Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

We stood outside the classroom in the specific quiet of people who had shared something the night before and were now standing in the daylight aftermath of it.

Me, Sherry, Annabelle, Wells, Mute. The five of us who had crossed the city and come back.

"I don’t get it," Annabelle said. "Yesterday she was ready to fight for Hogsby no matter what. What changed overnight?"

"I thought the job locked in the funding," she went on. "We did what Kim wanted. So why’s she leaving?"

Nobody had an answer. Because nobody else had heard what I heard through Daphne’s walls at midnight.

"Last night was the best night of my life," Wells said, with the specific conviction of someone who’d discovered what his ability felt like at full power and was already missing the rush. "I was hoping for more jobs. Real ones."

Someone wants to use his ability, I thought, watching his face. Good. That energy’s going to be useful.

"Loved every second," Annabelle said, glancing at me with a look that covered about three different things at once.

Mute stood slightly apart, arms crossed, listening without adding anything. His default. But he was there, which two days ago he wouldn’t have been, and I noted the difference.

"There she is." Annabelle tilted her head.

Miss Brown came down the corridor with Daphne. Both composed, moving with purpose. Not the purpose of someone bringing good news.

We filed in and found our seats. I was just settling into the familiar shape of the back bench when I caught something.

Daphne glanced at me for exactly one second when she entered, then looked deliberately away and didn’t look back. The specific avoidance of someone managing a situation in real time. She kept her face professional and her eyes everywhere except where I was sitting.

Good morning, I thought.

Miss Brown stood at the front.

"Good morning again." She got a few thin, cautious responses. The room knew she’d changed her position overnight and was waiting to find out what that meant for them.

"I’m not here to argue," she said. "I’m here to tell you I’m still with you."

She paused, letting the murmuring settle.

"Hogsby won’t have a senior class after today."

"What?" Someone in the front row.

"You heard me." She didn’t soften it. "I’m taking you all with me to School Central."

Isabelle’s hand shot up.

"Yes, Ellie."

Ellie, I thought. Miss Brown calls her Ellie.

"I thought you needed our permission." Not quite a question. The frustrated argument of someone who’d expected a different conversation.

"Your parents and guardians have already been told. School Central has more—more exposure, the city, real opportunities after you level up." She said it like a list of facts, not a sales pitch. "Guaranteed placement if you hit par."

Isabelle stayed standing.

"So what are we giving up by leaving here?"

Miss Brown paused. "Everything’s better at Central. The only difference is they don’t provide food. You’d have to feed yourselves."

"That’s kind of a big deal you didn’t mention."

"Ellie. Your guardians know."

Isabelle sat down, still not happy, which was the right reaction. She had a point and the room knew it.

Miss Brown looked at all of us.

"This isn’t negotiable. Today’s your last day at Hogsby. The administration decided." She said it without apology. Final. Clean. "Get ready. Say goodbye to whoever you need to say goodbye to." A pause. "Tomorrow morning, early, you come with me."

Daphne and I locked eyes.

One second. Two. Something passed between us—no words for it in a classroom, just an acknowledgment, a question, an answer to something neither of us had asked out loud yet. Then she looked away and I turned to the window.

She’s got her ability back, I thought. Whatever she had before the burnout, she woke up with it again. She’ll have to figure out what to do with that.

"I’m sorry," Miss Brown said, in a tone that meant it but also knew it changed nothing. "That’s all."

She left. Daphne followed without looking back.

The classroom sat with it for a moment. Then the noise started, the specific noise of students rearranging their plans around new information.

One day left at Hogsby.

I looked at the back bench, the window, the familiar shape of a room that had been mine for less than two weeks and somehow become something I recognized.

The city, I thought. More students. Bigger campus. No food, which means we need money—missions, work, both.

I ran the list in my head. School Central, I thought. Let’s go.

****

The rest of the day passed in a blur of packing and saying things that didn’t need words. Then evening came.

By evening, the campus had changed. Not quieter. Louder.

The room was the same. The bed, the table, the boarded wall with the tissue still in the hole. But the atmosphere had shifted—the specific way of places that know they’re being left. Everything looked slightly more itself than usual. The way things do when you’re about to stop seeing them.

We’d been told to prepare. One night. Tomorrow, School Central.

I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling and let my mind go where it wanted. It went to Mary Stam.

Not Hogsby. Not the move. Mary, a wound in her side, a gun she’d eventually put down. I’d charged her enough to walk out through a window and into the city. Whether she’d made it to a hospital, whether level seven shadow walking was enough to get her somewhere safe before the wound made the decision for her, I didn’t know.

I hope you made it, I thought.

Then my mind moved to Daphne. Miss Brown had said all seniors were going to School Central. Daphne wasn’t a senior. She was a teacher, different category, which meant tomorrow morning when the cars came, she might not be in one.

I sat up. The campus was still loud outside. Students were saying goodbye in their own ways. I had my own goodbye to find.

I stood up and walked out.

One night left. I wasn’t wasting it.