Project: Death for Classroom Zero

Chapter 71: Boundaries

Lurking in the darkness, she was staring at a small monitor screen.

If things like her could only sigh, she would have done it. However, because she is a creature that was only made—or maybe remade—on wires and metals, there were things that is limited to what she can do. Even though she is alive, yes, she could feel it, but somehow, she still felt death inside of her.

She has thoughts. Free will. Thinking capacity that made humans as humans—of course she would have, because she had her brain attached on her: rewired and connected to complex circuits of wires and metallic elements.

She is once a human. A beautiful one.

Cassandra Hernandez is a beautiful woman who has a lot of dreams in life. She is a hard-working woman, intelligent, and is someone who always values virtue. With her passion and perseverance, she was able to apply in one of the most prestigious high schools found in the world. Josen High School of the elites.

Truth is, she is not an elite student. Even though she is not poor; can able to sustain her meals more than three times a day, she was not as rich or as elite as the others.

She had not expected herself that she would be admitted to one of the most prestigious school. It fascinates her. On the first day of her highschool life, she was awestruck of the prestige beauty of the school: big buildings, well-equipped laboratories, clean cafeteria, and a serene type of school where one can study peacefully even just sitting on the Bermuda grass, at the center of the school.

As a young woman, full of dreams, she was optimistic of everything. However, the day passed, and she was hit by a hard reality.

Most of her classmates made her a laughing figure. A clown.

She was a proud scholar of the academy. At least that is what she was, before she realized that being a scholar in this school is a matter of shame and is being treated as disgusting. It has hit her hard time. When she introduced herself on the class, proud of saying that she was able to join the prestigious school because of full-grant scholarship, almost everyone has laughed at her. It was the most embarrassing part of her life. While standing in front of the class, broken and confused while listening to the manic laughs of her classmate, it seemed that all of her optimisms, all of her built dreams and passion, was demolished just because she was judged by others only because of her scholarship.

It was a petty and absurd judgement she had received. She was confused, thinking how does her status in life affects the treatments of others to her. Back in their place, in their small community, when the news that she was accepted at Josen High School as a scholar, everyone in there celebrated. Everyone was proud of her and her achievements, and her dedication, and her hardworks just to slowly achieve her dream. It was a blissful moment. However, the reality had hit her inside the classroom that she was once standing, shamed: everyone studying inside this prestigious school are sons and daughters if elites. They are rich. Full of money stuck in their pockets—and she was not. The social status she has, compared to them, has made a clear set of boundary and reasons.

However, it would be too hard to say that everyone of them has the same views; has the same treatment to a person just like her. Ironically, she found that in a basket full of rotten tomatoes, there are still fresh, red, and plump tomatoes that remains thriving. It was a bad analogy. However, she remained into that belief, for those people who treated her as a trash, is perhaps much more worse than being a rotten tomato.

Inside the Josen High School, she met friends—they were very few, but real, and does not judge her for being who she was. She has survived the school for four years, trying to either fight or ignore the left and right shaming of the people around her. She was a fighter. She could not tell to her parents what was happening to her, because she knew that they will immediately take action on to it, and would decide to make her drop out of the academy—which she does not want. Even though it was hard for her, yes it was, but she has a lot of dreams. Even though at the first day of her school, those dreams were abolished and ruthlessly ruined, she found her way to reconstruct it, and plaster it with tight hopes and perseverance. Graduating in this prestigious academy would bring her far. And so, she decided that she will swallow every bullying, every shame, every laughs, just to make sure that she would graduate from the academy—with highest flying colors.

It should be another usual day for Cassandra when she became a Senior High School student. It was her first day as a Senior High School, and what she was bringing inside her, as she walks on the campus, was the thought that she only needs to swallow everything for just the span of two years only. She had made it out of the Junior High for four years, and now she only needs to finish her suffering for another couple of years. She kept on telling herself that it was just only a short period of time.

It should be another normal day. She was expecting that she will be bullied once again, especially by those self-proclaimed Queen bees of the school.

It all changed though, when Arvin Gray Sindric came into her life. Her Senior High School years had became blissful and full of euphoric memories. At least half of her memories was. The rest, she doesn’t want to remember it anymore.

Perhaps, it was just only a fragment of memory. It will only remain as part of her memory. Her past. It could only be repeated inside her Artificial Intelligence imagination. Those happy thoughts, those blissful memories, it would never happen to her anymore.

Because the moment that she became obsessed with that kind of bliss, she ended up here, inside a dark room, moving with her metal bodies, and carefully watching kids who was trying to escape from a hellish place, hoping that their plans would succeed, and would help them the best that she could, just like how ‘See You’ had been helping Tristan. The only problem that those kids trying to escape has been unknowingly facing, is that on their group, two of them is a traitor: one is a great actress wannabe, one is a silent liar.

As she wonder through the screens and monitor, she noticed that a figure was about to approach the place where she was working. Quickly, she closed the monitors, and shut down all of the systems she had activated. She went back from the place her owner had left her, and then pretended as if she was doing nothing.

When the door opened, a figure of a handsome man appeared.

“Welcome back, Copper,” she greeted in the most joyful tone she could pull, even though she does not have any energy anymore.

“I told you that you should be opening the lights if you wanted to. Why do you always want to lurk in the dark?” Copper asked, chuckling, while opening the vintage light of the room.

“As I’ve been saying, I prefer lights off than lights on,” she said, pretending to tease him.

Copper chuckled. He seemed to be in a good mood. “I have a good news for you.”

“What is it, my master?”

The good news, she doesn’t think it was good for her.

“We finally captured Arvin.” Her heart sank. She felt broken even though she currently does not have any physical heart.