Lumia

Lumia bolted upright, gasping, from an ear-piercing ring from beside her. The sound was unfamiliar. The soft surface beneath her felt strange. The pristine white walls made angles that grated against her hazy memories. It took a few more ragged breaths before Lumia remembered where she was, and that the ringing was coming from an electronic device. Her electronic device.

She snatched the meus off the bedside table and stared helplessly at the screen. It read, Door: Roxelana. Lumia blinked at the screen, wracking her brain for a sliver of comprehension. It was no use as she was still trying to unclog the morning haze from her thoughts.

How do I answer, again? she panicked.

Her hands shaking, hear breath held, Lumia began mashing icons on the screen. She did something, then the call screen disappeared.

“Oh no, I’m such an idiot!” she cried. “I should have—”

“That’s why I told you not to do it!” a voice shouted from the meus, sounding tinny through the meus’ speakers. Lumia recognised the voice. It was Alan’s.

“Just don’t look!” Tock wailed. Lumia winced as the speakers then produced a teeth-grinding rustle.

“And besides, she’s not going to answer,” Alan continued. “She doesn’t even know how to use her meus.”

“And I said,” rebutted Morgan, her voice sounding more distant, “that you should respect her privacy.”

“I vote for privacy,” added Raphael.

“Hey, she answered,” said Leo.

“Oh, cat!” Next moment, Tock’s voice boomed into the room. “Lumia, what are you doing?”

Lumia stared at her meus in complete disbelief. “Wha—what is it?” she uttered, her voice a blend of sleepiness and confusion.

“Are you in bed?”

“I—yes, why?”

“You’re going to be late!”

Lumia’s heart began to leap as realisation creeped up on her. Oh, no, don’t tell me I set the alarm incorrectly.

She turned the meus this way and that—she had never checked the time from the screen which showed all the icons. Panicking, she pulled the meus to her mouth. “How do I see the time?”

“It’s 6:37,” said Leo.

Lumia paused and took a moment to arrange the numbers in her head. “But isn’t breakfast at 7:45, and our first class at 8:30?”

“Yeah, but morning training starts in eight minutes!” Tock shrilled.

It took a while for Lumia to process what she had just heard, but there was one word which stuck out to her. A very unfamiliar word. “T-training?”

There was a long pause. For a moment, Lumia thought she might have done something to her meus and cut off the call. But then Raphael muttered, “Sorry. I should have told her.”

An unintelligible growl rose from Tock, then cut off as the call came to an abrupt end. Lumia stared at her meus a moment. “Hello?” she said feebly.

The bedroom door slammed open. Standing in the doorway, wreathed by the light of the morning sun, was a girl with big frizzy hair. Tock was wearing a loose T-shirt and shorts, and her meus was gripped in one hand. In fact, the entirety of Class Euripides was wearing the same outfit, and they were all waiting by Lumia’s door, for her. Even Morgan was there, resting against the couch behind them with her arms folded.

Lumia squeaked and dived under her blanket. She wasn’t indecent as she was wearing the pyjamas that the school had provided her, but she had bed hair. Bed hair!

The door snapped shut again and Tock cried, “Come on, get up! Do you know how much trouble we’ll be in if we’re late?”

“Trouble?” Lumia shrieked, risking a look above the blankets. Tock ripped open one of her draws and rifled through it, tossing bits of uniform over her shoulder. Lumia watched in horror as her clothes landed on the floor in a crumpled heap. They were going to get wrinkled!

“Yep. All of us. Because if one of us is late, then we’re all going to be late.”

That bothered Lumia slightly. She understood if Leo and Raphael would make such a sacrifice for her as she had the impression they’d do such a foolish thing, but after her argument with Morgan last night…

Lumia dipped slightly into her blankets so that she could barely see over the hem. “Did Morgan agree to wait as well?”

Tock paused with her hands stuffed in the drawer. “Now that you mention it, she just went along with it.”

Tension drained away from Lumia, tension she hadn’t been aware she’d held all last night. If Morgan had been truly upset with her, then the highly particular girl would have left without them, allowing them all to fall without her. It would have been fair: nobody was responsible for Lumia’s lateness but herself. She ought to have taken more time to understand the way things worked in King’s College. But she was cagey at night, when she had too much time to think, so though she had inquired the other students on some matters she’d kept her questions limited. That, and the events of last night were encouragement to keep her footprint small, as the Platonians would say. She gave her eyes a good rub, hoping that would help clear away some of the usual redness.

