By the time I had gotten home, it was 6:54 am, the lights were on, and I could hear the TV playing in the background. Bryan and Arielle had both gotten up and were having breakfast while conversing on the small dining table by the kitchen.

"Hey," I said with a nod. I manoeuvred through the kitchen, grabbing a bowl and spoon before I joined them and poured cereal and milk into my bowl to eat for breakfast.

As I was pouring the milk, Arielle turned to me and asked, "What were you doing out so early? Have you started running in the mornings again?"

"Yeah," I replied curtly again with a nod, a convenient excuse. Before we entered high school, I would run every morning after I woke up, but I stopped doing it. I didn't even remember why.

But now, mornings were a good time to conduct my tests, as I had school until afternoon and then worked until night. I could wake up early every morning to conduct experiments on the changes that happened to me before going to school.

I just remembered since I was so side-tracked with the 'awakening' that I forgot to tell Bryan the details of our new work employment. Turning to face him, I said, "Brian," when he looked back and replied, "Yeah?" I continued, "I forgot to tell you details of our new working conditions, sorry."

To which Bryan just replied with a straight face, "Yeah, so what about it?" I continued, "The client is an old Chinese guy, he needs us to demolish his house, we will be working with others, everything is supplied, and they will tell us what to do, we just need to do as told, shouldn't be too hard."

Bryan looked confused as he replied, "Isn't house demolish like a big thing? What if we are outed by the other workers? We'll be in big trouble, right?"

I could understand where he was coming from. Since many of the jobs we did were illegal, we were usually the only ones, and they weren't jobs that got any serious attention, but demolition was something that garnered attention from the authorities.

"There's no need to worry. The other workers all seem to be underlings of this guy. I think he's some kind of bigshot on the low. He told me that we will have fake apprenticeship permits, and we will be pretending to be trainees working under the real workers. He's already taken care of it," I replied.

Bryan looks convinced and nods, "Ok." Ever since we were kids, Bryan looked to me for leadership, I told him what to do and how to do it, and he did it. We completely trusted each other, even with our lives.

Bryan shifted the topic to something more fun, and they continued talking until it was 7 on the dot. It was time to go to school, so we left our apartment and began making our way there.

On the way to school, as we walked, we were talking about what Bryan and Arielle did last night, "Where was that festival you guys went to?" I asked.

Arielle replied, "It was one of those pop-up festivals, you know the kind that are always moving, by the bay down south."

"Oh, that's pretty close then," I replied. Our high school was near the south-east side, the area and that around it was all disputed property of the gangs, they had a lot of influence in those blocks, and it was where they conducted themselves.

Largely, this meant that the school would be bad too due to the area it was in, and that was right, with just over 4000 students, the school majority was made up of the delinquents and destitute people in this part of the ward.

The school was made up of factions of race, with Blacks, Asians, and Latinos being the most powerful, and dozens of gangs with ties to prominent criminal gangs and organisations.

There were often violent clashes, constant discrimination, racism, widespread bullying, many incidents of murders and homicides in between students, both inside and outside of school grounds. It seemed like every other week that another mistreated student commits suicide.

The teachers themselves were involved in criminal activities, letting students cheat, manipulating student records, taking part in the racial fights, backing up students with their illegal activities, and supporting them all in exchange for bribes or other favours, even blackmailing and extorting students.

It was really the lowest of the low scum shit stain school, well known in our ward for its terrible reputation, if we had a choice, we would have picked another school, but due to our awful records and background, it was impossible for us to get transferred, or get approved somewhere else.

If the local authorities had cared even slightly, such a terrible school would have been closed down long ago, but they didn't.

Bryan and I didn't care about our school performance. We just had to show up for legal reasons since if we didn't go to school, the authorities wouldn't let us continue living together. Our focus was on working, not school.

It was Arielle who was suffering as a result of this school. Out of the three of us, she's the only one who takes school seriously, and the school we went to is seriously dragging her down.

