003 WHAT SHOULD I CHOOSE?
Damen sat on the cracked concrete by the basketball court, the phone warm in his hand. He'd been mining Miss Poney, the morning teachers, anyone he could think of until the counter reached thirty-eight coins and change.
"What do I even do with these coins"? he wondered, scrolling through the DemCoin menus.
There was no shop, no wallet transfer, no way to spend the balance. The coins were just figures ticking up and nothing to show for them.
"Damnit. This is a worthless app," he muttered, pocketing the phone.
A hard thud on his shoulder made him jump. A basketball had rebounded off his arm and skittered away.
"Hey! Watch it!" Damen snapped, standing.
A group of boys sauntered over, their smirks in place.
Thames Jackson pushed through them first, that same arrogant grin on his face. "Look who it is—the class trash. Damen Dark."
Laughter rolled around the court.
Damen said nothing.
It wasn't the first time. He knew the routine: insult, shove, spectacle. The result would always be the same- he would be beaten by these boys for no apparent reason at all and he had no avenue to complain about the bullying.
Thames shoved his chin up and grabbed Damen's collar with a practiced, theatrical disgust.
"Kneel," he said loudly. "Apologize to my ball."
"Hahaha", the students around him laughed.
"What?" Damen blinked. "Apologize to your… balls?"
Damen didn't know why he said it or why he resisted the bullies this time. "Was it confidence given to him by his mining app?" he thought.
"No—my basketball, …you bastard, haha," Thames barked, then realized how it sounded.
He tried to laugh at Damen, but the joke landed on him instead; his forced laugh came out thin.
The circle around them tightened, the curiosity of the busybodies sharpened into hunger for drama as more people came to enjoy the show.
Damen was about to be whacked.
Thames's face went red, his fists clenched into fiery balls of fury.
"Apologize now or I'll crush your face," he hissed at Damen, the threat crude enough to silence the small crowd.
Damen felt the pressure of dozens of eyes. For a second he considered standing down. Avoiding trouble was practical and habitual. He had always endured this… why is he feeling different now?
"Should I just kneel and beg for forgiveness like before?" he asked but the sting in his chest was a different kind of debt today.
He remembered the phone in his pocket, the counter that kept climbing like a secret ledger of power.
He didn't kneel. He didn't speak. Instead, he reached for the phone and raised it…not in submission, but like a quiet challenge.
The boys stiffened. Thames's grip tightened. Around them, the court went suddenly small and loud. The busybodies were getting themselves out of trouble.
Damen jabbed the phone forward, his voice hard and furious. "Try anything and your face will be on my phone and the school's clous server."
He aimed the camera straight at Thames.
For a beat the bullies froze.
Damen was the kid who usually swallowed insults and beatings then walked away quietly …. but the phone app changed everything.
He tapped the record icon on his phone with a calmness that made the others uneasy.
Thames flinched.
It wasn't Damen that he feared.
It was the camera. The school-issued handsets were locked down…every photo and videos were uploaded automatically to the school's cloud. Students couldn't delete recordings; only administrators could.
A single clip could become an indelible entry in a file no student wanted on their record.
"Afraid of the trash?" someone jeered, egging Thames on.
The circle of busybodies had come expecting a fight. They wanted a show.
Thames shot them an angry look, then at Damen's phone. Heat crawled across his face.
"He's got our video, you bloody idiots, do you want trouble?" he spat, more to the crowd than to Damen.
He snatched up his basketball and stalked off, his shoulders tight with bruised pride.
When he was gone, Mikey hustled up to Damen. "You okay? What was all that about? You were so damn cool to stand up to Thames," he asked, scanning for any sign of a bruise on Damen.
Damen let a small, brittle smile slip. "He won't mess with me here. School cameras and all. Thames can't risk a suspension especially now during the finals."
Damen was bullied time and time again both in school and outside. In his mind, he learned of a thousand ways to protect himself but never had the courage to actually do so.
But now somehow he felt different- like a guardian angel was watching him.
Mikey's smile didn't reach his eyes. "True. But watch him. Thames doesn't forget."
He glanced back once, catching the bully's parting glare aimed in their direction, then drifted away.
Damen ignored the laughter behind him and sank back into his phone. The numbers on his mining app ticked upward, faster than ever.
His target: Thames Jackson.
He sat calmly on the edge of the basketball court while Thames and his gang played, pretending not to care. Every so often, Damen grinned at his screen, letting them see.
To the bullies, that smile was a taunt.
They burned with fury, but none of them walked away. Leaving would mean conceding to him, and Thames would rather choke than give Damen that victory.
It was exactly as Damen expected.
"Perfect," Damen muttered. "Farm away, Thames Jackson. Hahaha."
Suddenly, a new notification flashed across his screen:
[You have reached enough coins for a software upgrade. Proceed? Y/N]
His heart thumped. Finally, something more than counting numbers.
"Software Upgrade. What is that? .. Ah no matter."
"Yes."
The screen went black except for a pulsing counter: Upgrading…
Damen waited, watching the digits crawl upward. It felt like forever, but at last: Upgrade Complete.
Excited, he dove into the menus.
But there were no shop. No store. Nothing new that made sense.
"Are you kidding me? That's it?" He cried loudly to complain as the bullies gave him their signature fingers. He ignored them.
"No…", he cried again when he noticed the cost of the upgrade.
His balance had dropped to 0.23 coins. The upgrade cost him almost all his Demo Coins.
He sighed, raised his phone, and locked onto Thames again. A target frame snapped over the bully's face. Damen hit Begin Mining.
"Well, have to start over", he muttered.
He expected nothing. Instead, a new button appeared above the button: Acquire.
"Acquire? What the hell…?" He pressed it without thinking.
The app flickered. A list materialized across the screen, words glowing as if carved from light:
StrengthCharmMetaCommand
Damen's mouth went dry. "Acquire… from Thames?"
It was obvious what the app meant. The only question was which piece of Thames Jackson he wanted to acquire and take.
He didn't look at Thames with anger this time, but with something closer to curiosity… maybe even greed.
"What should I take from you?"
The glowing words hovered in front of his eyes:
Strength. Charm. Command. Meta.
"There are no descriptions, no numbers… what do they even mean?" Damen muttered as he swiped through the phone.
There were no descriptions or info buttons anywhere. This DemCoin app was definitely not user friendly. Then he understood.
"I must discover the functions of the app myself", Damen said to himself.
"But what should I choose?" he asked himself again.