I had to take multiple breaths through my mouth while I talked.

Suffice to say, I was out of breath already.

"Everything can be cured." She came close, stared directly into my eyes: I could feel her breath. "And I wasn't calling your mother, but now, I just might."

My forehead twitched. I'd dug my own grave. "She's at work and she missed a lot of work this week. Can you please not do that?" I pleaded. "Sorry? Pretty please?" I pleaded some more.

Some hypocrite, I was.

She sighed. "You're weird but as her friend, I'll try not to disturb her work." The nurse put a hand on my chest: I wanted to scream but I knew screaming would have only increased the pain. "Two broken bones and you almost stabbed your lungs with a rib too. Lucky."

"How's that lucky?" I managed.

"Because if you had fallen just two degrees angled towards the right, you'd be dying right about now."

Oh! That shut me up quite nicely.

The nurse made me take off my clothes and rubbed some kind of gel on the bruise on my chest. Boy did it hurt!

She also checked the rest of my body and confirmed that I only had three fractures on my leg and left hand. Strangely I didn't feel them as much as I did with the chest.

I wanted to cry. "Are you done yet?" I really wanted to cry.

"Be sure to rest for the week. With the gel, it should heal in two days but jumping around or swinging anything might make them crack again."

"Huh? But I have matches today!" I shouldn't have talked in a loud voice, because now my chest hurt even more.

But I couldn't afford to not fight.

"Then, forfeit! What's more important, your life or some kid's tournament? Your life is more important. Or do you want me to call your mother?" This woman was really not holding anything back.

"Sorry, but even if mom herself came here, I still wouldn't have listened. I have my reasons for doing this, if you can fix me, then please do so, but I have to do this no matter what."

After all, I had to fight Marg in this tournament to confront her. Meaning, I had to win these matches no matter what.

She stared at me, rather rudely. She went towards the freezer and brought out a frozen vial. She also had a syringe on hand. 'Oh shit.'

"It was you, who asked for this, by the way." She grinned.

I tried to get up but the chest pain was still crippling me. "Can we not do that?" I knew it didn't hurt as much as I thought, but I still didn't want to experience that that thing again. "But will it make this heal faster?"

She walked casually and sat down. "You wanted to fight, so I'm just making sure you won't end up dead. And no." She proceeded to impale my arm. Last time it was barely like a fire ant's pinch. This time? This time it hurt extra. And she purposefully made it hurt too. "Make sure to remember this pain the next time you have the brilliant idea of jumping from the top of the academy."

"What?" I was almost reduced to tears. And what did she mean this won't make me heal faster? Then what was the point of this? "I didn't jump from there. I jumped from a pl-" I was almost about to spill the beans too. But my head was going funny. It spun. But if it hadn't, I might have spilled a lot more beans than necessary.

"Looks like its working. Sleep well now. And don't worry, I'll be sure to give your mom the memo. Jumping off a plane, huh? Hmmm…"

Her voice disappeared as everything just stopped working and the world became too quiet.

***

A white room.

No sound.

A grinning shadow in the corner sitting on a stool.

It didn't take a genius to know where I was.

But my head did ache and I felt seriously groggy. The first time I didn't feel anything, I didn't feel anything the second time either. But ever since the seal had broken, my headache just got worse and worse when I was in this place.

"Why am I here?" I grabbed my head and tried to focus.

"I gave you clues, I even helped you fly, and yet, what a failure." The shadow chuckled. "I can do a hundred times better than that."

Was this thing mocking me?

"Yes, I am mocking you."

And it could also read my thoughts. Yay. "So, what do you want?"

It looked at me a bit confused and chuckled again. "Even after knowing the reality, you still wish to play dumb? You still wish to not grant me my freedom?"

I sighed. "You know, you're freedom is great and all, but, what about mine? I've lived all my life in this body, you can't just tell me to hand it over to you and stay here." Because that was just ridiculous.

"THEN what about ME! I've been stuck here ever since I was born! I want FREEDOM!" This guy could scream loud, really loud.

I guess he didn't know, no man was free. Everyone is bound to something.

"I know, I know you want to get out. But you have to accept that I'm the one in control and I'd like to stay in control. If you guys are me, then be happy, after all, if you're me, than doesn't that mean you're also in charge?" I was kind of confused to what I just said.

"Hypocrisy at its finest. Your words don't mean anything. We may be of the same origin, but we're not the same." He glared. "One day, I will have my freedom. You can't stop me."

"Uh-huh? How do I get out again? I don't want to stay here."

"Then get out? You can go live in that darkness if you want." With that said the shadow actually kicked me out of that room and then the small apartment-like place, and into the darkness.

I was flying out but- "AHH!" halfway through I stopped screaming. I had enough screams for one day.

I fell roughly a hundred meters away from the nearest door.

At first, I thought this place was purely just darkness but it wasn't. It was gray.

I looked back and the white room was actually in the middle of the gray zone.

A groan. Behind me.

It was the liquid darkness thing and it had seen me. But there was nowhere to run.

It came for me. It came for in with blazing speeds.

I tried to run, but the darkness beneath my feet was like water, slowing me down.