Chapter 1: A Hectic Morning
There is a relatively small town called Dwindabre, in a county named Dravrim’s Respite, in the south of a little country named J-Land, in a parallel universe planet mirroring Earth called Janiki. Dwindabre is a small and peaceful town with a surprisingly high amount of non-suburban infrastructure for its size and a low crime rate to follow!
In recent times, Dwindabre has also been crowned the town with the least ‘Villain and Criminal Activity’ in the southern end of J-Land, according to the internet, and since Josephnite Flyer broke free from his ‘Golden Phase’ near the start of two-thousand-one hundred and twenty-one, this year. However, the rest of J-Land and the whole of Janiki have seen its villainous and criminal activity spike drastically since Josephnite Flyer’s reintroduction into the hero world.
Since Dwindabre is a small town, it only has a select number of shops and buildings in the local area that it needs to function as a ‘small suburban town’ for the people who live here. However, the rest of the buildings in Dwindabre are built for office workers who travel far from their homes outside of Dwindabre to work inside Dwindabre.
All of the main buildings people need in Dwindabre are within walking distance but are mainly located in the town centre itself, which is anywhere from five to eight minutes or more from the average Dwindabre house. Getting to anything else that wasn’t in Dwindabre is at least twenty-five kilometres away from Dwindabre.
The best mode of transportation for the people of Dwindabre wishing to leave Dwindabre for commuting or other travel purposes is to travel by train since it is more active, faster, and cheaper to pay for, rather than getting a bus straight out of town and to where they needed to go.
A lot of the independent local shops were eventually weeded out due to the declining population of Dwindabre around ten years ago. But, of all the places that weren’t forced to move out of Dwindabre or shrank down in physical building size were the local secondary schools.
The secondary schools in Dwindabre were made into two separate buildings by the local Dwindabre council over one hundred years ago! One building was built for the ‘junior’ secondary school students in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-year classes respectively. In these years were teenagers between twelve to sixteen years old.
While the other secondary school building was to be built away from the ‘junior’ secondary school building and on the other side of Dwindabre, this secondary school is only for the ‘senior’ secondary school students who were in their 4th, 5th, and 6th-year classes respectively. Teenagers aged from sixteen to nineteen years old are present in this school.
At the time of their creation, these two secondary schools were set up with two separate names to make it all the more confusing for the parents inside and outside of Dwindabre wishing to enlist their child into one of Dwindabre’s secondary schools.
The junior secondary school was named after the current principal’s grandmother, Mrs Drillhole, and was called Mrs Drillhole’s Secondary School. At the same time, the other secondary school in Dwindabre was called Dwindabre Secondary School for Seniors or just Dwindabre Secondary School for short and is currently run by the principal known as Kevin Gravdol!
The councilman who approved these plans for the division of the two cycles of secondary school students and the secondary schools themselves over a hundred years ago stated.
“I know it’s been years since anyone has been able to directly make sense of one of the Legend’s messages from my family’s past, but I believe that my family line was in charge of setting up these secondary schools in this fashion! What this will achieve is currently beyond me. Still, I do hope that in the future the future council members will figure it out one day, even if I pass away without seeing the reason why my family was entrusted with the Legendary message of separating the schools into two. May these schools reach their maximum purpose and potential, even after my death!”
Dwindabre is far from many other towns in Dravrim’s Respite; hence, the next town is over twenty-five kilometres away by train. The town’s residents mostly use hydrogen or hybrid cars to get around since the housing estates and houses in these areas are more spread out than in other cities in Dravrim’s Respite. People without a motorised licenced vehicle use bicycles or motorized scooters if they have a lesser licence to use one and cannot afford a licenced vehicle.
Around a fifteen-minute walk from Dwindabre’s town centre is a collection of detached houses made of red bricks and white windowsills on Bragondrove Street. These houses are identical, with only a few tiny differences between them. Like the cars parked in the driveway, the blinds/curtains used in the house owner’s windows and so on.
