Time passed, and all Kaiden did was drinking his hot cocoa, lost in thought.
How long had they been sitting at the slightly longer, clean white dining table amidst the multitude of others eating?
A somewhat louder atmosphere surrounded them, even though they still understood each other. Kaiden, who had been sipping the cup indirectly, occasionally since the memory of Leon, seemed neither absent nor present.
His nausea was completely gone, the cold sweat had dried up, and he felt quite normal again.
"Is everyone finished?"
Ren asked after waiting forever for the others. After a short wait and glances around, everyone saw that the others had already finished.
"Kaiden, are you done too?"
Thrown off guard, he felt as if he was pulled out of a daze and said somewhat dazed,
"Uh, y-yes, I'm done."
Relieved like the others, they stood up, taking their food remnants on their rather simple white trays toward the storage area. Again, like before, they walked towards their rooms, with Kaiden analyzing and familiarizing himself more and more with the surroundings.
There were various long corridors, but not too many, about five. Built high, resembling castles, but with differences.
While old castles looked quite brittle and aged, here everything looked abstractly new. Robust and unchangeable.
Everything was simply dressed in boring white or black most of the time.
'Was that because there was no paint color? Or did they want it that way?'
But Kaiden's questions about the surroundings drifted into the past once they reached their room.
The completely black door seemed entirely out of place, surrounded by all the white.
Once inside, everyone sat back on their beds. Zack on the top bunk right next to the door, and below him, his sister.
Across were Mark and Ren, with Ren choosing the lower bunk and Mark the upper.
The remaining two, Kaiden and Mary, also shared a bunk bed, with Mary on top and Kaiden below.
Kaiden felt comfortable in this arrangement; if he were on top, he'd have a kind of paranoia. While he was sure that Mary wouldn't harm him at the moment, they were together for more than just this moment, and relationships that start as comrades can quickly turn hostile.
Lying on the bed with plenty of space, he looked at the about 1 meter higher support of the mattress-like surface. When he thought about it, the material seemed familiar; wasn't it Flexidur?
He hit it with a bit more force, and indeed, the mattress didn't bend while his lower body sank in completely. Really comfortable, thought Kaiden, even though he had a bad experience with it.
He almost started coughing for a moment, but it wasn't that dramatic.
The light went out suddenly;
'what was happening now?'
Kaiden wondered, and another person voiced his thoughts.
Mark responded, telling Zack that he should read his notifications and not put them on silent.
"But every time I do that, I get a headache, and I don't like it,"
Zack replied to Mark.
"Just read it now; you don't have the notification beeping anymore,"
Mark advised.
"As you wish," Zack said to Mark again.
'What were they talking about?'
Kaiden wondered. He had asked himself that question several times now but hadn't asked it all this time because the timing was never right.
But now was the right time.
"What do you actually mean by notifications all the time?"
"What do we mean?"
Mark replied.
"Well, you keep talking about notifications and so on. I don't understand exactly what you mean."
Ren calmly explained to Kaiden that the hologram contained all the information, and one could access it at will.
"So, if you want to know the time, you say or think, depending on how you've set it, what time it is. Similarly, you have to manually activate the notifications from the academy channel."
After a short pause, he added,
"But you should already know that."
Kaiden justified his position by saying,
"Well, I've only been out of a coma for about half a month and awake since then."
Silence,
Why was the atmosphere suddenly like this?
He had been in a coma, and they already knew that.
So, what did he say now that created this atmosphere?
The silence continued for some time until Ren opened his mouth.
"Kaiden, you may not quite understand it yet, but we've all had our powers since the catastrophe of the explosion. In other words, almost everyone had two years to prepare, train, and become stronger. Not as strong as we can be now in the academy, but we could prepare ourselves. You, on the other hand, only had how many weeks or days to train with your ability?"
Kaiden replied with
"None."
"What do you mean, none?" Ren asked.
To which Kaiden replied,
"I awakened only in this Flexidur cave."
Historical laughter erupted, not just from Ren but also from the others, except for Mary.
"Kaiden, that fact only worsens the whole situation,"
Mark proceeded to explain further.
"In principle, it's possible to pass the entrance exam without a power, it happens more often than you, as a normie or a normal, might have heard before. However, even in those cases, the serum flows in them, which means they're still stronger than other people and can surpass human physical limits. You, on the other hand, survived without these real superhuman physical abilities and defeated someone else."
After taking another deep breath, he concluded his somewhat longer sentence, saying,
"You're truly a monster."
Silence,
No one could add anything, their thoughts summed up as they looked at Kaiden, as much as they could in their peripheral vision.
Eventually, they fell asleep, except for Mary; she stayed awake, eyes still shockingly wide open.
No one saw her, but she spoke a thousand words.