Introducing the Only Decent Character

      “Ding Dong!” Went the school bell, ringing through the classroom. It was echoing through the grey wall right to James’s ear.

      James stood up the second that the bell rang, ready to finally end his suffering and get to his true love; his body pillow.

      Emma broke his excitement as she walked up to him, and gestured for him to follow her. They went through the dull hallways, Emma leading James through the twists and turns of the giant arctic school. “Why did they make this building so big?” James muttered to himself as he continued to follow her. The grey walls grew duller the more of them he walked through as they blended together in his brain. The red highlights that were on the top and bottoms of the walls blended into the background.

      “This is a rather big building for such a small student population.” James commented while looking around, trying to break the silence that had surrounded them.

      “I think it had to do with the weather or something like that. The builders kept getting stuck up here and had the materials, so they just said ‘screw it’ and made it like ten times bigger than it needed to be. It was the government's money, not theirs after all, and they had that authority to use all the materials there.”

      James shrugged, unable to think of a way to continue their conversation, and walked in silence with her again.

      “Ah, here we are” Said Emma as she pushed open a grey door. The door stood out from all the other ones in the fact that it was grey, unlike every other door that he had seen since he entered the building, which had been wooden.

      Inside the mysterious grey door was a grey hall that looked exactly like every other hall he had seen in the building at first, with the grey wall, red highlights, and cold concrete floor. He then noticed the doors. They completely stood out as being the most colorful things he had seen since entering the building. Each wooden door had the owner's name on a shiny brass nameplate around two inches wide and one inch tall. There were several posters, records, political propaganda, and other decorations on all the doors, making the room look like someone had spilled a bucket of paint at random if you just looked at it at a glance, or down if you were as tall as James was.

      James followed Emma along the hall, who ignored all the decorations, like she had seen them a million times before, which she probably had. After some walking along the colorful hallway, they eventually reached a room with no decorations on the door. The name James was printed on the shiny nametag.

      “As you have probably been able to guess, this is your room. All your stuff should be inside it.” Emma turned to walk away. “If you need anything, I’ll be two doors down,” She said as she entered her room.

      James took a deep breath and entered his room. He gasped with excitement as he saw that all his stuff was there, just like Emma told him. It was all there, from his anime and Destiny books and DVDs to his consoles, to even his precious body pillow and one and only true love. He hugged the body pillow in excitement after closing the door, happy to see his truly beloved.

      He then looked at the mountain of boxes that were all his other stuff and decided to get to work. “Sorry honey, I’ll have fun with you later,” He said to his body pillow as he set her against the wall.

      He started by putting up his dark oak bookshelves, which had been laying on his floor like a bed. He spread them around the room, mainly covering the side walls with them. He also put them in the back of the room, next to the window that was located in the back.

      “I wonder why they stress not looking outside so much if they are dumb enough to put a giant freaking window in every single room. Like seriously, who thought that those two things would work well together?” James wondered allowed as he put his manga, anime DVDs, and Destiny memorabilia in the dark oak bookshelves. He had one-third of the bookshelves for each of them, with the anime DVDs slightly taking up some of the Manga and light novel room as well.

      After he did that, he got up and looked at his work so far. After deeming it satisfactory, he decided to look at everything else.

      The room had little original furniture, with only a twin bed and a small smart tv being provided by the school for the dorm rooms. The twin bed had red sheets, with a grey frame, to match the aesthetic of the school as a whole. James decided to put the dark oak desk he had brought with him next to his bed, as he thought it would go extremely well with the grey dullness of the grey room, with its wooden floors with random lines on them. They had probably been part of a high school gym floor, and ripped up and placed randomly here to use as flooring. “It could have been the concrete that lines the rest of the school hallways.” James thought to himself as he tested its hardness.

      After sorting through it he looked at all the piles he had created of his stuff. The soaps and other toiletries had already been put in the small bathroom that was connected to the small grey room. The bathroom was a bright white, with tiles all over the room. It had a small curtain shower with a bright white curtain.

      After thinking about it for a few seconds, he decided to tackle his posters next. He had several from all forms of media. The most prevalent ones were Destiny and JoJo posters, of which he had several, some of them worth a decent amount of money. He started out with one of the basic Destiny posters with the Destiny logo in the middle. The Destiny logo was bright white with a black background, emphasizing the logo compared to the background. James hung them all over his room covering all the walls and completely covering the dull dark grayness that the room and walls provided with his own splash of colors.