One of these houses housed a girl who was interrupted by her bizarre dream that she was having and starting to feel a sense of panic and dread from her mother’s call from down the stairs of her house. This girl’s mother, Samantha Aweber, shouted from the bottom of the stairs while lowering her left hand down from her mouth as she finished shouting up to her daughter, Sherry Aweber, once she heard Sherry make some noise in her bedroom. Samantha had asked Sherry.
“Sherry! Have you bought your new uniform yet!?”
Samantha Aweber, nicknamed ‘Sam’ to her partner and friends along with ‘mom’ by Sherry, had pink hair just like Sherry’s but was just a shade darker than Sherry’s hair colour. However, Samantha’s eyes were also pink, just like her hair, and unlike Sherry’s light blue eyes that she got from her father.
Samantha stood at the height of five foot six inches tall and was wearing a navy blue business suit with her car keys ready in one hand, which she had near her mouth when she was shouting up for Sherry. In her other hand, she held a partly drunk and steamy cup of black coffee in a grey mug with words in italics that read ‘STFU, I’m drinking my Joe!’.
As Sherry jumped out of her bed in her pink striped pyjamas with another paler pink colour to contrast her top and bottoms and a picture of a sleepy cloud with a face on it that was fast asleep in its little miniature bed on Sherry’s chest, Sherry panickily opened her pink wallet with a red threaded outline and a picture of a strawberry, while Sherry herself was still in a daze with messy, unbrushed hair.
Sherry’s stomach pitted as she quickly realised that Samantha’s money was still lingering within her wallet from when Samantha gave it to her so that she would go and take the time to buy some new school supplies for the upcoming start of her fourth year in third level education as a new student in Dwindabre Secondary School.
Sherry froze still with a shocked look on her face as sweat droplets dropped down her face too. Sherry squeaked to herself, with tear droplets forming in the corners of her eyes. Sherry knew that she needed to go right now! It was no problem going out to get stuff for school, like some stationery equipment; it was just getting what she needed for her new custom school uniform that might be a challenge posed against her.
It’ll nearly be impossible to get what she needs for her school uniform while staying just in Dwindabre since they’ll soon be running out of school clothing. The local shops only stocked enough school uniform clothing for a limited time before the shop’s supplies returned to normal clothing.
Sherry also felt that she would return to school soon because it was near the end of August and the passing of Samantha’s birthday recently which was a clear enough indication to her that her summer break would be ending shortly. Sherry knew that she had to get her new custom school uniform ready for the new school year as soon as possible, or else Samantha wouldn’t be pleased with her.
Sherry shook her head franticly from side to side, closing her eyes and gritting her teeth in fear. Sherry quickly got up and dressed as quickly as she could, so fast that it looked like her clothes just swapped onto her with very little movement. Sherry neglected to brush her hair since she was in such a hurry.
Without hesitation, Sherry rushed down the stairs of her house and flew past Samantha, who reappeared at the bottom of the stairs without her grey coffee mug in her hand since she had just gone to put the grey mug into the kitchen sink for cleaning later. Sherry landed directly into her conveniently placed white and pink shoe trainers at the bottom of the stairs and then leapt out of the front door of the house that Samantha had already opened for herself to leave for work. A gust of wind soon breezed past Samantha’s face as Sherry dashed off past her and out of the house, causing her pink hair to float lightly in the wind that Sherry created while rushing past her.
Samantha let out a big sigh before putting on her black high heels and saying to herself softly.
“Take care…Sherry…”
Samantha felt fed up with having to tell Sherry multiple times throughout the summer to go out and shop for school supplies since she didn’t seem to be doing anything else this past summer. Before Samantha headed out of the house through the front door, she heard a chirpy and familiar voice from down the hall and in the kitchen that faced the house’s front door.
“Hey Sam, did Sher just go out there?”
