Bully

The lunch hall was a storm.

Not loud.

Just packed.

Lines of students pressed so close the air itself felt borrowed.

Voices tumbling over each other, static turning to song.

Plates clattered.

Someone dropped a cup.

The sound vanished in the noise.

The room itself seemed alive, breathing in the edges of every conversation and letting out something tense and electric.

Astrae didn't wait for me to catch up.

She carved through the crowd like she'd done it a thousand times.

Chin high. Shoulders set.

I kept just behind her. Steps small.

If she noticed, she didn't say anything.

I felt like I was trailing her shadow—an old coat, slung over a chair, forgotten but still taking up space.

In line, Astrae reached for a plate.

She didn't check what landed on it—just scooped up cubes of something pale, a thin orange stew, a blue fruit that oozed sticky liquid when she set it down.

I followed her cue. Hands uncertain, moving the way you do when you want to pass for normal.

The smell was sharp. Almost chemical. Almost familiar.

Somewhere behind it all, there was the bite of memory. Something that stung the back of my nose.

"Don't think. Just eat."

Astrae's voice was dry, but there was an edge to it that cut the noise down to size.

Her eyes found mine for half a second, then slipped away.

We wove through tables, searching for an open spot—one that didn't already belong to someone else.

Most faces flickered if you looked too long. Features rearranging, edges blurring.

The whole hall felt like a place halfway between real and remembered.

As if if you blinked too fast, you'd fall out of it.

A sudden laugh caught Astrae's attention.

Ruel flagged us down, grinning wide. Hair bleached nearly white. Eyes always scanning for the next joke or threat.

His hoodie was tied around his waist; he looked like he'd slept through a storm and woken up ready to fight the sky.

Nilus sat on his left, reading through the lines of a thick book. His fork moving slow and steady, dark skin catching the overhead lights, face calm as rain.

Sylas hunched close, elbows tucked, glasses perched at the tip of his nose, a notebook open and scribbled with more ink than sense.

Quintin was already lost behind the blue glow of his phone. Buzzed hair, eyes barely open, thumbs moving with the sleepy rhythm of someone who'd mastered the art of vanishing.

Astrae slid in next to Ruel like she'd never left.

I took the spot beside her. Knees bumping the underside of the table. The metal felt cold. I tried not to flinch.

"Try the fruit," Ruel said, waving a blue-stained fork at me, voice big enough to draw a glance from two tables over.

"Might dye your tongue blue for the rest of your life. Or just a week."

Nilus looked up from his page. His voice was soft, polite, measured.

"First time's always a little strange. You get used to it."

Sylas didn't glance up.

"Don't trust anything that glows."

I stared at the blue fruit. It glistened, bleeding a thin ribbon of juice down the side of the plate.

I bit in. Sweet, then sharp, then sour.

The taste changed every time I swallowed—like biting into something I used to love, then learning it was gone.

I ate more anyway.

Around us, the table fell into an easy kind of rhythm.

Ruel launched into a story about his last practical—getting caught in a memory loop, barely escaping before the bell.

Nilus corrected the details, slow and gentle.

Sylas scribbled something in his book, then flicked a smile at Quintin, who didn't notice.

Astrae leaned in, whispering small jokes only I could hear, her breath warm at the edge of my ear.

Every now and then, she'd nudge me with her knee, just enough to let me know she was real.

The noise stretched and bent, laughter skating across plates and trays.

There was a looseness to it. An absence of cruelty.

No one here needed to be loud to take up space.

Then the temperature in the room shifted.

The kind of hush that slides in before you realize something's wrong.

Chairs scraped—one, then two.

I looked up.

At the far end, a group of upperclassmen blocked a narrow table. Bodies crowding close.

One of them leaned over a smaller boy—a first-year, maybe. Hair dark and plastered flat. Hands tight around a lunch tray that looked too heavy for him.

"Heard Strays bring bad luck," one of the older kids said, voice just a little too loud to be a joke. "You want that sitting next to you?"

The table beside us stilled.

Nilus set down his fork, marking his page with the edge of his hand.

Sylas looked up, jaw tight.