As we made our way east, we passed by one of the two nearby malls. It was still closed since it was early, but it was still loitering with people. The back of the mall was a popular place for high schoolers to fuck around, have sex and take drugs.

It was also one of the places the more degenerate gangs sold drugs to children, getting them addicted and then extorting them, they were the lowest of the gangs, but they were actually common here.

Further southeast and past the shopping district, in a run-down block was our school, classes started at 8 in the morning, and after our 50-minute track to school, we arrived a few minutes early every day.

Outside of the entrance of the school, there were several groups of students hanging out. The most notable of them was a group of twelve boys and five girls. They were all wearing matching yellow jackets, symbolising that they all belonged to the same gang.

I knew them. They were a part of the most powerful gang in the school, CHNS, a group of Chinese school thugs that had ties to the Chinese triad crime syndicate. These guys were well known for their notoriety.

They often had clashes with several other gangs, and were in the drug dealing business, had a record of multiple murders, homicides, and committing many other atrocities. One of their leaders, Lee Chen, was in the group that was outside of the entrance, along with his goons and girlfriends.

I noticed that Arielle was glancing at the girls in the CHNS gang as we were walking towards the school with wary eyes, so I asked her, "You alright?"

Arielle quickly looked away from them to face me and replied, "What do you mean? I'm fine," with a straight face, but I could easily tell that she was lying. There was probably something happening between her and those girls. I made a mental note to look into it later.

We hadn't gotten into any big fights or gotten the attention of the delinquents in school except for a few minor cases ever since Arielle and I joined the school. But It seemed like something was starting up now.

Before we came to the high school, Bryan used to come here alone and often came home beaten black and blue. There was nothing we could do to help him. In primary, we had each other's backs, and nobody stood a chance against our trio.

But Bryan was alone in grade 9, while Arielle and I were stuck in primary school grade 8, and being of the youngest in the school — he didn't stand a chance against the older students.

With my thoughts leading down that way, a hazy memory that I had forgotten about had started to resurface. I didn't want to think about it. Why was it coming back to me now? Not now. I didn't want to remember it now.

The latter part of the memory was still foggy, but the first part that I didn't want to remember was vivid in my head, along with how I felt at the time. That couldn't happen again. Never again. I told Arielle, "Hey if they try to start anything, tell me immediately, okay?"

Arielle made a fake smile and replied, "Okay, Callum." Those girls were a part of the most powerful gang in school. Knowing her, she wouldn't tell us and deal with it herself as to not trouble us, but I couldn't allow that.

I told her with a stern expression, "I'm serious. If anything happens, tell Bryan, I think that my classes before lunch will be further away, but you guys will be close together. We have your back, don't ever try to deal with it on your own."

Arielle just nodded. I moved to Bryan and told him quietly so as she couldn't hear us, "Watch out for her, if you notice that she gets into trouble with those girls, come get me immediately. I have English then IT in the computer room for the first and second period."

Bryan nods and replies with a firm expression, "Of course." With that settled, I could be a little more relaxed, but the impending trouble was still there. I had to be ready for it. I couldn't be vulnerable. I had to protect my friends.

Making my way down the halls, I noticed I was getting attention. For whatever reason, everyone I had passed would give me weird glances, and some of the wimps would back off from me. I didn't do anything recently, so why was I getting their attention?

When the bell rang, after splitting off from Bryan and Arielle, I made my way to my first class of the day. It was English, then IT for my second period. My IT teacher was one of the OK ones on campus, and he didn't have much of a bad history, at least not anything substantial that was known.

I spent most of the first half of the day killing time looking for more work requests on an online message board where I would usually find our clients. I didn't even know what we were learning about in my classes. Time passed by, and soon it was lunchtime.

We all had separate classes except for a business class with the three of us and a chemistry class with only Bryan and Arielle. However, we didn't have those classes right now, so I went to meet up with the duo in the cafeteria as we usually did.

Bryan hadn't come to get me, so I figured that nothing had happened with Arielle. I wasn't too worried; little did I know.