Samantha turned around to face her partner, Yovan Tristal, down the hallway and in the white kitchen door frame as Yovan poked half of herself out of the kitchen and into the hallway for Samantha to see her. Yovan scratched the underside of her right breast through her flimsy yellow tank top and slumped in the doorframe but fixed her posture by standing up straight at five foot seven inches tall.
Yovan Tristal, nicknamed ‘ma’ to Sherry, was partly dressed since she didn’t need to head to work until Samantha left for work herself since Samantha’s car covered the driveway to their house and trapped Yovan’s car in. Yovan’s black hair flowed down to the top of her shoulders as her lilac-coloured eyes gazed at Samantha at the front door of their house. Yovan has a fitter physique than her partner Samantha, which always made her jealous of her but was one of the reasons Samantha liked her, other than what she sees in her partner, a decent Janikan being.
Samantha looked Yovan up and down before rolling her eyes at how she was presenting herself this morning and smiled while replying to Yovan as she turned around to the house’s front door.
“Yeah… I hope Sherry’s keeping it together. I worry for her since I feel like she acts strange like this since she doesn’t have any fri-“
Samantha abruptly stopped talking and was caught off guard when Yovan started to hug her from behind. Samantha got slightly flustered when she turned her head slightly to try and face Yovan even though Yovan was hugging her in a weird position. Yovan turned Samantha around and helped fix up her suit since she messed it up by hugging Samantha out of nowhere and without warning.
As Yovan fixed up Samantha’s tie, Yovan told Samantha.
“Don’t worry about it! I’m sure Sher does have some friends! Just because we don’t see them doesn’t mean she hasn’t got any, you know!”
Samantha smiled and, surprisingly, even to Yovan, hugged her back briefly. Once they let go of each other, Samantha ended their conversation with Yovan by telling her.
“Yeah, I just hope she brings someone around…like the boy she was friends with years ago, erm….”
Samantha tried to recall his name by rubbing her temple on the right-hand side of her head with her right hand.
“I think you were saying his name was Dan?... Right?”
Yovan chimed in, hoping to get it right but was also concerned in the back of her mind about Sherry bringing over and being friends with a boy since she didn’t take too kindly to the idea of Sherry being with a boy. Since Sherry is fatherless, this leaves Yovan with the position of ‘father’ in a weird way since she always acts fatherly towards Sherry whenever boys are involved.
“No, it was…! It wasn’t that, but… his name did start with a ‘D’….”
Samantha struggled to speak as she couldn’t remember Sherry’s old friend’s name. Samantha soon stopped thinking about it when she realised she needed to start heading off to work soon or she might be late for her office. Samantha opened the house’s front door and started walking out of the house but said back to Yovan before leaving the house altogether and closing the front door.
“I’m off! Make sure you also get ready soon as well. Okay?~”
Samantha smiled sincerely at Yovan before closing the front door of the house. Yovan stood still for a moment in the hallway and said aloud to herself while swinging backwards and forwards on the spot she stood on in the wooden floor hallway.
“N-no kiss today, …okay! Right! Eh…back to the kitchen to make my lunch then!”
Sherry ran away in a panic for a solid minute before she started to slow herself down from tiring herself out. Sherry ground herself to a halt while bending down with her hands on her knees and desperately gasping for some fresh air since she wasn’t an athletic girl. Sherry panted for a few seconds and said to herself while taking in deep breaths in between talking to herself out loud.
“Huh… I thought I could… run for… another few minutes… or so…”
As Sherry started to stress about how unhealthy she was, she straightened herself up with her hands on her back and looked up at the pale red sky for more air. Even though she was outside, Sherry continued talking to herself, which meant that anyone could overhear her and realise how weird she was.
“It doesn’t matter… I better get back to… “
Sherry looked up and around herself after having completely forgotten why she was so scared in the first place that it caused her to leave the house abruptly in fear and without properly saying goodbye to her parents. Sherry looked ahead of herself, down the worn-down pathway she was standing still on and put her right hand on her chin while letting her left hand grip her right elbow as she thought to herself.