The hazel-eyed girl shrugged and resumed her search. A moment later her eyes brightened. She snatched up a pair of shorts, balled it up—does she expect me to wear it like that? Then she tossed it at Lumia. It landed right on Lumia’s face and she yelped from surprise.

“Don’t worry about how you look,” Tock said. “You’re going to look way worse after we’re done.”

“Okay, but you still have to leave.”

“It’s good to see Class Euripides has finally joined us.”

A lean, bespectacled girl was waiting for them, impatiently. Her hair was pulled back so tight that her eyebrows rode up her scalp. Held before her was a flat terminal, one of the models that were just a screen with virtual keyboard that could be held comfortably in both hands. A tablet, Lumia recalled.

As Class Euripides approached the girl tapped on her terminal. A few dozen or so other students were there also, all wearing the same black with gold trim shorts and T-shirt as Class Euripides. The students smirked at them. But mostly at Lumia.

Which was no surprise, since she was completely puffed out from the jog out of the dormitories. In contrast, her classmates were breathing perfectly fine, making Lumia the odd one out. Blushing, Lumia straightened up, tried to regulate her breathing, and tucked her shirt back into her shorts now that it had come undone.

Leo threw the bespectacled girl a wave and a toothy grin. “Sorry, I couldn’t find my uniform.”

“I see,” she said. “Then what is everyone else’s excuse?”

“I couldn’t find my uniform either,” Tock shouted so loudly that her voice returned to them as an echo.

The bespectacled girl eyed her suspiciously. “Of course. Line up, then.” When she looked away, Tock poked her tongue at her.

The students that had arrived before them were standing on a white line that ran around a wide burgundy circuit. Lumia recognised what this structure was from pictures: a running track. This was her first time seeing one up close, and her first time standing on one! Contrary to what’s its rough texture suggested, the surface was surprisingly soft—even through the souls of her shoes she could feel how cushy it was.

Regardless, it was no time to be thinking about such things. They were late, and so they needed to demonstrate a willingness to behave from now on. All of Class Euripides lined up in tandem with the other students.

The bespectacled girl nodded. She addressed them from a dew-dappled grass island that was caged in by the track. “Now I will repeat what I had said to you all earlier, and you can thank Class Euripides for the delay. My name is Ising, after the esteemed Ernest Ising. I’ve volunteered to supervise some of the tenth year students during morning exercise. Be sure to pay attention to your schedule because we rotate the school’s facilities with other groups. If you attend the wrong facility, you will be marked as absent and receive a demerit. The longer you take to complete your assigned exercise regime, the less time you will have for breakfast.”

Though outwardly she appeared attentive, Lumia listened with half an ear. She was too focused on her hair, running her fingers through it to untangle any knots that had crept their way in overnight. The rest of her attention was absorbed by the cold. She was completely unused to cold. In Glassfall, it was generally hot and muggy, though once in a while the temperature at night could drop low enough that she’d have to huddle together with her sister to stay warm.

This, however, was a different kind of cold! The chill was persistent, intoxicating, broken only by the prickling sunlight. The air was thick with grey humidity that caused her breath to fog and her skin to break out in goosebumps. She would have preferred to give her arms a vigorous rub and to dance around on the spot to warm herself up, but that would have looked ridiculous. So she shivered instead.

All things considered, it was a gorgeous day. Droplets clung to the grass and the sunlight danced off them, making the ground shimmer. Steam rose from the island as radiant heat brought the dew to a boil. The wisps dissipated into the unknown, trapped somewhere between earth and dome. The surrounding buildings were greyed out by fog, making it seem like there was nothing before or behind them but the track and its impatient supplicants. It was a morning in flux: fleeting, and with a push one way or another it would soon be gone.

From beside her, Lumia could hear snickering. She leaned over to see what the commotion was and saw Leo stifling a laugh.

“Demerit,” he whispered, mocking Ising.

Raphael, who was beside Leo, gave no visible reaction other than a quick twitch of his mouth. On the other hand, Tock made a scratching sound with her throat and pressed her lips together, trying her best to stifle her laughter.

Lumia couldn’t help but gape at Leo. Was he actually risking punishment just to make a few silly jokes? She had no clue what these demerits were, but Lumia was certain that it was something they could not afford to accumulate. They were Class Euripides, after all. They lived in the sturdiest tower in the city, so to speak, and there would be plenty of jealous people seeking to take it from them.

