“Okay, girl, just breathe!” Sherry was urging me.

I buried my face in my hands and took in deeper breaths. Even though I had somewhat stopped panicking, tears still ran down my cheeks. My nose must have been red, an attractive sight with my swollen eyes.

“Kalyn?” I looked up to see the literature teacher look down at me. “Class needs to start,” she stated calmly. “Do you want to calm down in the bathroom? Sherry can go with you.”

I nodded, my throat still clogged up. Sherry grabbed one of my arms, taking it away from my face, and gently led me out of the room.

As the door closed behind us, she turned and grabbed my other hand away, which had been covering my mouth. “Just let it out,” she ordered me softly as I leaned my back on one of the walls in the hallway.

I breathed in. “H-hua Shang confronted m-me and was about to s-slap me until Tao s-stopped her.”

“Ignore her. Everyone hates her.”

“They also all hate me. Can’t you hear their snide comments?” I gestured around wildly. “I don’t understand. Is it my fault I’m trying to get through here until I graduate and they aren’t? I don’t want to play their silly little games, and I have no interest in whatsoever with dealing with their worlds. Yet here I am, already making trouble-“

“You’re the not the one who made trouble,” Sherry interrupted me.

“No, I’m the one who’s always making trouble.” Fresh tears sprung up in my eyes again. “I’ve tried so hard to be a good person, but it’s always my fault. I always become a burden to others.”

Sherry started to reply, but someone called her name from the literature classroom. “I’ll be right back.” She walked away with a worried look.

I collapsed when she left, letting myself sink to the floor. Although this feeling of hopelessness wasn’t a strange feeling to me anymore, it still was ready to swallow me as an endless abyss. When did it begin? I closed my eyes, feeling another tear escape.

“It’s okay honey-“

“No it’s NOT Mom! I let him down!” I looked at our meeting place. “He’s gone.”

“Kalyn?” I opened my eyes to see Yinna standing over me. She crouched down. “What are you doing here?”

I attempted a smile. “The teacher let me cry out here. I guess she thought I would be a disturbance.” I gave a wry laugh, but it was more of a sob.

Yinna sat down next to me. “What happened?”

“Hua Shang was harassing her.” Sherry appeared again.

Yinna’s right fist clenched. “That girl-“

“It wasn’t just her.” I focused on the tiles underneath my feet.  “It was everyone.”

“Oh.” I looked at her face to see it shift from anger to a defeated expression to annoyance. She threw her hands up in the air. “I swear people in this school don’t know how to keep their mouths in line with their heads.”

“I don’t think a lot of places are different from this place,” I said slowly.

“Whatever.” Yinna tapped her chin with a finger. “We’re going to figure out a way to keep you safe, okay? Just try to get through lunch. We only have two more classes.”

“And I’m in both of them,” Sherry chimed in.

I looked from girl to girl, then nodded. From the gleam in their eyes, it looked like they knew what they were doing.

At least I hoped they did.

I couldn’t concentrate for the rest of the day. Any moment I wasn’t focusing on the teacher and on school work was spent on worrying what would happen to me. Was Hua Shang going to come after me at lunch? Sherry’s presence nearby helped, especially when she look at my way, but I still felt singled out from everyone else. The whispers of my classmates seemed to be magnified to my ears, yet I still couldn’t tell what they were saying. As the bell rang for lunch, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that someone was talking about me, glancing in my direction.

When I wouldn’t move, Sherry dragged me to the lunchroom and sat me down. “Okay, we made it,” she breathed out. “No incidents.”

“Not yet.” I sat there tensed, my eyes shifting back and forth. I never felt so captive in my life before. Who knew when Hua Shang and the others would try their chances again? Yinna sat down next to me and started eating. I carefully took out my lunch and unwrapped the sandwich I made this morning. “Not yet,” I replied.

“Never.” I looked up to see Tao standing behind me. He seemed to be looking in the distance, but his glance at me was full of concern. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah. A bit shaken.” More like my nerves would always be frazzled.

