Well lay on the bathroom floor, smiling up at Rain in a way that felt wrong even to himself.
Rain sat beside him, her face cold and unreadable, though her eyes carried a quiet confusion. She said nothing. The silence pressed against Well harder than the pain in his broken nose.
"So," Well said, holding the bloodied bridge of his nose, "why are you here?"
Near his side, a nearly dead cockroach dragged itself across the tiles, its remaining legs scraping weakly as it tried to escape the presence of the two towering giants above it.
"The school principal asked me to apologize to you," Rain replied flatly, "and to show you around the school."
Well turned his gaze toward her.
"Apologize for what?"
Rain's eyes tilted slightly.
"For my question."
Well let out a quiet laugh and looked back down at the cockroach, now crawling closer to the wall.
"Well," he said dryly, "you already apologized with a punch."
Rain's lips twitched. A brief, accidental laugh slipped out before she caught herself.
"Well, you did try to grab me," she said, regaining her composure. "And you kept calling me by a strange name like a lunatic. I'm not sorry about that."
The smile on Well's face—half pathetic, half sarcastic—slowly drained into something empty.
"How come no one else came into this bathroom?" he asked.
The cockroach paused, its body trembling as it caught its breath. A thin spark of hope flickered in its damaged eyes.
"This bathroom's abandoned," Rain said. "Teachers and students avoid it. A girl committed suicide here last year."
Silence settled between them.
Well's eyes darkened as he watched the insect.
"So," Rain said after a moment, "what are you on? And should I take you to the nurse?"
Well glanced toward the crumpled napkin he had used to hide the evidence. His left eye flinched.
"It's not a big deal," he said. "And if we go to the nurse, they'll ask questions. We'd probably both get expelled."
He spoke logically—but expulsion wasn't what scared him.
His father was.
"You're not answering the first question," Rain said.
She finally noticed the cockroach.
Well sighed.
"On the bus," he said, "a famous rapper and a new friend gave me a weird cigarette. All black. Reckless-looking. I didn't think much of it at the time."
The cockroach noticed their attention and froze, pretending to be dead—though its body refused to stay still.
Rain stood.
"A new friend?" she asked. "What's his name?"
She raised her foot.
The cockroach sensed the shadow above it. It gathered what little strength it had left and tried to run, but its legs failed.
This is it, it thought, squeezing its eyes shut.
Rain's foot came down—
—and crushed Well's hand instead.
"What the hell are you doing?" Rain snapped. "It's just a bug. It's already dying. What's the point of saving it?"
Well laughed through the pain. His left palm throbbed as he lifted the cockroach gently.
"But it didn't want to die yet," he said, smiling.
Rain stared at him, stunned.
Is he even sane? she thought, turning away.
Well carefully placed the cockroach in a safer corner before standing and following her, wiping blood from his face and clothes.
They left the cockroach behind.
Its eyes filled with tears—tears of shock, disbelief, fragile joy.
"I'm alive," it thought. "The other giant saved me."
It closed its eyes, resting in the warmth of survival.
A spider crept silently across the tiles.
It fed.
It didn't matter after all, the cockroach thought.
Meanwhile—
Aizak found himself swimming in a red sea—thick, sticky, familiar.
White shapes brushed against his legs beneath the surface as the liquid rose around him. Indifferently, he kept swimming.
I have to find a way out, he thought. Before I die in this shithole.
The red water climbed higher. Waves formed, dragging at him. The white shapes struck his legs again and again.
When the surface reached his throat, a mouthful of liquid rushed inside him.
That was when he realized—
This wasn't water.
It was blood.
Panic exploded through him. He thrashed wildly, choking, forcing himself to stay afloat.
For now.
Then he saw it.
A patch of land ahead—glowing pure white.
Finally, he thought. I can survive.
He swam toward it with everything he had.
Just as his fingers nearly touched the shore, something seized him and dragged him down.
"What is this?!" he screamed, but no sound escaped his mouth.
The answer revealed itself as he sank.
The white shapes were bones.
Broken skeletons wrapped their arms around him, pulling him deeper.
"Join us," they whispered.
He screamed underwater, losing his final breath.
And died.
—
Aizak opened his eyes.
He lay in a white room, restrained, machines humming beside him.
"I'm not dead?" he murmured.