“Wait… why am I out here again? I swear I was-”
Sherry started patting down the sides of her jeans pockets to see if anything would re-jog her memory. Eventually, after Sherry patted down her jeans’ pockets enough, she felt her wallet in her left pocket. Sherry’s wallet was slightly bulking and bulging in her pocket since Sherry had more money in it than usual. Sherry pulled her bright-coloured wallet from her dark blue jean trousers and opened it up. As the sight of multiple Jeuro notes greeted Sherry, she started to remember everything clearly. Sherry told herself.
“Oh! I better get some stuff for school soon before ‘mom’ scolds me for not buying stuff sooner.”
Sherry continued to walk in the direction she was initially running to and began her big shopping trip for school supplies, firstly in Dwindabre. After walking for a few minutes, Sherry made her way over to the local ‘Generic Brand: Superstore’ to get her school clothes first since she remembered seeing an advertisement in the shop’s windows that there were school clothes available in the shop for a limited time.
Sherry planned to acquire the clothing pieces she needed for her school uniform of preference and then search for some school supplies in the same shop since the shop itself would be big enough to have items like that in them too. It was also the back-to-school season in J-Land, so these school items weren’t hard to miss around this time of year.
The company ‘Generic Brand’ is a multi-billion Jeuro company that specialises in producing cheap products with its ‘iconic’ and simplistic branding of the product being a ‘Generic Brand,’ making an affordable version of an everyday item. This in and upon itself is the company’s motto for its entire international outbranched franchise.
Sherry walked up to the automatic glass front doors of the Generic Brand: Superstore, in quotations as Sherry would like to say since it wasn’t so super in size but stopped to look at the paper poster sign that looked like it was freshly put up right in front of Sherry on the other side of the automatic glass doors.
The store’s glass doors automatically opened as Sherry approached it, and Sherry read the paper sign. Suddenly Sherry slammed her hands onto the automatically opening glass door window and put her face right up and into the poster. The paper poster was for the school uniform clothing items for Mrs Drillhole’s Secondary School and Dwindabre Secondary School, respectively. Sherry screamed out loud.
“WHAT! THEY’RE SOLD OUT ALREADY!”
Sherry unknowingly started to cause a commotion in front of the superstore, halting the automatic doors from completely opening up and shouting at them. Once Sherry realised that she was holding the automatic glass doors closed over from the other people trying to enter the store, she quickly took her hands off of the window and started to apologise to all of the people around her while moving to one side and away from the automatic glass doors to give herself some time to think.
Sherry’s main thought right now was.
“Mom’s gonna kill me if I can’t get my uniform ready on time for school!”
Sherry looked back into the store again and saw all the other school supplies she needed, like new pencils and copybooks, so she decided that it wouldn’t hurt to buy the bulk of the stuff she could see for now while she saw them in the store.
Without delaying any further and the lingering feeling of needing to get her customized school uniform sorted, Sherry soon went into the Generic Brand: Superstore and bought all of the school supplies that she needed for this year and a reusable plastic bag that had the logo of the Generic Brand company on it so that she could carry her purchases.
After walking a few steps away from the superstore, Sherry stopped and pointed with her index finger on her chin before thinking to herself.
“Wait a minute… when does school start up again? It’s probably not starting for another few weeks or so…right? But then again…why would all the school uniform stuff be all out?”
Sherry reached for her pink-cased phone in the back of her dark blue jeans pocket and started pondering on the thought of how easily she lost track of time for when school started back up. Sherry frowned for a minute and depressingly thought that it may be due to a lack of reasons for her need to remember when she was heading back to school since her social life wasn’t as happy or as exciting as everybody else’s. Sherry shrugged her shoulders at this pessimistic thought since she didn’t want to think about it too much.
Sherry’s jaw dropped as she panicked and shouted at her phone with the calendar app opened.
“IT’S TOMORROW!”
