Aurora Over a Dead World

"Zenith!! Why did you miss class yesterday? Are you okay? You seem kind of frustrated and tense," Delilah asks me as I walk into the teachers’ lounge. I look at her, then at the table where no one else is sitting. She got here absurdly early again, or maybe she never even left the academy yesterday.

"I’m fine. What the hell are you doing here at the academy so early? It’s four in the morning." Since I stayed home yesterday, I ended up going to bed early, which made me wake up at three in the morning. So I just got ready and came to school even earlier than usual.

"I’m just working on something!!" she says excitedly, but the dark circles under her eyes are still terrible, same as always. I glance at the things on her desk—a small disc-shaped robot.

"Looks like a pretty professional project," I say, making conversation about the machine I’m looking at. Her robot reminds me that the robots from that suspicious hooded woman were sent off to be dismantled. They haven’t told me anything about what they found, so it seems like that hooded woman is a serious problem.

"Oh yes! I’ve been building robots for a while now, although this one’s failing!! They’re all failing, look!" She grabs my hand, practically pulling me closer to her project.

"..."

"Isn’t that the capsule from a vector weapon? Do you have permission to use that?" I ask as she turns the robot on.

"Of course I do!" she says as a small screen pops up on the robot. I see a program with a really simple interface, almost crude.

"You didn’t use Nexus’s help?"

"No! I prefer to do everything on my own. More credit for me!" she says with a smile on her face, but all I can do is stare at the dark circles under her eyes and find it strange that she’s so energetic.

"What’s this robot for?" I ask, stepping back a little from her. I’m not fully okay yet, so I’m easily irritated, and I don’t want to get stressed right now. Class starts in a few hours.

"Nothing. It has no purpose. It’s just an interesting machine I created. Not everything needs to have a purpose to exist, Zenith!! Sometimes things are created for no reason at all."

"Like us! Humans—why are we born? What were we created for? There’s no exact reason, just like this robot. It has no reason or purpose at all, and it can only perform certain basic functions I found interesting to test," she murmurs, using a screwdriver to unscrew a piece.

"I didn’t think you’d be good at this."

"Eh... I’m more or less okay at it! I’m not actually good at making robots!" she murmurs while I lean back in a chair, resting my tail on the table so the chair doesn’t just break under my weight.

"Delilah, don’t you have a life outside the academy?" I’ve never seen her leave the academy, and Nexus never found anything very relevant about her before.

"Ah... you know how it is, right? Hahaha," she says with a laugh, but she kind of dodges the question.

"...Haa... whatever." I just grab my phone and do some research. I’ve finally learned how civilian phones actually work. Unlike military ones, which are way simpler in the interface to make them easier to use quickly, civilian phones are full of options, so it took me some time to learn.

I do various light, general searches, trying to see what most people do or use for entertainment. Some other teachers arrive in the lounge and start adjusting their class materials while I ignore them. When class time comes, I stand up, say goodbye to Delilah, and walk to my classroom.

’I wonder what they did yesterday.’ Since I missed class yesterday, I even got a formal complaint from Astrid by message, because I didn’t warn her I’d be absent and she only found out very late. So the students were stuck in the classroom the whole time.

"Haa..." I open the classroom door, walking in and seeing that everyone is in their seats. This reminds me of a few months ago—they were all so disorganized back then. Now everyone is in position.

"Today I think we can head to the simulator to test your skills. All of you have improved a lot in teamwork, decision-making, and your ability to reduce the damage you take. You should already be able to handle the simulator mission much more easily now," I tell them what we’re going to do right away as I enter the room, noticing that everyone is looking at me strangely.

"Something wrong?" I ask without understanding, pulling a lollipop from my clothes. My tail pulls the chair over for me to sit down, while the atmosphere is weirder than usual.

"Say something. Come on, you don’t need to hold back. You all look like you want to say something."

"Professor... we’re really sorry about what happened to you a few years ago. It was terrible watching you lose your limbs, but it was amazing seeing how you saved so many people and the effort you made to save those who were important to you. We watched the recordings of that moment with our hearts racing! A–"

"...What did you say, Eirwen? What recordings?" I cut Eirwen off. She’d started speaking in a way that tried not to come across badly, but she mentioned something that doesn’t make sense.

