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break record
Dec. 22nd, 2015 07:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
byakkomaru[ For Shinya, life in the Hiiragi testing facility has a definitive, immutable pattern. Wake up, eat a perfectly nutritionally-balanced and tasteless meal, engage in group lessons and make sure none of the other children manage to sabotage you; visit the infirmary if necessary, otherwise, a period of self-study (Shinya is good enough that he always self-studies, which may be why he never needs to visit the infirmary); another perfectly balanced and cardboard dull meal for lunch, then practical lessons with the instructors until dinner of more of the same as breakfast and lunch; then self-study until the lights are turned out and sleep; rinse, repeat. Every third week there is a test, and "survive the day's test" becomes part of the routine, also predictable; Shinya always survives, always goes back to more of the same, unchanging pattern day after day. The only thing that changes is the number of children who attend lessons and who he must fight against in the tests. Their number has been dwindling, barely thirty of them left now. Sometimes, Shinya wonders what will happen when there's only one of them left, but he doesn't spend much time on that. Studying so he can rank high enough to be deemed useful takes up too much of his time.
But today, the routine has changed. There's a shift in the air, unfamiliar magic running through the underground compound and waking Shinya before the lights are even turned on for the day. It's new, intriguing — it's not the right day for a test, but maybe with so few candidates left, they're accelerating the schedule. He can't be sure.
Cautiously, Shinya uncurls from the ball he sleeps in on his narrow cot, squeezed in among stacks of spellbooks so he can use every moment of precious light time to learn just one more spell, one more edge he might have over the other children — his enemies. There's a scuffling outside the door of his cell, the quiet tread of feet. Curious, he peers over one of the stacks of books.
A child is standing outside the bars, black-haired, his features indistinguishable in the murky emergency lighting that keeps the compound in a perpetual, dingy grey twilight. It's not any of the other candidates; Shinya knows them all by face, name, skills and weaknesses, a perfect catalog in his head that he's been building ever since the tests turned to direct competition. Since they started killing each other face to face.
He waits, watching, barely more than a pale shadow, the moonlight of his hair, behind the shelter of his stack of books. If this is a test, what he has to do will be made clear shortly. If it's not a test... If it's not a test, if there really is a strange child standing outside his cell, he doesn't know what to do. ]
But today, the routine has changed. There's a shift in the air, unfamiliar magic running through the underground compound and waking Shinya before the lights are even turned on for the day. It's new, intriguing — it's not the right day for a test, but maybe with so few candidates left, they're accelerating the schedule. He can't be sure.
Cautiously, Shinya uncurls from the ball he sleeps in on his narrow cot, squeezed in among stacks of spellbooks so he can use every moment of precious light time to learn just one more spell, one more edge he might have over the other children — his enemies. There's a scuffling outside the door of his cell, the quiet tread of feet. Curious, he peers over one of the stacks of books.
A child is standing outside the bars, black-haired, his features indistinguishable in the murky emergency lighting that keeps the compound in a perpetual, dingy grey twilight. It's not any of the other candidates; Shinya knows them all by face, name, skills and weaknesses, a perfect catalog in his head that he's been building ever since the tests turned to direct competition. Since they started killing each other face to face.
He waits, watching, barely more than a pale shadow, the moonlight of his hair, behind the shelter of his stack of books. If this is a test, what he has to do will be made clear shortly. If it's not a test... If it's not a test, if there really is a strange child standing outside his cell, he doesn't know what to do. ]
