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To me, it was just another day. I woke up with my lazy hair, and my cowlick stuck in an unfashionable way. My eyelids were tightly shut as I tried to rub them the tiredness out of them. My shirt was stuck in my boxer briefs and even I’m not sure as to how it happened. I yawned and stretched, as my muscles of my body twitched countless times, I almost thought I might grow a few inches. Alas, my luck wasn’t that good.

Grumbling about having to wake up early for school, I rushed into the shower. It was my holy place where I could ponder the magnificent wonders of the universe, such as, Why didn’t god create me to be the most handsome man alive?

But that didn’t much matter to me, I was by no means a handsome guy, but I’d like to consider myself as average at the very least. To be honest my most attractive feature might be my butt, however the girls wouldn’t know as the jeans I wear gave a flat feeling to it. My chest was average as I didn’t constantly work out, however I do play soccer and because of that, I’m quite toned. Might be the reason I have such a nice butt, I’m not entirely sure though.

My nose was sort of stretched and sometimes I could easily see it if I criss-crossed my eyes. I was told it looks normal but somehow I felt mine was slightly longer. My eye brows? Well there was nothing special about them, of course I didn’t have a uni-brow. My eyes, so say the girls, are the most attractive part about me. Why? Even I don’t know. They are black as night and to the girls they apparently feel like their souls are being sucked out.

Well, I hardly have the chance to stare at a girl that long anyways, after all I’m average at best. My height for a 17-year-old in my last year of high school was normal I was a good 5’10. Awkwardly thought my shoe size was tiny, and only reached a size seven.

When my ear length brown hair wasn’t being a mess it would naturally have a right side cowlick that I sort of had an obsession to play with. I don’t even know why, people call me weird but I swear you try having this soft of hair. It just feels that good.

Overall there wasn’t anything fascinating about me. And with another day, was another walk to school.

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After a nice breakfast cooked by my loving family, I left my house after brushing my teeth and all the stuff a good kid would do. I had already booked it out of the door and awaiting me were two similar looking people. They were naturally familiar looking because they were my best friends.

“Morning Ryker~”

“Yo!”

As the girl ahead of me waved energetically, and the man gave a slight salute, I too gave them a morning greeting.

“Morning Sasha, Sup.”

The girl was a head shorter than me. Her rosy cheeks from taking a shower had given off a lovable feeling. Her eyebrows were perfectly symmetrical that complemented her deep blue eyes. Time after time I could see myself getting lost in these eyes. Not cause I was in love with her or anything, but that was just the type of eyes they were. It was also Sasha that first said staring into my eyes seemed to suck in her soul, which in turn caused a one day mayhem of multiple girls trying it. But now, the only person that will stare back is Sasha, which I don’t mind, call me crazy but I kind of have a soft spot for blue eyes. Her long dirty blonde hair was in a pony-tail which gave off the feeling of a sporty girl. The truth in the matter was that she was a sporty girl, a sport girl with the natural curves to match it.

‘Ah what a goddess she is’

Is what I thought time and time again every time i saw her. But it wasn’t just me who did, Leo and every single other guy stared at her all day long while dreaming of being able to just hold her hand. Leo and I both wonder how we got so lucky to be so close to her.

Leo on the other hand gave the opposite impression. He was a ginormous guy who was easily 6’2 although he was big he was kind to a fault. His overly large build was sought after many girls and day after day he would get love letters. After being reminded of such a thing I could not help but clench my fist slightly in bitterness. But contrary to his love letters his looks were average. He had a wider nose that seemed overly normal, and eyes that didn’t leave any particular feeling as they were a normal hazel colour. His short black was straight and gave off a nice sheen from the sun. All in all he was an average built man.

The true reasons why Sasha and Leo were so popular was because of their actions. Sasha herself was the ace of the volleyball team while Leo was the ace quarterback of the football team. Me? Did you forget? I’m the regular average joe on the soccer team who plays as a substitute half the time. How did i get matched up with such good friends?

Long story short is our families grew up together and naturally we also hung out together. Being friends at a young age whether we wanted to or not our families would drag us over to another, forcing us to play together. So we couldn’t just say no. We became good friends and after that never separated. Even our families made sure to have us all go to the same school.

