The Empress/L'Impératrice:

The Empress is mother, a creator and nurturer. In many decks she can be shown as pregnant. She can represent the creation of life, of romance, of art or business. The Empress can represent the germination of an idea before it is ready to be fully born. The Empress is often associated with Venus, goddess of beautiful things as well as love, and indeed the Rider-Waite deck brandishes her symbol upon a heart-shaped bolster.

Chapter 3

L'Impératrice

Behold! The true face of humans!

So easy to shatter their little democracy.

    Park Chanyeol

I tried keeping my ears shut by pressing my hands nearly inside my head. It didn’t work though, they kept talking. They kept screaming. They kept crying. I didn’t know how long I had been sitting like this, but after a long while, I couldn’t take it anymore.

Mr. Byun couldn’t either. He slammed his hands on his desk and blinked in shock. He was the first one to notice that the door was open. In a rush he started counting people. “Everyone is here.” he sighed. “Good.”

“Not for long!” Key yelled and stood up. “I want to leave this stupid building!”

“No Eul tried doing that too.” Yoonhye whined. “Look where that got her!” she yelled, angrily. I heard how disappointed she was at everything. She was alone now. All alone in a world which was hunting her down. She had no best friend anymore.

“What should we do, teacher? What should we do?” Yoonhye’s tears polluted the entire classroom. They made me sick. If only I could slap her to get her to be silent. I couldn’t, though.

Mr. Byun wanted to take a seat on his desk, but someone stopped him from doing so. It was a pencil thrown at him by Key. “I’m sorry, but do you really think you still have power? No Eul died under YOUR watch!”

“Excuse me? I’m still your teacher. I promise, we will get out of here.”

“Oh yes? I do believe that Xiumin’s whole idea was just as sick as he’s always been. Look at us! We’re driven into a corner. He asked us to show humanity and outlive this thing, but I believe now that escaping would’ve been better.” Heechul and Zhou Mi were standing next to each other. The second one took over.

“Yes,” Zhou Mi stated. “Look at us! He expected us to be nice and not kill someone, while we thought that he would show some kind of mercy. We were wrong. YOU were wrong!” he pointed at Mr. Byun and started laughing.

“Okay…” Mr. Byun frowned.

“Don’t talk to him like that!” Yoonhye yelled and jumped up. “He’s keeping us together, don’t you see that?”

“Who says we want to stay together? We’re a huge target!” Kahi was the one to talk now. Strange. She never did. I had the feeling she was actually glad No Eul wasn’t amongst us anymore. They never liked each other.

“You are all incredible idiots! Every single one of you! Don’t you see that this is what that Jaejoong guy wants! He said so himself! He likes watching this!” Yuri yelled at them. She was right. I never liked Yuri before, but lately, today, she was the only one making sense. A bit sense.

“I like watching this too.” Ailee purred. “Don’t mind me.”

“I say we go to that Jaejoong guy and kill him!” Henry shouted. He started laughing uncontrollably when everyone looked at him is disgust. “Sorry, guys! I was just trolling you all!”

The room turned silent. Mr. Byun was looking at me. His eyes were scared. He never asked to do this. He didn’t even know why this was happening.

“There is a wolf!” Heechul shouted, breaking the silence. “You still want to stay together, knowing there is a dirty traitor amongst us? Look at you, you innocent little Yoonhye. You get straight A’s, your best friend died and you support the teacher. She can’t be a wolf!” he said sarcastically.

This sounded like a game we used to play together. Who is the wolf? I couldn’t remember which one of us was the best at it…Damn…

Yoonhye started crying and sat down again. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore. You’re driving us mad!”

“Teacher? Don’t you have to interfere?” Zelo asked with a timid voice.

Mr. Byun took a deep breath and took off his jacket. He just stood there, his w