It seemed Morgan was thinking along the same lines. She hissed a little too audibly, “Stop it!”

Ising paused from her lecture on punctuality and why students of King’s College ought to excel in every aspect of life to glance down at her terminal. In a stern voice, she said, “Under classmate Morgan, correct?”

Morgan stiffened up. “Yes, upper classmate?”

“Is there anything you wish to share with your classmates?” Ising said, fixing Morgan with a hard stare.

Morgan glanced wide-eyed at Leo, her fingers pinching her shorts. Her toes touched the track’s white line and she stared down at them. “I—no, upper classmate Ising.”

“Then perhaps you should apologise to them. For wasting their time.” Not a suggestion, but a statement.

Morgan’s mouth worked, possibly searching for an excuse to give Ising. She had done the right thing, but arguing now would only cement Ising’s position, giving her an excuse to scold Morgan further and blame her for holding up the class. It wasn’t fair, and Lumia sympathised with Morgan, but authority was not supposed to be fair, only right.

“My apologies, upper classmate Ising. Class,” Morgan said reluctantly.

Lumia half expected Leo to snicker at her, but surprisingly he kept his eyes forward and wore a stony expression.

As she brushed her hair, Lumia’s strokes grew idle: less focused on removing knots and moving more from habit. They’d arrived late because of her. If they hadn’t, then perhaps Ising would not have been so harsh on them. And the rest of the class would not have to suffer a later breakfast. Just thinking of food made her stomach rumble. She couldn’t imagine how every other student was feeling.

Ising glanced down at her terminal again. “Under classmate Lumia,” she said in a stern voice.

Lumia’s hands froze and her mouth snapped into a reactive smile. “Yes? Upper classmate Ising,” she added, copying the honorific from Morgan.

“You had all morning to play with your hair, now stop. You should be grateful that you were allowed to keep it that long, so how about you don’t show it off.”

I take it back, Lumia thought. She’s terrible.

Untangling her fingers from her hair, Lumia said, “Sorry, upper classmate Ising,” and offered a slight dip of the head. She didn’t bow, of course, because Ising was not deserving of such respect. Then she turned and bowed solemnly to her classmates. “Sorry, everyone.”

Ising nodded her approval, then gave them their schedule. With every new instruction, Lumia’s smile tightened a little more.

This is impossible!

Lumia had completed only four of her required ten laps around the track. Her feet were aching, she could barely raise them high enough to slide one foot in front of the next, and her lungs were on fire. Whatever chill she had felt before had left her entirely now. All she wanted to do was dive into a cold shower and never walk again.

She dragged a foot forward and clipped the back of her other shoe. With a gasp, she stumbled over and slapped onto the ground.

Lumia lay there, panting. She tried to muster up the strength to pick herself off the ground, but everything was sore, from both the fall and fatigue. A sting radiated from her palms down to her elbows, and Lumia realised she’d grazed them both. Giving up, she ceased moving altogether and focused on catching her breath. The ground was cool and she lay as flat as she could to let it siphon off her body heat. Lumia figured that if she stayed perfectly still, everyone would ignore her.

This is my first day of school. Well, technically second, if she counted yesterday’s crazy test, but officially her first. And I’m already failing!

She heard feet stomp by and caught the flashes of dark grey running shoes. She kept her head down so as not to garner their attention. However, someone came to a skidding halt ahead of her, then walked back her way. Shortly, Lumia was cast in a cool shade as the figure stopped and crouched over her.

“You okay there?”

With an effort, Lumia raised her head and met Tock’s gaze. Concern was written across the shorter girl’s face. Lumia tried a smile, but grinning while breathing heavily was a near impossible feat.

“I’m fine,” Lumia managed. “Just—pretend—I’m not here.”

Tock considered her. “You can slow down, you know,” she huffed. “If you overdo it and hurt yourself, well, there’s no point, right?” She pointed across the track. “Look.”

A girl was walking on the inner lane of the track. Not jogging, walking. She was dark and slight and her eyes were fixed on Leo, who jogged past the girl without taking notice. In the girl’s hand was a carton, and she sipped from it through a straw. That wasn’t the oddest part about her, however: it was the fact that Ising seemed not to care that she was walking, drinking, and otherwise defeating the purpose of the exercise. Also, the sight of the girl’s carton made Lumia’s stomach rumble.