      After that, he had two posters left: a DuckTales poster and a JoJo's poster. The DuckTales poster was lined with Huey, Dewey, and Louie with Uncle Scrooge in the background arms out between the three. Uncle Scrooge was in front of a pile of gold coins. In fact, there were so many gold coins on the poster that there was a sea of gold coins behind him. James weighed that against the JoJo's poster. The poster had the JoJo's logo with a desert camouflage background, the purple logo being a unique color that stood out compared to all the blacks and whites that his room had naturally created.

      After some extremely hard deliberation on his part, he decided to put the DuckTales poster in the open slot in his room and the amazing JoJo's poster on his door outside in the hallway for everyone to see. He went to his door, extremely excited to put the poster up to let everyone see his love and passion for what was in his opinion one of the best TV shows of all time. People called him a stalker-like fan, but they were just wrong, objectively. James opened the door and,

      “Thud.”

      James recoiled from the impact of the door as he realized that he had run into someone on the other side of the door. Furious at whoever that person was, he looked to see who was dumb enough to stand outside the door.

      The person he had run into had an air of extreme confidence; his hair was a mix of light brown and blond. It seemed to switch with the light, and you couldn't really tell which color it was. He had grayish eyes, that shone with a dark intelligence. He wore a shirt with the words serial experiments lain on it, like some sort of logo from a tv series or something that James did not recognize. A silver necklace with a red and silver cross in the middle of it was around his neck. There were also silver earrings with the same cross design that was worn on the necklace.

      “Sorry about that,” The person said while Shaking off the blow “I was just putting up my new poster.”

      James looked past him towards the door which now had a Super Smash Brothers Ultimate poster on the top of it right below the nameplate. A Gonzaga poster was on the bottom right under it.

      The Catholic looking person put out his hand in a friendly gesture. “My name is John Paul. Sorry about the interesting introduction. By the way, your name is James right?”

      James shook his hand. “Yeah, nice to meet you, dude. I do have to ask about your outfit though.”

      John Paul laughed at his statement. “As you probably know or guessed, this school is supposed to be a non-denominational Christian school, with pretty much every denomination here represented, except for some reason that's not exactly the case.” He said, almost like it was something he rehearsed.

      James, who himself was Nondenominational, looked at John Paul, confused by what he was saying. “What do you mean, shouldn't every denomination be treated the same? After all, we’re all Christians here. It's not like we’re Mormon or something like that.”

      John Paul smiled at his statement. “Sadly, that's not how it works here. For whatever reason, the school leans extremely Fundamentalist.”

      “Isn't that the cultish one that's prevalent in the Bible belt?” James asked.

      “Yep exactly. Because of that, they're not exactly accepting of other denominations in general much less mine, Roman Catholicism. For whatever reason, they are dead set on treating us like the Antichrist for reasons I don't understand. Personally, I just think they're scared that we’re right and that their little brains can't understand that, but what do I know? I'm not dumb enough to be a cultist, sorry Fundamentalists.”

      James's eyes widened a bit at what John Paul said. The mix of obvious Christphobia and John Paul’s general personality threw him for a loop. “What do you mean by discrimination? They can't seriously be dumb enough to think that, can they? Even if they think that, it's really not that big of a deal. Do they try to harass you or anything like that?”

      “I wouldn’t say harassment, but more just making jabs at me and talking about why my faith is wrong in front of my face. It's really fun once you get used to it, definitely. I also was compared to Isis in front of my face once, that was a ton of fun. I mean, I perfectly understand. As a Catholic, I love crashing planes into buildings.”

      “Because of that,” John Paul continued, “I feel like I have to push the fact I'm Catholic onto everyone else and stoke their fears a little,” he said with a grin on his face.

      James was absolutely shocked at what John Paul was saying. He knew that fundamentalists were practically cultists in their own right, but he didn’t know that they were so bigoted in their ways. “Of course, if they’re cultlike that’s not much of a surprise,” James thought to himself. “But still, I can't see Emma doing something like that from what I know of her.”

      “Anyway, don't let that discourage you here. It's mostly a select group of students and staff members, not the collective. There's still a ton of nice people here at North Pole Christian” John Paul said, trying to reassure James.

      James sighed, the tension and nervousness that had been building inside him released. “Still, I guess I'm going to have to watch out, there are extremists everywhere you go these days.”

      “Anyway, it's nice to meet you, James.” John Paul said, turning towards the hallway that James had just come from.

(Hey, this I the author here. This chapter has some uhh hot takes that I personally don't condone, but have to be there for plot reasons (Yes, I'm as shocked as you are that there's a plot, and I'm writing the thing.) Also, people have been 'understandably' asking me what colors the school is. It happens to be grey if you were able to catch that. Really bad sarcasm aside, I hope you have fun reading!")