___

Smoke rose from my lips–the familiar taste of nicotine burning the very lungs they so ominously craved.

Rain poured from the sky as I sat underneath my school’s front entrance. Chatter from my class came through the window, muffled. I was sure my homeroom teacher was glancing down towards me even not, not that he’d actually bother to say anything. I’d broken him ages ago.

As long as I kept my smoking away from the rest of the class, I was free.

“Bitch,” I muttered, grabbing my phone while it vibrated like a fiend in my pocket. Nothing important. It never was.

My damp sleeves weighed me down. We weren't required to wear long sleeves, not for another month at least, but there was something so comforting about the soft fabric that reached all the way to the tips of my wrist. The fact they hid my bruises also saved a ton of explaining to my nosy classmates.

Another wave of vibrations came from my pocket, my arm millimeters away from tossing my phone into the concrete. Couldn’t someone give a girl a bit of free time?

All that for a dumb email. With righteous fury, I opened the message, ready to delete the thing on the spot, yet, something about the message made me pause. It wasn’t the simple text, nor the random string of letters that made up the address, but rather a single line at the bottom of the page.

“For those who are chosen, a better place awaits those lucky few.”

What kind of cultish gibberish was this? I could barely read the rest without my eyes glazing over in boredom. Way too much otaku speak for any normal person to read.

Whatever. I just gave my cigarette one last puff, tossing it nonchalantly on the concrete.