Quintin's thumb hovered over his screen, not moving.

Astrae's voice found me, low but bright.

"Go on," she murmured. "You're not a ghost. Right?"

I felt everyone's eyes land.

My legs didn't want to work. I made them.

The whole room narrowed—noise fading, breath thinned.

I stood.

Each step was heavier than the last.

The upperclassmen only shifted when I got close. Bodies tensing, like they'd been waiting for a reason.

Three of them. Older. All built like they'd played contact sports in another life.

The leader's smile was wide. Cold. The kind that shows too many teeth.

"You new?" he asked.

His voice played at being friendly, but the words were sandpaper.

"Lost?"

I ignored him.

I looked at the boy—the way his shoulders curled, the line of fear in his jaw, how he gripped the tray like it was the only thing left.

His eyes stayed down.

"Leave him alone."

I didn't plan to say it.

My voice sounded flat, too small for the room, but it cut through.

Laughter rippled.

The leader stepped closer, trying to crowd me out.

"Or what?" he said, leaning in. His breath smelled like something burnt.

Something in me shifted. Not anger, not courage—just a space where fear should have been.

The air went taut.

Astrae's gaze burned into my back. I could feel Ruel's silence. Nilus's chair sliding out.

The room felt like it had tilted.

The leader grinned.

"Strays don't belong. You don't get it. You think you can just—"

I moved before I could talk myself out of it.

Between.

The skill flickered, the world stuttering, colors going pale and edges losing their bite.

For a second, nobody could see me. I slipped through the space beside him, behind him.

Time didn't so much stop as hold its breath.

Threshold Drift shimmered under my skin, a note of warning in the air.

He tried to turn. Couldn't.

For two and a half seconds, every threat in the room went cold.

The other two blinked, eyes sliding off me like I'd stopped existing.

I leaned in. Not a whisper, just quiet.

"You don't want to do this," I said.

Something snapped.

The leader sat down so hard his tray rattled, eyes blank.

The other two followed.

Shaken, blinking.

As if the world had skipped a beat and tried to catch up. I stepped back into myself.

The spell broke.

The room rushed in.

The boy with the tray looked up, eyes wide and wet. I nodded at our table.

"Come on," I said. My voice was steadier now. "You're with us."

He didn't move at first, then stood slow, like his body had to remember how.

He walked the long way around the crowded tables and slid into the empty spot at the end of ours.

Nobody stopped him. Nobody said a word.

A ripple passed through the hall.

Uneasy, half-impressed, half-afraid.

A moment of silence, then the noise started up again. Louder. Looser. As if the tension had only ever been a ghost.

I sat down.

Astrae flashed a smile, digging into her stew.

"That was dramatic," she whispered, voice low, teasing. "You planning to make a habit of it?"

Ruel thumped my back.

"Didn't know you had that in you, Stray."

Nilus's eyes lingered on mine, something new in them.

"You made an impression," he said.

Sylas laughed, honest and sharp.

"Bet no one pulls that on a first-year again."

Quintin looked up from his phone for the first time. His mouth twisted—half-smile, half-surprise.

"About time."

The table felt different. Like we'd been let in on a secret nobody else knew.

The boy at the end—he still held his tray tight, but his shoulders eased a little.

He didn't speak, but he didn't need to.

I finished my lunch.

The food was bland, flavorless, but I ate every bite.

It tasted like staying. Like earning a place instead of just drifting through.

We stayed after the bell. Nobody hurried. No one wanted to be the first to let the world back in.

The hall thinned, voices trailing off.

Astrae drew lines in the condensation on her plate.

Ruel made a joke that didn't land.

Nilus read. Sylas and Quintin argued about something I couldn't hear.

The boy at the end stared at nothing, but for once, it looked like peace.

Eventually, we stood.

We drifted toward the doors, slow, letting the noise build back up around us.

I looked back—just once—at the table.

It was just a table. But for a while, it had been a shelter.

For the first time since arriving, I didn't feel like I was pretending to be real.

I was here. I belonged.

And when I left the hall, I did it without looking over my shoulder.