Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

I didn’t know if I slept for an hour or three. What I knew was that my body had opinions about the previous night and was expressing all of them simultaneously. Running. Window jumping. The warehouse. The city street. Daphne’s bathroom. All of it sitting in my muscles like an itemized invoice.

"Bram." Sherry’s knock. The specific rhythm of someone who had already waited longer than she wanted to.

I bathed, dressed, and got out. Our daily routine, assembled without discussion, running on its own now.

The corridor was already moving. Students heading somewhere that wasn’t class.

Wells was at the doorway, and when he saw us his face did the thing that faces do when shared experience creates the kind of bond that doesn’t need to be announced. Last night had built something between the five of us that hadn’t existed before it.

"Morning." He fell into step with us briefly. "Assembly. General. Dean called it."

"Thank you, Wells," Sherry said.

We followed the flow of students toward a building I hadn’t known existed. The gym. Large, high-ceilinged, with the specific echo of a space built for noise and currently receiving plenty of it. Juniors already seated in the arranged chaos of students who hadn’t been told why they were there yet and were filling the uncertainty with conversation.

Sherry and I found our bench at the back. We always found the back bench. It was a preference we had arrived at independently and confirmed without discussion.

Annabelle, Isabelle, and Mable came in together. They moved as a unit.

"I think the government wants to send us outside the walls," one of the junior boys said, loudly enough to carry several rows.

Laughter.

"That would actually work for Jo," another one said. "Only chance he gets to be laid by a zombie."

More laughter. I kept my face neutral and thought about the plain and said nothing.

Miss Brown entered. Navy blue suit. Black heels. Daphne two steps behind her, smartly dressed, her expression the careful professional one she wore when she was managing something internally. Professor Bagins beside her, carrying the posture of a man who had been given information he found pleasing and was working to contain how pleasing he found it. The noise died in stages.

"Good morning, Hogsby."

"Good morning," the hall replied.

"My name is Brown. Dean of this school." She said it the way she said everything, direct, no warmup. "I’ve called a general assembly because I have important things to pass along."

She paused.

"First. This week, Hogsby produced its first confirmed level up."

The juniors clapped. Not the polished response of seniors who had witnessed it. The genuine response of students who had been hearing it as a rumor and were now being told it was real.

"You can clap," she said, allowing it, "because no institution has ever done it. We were first." She waited. "And then we did it a second time in the same week. The first time might be luck. Twice is mastery."

The applause was harder this time. Students sitting up. Something shifting in the room, the specific shift of people who had been operating on low hope and just had it adjusted upward.

"She’s a good leader," Sherry said quietly beside me.

Good, I thought. If only you knew—last night’s mission was built on a lie. "Yes," I said. "She is."

"The main reason I called this assembly," Miss Brown continued, "is to celebrate this achievement." A pause. "And for one other thing. Minor."

Minor, she said, with the delivery of someone who knew it was not minor.

"Yesterday I told the seniors I had received an offer. A larger institution. Dean of School Central." She looked at the room. "I told them I turned it down."

The hall applauded. Genuine. Grateful. The sound of students who had feared losing something and been told they weren’t losing it. She waited for it to settle.

"This morning I’m here to tell you that I’m leaving Hogsby."

The applause stopped like something had been switched off.

The room went emotional in the way large rooms go emotional, quietly and all at once, the sound of seventy students absorbing something they hadn’t prepared for.

"Nineteen years," she said. "And I believe this is the right time."

I looked at her from the back bench. Last night she had spoken Hogsby’s closing into a microphone at midnight, afraid, reaching for one of the people she trusted.

This morning she was standing in front of her entire school in a navy blue suit delivering it as a choice. Whatever had happened between midnight and this morning, whatever calculation she had run and what answer it had produced, she had decided to frame it as departure rather than defeat.

She’s not protecting the school, I thought.

Or she was—and I just didn’t understand how yet..

"Professor Bagins will serve as the new dean effective today." She turned and handed it over with the practiced grace of someone who had rehearsed this particular movement.

Bagins stepped forward. All smiles. The smile of a man who had wanted something for a long time and was now holding it with both hands and trying to look like he’d expected it all along.

A hand went up in the juniors.

"I’ll take questions after," she said. The hand stayed up. She looked at it. "Okay."

"Are you leaving ability education? And where are you going?"

"School Central," she said simply.

Sophia Vale’s offer. Accepted. After turning it down publicly yesterday morning, after building this assembly around the celebration of what Hogsby had achieved, she had called Sophia in the night and said yes. Something had moved her. I didn’t know what it was yet.

"We’ll miss her," Sherry said.

I thought about the seniors. Annabelle, Mable, Isabelle, May, Wells. Bagins and Sophia had arranged for Miss Brown to take her best students with her to School Central. A larger institution. A city school. Significantly more ability users than Hogsby had ever housed.

"Yes," I said. "We will."

"Let’s welcome Dean Bagins," Miss Brown said, stepping back.

The students clapped. Some of them. Enough of them.

"Seniors," she added, as she moved toward the side door. "I’ll see you in your classroom."

The assembly ended. Students began filing out. I stayed on the back bench and watched Bagins at the front, still smiling, receiving congratulations from junior students who didn’t know what they were congratulating yet. He thought he had won.

Good luck with that, I thought.

What had forced Miss Brown to accept the job was a mystery I didn’t have all the pieces to yet.

But whatever it was, it had moved fast enough to change everything overnight. And I had the feeling it wasn’t done moving.