The cafeteria buzzed with low voices and the clatter of trays. Children huddled in small groups, their conversations hushed but intense. Something lingered in the air—tension unspoken, but shared. The incident in the courtyard had become a quiet wildfire, passed from mouth to mouth with wide eyes and lowered voices.
"I heard he didn't even touch anyone," a boy whispered. "They just dropped. Like the air hit them."
"That's not how it happened," someone replied. "I was there. He moved fast. Too fast. Like a blur."
"He's dangerous," said a girl at the end of the table. "You all saw how Edward looked at him."
"He saved Elliot," another voice offered.
"Yeah, but did you see his face?" someone else said. "He didn't look heroic. He looked… cold."
At one of the center tables, Daniel sat hunched over his food, not eating. Mia sat beside him, frowning at the group across from them.
"He's not a monster," Mia said, sharper than she meant to. "He's scared."
"He didn't look scared," a younger boy mumbled.
"He looked like Sir Edward," added someone else.
Daniel looked up. "That's what scares me."
The group went quiet.
Daniel set his fork down, his voice low. "The way Michael stood there, the way everything stopped… it was the same feeling I had the day Sir Edward stepped in. That weight. That cold."
"There is a reason," Mia said, softer now. "Broken by something and not by choice and definitely not like them."
"And what if that's all he knows now?" Daniel asked. "What if we're not the same? What if there's no going back?"
Mia didn't answer at first. Her hand reached across the table and rested on Daniel's wrist.
"Then let's be what pulls him back," she said. "Let's show him there's more than what he came from. That he's not alone."
Daniel didn't speak. But he didn't pull away either.
The table stayed quiet, the others unsure whether to agree or argue.
Then the doors opened.
Michael stepped inside.
Every head turned. Conversations cut off mid-sentence. The scrape of a spoon on a tray was suddenly too loud. No one called to him. No one smiled.
He moved through the room without hesitation, tray in hand, eyes low. He passed the table where Daniel and Mia sat. Daniel glanced up, mouth slightly open, unsure whether to speak. Mia watched him pass with something like hope, or maybe warning.
Michael didn't stop. He took his usual seat by the far window, alone.
The room didn't breathe until he started eating.
When the conversation resumed, it was different. Quieter. Uneven.
Whatever Michael had become, it had changed the way the others looked at him, neither as a peer nor as a threat.
They left it there.
The silence persisted, until Elliot was hurt again.
Michael rounded the corner just in time to see him on the ground, arm twisted unnaturally, sobbing silently. The same group of boys laughed as they ran. Daniel reached him first this time, fire in his eyes, but like a cold shower, he noticed Michael, and saw it.
Anger.
Absolute unfiltered rage, Daniel took a step forward, voice trembling as it left his throat. "Michael, wa—"
But the word never finished.
Michael stepped forward, his lips parting.
"So this... is what being mad for someone else feels like."
Time stopped.
Then he vanished. To everyone else, he disappeared. But to Michael, the world had frozen again, breathless, leaves were left hanging in the air, and birds paused mid-wingbeat.
He sped outside of the orphanage, toward the alley. Toward laughter that still echoed in frozen time. He positioned himself just out of sight, watching the three boys, smug and oblivious. And then, he exhaled, letting time breathe again.
The first boy turned, just in time to see the blur of a fist. Michael's strike caught him clean in the throat. He staggered back, fingers scrabbling at his throat, breath rasping short and sharp. His eyes widened, wild with panic, as he dropped to his knees.
The second reached for something in his pocket. Michael swept his legs from under him, stepped in with practiced precision, and drove his knee into the boy's face. Bone met bone, and the boy flew backward into the brick wall. His head cracked against it with a sickening thud, and he dropped like a dead weight.
The leader stood alone, frozen.
Michael stepped from the slight shadow created by the building. The boy screamed and tried to flee, bolting for the alley's end.
But Michael was already there. He gripped the boy's shoulder, breath hot at his ear. His voice was barely above a whisper, but it was cold like ice.
"Tell me-what will your father say when he sees you break?"
The shoulder twisted, and a pop echoed in the tight alley. The boy's scream shredded the silence, echoing through the alley.
The first attacker, now coughing and dizzy, stood up, trying to swing a wild punch at Michael's back. Without looking, Michael turned and hauled the leader into the path of the strike. The fist collided with the nose, and the leader fell on his butt while covering his bloody nose.
Michael turned fully, facing his first victim, and drove a front kick just above the knee. A crack, sharp and wet, he fell screaming, looking at his leg bending at the wrong angle.
And then came the bodyguards, three wary middle-aged men whom the wealthy family trained. Wary and wearing their training like a thick vest, the bodyguards approached Michael.
But they stopped short. Because what stood before them wasn't a child anymore. It was something heavy, an aura pacted with the memory of pain. Something their instincts warned them not to challenge.
Then Michael vanished.
But before the bodyguards could act, a pressure greater than anything they'd felt crashed down on them.
Sir Edward.
His presence descended like an anchor dropped from the heavens. Michael's body hit the ground, his magic stilled, suppressed under a weight that warped the very air.
The guards crumpled, not from harm, but from instinct. Lowering their head as if their training told them not to look Sir Edward in the eyes.
Sir Edward sighed, stepping into the alley one step at a time, his coat fluttering from the shift in force. Noticing the state of things, he murmured in disappointment. "I was too late".
He turned toward Michael, now struggling under the invisible weight. With a long sigh, he released the pressure, allowing him to breathe again.
"You really make this hard for an old man, Michael."