“Good. They won’t bother you again.” Without another word, he turned and disappeared.

I watched him go. “He doesn’t eat lunch here?”

When I hadn’t received any response, I turned to see Sherry gaping at me. “What?”

She shook her head, regaining her composure. “He has never entered the lunchroom the whole time he’s been here. THE WHOLE TIME. No one knows where he goes for lunch. So why don’t you tell me why he’s here?”

“I told you, Tao stopped Hua Shang from hitting me.” I shook my head. “Never mind. Forget that I asked anything.”

She looked at me with a strange look. “Why? Don’t you want to know more about Tao?”

“Why would I? Probably everything about him is online anyway.”

Yinna facepalmed, groaning. “Know him personally is what Sherry meant.”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Why not?” they both asked.

“It’s just not…me.” I shrugged. “I don’t belong in his crowd and vice versa. I know chemistry when I feel it. Which is why you guys are my friends.”

“But…” Yinna started to protest.

“Wait, we are your friends?” Sherry grabbed my hand.

I blinked. “Of course. It’s not like you guys gave me a choice when you started talking to me.”

“Aww.” Her eyes started to fill with tears.

“Hey, you better not get sentimental!”

She laughed and wiped her eyes. “Okay, okay, I won’t.”

“So you’re not the type of person who ponders on emotion?” Yinna asked, taking another bite.

 “Only with art.” I played with the leftover saran wrap from my lunch.

“Why only with art?”

“I rather not talk about it right now.”

Yinna raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything. I could tell she wanted me to go on, to spill. But even if I wanted to open my mouth, my throat was already closed.  It was too soon to let them see the real me, if I would even let them see.

The last time I let someone see, they left me broken. I’m still broken.

Luckily, the bell rang before I could fall over the edge again.

[A/N] I was going to make this 2 chapters, but hey, why not? That’s why it took me so long to write. I hope you don’t mind, I’m finally getting my grades back up. Hopefully I’ll get back on track –fingers crossed-

So yeah, we have a lot of going on with Kalyn’s past and her, err, person. As you probably could tell, she’s a bit of a dark, unstable person, but hopefully you’ll see later on why she’s not like the rest of us, including me.

Going on a tangent here, probably a lot of you who have been hanging around AFF seen a lot of people go this:

 (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

That’s right, flipping tables. They’re going “WTF is Jason going mad with the karma system?”
I dunno.

All I know is that while it’s there, we should make the best use of it, ya know? I mean, if you don’t like it, go somewhere else like I did. Although I do like this site a bit better because it’s easier to get into the community and stuff. Not to mention it’s still more user-friendly than other places.

But anyway, my 2 cents on the changes that have been made so far:

1.       The auction system. Haters on karma-greedy ppl going to hate. Although the concept where the bid you need to surpass is shown instead of the maximum bid the higher bidder is put up is a bit interesting.

2.       Upvoting stories. I hope that’s not the only factor on getting featured.  I mean, it’s like the same as # of subscribers, right? IDK. I’m a bit torn about it. But you guys don’t have to bother, I’m never going to get featured anyway. The point of me writing is just to write and hopefully entertain people who even like it.

3.       Downvoting comments. MUHAHAHA! Beware you people who give me useless comments such as “Update soon!” Well okay, I’m not actually that mean, but maybe if your comment really annoys me, I’ll just do that since I’m too lazy to tell you that your comment is worthless. And doing that will make your comment literally worthless. GENIUS! But I probably won’t do that a lot. Because I’m not a troll author that way.

4.       The original policy where you only get karma for 1 comment of a story in a 24 hour period. This definitely guards against spammers, but what about commenting on different chapters when an author makes a multiple update? They should do it where you only get karma for 1 comment of a story in a 24 hour period and/or between updates. IDK, I think if you make comments on different chapters, you should get all the credit for all the comments. That being said, I probably will never make a multiple update for that reason and I don’t like hoarding chapters anymore. Got too confusing.

So I hope you guys have a great weekend and I’ll see you next time!