A few strong beams of morning sunlight found their way through the blinds and into the room, bringing much brilliance but no warmth. Her room remained an eternal icebox. Was she being packed and preserved? Xinling woke to a raging headache and a drying stickiness between her legs. The persistent pounding in her skull continued long after she had departed from the flat. It was almost eight when she joined the bustling flow of people rushing to work and school. Moving along their own tracks, selfish and self-absorbed, a source of pain to others, like her. The very same... except she was fully conscious of it.

Upon arriving at school, Xinling slipped through the side door and walked down the swept hallway towards homeroom. She perceived her classmates standing, as if contemplating, in clusters directly outside the door. She plowed through the loitering lot and stepped across the threshold to witness the cause of their discomfort.

No one else was in the classroom except for their teacher. He threw a swift, nervous glance at her while scraping off the photo plastered to his podium. His action, his expression, his whole being reeked of embarrassing guilt.

They hung everywhere. The walls. The ceiling. The floor. Xinling lifted her foot and beheld a series of ty images laying side by side. The first one displayed a woman's abdomen. Her voluptuously formed legs were parted wide. Her fingers parted her even further, stretching it to its limit, fully exposing the pink nexus of her sin. Xinling kicked the pictures with the heel of her shoe but they remained stationary. She grinned in amusement. The ographic magazine pages were undoubtedly glued down with strong adhesive. 

As she walked the usual path to her seat, Xinling saw it all. Obscene images. Women with women. Men with women. Men with men. Locked in moral-abandoned tangles of . Leather and flesh fused like mating insects. Raw and graphic, nothing was left to the imagination.

The surface of her seat was not spared from the nefarious mischief. Covered in thick , a young man stared up at her. How befitting she thought as she sat bum down.

• • • • • • •

"Thank you for your hard work!" The owner bowed after her.

Xinling grabbed her new book bag and waved a hand in acknowledgement while exiting the store. On her way back from her after school job, she could feel a malicious presence following her. The unfathomable sense of being un-centered and at the edge of a cliff again. Earth's End. Strangely, it wasn't him. It was someone else. She passed the abandoned field where a textile factory used to stand proudly. Its distinctive smell inevitably prevailed, lingering like a stubborn ghost. Not wanting to be forgotten. Not wanting to be erased. She understood that feeling.

Xinling entered back into the busy part of town and headed for an alley where she could confront her pursuer. She stood there in the shadow and waited.

She didn't have to wait long. The intimate stench of cowardice told her who it was.

 Xinling brushed away an annoying strand of hair from her face. "Isn't it a little too early for you to come out and play, sensei?"

"Are you mocking me?" The man stood frozen and erect, blocking the light and casting an even darker shadow.

"What?"

He suddenly charged at her. His large hands grasped Xinling's shoulders and he pinned her small frame against the wall. "The classroom." He hissed. "It was you, wasn't it? Why are you doing this to me?" His voice quaked, revealing the anger and the suffering. "Is this revenge? Somehow, you found out it was me and now you're taking revenge?"

Xinling noticed how heavily he was perspiring. It aroused her and made her breathless. She lifted her leg and cradled his manhood with her knee. At her touch, he felt himself shriveling up like a salted slug. He didn't realize he was sobbing until he heard his own voice. "You're nothing more than an instrument of chaos. Tempting... Seducing..." He swallowed. "In this society, kids like you should just disappear."

In all seriousness, Xinling stared into the dark void where his face should've been. "Is that so, sensei... Is that so..." All the hypocritical crap coming from a stupid . She found it hilarious. And yet, those words... telling someone to disappear... wasn't it too much?

Even if the outside world is fake, the pain inside is real. If only there exist a switch to turn it off. If only...

She dropped her leg and gave him a friendly warning. "If you're not here to play, sensei, I suggest you get lost before something unfortunate happens."

The shaken man gasped and pulled hastily away, shunning her like a leper. He scuttled along the broken walls down the alley while she returned to the lit streets. Xinling's back was turned when she heard his muffled scream.

"Ahh.." She massaged her ears with cold fingers. "How unfortunate."

• • • • • • •

"Ikeda-san, you seem to frequent the station these days."

Xinling leans back in her chair. "What did I do this time, inspector? Vandalism? Extortion? Kidnap? Don't tell me it's murder again. How boring."

"A passerby saw you leaving an alley where they found the victim lying in a puddle of blood. He had taken a blunt object to the head. Did you or did you not kill him?" He removes a photo from his file and passes it to her.

"I haven't killed anyone recently, if that counts for anything."

"He is Saitou sensei, your homeroom teacher. We are aware of the incident that happened at school earlier that day. You met him in the alley. What were you doing in the alley with him?"

She sighs while playing with her chipped red nails. "He thought I was the one who wrecked his classroom... so he chased me down to confront me about it."

"And you did not attack him after..."

"No, I didn't. Hmm... maybe I should have."

"You need to tell us about every happening that night in detail so we can get to the bottom of this."

"And then what?" Her eyes pierce right though him. "What can you do about it?"

In this fake world? Nothing. Absolutely Nothing.