The students didn’t stop talking when Daphne walked in.
Not a pause. Not a glance. The room continued at exactly the volu and chaos it had been running at, with the specific indifference of people who had decided that a teacher entering was not an event worth acknowledging.
Daphne’s eyes moved through the room the way they always moved, cataloguing, sorting, and then they found at the back and sothing in her face settled. Not relaxed exactly. More like a ship finding a landmark. She knew where she was now.
New institution, I thought. No reputation here. No nineteen years of Miss Brown’s credibility to borrow. She has to build it from zero in front of forty students who don’t know her na yet.
"Good morning," she said.
Almost nobody cared. The conversations continued. Sobody laughed at sothing that had nothing to do with Daphne. The red-haired girl at the front kept talking to her neighbor without lowering her voice.
"My na is Daphne. I’m standing in for Mr Por."
The blue girl beside lifted her eyes from her book briefly, registered the situation, and went back to reading with the calm of soone who had seen this before and knew how it ended.
Daphne clapped her hands. Sharp. Once. The sound cutting through the noise the way specific sounds do when they’re unexpected.
The room went quiet. Forty faces turned toward the front.
"Sorry for that," she said, stepping into the silence before it could close back up. "My na is Daphne. Your substitute teacher."
For a mont she had them. I could feel it, the room balanced on the edge of deciding.
Then the laughter started.
"Who do you think you are, bitch?" From the middle rows. "We’ve heard you. You can go out now."
I moved my eyes to the source. Fat boy, middle row, the comfortable posture of soone who had done this before and found it effective.
That’s Daphne you’re disrespecting, I thought, with a heat I hadn’t expected. I’ll be seeing you later.
I wanted to move. Daphne’s eyes found across the room and her hand ca up slightly. Small gesture. Private. Stay.
She was still in control even while being disrespected. I could see it in how she was standing. She had co here with her ability restored and she had a plan and she did not need in it. I stayed.
"Who said that?" she asked.
The class laughed harder, which was the response of people who thought the question was weakness.
She turned toward the board. Moving on, apparently. The fat boy read it as retreat and stood up.
"I said it." He pushed out of his seat. "What are you going to do about it?"
She didn’t answer. She kept moving toward the board and he moved toward her, and the room shifted into the specific attention of students who could sll a confrontation and had stopped doing everything else.
He reached the front. Daphne turned and put both hands flat on his chest. He stopped.
Not because she was strong. Sothing else. Sothing that rooted him to the floor and held him there while she leaned in and said sothing into his ear that the rest of the room couldn’t catch.
Her ability, I thought. Whatever she had before the burn out. She’s using it.
The class watched in the silence of people who didn’t understand what they were seeing and were genuinely unsettled by that.
"Pain," Daphne said, pulling back, looking at him directly. "All you have inside is pain."
She released him. He stood at the front of the room with forty people watching him and the specific expression of soone whose armor has been removed in public. He looked around. Found no rescue.
"Fuck you," he said, which was all he had left, and the class laughed, but differently this ti. Not with him. At the situation. And he went back to his seat and sat down.
The murmuring continued but at a lower frequency. Daphne had room now.
"Good morning," she said again.
This ti the class replied. Then the air changed.
I felt it before I understood it. A pressure, like the atmosphere had shifted a weight, the light from the window dimming without clouds. The room went quiet in the way rooms go quiet when sothing has decided they should be quiet, not chosen it, been made to. Footsteps in the corridor. Unhurried.
A young man walked in. Early twenties. Purple hair. White t-shirt, black pants, black sunglasses sitting on a face that was structured with the specific confidence of soone who had never needed to earn a room’s attention because rooms had always given it.
"Not ti for lectures," he said to Daphne, in the tone of soone managing a scheduling conflict.
"Excuse ?" Daphne said.
He removed his sunglasses. He looked at her. Just looked. Whatever Daphne saw in his eyes she didn’t argue with it. She picked up her things and walked out of the classroom without another word, and the door closed behind her.
I was on my feet before I had made a decision.
That’s Daphne, I thought. You just walked Daphne out of her own classroom.
Sothing was burning in my chest and my hands were already running the calculation of distance to the front of the room and what level fourteen felt like when it was pointed at sothing specific.
A hand touched mine. The blue girl. Not grabbing. Just touching. One finger on the back of my hand, the lightest possible contact, and her pink eyes looking at from over the top of her book.
"Don’t be stupid, Abram Nadez," she said.
Her first words. Said with the flat certainty of soone who knew exactly what she was preventing and had chosen to prevent it.
I looked at her. Then at the front of the room. Then back at her. I sat down.
The young man had moved to the front row where the red-haired girl was sitting. The boy beside her read the situation and relocated himself to another seat without being asked, with the practiced speed of soone who had done this before.
He sat. Comfortable. Settled. Like the room was his and had always been his and the question of ownership had never been in doubt.
Then he looked back. His eyes moved through the room and found at the back, and for a mont we held each other’s gaze across forty students and whatever distance that was.
[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM]
[Vince Vale. Unknown entity.]
Vale, I thought. Sophia Vale’s building. Sophia Vale’s na on the school next door. And now Vince Vale sitting in the front row of my classroom like he owns the floor he’s standing on.
Unknown entity, the system had said. The sa classification it had given Sophia.
I looked at him. He looked at .
Who are you, I thought. And why does the system not know what you are.
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