The biggest problem with that was when Leo was trying to get into a middle school before when he didn’t play football and was only a scrawny tall kid. But after multiple tutoring sessions with Sasha and I, we managed to get him barely accepted at the bottom of the acceptance list. I remember sweating profusely as my eyes scrolled and started to move slower the farther I went down.

“Shall we go?”

“Ah, yeah let’s go.”

As my mind wandered there for a bit Sasha returned my from my reminiscing. Leo didn’t say much as he wasn’t the overly talkative type to begin with and gave a slight nod.

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As we started walking and chatting heavily with a few laughs here and there, suddenly Sasha frowned and put on the

‘unhappy’ act when she wanted something. Of course being guilty naturally Leo and I had to listen to her demands in order to brighten her mood.

“How come you guys never give me any interesting greetings!”

Leo and I stared dumbfounded at one another. We couldn’t help but both shrug our shoulders. Truthfully we didn’t really know either, as the three of us were best friends at one point in time Leo just naturally started to use the least amount of syllables he could in a sentence and I soon followed suit. Actually I knew what Sasha was truthfully talking about as I

held out my hand in front of Leo.

Leo returning his hand they slowly bumped into one another and we started a set chain of reactions of a handshake, low five, finger wiggle, the hand wave one on top of another, and finally finished it off with the awkward turtle.

As seriously young adults this did not suit our maturity level at all but alas we were young foolish little boys and what cooler method to greeting each other than a secret handshake? Regardless of how truly foolish it was now.

“Yeah like that!”

“It’s a guy thing.”

Leo only answered her with a simple one liner. Sasha seemed dissatisfied with his answer but didn’t follow through with it. She then only gave a slight grin, after all she knew that we were slightly happy about such a cool handshake even till today. It would only embarrass us if we used it in public, thus she sometimes she would lure us into doing it. She secretly was quite manipulative although no one knew about her bad side and even if I told someone they would call me a heretic for lying about their goddess.

I could only shake my head as I thought about being massively ganged up for speaking badly about Sasha.

“Ryker?”

Leo noticing my actions first asked me by just using his expression in a questioning like manner. I waved my hand as if it was nothing and responded to them.

“Nah it’s nothing school’s right around the corner, I’ll race you.. Go!”

“Not fair!”

“Haha what a sneaky guy.”

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As I opened the door to the classroom, I was about to walk in when Leo finally caught up to me and put me into a rear naked choke to express his unhappiness.

“O...kay I.. give!”

“That’s better!”

Leo pumped his chest with a slightly arrogant expression but I wasn’t about to complain after all I technically cheated him. As sportsmanship was his go to, naturally any form of cheating would bother him the most. To rest of the students in the class all watched this scene with slight smiles on their faces. They all knew they I was the type to cheat and knew I had done something wrong to receive his wrath. Although I say wrath the guys pretty much a stuffed bear. He looks scary on the outside but he’s harmless inside.

As I couldn’t be bothered with the class’s reaction I sat down in my seat, which was the furthest from the front. It was the corner of the classroom beside the windows. If I wanted too I could easily spend the entire time watching the clouds fly by, which might I add, did all the time. But this time as if the fate would have it the skies were clear and with nothing else to look at I stared at the ground watching the rushing workers get to work on time.

It was then I noticed at the school gate, a large figure walked in. Normally I would brush this off as a normal occurrence as even teachers could be late, or a parent would come for a meeting. For whatever reason it was a normal occurrence, but this time was different.

This large figure wasn’t wearing any shirt and had red stains covered on his bulging muscles. The weirdest part was that covering his face was a white mask. This mask was rough on the edges and had a place for the cheek bone. The mouth area had a circular fan that seemingly look like a gas mask. The eyes, although not super noticeable due to the brightness outside, had a bright blue glow to it, as if there were thermal scopes of some sort. This mask might have looked white but it was so overly dirty and covered with red stains as well it wouldn’t be appropriate to call it nice white colour. Because of the weird-looking mask I was unable to draw my attention to anything else of the masked man.