"Huh?" Eirwen looks confused when I ask that.

"The ones of you saving a piece of the island, obviously. I didn’t know a piece of it had fallen, so it was incredible to see that you were the one who saved that piece."

"!!!"

"WHAT THE HELL?! WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?!" I jump up from my chair, shouting at them.

"..." Everyone looks at Tanya, who seems confused by my reaction. I glare at her with rage while I crush the lollipop stick.

"You!!"

"I–I just brought some recordings! I was trying to help. Don’t you want them to know what you did?" she says, as if that’s an excuse for violating my privacy.

"Where the hell did you get recordings of me?"

"My family, obviously!" She says it so proudly, as if she hasn’t committed a terrible crime. Just the possession of military recordings marked for deletion is already a terrible crime!

And not only does she have them in her possession, she spread them to other people like it was some random documentary video.

"..." I look at all of them, and then I realize why the atmosphere is so strange.

"You all think this is okay? None of you even tried to say how wrong it was to watch what this stupid bitch brought to school?!" I look at Charlotte and then at Eirwen. The two of them could have easily realized they couldn’t just watch this kind of thing.

"..." I walk over to Tanya, grabbing her hand and pulling her phone out of her clothes.

"Nexus, why didn’t you do anything?" I ask Nexus through her phone while I shove Tanya back into her chair.

"[The data belongs to Neo and not to me. There wasn’t much I could do, but only the six of them know about this,]" Nexus says while looking at each and every one of these damn rebels.

"Listen here, you little shits. This can get you at least ten years in prison! And your talent wouldn’t stop that from happening!! Do you know how problematic a confidential content leak is?!! And worse, you invaded MY privacy."

"If I wanted you to know about the crap from my past, I would have told you!" I don’t want anyone knowing about my past. It’s my private life, and only those who were there with me deserve to know.

"W–Why are you so mad?! I was just trying to help! Now we all respect you a little more!" Tanya says, as if I care more about their respect than my personal privacy.

"Listen, you idiot—would you like it if I got ahold of naked photos of you and spread them around for everyone to see!!?!"

"O–Of course not! But this is different—"

"No, it’s not!! It’s my privacy. You had no right to see it, much less spread intimate information about my life... Everyone get out. Go to the simulator right now." I have a headache now. The day was already bad since yesterday, and now there’s this on top of it.

"..." Sensing the bad mood, most of them leave the room. Only Tanya stays, as if she’s somehow in the right about all this.

"I’m sorry, Professor..." Eirwen says, closing the door, realizing things went too far.

"Why are you so ungrateful?! I was just trying to give you the recognition they took from you, to show that someone would still know you did something incredible!! If you were that heroine in the past, why are you such a piece of trash person now?" I hold myself back hard to keep from punching this damn brat and breaking her stuck-up nose.

"..." I rub my temples, calming myself down.

"Tanya, your family seems pretty influential, doesn’t it? Do you think they got that kind of information legally? If you saw the video, it must have been made clear that it wasn’t meant to be shown to anyone."

"What you think doesn’t matter. I don’t want recognition. I don’t want gratitude. I want to be left in peace. Is that so hard to understand? I HAVEN’T changed at all. I was like this in the past too."

"A recording doesn’t define my personality. Are you really that desperate for a compliment from me? That’s pathetic."

"...What?" She looks in shock when I say that.

"You’re so desperate for empty validation. You think this is the way to earn it? You just disappointed me. I can accept a lot of things—your rebelliousness, your disobedience, the problems you cause me. But if there’s one thing I won’t accept, it’s someone invading my privacy like this."

"..." I look at her with disgust and then walk out of the room. The others are guilty for not refusing to watch, but I understand that the blame started entirely with Tanya.

"You know... I really had high hopes for you. Your talent is incredible, and I actually had big plans for your future... I never expected I’d be so disappointed in someone." I slam the door, leaving her alone as I head toward the simulator to just get to work already.

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