Slowly, Lumia pushed herself up and sat on her heels. A moment of panic crept up on her and her hand shot to her back. When she was satisfied that her shirt had not come undone, she resumed her panting. “I’ll—keep that in mind.”

Tock was right. She needed to slow down. During the run, when Lumia had seen that she was gradually falling behind, she had pushed herself beyond reason. It was clear she hadn’t the constitution to keep up with her classmates, but she had figured if she only pushed a little harder, mind over matter, she could somehow keep up. Well, the somehow part happened to be the fracture point in her convoluted ideals.

Her thoughts were interrupted when Tock pinched her forearm. She let out a yelp and was about to tell Tock not to do that again, but the shorter girl only stared at her with her brows furrowed.

“You’re really skinny,” Tock said.

“Oh, thank you.”

“That wasn’t a compliment. You need to put on some muscle.”

“Oh.”

That was the first time in Lumia’s life that she had been told to gain weight. Typically, women were expected to be women, and men were to be the warriors. But that was in Glassfall. This was Plato, and everything Lumia had once come to know as normal may as well have been glass, and Plato the sledgehammer.

Tock went on. “It’s not healthy to be this thin. Eat more. Train harder. Get smarter.” She shrugged. “Or something. I’m not the person you should be getting advice from.”

Lumia dipped her head. “My apologies. I’m still growing accustomed to life on Plato.”

“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that,” Tock cried, waving her hands before her. She likely sensed Lumia’s distress. “Thing is, if you’re stronger, everything gets easier. You don’t have to struggle to do every little thing. Or, like,” Tock twirled her curls with a finger. Then her eyes brightened and she leapt up. “You have to walk to classes every day, right? Imagine how easy it’ll be to do that if you can run a marathon. It’ll be nothing!”

Two figures sprinted by at breakneck pace. It took a moment for Lumia to recognise them as Raphael and Morgan. Raphael was ahead by a body length, his longer legs carrying him lazily across the track. His gait was smooth, his form relaxed, and he was in his element. Morgan, on the other hand, had her eyes set hard on his back. She was pushing herself, Lumia could tell from how heavily she breathed. But she wasn’t faltering.

Ignoring the passing runners, Tock grinned and thrust a finger at Lumia. “Right! I know how to fix this problem. From today on, Tock is going to cheer you on when you exercise, so that you’ll have the motivation to—ow!”

As the pack ran by, Leo swept an arm out and flicked Tock right in the forehead. Tock reeled back, rubbing her head, then whirled around to shout obscenities at him.

Leo smirked over his shoulder. “Hurry up. Breakfast,” he panted.

“Shut up! This is more important,” Tock rebutted.

Just then, Ising trotted over with a frown crossing her face. Lumia tried to stand so as not to receive her ire—if she remained collapsed on the ground, Ising would absolutely berate her. To her surprise, Ising motioned for her to stay down.

“What happened?” Ising addressed Tock.

Tock shrugged. “She tripped. It happens.”

Nodding, Ising dismissed her. “I’ll take it from here.”

Lumia’s eyes met Tock’s for a moment. The shorter girl shared a wide-eyed look, as if to say, Good luck, or, She’s so annoying. Lumia pursed her lips in agreement and then Tock left, catching up with a slow Alan positioned at the end of the running pack’s long tail.

“Can you walk?” Ising asked. She seemed genuinely concerned now, as opposed to her harsh demeaner before.

Not wanting to betray Tock, she carried through with the lie. “I think I’ve injured an ankle.”

“Then you shouldn’t be sitting on it.”

Idiot! Lumia thought. As though injured, Lumia doggedly dragged her right leg out from under her. Thank you, Tock. What an awkward situation you’ve placed me in.

Ising motioned to help her up, but Lumia waved her away. “No, I’m fine. I can keep moving.”

She tried to push herself up, but she was far too fatigued. Every motion took a great effort, and all she wanted to do was enjoy the cool surface of the track, even if the dimples along its surface were biting into her legs.

Ising shook her head. “If you can’t do it, then you can’t do it. I’ll carry you off the track so you can rest.”

“Sorry,” Lumia said meekly. There was nothing Ising could have said that would have galled her more.

Morgan and Raphael rushed past again. Raphael had gained a few more metres. Seeing this, Ising took a whistle that hung from her neck and blew an ear-piercing warning.

“You two!” she bellowed, looking at the leaders. “Pace yourselves. You’ll be worn out for class if you run too quickly.”