“Ryker!”

It was just then, that I noticed an old man staring at me in displeasure. He was the teacher of the class, and I couldn’t help but think ‘When did he get here?’

“Class has just started and you’re already cloud gazing. Should I move your seat?”

“Ah.. No sorry I’ll pay attention.”

“Good as your grades are one of the highest I won’t be too hard on you for dozing off sometimes, but at least try to pay attention at the very start.”

As the teacher sighed while he spoke, the students chuckled in the background. It was true, I didn’t pay attention half the time and because of that I was called an air head. They laughed because I watched clouds so much they thought it fit

even more.

It didn’t bother me, as it wasn’t like they were doing it in spite. After all, it was true that I was staring off into the distance, bored out of my mind half the time. School was boring, as it was too easy for me. You could say I had the potential to be one of the top students but because I didn’t put the effort in my grades above average.

As I looked around I noticed Leo shrugging his shoulders as if saying ‘I tried to warn you’.

‘Liar I know you wouldn’t open your mouth even if you wanted too!’

Unhappily breaking eye contact my gaze fell onto Sasha who was also starring towards me. She gave a worried look as if to ask ‘are you okay?’, and with a nod I responded ‘Yeah I’m fine’, or at least this was the impression I was hoping to deliver.

Finally remembering the figure I quickly shook my gaze from Sasha and look towards the school grounds.

‘Not there? Was I imagining it? I must be playing too many video games lately.’

But it was then that what I saw was truly not an illusion. I even realized that it was a mistake to be solely focused on the man’s mask alone. As the man itself had just opened the door and walked in disrupting the class. The teacher unhappily yelled out to the masked man.

“Who are you and what are you do-”

But before he finish the masked man swept his arm, and with it a terrifying sound rung out. The teacher unable to do anything was brutally attacked, with an object from the masked assailant. Unable to react in time sat there dumbfounded. It wasn’t until a girl in the front of the class screamed that everyone, myself included realized how grim the situation truly was.

As we stared in the direction the girl was looking we noticed the teachers body. From his body was a dark red liquid spreading onto the floor as if nothing could stop it from flooding the room. Everyone started to scream unconsciously even the guys were unable to hold back their voices. I, myself nearly wet my pants, but that was because I was the first to notice the object in the masked assailants hands.

In the masked man’s hand was a long three-foot object. Most of it looked like a normal rod with a handle grip on it, but that wasn’t the case for the top. The top of the rod sat a saw blade, much like one from a table saw only somewhat smaller.

It was when I finally noticed it was a dangerous weapon that a loud sound started to reverberate through room silencing all those who were unable to hold back their fear. They stared with pale faces at the fastly spinning saw. The girls were unable to hold back their tears as they huddled towards one another for protection. The guys clenched their fists tightly to hide their fear, but they weren’t fooling anyone especially not the one giving them fear.

The masked man’s silence didn’t last for long as he started to flail the weapon around like a maniac. It didn’t take long for the second victim to meet an unsightly end as the saw was struck at a young cowering girl’s chest. Screams erupted again and as if all reason had been lost some of the boys viciously charged at the masked man to hold him down. When three guys who even I forgot their names called out the class started to listen.

“Hurry! Get out of here while we are holding him back!”

As if the masked man was a superhuman before any of the students even had a chance to move the three boys were thrown off. Thrown unto the ground like a rag doll they were made into easy pickings as the saw came down and blood gushed from their arteries. Once again everyone was unable to move. The tears silently ran down the faces of the girls, who were even unable to scream at this point. The guy’s clenched fists loosened and they too lost hope.

As I felt I was the only one with mind still half functioning I called out to the man.

“Who are you? Why are you attacking and killing people?!”

“Hehe… You’ll soon understand young boy. Death is only the beginning for you all, as you’ll soon arrive to your Second Echo!”

To my surprise the man responded with bunch of gibberish, as if the masked man truly believed that he was in the right. I was flabbergasted as even now, I could feel the fear in my muscles as they twitched. Sure seeing murder was scary, but what was scarier was a man who thought he was doing the right thing. That was the moment that changed my life forever and brought me to my Second Echo.