1 The Beginning of the End

The halls were quiet that day, the setting sun peered through the windows, causing the sole resident of the halls to turn her head towards the window. She remembers the times where she would stare out the window looking at the baseball team practicing, but the season for that is over, and she won't get the chance to see it in a long time.

Turning her head back, she realizes one of the doors to a classroom is open, it was unlikely to have just been the wind so she assumes another person is either in the classroom or it had been left ajar from before.

She takes a step into the room and closes the door behind her. Despite this, the wind still flows through the room.

On the opposite side of the room is a boy, the same age as her, 17 years of age. The boy is wearing a school uniform, full of wrinkles and patches. He is slowly picking up glass shards off the ground, one by one, and placing them on one of the desks in the room.

The girl walks to one of the desks instinctively, as if it was only yesterday when sitting in this room was normal for her. Sliding her hand across the corner of the desk, she could feel the indentations she left behind with her pencil.

After dealing with her bout of nostalgia, she turned her chair to face the figure of the other person in the room, staring as he continues to pick up the pieces, giving her the occasional look reminding himself about her presence while choosing to ignore it.

After viewing this farce for an extended period of time, she opens her mouth. "You're going to cut yourself on one of those." The girl calls out to him, irked due to the sheer futility. No one else will come here, so there is no need to pick up the glass."

He turns his head towards her to acknowledge that her words were heard, and turns his head back to tell her that her words were not accepted. The sound of shards being picked up off the floor remained the loudest in the room. After all the shards were salvaged, he finally sat down in his own chair, right besides hers and faced towards her.

"How was being abandoned by the world?" The silence in the room was deafening, and the air was thickly laced with the ire of both parties.

"I don't know, you tell me." Her response seemed to have fallen on deaf ears as he wraps a sheet of tissue paper around his hand, slowly being colored by blood. She spoke up again, "I made my choice, no one abandoned me."

"No one seemed too keen on finding a way to include you." He spits out the words, as if the longer he held them inside his mouth, the more they would sicken him.

"Just as well as no one seemed reluctant to leave you behind. Besides, we all knew there wasn't any other choice, besides you."

"Because there was another choice." He places emphasis on the 'was' as he sits up, slightly raising his voice.

"No one wants to live in a cage, that may or may not collapse in on him or her for the rest of their lives." She replies with a disinterested tone, knowing full well how this conversation will pan out, as it had done many times prior.

"And in that time, we could have fixed the cage." He stands up, pushing his chair back causing it to crash against the seat behind him.

"Could have, not certain." She replies with the same tone as before, yet her eyes manage to convey a more hostile attitude.

"So, bringing them outside into a world they have even seen before is supposed to be the safer alternative?" Ignoring her growing hostility, he starts to shout madly at her. "You're just going to abandon the world Kyrie tried to-"

"If you say one more word I will shove those glass shards you love so much down your throat." Shocked by those words, he almost didn't even realize he was lying on the ground surrounded by scattered desks. A dull pain starts to arise from his bones and he stares back up at the girl who placed him in this position, who is now standing above him, with eyes filled with the same hostility as before. "This conversation is getting us nowhere, and whatever we say now won't change the past." She sits back down in her chair and starts to rub her temple. He slowly gets up and pulls up a chair to her desk, seeing as his desk was broken before he could notice. Sitting down slowly, to which her eyes neither beckon nor bar him from doing.

She stares off into the distance through the broken window, before closing her eyes and turning towards the boy. Before she could force herself to say anything, she is relieved of that duty by the boy opening his mouth. "Yeah, forget the past. We'll start over." His forced smile influenced her to create an equally forced smile, yet somehow managing to convey the effort for genuine reconciliation the two are attempting to find. He extended his hand. "Hi, my name is Claude."

Her smile noticeably quivered.

"Are you serious?"

"I did say from the beginning." A genuine grin appears on his face.

She silently shakes her head, "And I was trying so hard to find reasons not to drop kick you earlier." She said grabbing his extended hand and placing her fingers in such a way that his circulation was cut off. His smug smile instantly turned into one of discomfort "Chell."

As she released her grip, Claude pulled his hand back and started massaging it. "That could have been dangerous, a minute after meeting you for the first time, I almost needed an amputation."

"Come on, slight pressure to a vein isn't going to turn an arm necrotic, especially with your body." She sighs. "A couple minutes in and I already regret meeting you, now I wish I left someone else behind." She sat back down. The silence in the room continued until it was broken by Claude.

"Want to go look at the border again." He halfheartedly suggested.

"Whatever happened to starting anew?"

"Fine, want to go watch the border for the first time." He starts regretting his earlier choice of words, silently wishing he invested more in his language classes.

"Alright," she picked herself up and opened up the door, walking out of it. Claude follows behind, as he steps through the door frame, he looks behind before closing the door behind him.