Solflare: The Painter's Secret-Chapter 43: Really?!
Darkness welcomed Leon as he swung the door open and entered.
Stillness fell off him when he unwrapped the hoodie from his body and threw it forward, not minding where it would land.
He tilted himself sideways, inserted the key again, and locked the door.
"Uuuuugh... I’m tired," he said, rubbing his eyes with his left arm, then stretched his body.
He moved frantically in the darkness until the front of his knees slammed against a wooden structure with a sharp thwack.
He stumbled back, blinked, and then shook his head thrice.
Leon moved two steps to the right, then continued forward.
Drowsiness filled him so deeply that he fell fast into sleep the moment his body landed in the soft surface that reacted with a groan after he threw himself forward.
With every shift of his exhausted body, the material beneath him twitched and settled with a low, viscous sigh.
It molded to his shape with an unsettling precision, cradling him in a cool embrace that felt less like comfort and more like being swallowed by a gelatinous creature.
The bed rippled softly as if digesting his distress each time the dream of turning his head to escape the pressure of the lizard-lady’s finger on his forehead.
Although he could open his eyes and recheck, he was too drained, his consciousness fraying at the edges, pulling him into a synthetic sleep.
As the dream of the lizard-lady’s finger vanished, the warning from her and Hayes’s congratulations echoed like a distinct prayer in his mind.
"Grade B before twenty-five... or the world will collapse by your own hands."
"Congratulations, Leon Storm. You passed. You are now an official Grade E Awakened student."
The two voices looped in a maddening chorus.
They twisted together, letting the words "Creator" and "Grade E" clash until they lost all meaning and became a pounding rhythm of impending failure.
More dreams followed.
In one, he was running up the endless, crumbling staircase, but the sentinels at the top wore the faces of Hayes and the lizard-lady, speaking in unison.
At their back, he saw a flicker of Tiger’s face, but that vanished before he could recount it.
The dark-blue sky and ash clouds cleared, making way for the new day’s sky to appear.
A sharp blade of the morning sun sliced through a gap in the curtain, found the chocolate skin of his exposed forearm where he’d thrown across his face.
The rays didn’t warm his skin; they burned.
A sudden searing pain jolted through the fog of his tormented sleep and etched on him like a brand.
Leon grunted as the skin prickled with a heat that felt personal.
A deep resonant hum vibrated through the floor, up the bed frame, and into his bones.
It buzzed in his teeth like an oppressive knot that had been absent in the dead of the night.
Anger flashed through Leon as his eyes snapped open. His fist clenched in the twitching sheets as he lay there for a while.
Drowsiness was visible in his eyes, yet he glared at the ceiling as if he could silence the infrastructure.
Pink light stabbed his eyes, forcing him to blink. There, the anger he’d woken up with vanished and turned into confusion.
’Where am I?’ he whispered in his thought and turned his head slowly to the right.
His eyes caught sight of a small, polished desk filled with arrays of cosmetics and hairbrushes.
On the left, he saw a delicate, preserved flower in a crystal vial placed on the windowsill.
"This isn’t a male’s room," he said, his voice echoing in a whisper. "This is a feminine room."
The responsive mattress gurgled in protest when he sat up swiftly. His eyes darted around the room, taking in the subtle differences.
The way the light hit a silk scarf draped over a chair, and the faint, clean scent of something floral.
"HUH!" he cursed under his throat as realization coiled in his gut when a new sound cut through the building’s hum.
Splash. Drip. Drip. Splash.
A splash and soft dripping sound echoed from behind a slightly transparent door on the far-left side.
When he neared it, Leon’s eyes widened when he saw a ghostly imprint of something that confirmed his findings.
As he shook his head, his gaze shot to the big analog clock mounted above the very door he stumbled two steps away from.
The first time in the room, he saw something that didn’t have the pinkish color. The hands, bold and black, pointed unequivocally to 7:00 AM.
Panic surged in Leon, forcing him to wipe his eyes with his palms, then look at the clock again.
His mind replayed the previous night, the key, and the number assigned to him.
He’d seen and saw the 7 on the fob as he rechecked, but for the doors...
Coldness ran through his bones as he moved from the mat he had been walking on to the side of the door.
Leon unlocked it, yanked it open, and leaned out to check the number plaque beside the frame.
In the hallway, a bustling, noisy current of uniform and sleepy chatter clung to his eyes and ears.
Dozens of eyes locked onto him the moment he hastily moved out without a shirt at the doorway of a pink room.
Behind him, a tall guy with an arm draped around a petite girl’s shoulder stopped and stared at Leon.
A smirk played on his lips as he tapped on Leon’s shoulder and drew his attention.
"Do I know you from somewhere?" he drawled. The girl holding the boy’s hands giggled, then buried her face in his shoulder.
"Maybe," Leon squinted his eyes as if trying to remember, but stopped when he saw the girl’s smiling face.
"Didn’t they tell you the new academy directive?" The boy’s voice tensed at first, but calmed when he saw how confused the one at his front was.
Leon’s face shimmered with no emotion as he shook his head.
"Ooh, sorry. Rooms are dual-gender now." A smile tore on the boy’s lips as he tilted his gaze to the girl at his right-hand side.
’DUAL GENDER?’ Leon’s eyes widened as he screamed in his thoughts.
"Supposed to ’foster balanced synergy’ or some proctor nonsense." The boy paused and laughed. "Better hope you got a good one."
He frowned slightly and tilted his gaze at the lady, "Some of us weren’t so lucky." 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞
The words hit Leon like a physical blow. Dual-gender.
Leon didn’t wait for the boy to finish his jab. He entered and slammed the door shut.
He placed his back against it and breathed heavily, almost as if his end had come.
At that instant, the smile Zoe showed him the day she visited him at the hospital replayed in his mind like a movie that wouldn’t stop reeling.
