CUTSCENE

ACE Chapter 2: Cutscene

Hana hit the classroom door at a run.

She was three seconds too late and one second too early — too late to stop the confrontation, just early enough to step between Kai's cocked fist and whatever was about to happen to the new student.

"Kai." Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "Stop."

Kai's jaw tightened. He looked at her — really looked at her — and something behind his eyes shifted from aggression into something uglier.

"You're defending him." Not a question. A verdict.

"I'm asking you to stop—"

"You came running for HIM." His voice cracked on the last word, the performance of confidence slipping just enough to show what was underneath. "You've never once—"

"Kai—"

The fist moved.

Not toward Ace.

Toward her.

The class inhaled as one.

But Hana didn't feel anything.

In the space between the fist leaving Kai's shoulder and arriving at her face, something happened that nobody in the room could fully describe afterward. One moment Ace was seated. The next, Hana was pulled back by her sleeve — gently, almost carefully — and Ace was standing, and Kai's fist had closed on empty air.

Kai blinked.

His vision tilted.

It wasn't pain exactly. More like the ground deciding it was done being the ground. His legs stopped consulting him. The room rotated slowly, gracefully, the way a phone screen rotates when you tilt it — smooth, inevitable, without asking permission.

He was aware of falling. He just couldn't do anything about it.

This is a cutscene, some distant part of his brain observed. I can't skip it.

His friends went down the same way. One by one. No sound, no struggle, just a quiet surrendering to the floor.

The classroom was silent.

Ace stood in the middle of it, hands in his pockets, expression unchanged.

"He just stood there," someone would say later in the nurse's office, genuinely confused. "He didn't do anything. He just stood there."

In the corner of the room, unnoticed by everyone, a boy who had been watching from his seat near the window allowed himself a small smile.

Interesting.

Ren turned back to look outside.

Jimmy — who had been watching the whole thing with the focused attention of someone doing calculations — pulled out his phone before the nurse even arrived.

Senior bro, he typed. You need to see the new transfer.

The hallway outside the science block smelled like floor wax and consequence.

Ace had made it approximately forty meters from the classroom before the wall found him.

There were six of them. Older, broader, wearing their school uniforms with the particular looseness of people who had stopped caring about dress codes because nobody corrected them anymore. They arranged themselves in a loose semicircle with the practiced ease of people who had done this before.

Their leader stepped forward.

He had Kai's jaw. Older, harder, more patient — but the same jaw.

"New friend," he said pleasantly. He pressed one hand flat against the wall beside Ace's head, close enough that Ace had nowhere to go. "I'm Ryo. You might know my little brother."

Ace said nothing.

Ryo tilted his head. "See, that's interesting. Most people at least say hello." He glanced back at his crew with an expression of mild theatrical disappointment. "That's not very friendly, is it."

The punch to the stomach came without announcement — one of the crew, short and fast, stepping in from the left.

Ace absorbed it. Didn't double over. Didn't make a sound. Just looked at the boy who threw it with the same flat expression he'd worn since he walked into the classroom that morning.

Ryo tutted. "That was rude of us. My apologies." He didn't sound apologetic. "Let me ask again. What did you do to my brother?"

Silence.

"Still nothing." Ryo exhaled through his nose. "Okay."

The fists came in numbers after that — more than Ace could reasonably track, from more directions than the hallway should have allowed. He didn't fight back. Didn't cover up with any urgency. Just stood against the wall and took it with the resigned patience of someone waiting for a bus they knew was running late.

Voices somewhere down the hall. Security. The crew dissolved like smoke, Ryo last, straightening his collar as he walked away.

"We'll finish the conversation," he said without turning around.

Hana watched from the stairwell entrance, fingers tight around the strap of her bag.

She'd seen the whole thing. Hadn't moved. Wasn't sure she could have.

When Ace peeled himself off the wall and started walking — not limping, not holding anything, just walking — she followed at a distance, the way you follow something you're not sure is safe to approach.

He took the stairs up.

All the way up.

The roof.

The city spread out below them, indifferent and enormous. The wind was doing something useful with the silence.

Ace sat at the edge, feet hanging, looking at nothing in particular.

Hana approached slowly. Stopped beside him. "Is this seat taken?"

Nothing.

She sat down anyway.

The silence lasted long enough to become comfortable, which surprised her. She was not usually comfortable with silence. She filled it for a living.

"Why," she said finally.

Ace didn't look at her. "Why what."

"You could have stopped them. The hallway. All six of them." She kept her voice even. "Why did you let them hit you."

A pause. "How do you know I could have stopped them."

"Because of what happened in the classroom." She hesitated. "And because of what I read in the principal's office."

Something shifted in his posture. Subtle. "You read my file."

"You were expelled from three schools. Students hospitalized. A teacher." She paused. "Every time you were pushed to the limit first. Every time."

"So."

"So you weren't at your limit today."

He didn't answer that.

Hana looked at her hands. "What did you do to Kai. In the classroom. You didn't touch him."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You do."

Another silence. Longer this time.

Then Ace turned to look at her properly for the first time since she'd sat down. Something in his expression had changed — not open exactly, but calculating. Reassessing.

"You knew about the file," he said slowly. "The expulsions. The incidents." A pause. "Did you know about the other thing."

Hana frowned. "What other thing."

He looked at her for another moment. Then he reached out and took her wrist — not roughly, just firmly, the way you hold something you don't want to drop — and the rooftop disappeared.

The sound hit her first.

Waves. Real ones, close and unhurried, collapsing against sand with the rhythm of something that had been doing this long before either of them existed. The air was different — salt and open space where there had been wind and concrete.

Hana stood very still and looked at the ocean.

Then she looked at Ace.

Then she looked at the ocean again.

"How—" She turned a full circle, confirming that the school was, in fact, not anywhere. "How are we — this is a beach. This is an actual beach. We were just on the roof—"

"You said you knew my secret," Ace said. He was watching her with something that might have been mild interest. "I assumed you meant this."

Hana's mouth opened. Closed.

"The file," she said carefully. "I only read the file. Previous schools. Incidents. I didn't — I don't know anything about—" She gestured at the ocean. At the impossible distance from school. At everything. "This."

The silence that followed was a different kind than the one on the roof.

Ace looked at the water. Something moved behind his eyes — not quite emotion, but the shadow of it.

"Then I made a mistake," he said quietly.

Hana sat down on the sand because her legs suggested it was time. The waves kept doing what waves do, unbothered.

"So," she said after a moment. "You can teleport."

"Among other things."

"And you thought I knew."

"I thought you were something specific." He paused. "I was wrong."

Hana absorbed this. The sun was doing something nice on the water. Under different circumstances she might have taken a photo.

"Are you going to send us back," she asked.

"Eventually."

She nodded slowly. "Okay." A beat. "Can I ask you something first."

He didn't say no, which she was learning to interpret as yes.

"The classroom," she said. "Kai and his friends — you said you didn't do it. I believe you." She hesitated. "Do you know who did?"

Ace was quiet for long enough that she thought he wasn't going to answer.

"There's someone in that class," he said finally, almost to himself. "Someone who did that." His eyes stayed on the water. "I just don't know who yet."

The waves came in. The waves went out.

Somewhere in the city, Ren sat at his desk and looked out the window, and smiled at nothing in particular.