Sherry suddenly had thoughts of Samantha as the devil with flames behind her again and started to sweat at these thoughts as they included, and were not limited to:
‘Sherry kneeled onto the ground for forgiveness in front of Samantha, as Samantha looked down at Sherry with rage.’
‘Sherry, in a full black suit with sunglasses, a white shirt, and a pink tie, while walking away from her house and Samantha angrily trying to call Sherry back to their house while Yovan is beside Samantha, crying into a scrunched-up bunch of tissues while waving goodbye to Sherry as if she was setting off to a new place far away from home, in search for a new job and home, where she would never be seen again.’
And the last thought Sherry imagined was Samantha prolongingly shouting “SHERRY!!” as she has fire in her sharp-looking eyes with shark-like teeth. Yovan was also in the background with a barely detailed expression on her face, so much so that Yovan’s face just had small black dots for eyes with a tiny black curve for a smile.
Sherry started quivering once she snapped out of her imaginative thoughts and back into the real world. Sherry started to calm herself down by placing a hand on her chest while letting in and out some long deep breaths. Once Sherry reclaimed her wits, she thought to herself.
“I guess I’ll go try ‘The Market Lane’ and see if there’s a stall there selling anything I’d need for my uniform.”
Since Dwindabre has this mishmash of mainline/franchise-like buildings and tiny shops that the locals would run, it’s not surprising that Dwindabre is also the home of what many people inside and outside of Dwindabre call ‘The Market Lane.’ The Market Lane is a collection of small businesses, shops and stalls that is kept alive due to its significance in helping and starting small businesses that wish to grow from the ground up.
The Market Lane’s charm for people inside of Dwindabre is that it typically is the home to many stalls and tiny niche shops that have items that you wouldn’t find anywhere else in any other shops in Dwindabre. The Market Lane was established a few years after the decline of Dwindabre’s population in the hopes of helping entrepreneurs start their small businesses since they had previously missed their chance to start their businesses when their target demographic dwindled as the population of Dwindabre decreased not too long ago.
Sherry continued walking with her phone out in her hand and headed onto the school’s mobile webpage that displayed the new school uniform with all its interchanging options that were on the site itself by moving either out of frame to the left or right with the latest piece of the school uniform slotting into the missing pieces prior spot.
The uniform itself was comprised of, starting from the shoes and up to the shoulders; Black shoes, which also had a little speech bubble noting beside it saying that it’s okay if they aren’t pure black, as long as the shoes in question are predominantly the shade black. Then for the socks, the speech bubble continued to say that they could be any colour or pattern as long as they were appropriate for wearing on school grounds.
Next on the list for Sherry’s dream school uniform, was a grey skirt, since she didn’t fancy wearing trousers, with a note listing the colours it could also be in. Sherry read it to herself briefly in her head.
“Navy blue, darker shades of grey, lighter shades of grey, black. Also note: For skirts, chequered skirts are accepted as long as they are in the shades and colours listed beforehand.”
Then from the skirt upwards was the outfit’s torso segment, consisting of three clothing items: A shirt, a blazer/jumper, and a neck accessory. The shirt was mainly white, but the note beside it suggested that students may have a light colour mixed into the shirt or even a pastel-coloured shirt as long as it contrasted the dark blazer/jumper accompanying it.
The next piece of the torso part of the uniform was the jumper/blazer. The jumper was only in three colours since it was made for the school: Black, navy blue and dark grey. While it was okay to buy the blazer option outside of the collaborative school stores, from the student/parents’ choice, the blazer in question would still need to be dark to contrast the shirt.
Sherry cheekily commented while looking at the school’s website on her phone.
“Do people get that scratchy-looking jumper, though? It reminds me of Mrs Drillhole’s jumpers… they were so bad…”
Sherry also added to her thoughts by telling herself.
“I’ve heard that most people wear the blazer since it’s not scratchy depending on where you get it from…even with that, though… I still want one since… it just looks cooler!~”
Sherry’s eyes twinkled like stars while looking at the blazer and imagining herself in one since Sherry was forced and strictly told to wear: Black shoes, a grey skirt, a blue shirt, and a school-produced jumper back when she was still attending Mrs Drillhole’s secondary school.
Sherry smiled happily since she didn’t have to force herself to wear Mrs Drillhole’s set uniform anymore. Sherry continued reading her phone on the last piece of clothing she needed for her new school uniform. The last item of clothing Sherry needed for her uniform was her neck accessory which was between either a necktie, a ribbon tie, or a bow tie. The colour of the tie was purely optionable as long as it complimented the uniform itself and was visible to others in the school.
After finding out the last piece of the uniform that Sherry needed to keep an eye out for, Sherry put her phone into the back of her dark blue jean pockets and continued walking for a bit longer before thinking to herself.
“If my luck ends up even more horrible than it is now… I might have to go to Dwattale and waste my money since-”
Sherry stopped her train of thought for a moment while shaking her head from side to side since she felt like she was being too pessimistic but also felt like she was avoiding blaming herself for the lack of awareness she had for the life she lived. Sherry continued her train of thought again.
“This is my fault for not getting the uniform ready before tomorrow...I need to stop whining and stop making up excuses!”
After blaming herself and properly seeing that she was whining to herself too much for not going to buy her school supplies sooner, Sherry decided to, and reluctantly too, that if she didn’t find what she needed in The Market Lane she would hop onto a train that would lead her to the next town over that Sherry called Dwattale, which was twenty-five kilometres away from Dwindabre.
After walking through Dwindabre and having already visited The Market Lane, Sherry decided to go for a little jog to the train station and try to catch the next train to the next town since she was out of breath very quickly after exiting her house. Sherry also wanted to jog since she wanted to test herself on how much stamina she truly had if she paced herself correctly. Sherry also wanted to know if the results would be concerning or not to her and how she could fix her fitness problem.
As Sherry made her way over and into view of the Dwindabre Train Station, she sent a quick message to Yovan to tell her what she was planning to do next.
“Hey, ma! Don’t tell Mom yet but I’m gonna be a bit late for dinner today!”
Sherry sent the first part of her text and continued writing more messages, one after another.
“I have to go to Dwattale to get some stuff for school!”
Sherry sent the last text and quickly followed it up with another text.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can! Promise!”
Sherry left a bowing emoji along with a red heart emoji to the side of the text and then clicked send for the final time so that Yovan could read her messages and respond whenever she could find the time to. Sherry continued walking towards Dwindabre Train Station and noticed that the train she wanted to get on had just pulled up and into the station. Shortly after noticing the train, Sherry heard a bird chirping notification from her phone. Yovan managed to send Sherry a quick message since she was finishing her lunch break at work.
“Okay, Sher, I’ll keep her distracted as long as you need, hun! Stay safe! And don’t talk to any boys, or I’ll kill them! Love U!”
Yovan ended the text message to Sherry with a heart emoji followed by a knife emoji. Sherry didn’t manage to reply to Yovan as soon as she read the message since she had to scan her train card on the NFC receiver on the way into part of the train station where the trains themselves stopped. Soon after entering this section of the train station, the train announcer also stated that the trains would be taking off soon. Even though Sherry was in a hurry, she briefly noticed that Yovan’s last text had a knife emoji at the end, making her turn pale as she started to dash straight toward the train’s sliding doors and worry about what she was being threatened with.
Sherry managed to reach the train's sliding doors and slip her way through them before they closed entirely on her. Sherry stood straight back up from being slightly leant forward by her last dash to the train and made her way to a seat on the train. She decided to take the middle seat of five seats with two strangers on each side of the empty spot since it was the only one free in the carriage that she was currently in.
Soon after she sat down, the train started moving on to the next town over with Sherry beginning to hope that there was somewhere in ‘Dwattale’ that had what she needed for her ideal school uniform for school tomorrow while also being able to get back to Dwindabre in a very fashionable timeframe.
